The valet's eyes clicked from map to cash.

"I heard Chad Stonewell's taking a late lunch," I said.

"I heard the same thing but I wouldn't know for sure," he said, playing along, glancing at the map. "Mr. Stonewell's driver doesn't valet park."

"No reason you should get stiffed. I'll be parked across the street, on Ocean. Give me a salute when you see Stonewell's driver pull out, okay?"

The valet nodded. He was a twenty-something Latino, probably worked two jobs just to get by. The twenty changed palms when we shook hands. I didn't know why I was going to so much trouble. Stonewell would never be a nobody - he'd been too famous for too long for that - but he hadn't been in a hit film for almost a decade and despite owning the most famously dimpled chin in the history of motion pictures his name was rapidly dropping to the bottom of the list of bankable stars. An undisputed champ of big-budget action flicks in the 1980's, when he burst onto the scene as the Bruiser from Brewster Texas, Stonewell was no longer the first name called when the script called for a brawny kind of action hero and so the parts that came his way were ones others had already rejected. Hard to get another hit after that, particularly when the rise to fame came on a reputation for invincibility rather than acting talent. Not that I wouldn't be able to sell his photograph after I'd taken it. If Scandal Times - the primary tab I worked with - didn't take it, another one would. But I wouldn't get much more than a couple of hundred for it. I'd be lucky if I broke even.

I circled the block a couple of times before a spot opened on Ocean Avenue in clear sight of the parking valet. The girl had needed money, sure, but that didn't mean I was responsible for giving it to her. I hated being played for a sucker even if I didn't think she'd played me for one - I'd played myself. Maybe because in prison I'd seen a hundred variations of the same girl ten years after the wolves had found her, hallowed out by drugs and hardened by abuse. Nothing I could do to stop that from happening to her but I didn't have to contribute to it by refusing to help. Maybe she'd take that hundred dollars and change her life. Maybe that hundred dollars was all she needed to tip her life over to the good. Maybe Stonewell was inking at that very moment a multi-million dollar contract to star in the Next Big Thing and I'd sell his photograph for a couple grand. One thing about suckers like me, we have hope.

The sun rolled over the lip of sea and the sky darkened to violet before the parking valet saluted and a black Mercedes S430 rolled to the stoplight up the street from the restaurant. I wrapped the 35 mm Nikon in a plastic bag and tucked the little Canon instamatic into the ankle of my boot. Stonewell's image hadn't graced the pages of a tabloid in months. He needed the publicity. He was going to kiss the sidewalk at my feet when the first flash popped. I checked the avenue for traffic and jaywalked to the opposite curb. The Mercedes stopped in the space reserved for valet parking. I lingered on the corner next to a blond guy waiting to cross the street at the next green. When the driver circled the hood to open the passenger door I pulled the camera from the bag and stepped around the corner. A bodyguard was holding the door to the restaurant open for Stonewell and some other guy, Stonewell in jeans, sneakers and a satin windbreaker, the kind with the name of a film emblazoned on the back. The other guy was about fifty, wore a black suit that made him look like a priest in Armani. They stepped into the shot before they even knew I was there.

"Hey Chad, give us a smile!" I called and fired the flash.

That was the only shot I'd need, I thought, Chad Stonewell leaving a Los Angeles restaurant with an unidentified man, but Stonewell shouted like I'd just pulled a gun and the bodyguard bolted from the door. My finger twitched again to get the shot, Stonewell pointing at me, his face full of menace and the bodyguard vaulting around his left shoulder. I'd seen the same look from other celebrities and knew it meant I needed to jet. I backpedaled for a last shot, turned to start my sprint and collided into the citizen I'd seen waiting for the light at the corner. I spun to go around him but he grabbed my arm and hit me with a forearm shot to the jaw. He jerked the camera as I fell, held it over his head to show Stonewell that he'd gotten it and tossed it to the bodyguard. The bodyguard flipped open the back of the camera and stripped out the film.

"Teach her a lesson," Stonewell said. "Camera, too."

The bodyguard shrugged and windmilled the Nikon on its strap. On the down stroke he dropped his shoulder and smashed the camera lens-first into the sidewalk.

"Again," Stonewell said.

The black-suited man behind him presumably watched, his expression impassive behind teardrop-shaped sunglasses. The Nikon swung in a high arc, taught on its strap. The lens had already shattered and the film compartment twisted open on a broken hinge. The second blow came like the coup-de-grace to a corpse. The impact shattered the body. The lens snapped free and rolled like a severed head into the gutter. Had they stopped at stripping the film from my camera I would have accepted the loss as one of the hazards of the trade. Celebrities have bodyguards. Sometimes they catch you and when they do they take your film. Every now and then they might throw an elbow into your ribs or in extreme circumstances wrestle you to the ground. By breaking my camera they had taken the chief tool of my trade and that threatened my survival. I pulled my legs up to my chest and drew the boot cam concealed in my Doc Martens. Nobody paid any attention to me when I stood. Stonewell tapped fists with the bodyguard and said something to the man in the black suit as they stepped toward the car. The citizen returned to the street corner, as though waiting for the light. I leapt forward, swinging the instamatic to my eye.

"Hey Chad, how about a smile?" I said.

The flash popped on a group shot, the black-suited man almost smiling in surprise, Stonewell and the bodyguard gaping like they'd just been caught robbing the bank. The flash, fired that close, blinded them. I sprang from my shooter's crouch and sprinted for the gap between the driver and the man in the black suit, who stepped back to avoid me, cutting off the bodyguard. The driver just looked on. I wasn't his job. Stonewell lunged to grab my jacket but caught nothing more than my slipstream as I raced past. Nobody else was in position to catch me. Mid-block I cut left onto the 3rd Street Promenade, a walk-street of shops and cinemas three blocks from the beach. They'd pile into the car, I thought, and try to catch me on the streets, probably at Wilshire, where the Promenade ends. I cut left again, toward Palisades Park, got lucky catching a green light at Ocean Avenue, and when I reached the mouth of the pedestrian bridge that crosses over the Pacific Coast Highway to the beach, I glanced back to see the bodyguard hunched over three blocks behind, vomiting into the curb. I maintained my stride until slowed by the sand beneath Santa Monica Pier and only then, safely concealed among the pilings, did I begin to wonder what the hell had just happened.

* * *

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