The Oculus Heist

by Alex Moss

  Is she kidding herself?

  It’s as though she has been programmed to care, just because you’re just meant to miss a family member when they’re gone–forgive them of all their sins. And her mother has many sins. Anna needs to remember what they are, but at this point in time, she can’t unlock the memories. They are buried away for good reason.

  Strangely, Anna smiles as though she’s just realized something and Anna shakes off her thoughtful state, gets back on her feet, picks up the red shoulder bag, and leaves the garden from the way she entered.

  There is a pause in the retelling of events.

  Anna looks at them all. “It was then that I knew I needed to make a plan to get away from that house and from this city forever. I let bad memories screw up the good thing that Victor and I had going.” Anna looks at Stelson.

  She continues with her recall of events…

  Anna runs down Santa Monica Boulevard. She’s been running for a while now and crosses the 101. She slows to watch the flow of traffic pass through the veins of LA. This freeway crosses her path so many times and she wonders how many. On the other side, as she continues east, she spots a store called Seda’s Printing & Direct Mailing. It’s an art deco building jutting out all on its own, but with a large landscape format billboard above it propped up by a purple column. The advertising copy is written in Spanish. The building seems almost iconic. Charming for a print and copy shop, less so if it were a diner or fast food joint.

  Anna enters Seda’s and approaches the counter where a Latino gentleman is slouched over a thick hand-written accounts ledger. His crucifix chain hovers over the page and he seems to be waiting for some divine intervention before he runs his pen through the columns to complete a balance sheet or something like that. He senses Anna’s approach and looks up from the page. He wears a patch over his right eye and the skin around it is scarred in a dappling of criss-cross patterns. His other eye is perfectly fine and the darkest of browns.

  “Can I help you, Miss?”

  Anna lingers on the pirate-faced Latino’s pleased-to-see-her grin. She brushes some of the sweat from her cheeks. “I need to make a copy.”

  “No problem, miss. Black and white or color? And how many you gonna need at what size? Nothin’s a problem for us. At your service.”

  “Just one copy.”

  The pirate-faced guy raises the thin black pristine eyebrow above his left eye. “Okay. Show me what you got?”

  “Are you a good man?”

  “Huh?”

  “Can I trust you?” The question seems ironic given his pirate-like appearance.

  “I’m honored by you asking, as my Mama used to tell me I was a good kid but nobody remembers and she ain’t around to vouch for me, God rest her soul.” He grins. “You’re not wastin’ my time here are you, miss?”

  Anna looks at the crucifix chain around his neck. He seems uncomfortable with her silence and the way she considers it. Anna unzips the red shoulder bag, checks she’s not being watched by others, and pulls out the pearl necklace.

  “You some kinda loco thief?”

  “Nailed it in one, now can I make a copy?”

  “Just so we straight, you wanna put this thing on one of these copiers back here?”

  Anna smiles and flutters her eyelids. “I’m also going to need a copy of today’s newspaper and a packet of cigarettes alongside.”

  “Why not take a picture?”

  “Pictures can be traced back to the person who took it. That’s not goin’ to work for me.”

  “Damn, those are real pearls, right?

  Anna nods.

  “Why they so big?”

  “Just are. Very rare.”

  “You tryin’ to tempt me?”

  Anna moves behind the counter and brushes her body against his and then shifts away and reaches for a copier lid.

  “Can I use this one?”

  “Be my guest.” He fishes an empty pack of smokes out of a nearby bin along with a copy of today’s LA Daily News from a stack under the counter and places them down on the copier glass. “Here, let me adjust the color settin’ so they look sweet as candy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hope this don’t make me an accomplice to little Miss Felony, know what I’m sayin?”

  “What happened to you–the eye?”

  “I lost it.”

  “Like a disease or somethin’?”

  “Somethin’ like that.”

  Anna arranges the items so that the cigarette pack is nestled in the middle of the pearl necklace to show scale and the newspaper covers them both to display the date of the copy. “You ain’t had that crucifix chain for too long?” He watches her arrange the items and close the lid and touch the copy button. “It’s probably not even yours.”

  He touches the Christ at the end of the chain.

  “You’re not down with religious bullshit. You’ve never normally worn one of those and had no intention to until recently.”

  A color copy is spat out in the tray below showing the pearls juxtaposed alongside today’s date and the packet of cigarette. Anna pulls it off and nods. “Pretty good.”

  “How’d you know I ain’t some cholo looking for redemption just like most the other gangbangers roun’ here?”

