The Night Crew Read Free Page A

hold the door, but they kicked through. Then about four of them held me and I couldn’t get to the phone, and they tipped everything over in the lab, all the animal cages, everything.’’ He touched his face. ‘‘I think the door hit me . . .’’
    ‘‘Look, there’s gonna be two sides to this,’’ Anna said. She looked back at Creek, and said, ‘‘Creek.’’
    Creek stepped away, spotted a mouse looking at him from the top of the loading dock and closed in on it. Behind him, the Bee and the Rat were still talking to Jason’s camera; the pig was still struggling with the woman who’d taken it, but the squealing had stopped, and the scene was almost quiet.
    Anna turned back to the kid and continued, ‘‘The animal rights guys will be heroes to some people. And some people will be heroes to the scientific community.’’
    She patted his thigh. ‘‘Now, go like this. From your nose.’’
    She made an upward rubbing gesture with her hand, on her own face.
    The kid gulped. ‘‘Why?’’
    ‘‘Want to keep your job?’’ Anna grinned at him. She was a small woman, dark-haired, with an oval face and corn-flower-blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses: she had an effect on young males. ‘‘Be a hero. Smear a little blood around your face and we’ll put you on camera, telling your side. Believe me, they won’t fire you.’’
    ‘‘I need the job,’’ the kid said tentatively.
    ‘‘Smear a little blood and stand up . . . what’s your name?’’
    The kid was no dummy: He’d been born in front of a TV set. He wiped blood up his cheek and said, ‘‘Charles Mc-Kinley . . . How do I look?’’ His cheek looked like a raw sirloin.
    ‘‘Great. That’s McKinley, M-c-K-i-n-l-e-y, Charles, regular spelling.’’
    ‘‘Yeah.’’ He touched his face again: the blood was brilliant red.
    ‘‘What’s your job up there, Charles?’’ Anna got a few more details about the job, his age, where he lived.
    ‘‘That’s really great,’’ she said. ‘‘Now what . . .’’
    The pig screamed, and Anna turned.
    The woman who’d been holding it had carried it toward Jason’s camera, where Jason was interviewing the Rat. As it screamed, the animal kicked free, and ran.
    The Rat stooped and tried to scoop it up, like a bouncing football; but the pig went through, smacked into his ankle, and the Rat fell squarely on his butt: ‘‘Shit,’’ he shouted. ‘‘Get the pig . . .’’
    Jason was still on him, lights in his face: He rolled and the pig, now panicked, ran behind the woman who’d originally held him, did another quick turn, and as the Rat tried to get to his feet, ran squarely into the Rat’s chest, knocking him flat on his butt again.
    Jason stayed with it as the Rat scrambled to his feet.
    Anna grinned and turned back to the kid: ‘‘. . . Tell us what happened, talk to this camera,’’ Anna said, pointing at Creek. ‘‘Creek, come on back.’’
    Creek lit up and the kid told his story, breaking into tears again as he got caught up with it.
    Anna stepped away to watch Jason, and when the Rat got tangled in a long complicated explanation of animal rights, she broke in: ‘‘How come all the women in the group?’’
    ‘‘There are some guys—they just didn’t make it tonight,’’ Rat said. He started to say more, when Anna’s cell phone rang.
    She unclipped it and stepped away, glanced at Creek, who was still with the kid. ‘‘Yeah.’’
    Louis, calling from the truck seventy-five feet away, excited: ‘‘Jesus, Anna, we got a jumper on Wilshire, he’s on a ledge.’’
    ‘‘Where?’’ A basic rule: everything happened at once. Anna looked back at the two interviews, calculating.
    ‘‘I don’t know, somewhere on Wilshire, close, I think. I’m getting the address up.’’
    ‘‘Get it now,’’ Anna rapped. Very tense: a jumper would make everything. The networks, CNN, everything—if they got the jump. She could hear Louis tapping on the laptop keys, where he