The Night Crew

'Two minutes to Mission,' A

'Get off, go east,' Louis said. He was punching numbers into the laptop. 'Okay, three blocks east, right side, we should see it, they got one guy down and one of the clerks threw a pot of boiling coffee on the holdup guy, he's still in the street, he might be blind, he's still armed, cops on the way.'

'Could be good,' A

'I am hurrying,' he said. 'I'm doing seventy.'

'I mean hurry,' A

Coughlin took it sedately through the curve and A

'Jesus,' Coughlin said, but he floored it and the truck took off.

Three blocks ahead, there were people in the street: 'That's gotta be it,' she said.

Louis was fumbling with the main camera, and said to Coughlin, 'All right, the camera's all set. Just pull the trigger.'

'Yeah, yeah.'

Louis reached over the seat and put the headset over the top of Coughlin's head. 'Pull it down over your ears.'

'Right therepull right up on that curb,' A

'Fuckin' people are nuts,' Coughlin said, but he put two wheels on the curb, stood on the brake, and A

A man was lying on the street with his hands on his face, moaning, bleeding from the face, a revolver on the sidewalk ten feet away. A tough-looking teenager in a letter jacket was standing over him. Sirens began screaming in. Coughlin was out with the camera, but not moving fast enough. A

Coughlin broke into a trot, the camera bouncing on his shoulder, and A

'Guy come ru

A

As the teenager started talking again, she ran inside the store. Another man was on the floor, and a half-dozen Starbucks counterpeople were gathered around him. She said, 'Coughlin, get in here, right now. Get the scene on the floor. Hurry, goddammit, the cops are almost here.'

The cops werethere. Coughlin trotted into the store and began walking sideways, working around the group on the floor, and one of the counterwomen stood up and pointed a finger at him and said, 'Get out of here, that's not allowed, that's not allowed.'

A

Three cops hurried in the door. One spotted the camera and waved it away, and Coughlin took it down again. A

Two or three nodded, and she said, 'We'd like to get statements outside, if anyone has time.'

'Will this be in the newspaper tomorrow?' somebody asked.

'Maybe TV,' A

A paramedic truck arrived as they did the interviews, and Coughlin moved away again to catch the wounded man being carried out. The shooter with the burned face was cuffed and put in another ambulance, and then there was nothing but a crowd of gawkers and the flashing lights on the cop car.

'This way, back to the truck,' A

'I'm ru

She shook her head: 'Still not moving fast enough,' she said.

Coughlin caught up with her halfway to the truck, pulled the headset off and said, 'What's the rush?'

'Cops might give us a hard time, especially if the Starbucks people complain. Might want to look at the tape: we gotta get out of here before they start thinking about it.'

He nodded, and hurried along with her. Louis took the camera and Coughlin jumped into the driver's seat. 'Kind of a rush,' he said, starting the truck.

'Yeah, but you gotta move,' A

'Hey, I'm a begi

She shrugged, then smiled. 'Yeah, I guess. For a guy who doesn't know the rules. But next time, rules number one and two: drive fast, then run.'

'Yes, ma'am.' He laughed, a little giddy. Then: 'How come nobody else showed up? No competition?'

A

'Yeah, yeah.'

'Anyway, there's no way this would make the papers, much less TV news, just on what happened. Routine holdup shooting. We might have a couple of good images, so maybe it'll make itnot because it means anything, but because the images are good.'

'I hope I got some,' Coughlin said nervously, looking over his shoulder at Louis. 'I just kept pulling the trigger.'

'You did okay,' Louis said from the back of the truck. He had the tape up on a monitor. 'It's not great, but it's usable.'

A

'I was thinking I should help,' Coughlin said.

'No,' A

'That's cold,' Coughlin said.

'That's the way it is,' said A

A couple of minutes later, Coughlin took the radio out of his pocket, pushed the transmit button and asked, 'Anything?'

He listened, then said to A

A

Two kids, motorheads from a valley technical school, were chasing each other down the Ventura, when one lost it and rolled his rebuilt Charger off the freeway and down an embankment. They started that way, but when A

'The kid's dead,' Coughlin said.

'Yeah, but we can't get in and out, and that's the main thing,' A

A chase started on the Santa Monica, the highway patrol ru

'He's probably go