  “Because you didn’t mark the sign of the cross when you mentioned your mother’s passing and the Lord’s name in the same breath.”

  “So I forgot.”

  Anna grabs a marker pen from the counter and writes something across the top of the copy, folds it four times, and writes on the face-up side and then leaves in a hurry, slinging the shoulder bag over her back. The pirate-faced man seems disappointed that’s she’s gone from his life so damn fast, yet hopeful that he’ll see her again.

  Anna approaches the humble one-story house on Lexington Avenue and Lyman Place in East Hollywood. She opens the gate, enters the front yard, and darts down the side of the house to the side door. She retrieves a key from the soil in a planted pot and enters the kitchen in silent stealth.

  The house is neat and sparse. It’s a rental with no discernible features to give away the identity of its occupants. She pauses and listens, studying the kitchen space for signs of disturbance. Does the same in each room–lounge, two beds, bathroom. She’s frustrated by the traffic noise outside. What she wants and needs right now is total silence. She goes back into the kitchen and pulls out the folded photo-copy of the pearl necklace and places it on the table. FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION is written along the front like some producer’s ad in Variety. She considers the wording, the contents, and her intent as she drifts off for a brief interlude, oblivious to the figure that’s wandering past the kitchen window to reach the side door entrance. All she hears is the handle turning and she whips around. “Victor?”

  It’s not Victor. It’s an Asian man with an almost angelic face who seems just as surprised as she does. They both freeze.

  “Who are you?” the man asks with a British-Hong Kong accent.

  “Who are you?” asks Anna. She doesn’t know what else to say but she knows what to think. They got here faster than she thought. Anna feels for the folded photocopy.

  “Do you work for Victor Lesko?” the man asks.

  “Who is Victor Lesko?” Anna picks up the copy and holds it tightly.

  The angelic man smiles and cocks his head sideways, clearly eyeing the red shoulder bag.

  “Victor has something that belongs to us now.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m nobody,” Anna replies.

  “Okay, nobody. Victor did a deal with us. We have invested time on this deal and made a lot of promises that need to be kept.” He ends this with a nod and another sideways cock of the head.

  Anna is considering him and flicks the folded copy in her
hand. The man watches her nervously fidgeting with the piece of paper and slowly shifts closer to her.

  “Would you consider a bigger deal?” she spits out so fast it’s barely comprehensible.

  “We will always consider but now we want what we agreed.”

  “So where’s our end?” She’s starting to visibly panic but retains her cool.

  “Our end? I thought you were nobody.” He lunges for her, she shifts back and turns and reaches for a specific drawer and pulls a meat carving knife and only has to turn back and the man’s weight does the rest of the work as the knife slides half way into his stomach and upwards into his diaphragm.

  Anna is only inches from his shock-wide eyes and she observes how the pain affects the expression on his face.

  He’s melting like candle wax.

  She pushes him away so that he stumbles backwards and lands on the kitchen table, bent over backwards, staring at the ceiling, his feet still loosely planted on the floor. The man barely breathes, his diaphragm probably split. Blood has soaked his crisp business shirt.

  Anna watches him die but is frustrated by the slowness of it all. He is sure to have a partner, waiting somewhere down the street in an expensive SUV, staking out the area and this house.

  Perhaps her urge is the result of the frustration–the survival instinct. She keenly steps over to the man and pushes the carving knife deeper, all the way to the grip. This takes all her strength and she grits her teeth as she drives it down. The man’s death speeds up exponentially with every new centimeter that’s buried. Anna holds it in place, just the grip showing until his last breath. She pulls away.

  Her hands are still and she is calm. On auto-pilot. Cold and single-minded.

  She switches on the cooker gas and checks that all the windows are closed in the house. Back in the kitchen, she fills a frying pan with BBQ lighter fuel and sets it off with a match and then leaves with the bag and the folded paper copy that she now stows up the sleeve of her silky hooded top.

  “So you lied to me,” Stelson says. “You started the fire.”

  Victor, Kenny, and Tilman mull over Anna’s revelations–probably more interested in the consequences.

  “I killed a man and I felt good about it. So what if I lied to you?”

  Stelson nods. “Yeah, so what?” He smiles at her.

  “So what? You killed one of theirs,” says Kenny.

  “But they don’t know who I am or what happened in that house or whether I was ever there. I’m an enigma to them. Just some crazy girl who delivered a message and stole their Cadillac.” Anna thinks back to the moment when the message was delivered.

  The house on Lexington and Lyman Place burns.

  Stelson is pinning the Asian man to the blacktop next to his Cadillac SUV, rage quivering facial muscles on both of their faces.

