“You have to call the police... What's that smell? It's terrible.”

“Tear gas.”

A pause. “Just who are you?”

Rune rose to her feet slowly, thanked them. Then stumbled through the warehouse out into the daylight.

When she got to a pay phone she called the police. They showed up pretty quickly. But, as she'd expected, there wasn't much they could do. She didn't have a detailed description of the attacker. Probably white male, medium build. No hair color, no eye color, no facial characteristic. A red windbreaker, like in Don't Look Now — that scary movie based on the Daphne du Maurier story. Which Rune deduced neither of the responding cops had seen or read, judging by the blank look on their faces.

They said they'd check into it, though they weren't happy that she'd had a canister of CS-38, which was illegal in the city.

“You have any idea why he'd want to do it?”

She supposed it might have something to do with her movie and the porn theater and the Sword of Jesus. She told them this and the look on their faces told her that, as far as they were concerned, the case was already a dead end. They flipped their notebooks closed and said they'd have a patrol car cruise past occasionally.

She asked them again how many men they were going to put on the case but they just looked at her blankly and told her they were sorry for her troubles.

And then they confiscated the tear gas.

After cleaning up, putting hydrogen peroxide on the scrapes and digging a new tear gas canister out from under the sink, Rune went to L&R Productions.

“ 'ey, what've we got 'ere?” Bob asked, examining her face.

She wasn't about to tell him that the injuries might have to do with her movie — since it was L&R's Betacam that would be at risk if she got machine-gunned down on the street.

“Guy hassled me. I beat the crap out of him.”

“Uh-huh,” Bob said skeptically.

“Listen, after work, I need to borrow the camera again. And some lights.”

Bob, in a lecturing mood, said to her, “You know what this is, Rune?” Rubbing the large video camera as if it were a blonde's rump.

“Larry said it was okay. I've used it before.”

“Humor an old man, luv. Tell me. What is it?”

“It's a Betacam video camera, Bob. It's made by Sony. It has an Ampex deck. I've used one about fifty times.”

“Do you know how much they cost?”

“More than you'll ever pay me in my lifetime, I'll bet.”

“Ha. It's worth forty-seven thousand dollars.” He paused for dramatic effect.

“Larry told me that the first time he loaned it to me. I didn't think it'd gone down in value.”

“You lose it, you break it, you burn out the tube, you pay for it.”

“I'll be careful, Bob.”