The cabbie died at the scene. And the protests that had been dwindling in the wake of the first terrible accident had erupted anew.

The usual Hollywood horde had taken up the call to action. The socialist elite from both coasts descended like well-dressed locusts on the steps of the police precinct where the two officers worked.

And there they sat.

During the day, they chanted. At night, they lit candles. And through it all, deals were discussed and lunches scheduled. It was less a protest than a three-week-long networking session. Plus the press coverage didn't hurt their careers.

Since he'd taken up his late-morning position on the sidewalk twenty minutes ago, Remo had singled out a bunch of celebrities he recognized.

There was Susan Saranrap and her companion, Tom Roberts. Remo made a point of avoiding their line of sight.

By the looks of it, Saranrap had followed through on a threat to became pregnant yet again. But at age seventy-six, she'd had to put an entire team of Frankenstein-inspired physicians to work revving up her dusty womb. Whatever injections they were giving her made her bugging eyes launch even farther from their sockets. The ability to blink over her trademark swollen orbs had been lost somewhere in the early part of the first trimester.

The famous Afrocentric movie director Mace Scree had abandoned his courtside L.A. Lakers seat to fly in for this day's rally. His slight frame was draped in an oversize basketball jersey. A goateed face that looked as if it had been borrowed from a cartoon weasel peered millionaire malevolence from beneath the brim of his omnipresent baseball cap.

Not one, but two former New York mayors had joined the cause. The first was an elderly man who looked like a frog starving for a fly. He'd found time to protest in the downtime between his twice yearly heart attacks.

The second ex-mayor was dressed in a thin cotton sweater, white shorts and carried a tennis racket. Though his detractors would have found it difficult to believe, this rally seemed to interest him even less than his stint in Gracie Mansion. Sitting on the precinct steps, bored, he bounced his racket off one knobby knee.