  “Get me the gun?” demands Stelson as he struggles to keep the man down.

  Anna picks up the gun that was knocked to the ground and hands it to Stelson at close quarters. She seems to linger, looking him in the eyes while their hands brush against each other with the exchange.

  One hand passing Stelson the gun, the other wrapped around his waist and then feeding the photocopy of the item into the Asian man’s trouser pocket.

  FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

  She retreats and Stelson jumps up quickly, releasing the man while pointing the gun at his head.

  “Crawl under the truck,” Stelson shouts.

  The Asian man lays on his back. “We’ll come after you.” He has a pseudo-American accent. Could be from anywhere. Spent some time here, maybe college, or watched too many Hollywood movies.

  “You don’t know who we are? We could be just a couple of Bonnie and Clyde’s stealing your ride,” says Stelson. “Crawl under the truck. Do it.”

  This time, the Asian man moves and turns over and crawls slowly under the SUV. Stelson signals to Anna to get into the SUV. She does. Stelson looks about. He’s now got unwanted attention. He pulls his hood over his face as much as he can to hide his facial features. Anna slings open the driver’s door for him and he jumps in, slams it, tosses the gun onto the street, and accelerates, leaving the Asian man with his hands over his head, eating gravel, looking silly.

  After a moment of composure, the Asian man rolls onto his back and sits up quickly. He glances at his trouser pocket and feels for the lingering memory–the touch–from the crazy girl in the hood. He pulls out the piece of folded paper marked for consideration. He unfolds it four times and stares at the contents and then gets up, brushes himself down, and steps into the crowd and disappears. The house fire is enough of a distraction to get away cleanly without fuss.

  TWENTY-THREE

  They’re all staring her down, unsure how to react or what to say next. Victor pipes up. “Do you see how the intelligence is unlikely to be wrong? You’ve confirmed an even greater motive for revenge. Basically, we’re walking into a trap. They’re baiting us with the money. They know it’s not me that’s running the show here. To them, you’re just some chancer going all out, do or die. They know I wouldn’t be stupid enough to set-up a one-time transaction of this size.”

  “How would they know that?” Anna asks.

  Kenny scratches his head and looks at the monitors. “So what about this fool in Van Nuys we’re watching? What’s the point?”

  “He’s a source, has been for years. The point is that he was contacted by a client to take down a score but the request was for an exact amount.”

  “Fifty-five million dollars,” Kenny responds. “But this is all an about face. Clients find out what’s on the table, not request a fixed dollar amount, particularly not that big. Banks hardly ever hold onto that kinda cash and if they did it would be next to impossible to know about it.”

  “There you go, Kenny’s on the money. You can continue to explain to Anna.”

  “They put that dollar amount out there intentionally. They wanted the department to pick up on it and take it seriously.”

  “So when Anna told me she had done a fifty-five million dollar deal, I checked with each of our CI’s. I met with the one we are looking at now and he confirmed that he’d gone back to the client and offered a more realistic number based on his own knowledge. He smelled something was off. Was more than happy to share the details with me.”

  “So what was the number?” asks Stelson.

  “Fifteen. Our source takes fifty per cent for his skills.”

  “Which leaves seven point five for us. Seven point five is better than nothing,” Anna says.

  Victor looks at her in disappointment. “You ain’t going to see any of that seven point five. The score is a distraction for cops like me. It’s close enough to Seventh and Fig to be just that–City National Bank at 525 Flower Street. Same day, roughly the same time. Our source is going in full force to cause chaos in downtown while the client snatches whatever they think we have from under our noses.”

  “There’s one more thing,” says Anna, tentatively. “I’ve taken out an insurance policy to protect myself from all of you wisecrackers.”

  Victor doesn’t seem surprised. “It’s your prerogative, so enlighten us?”

  “The deal will only go down if I’m carrying the items in the red bag. Both need to be present and in view. If not, they’ll kill anyone else who tries to cut in.”

  “But you said yourself, you’re an enigma to them,” Kenny points out.

  “Enigmas are easy to spot. You get a feeling. They’ll know me when they seem me.”

  Victor and Kenny nod.

  “This is insane,” Stelson says, holding his head in his hands. He’s gradually coming to terms with the deepness of the shit he’s wading through now, but at the same time trying to convince himself that this is just some elaborate game that can end at any point and he can just walk away.

  He gets up and steps
out of the partitioned booth with cooler feet. Tilman grabs his arm on the way out. “Don’t even think about going anywhere.”

  Stelson paces around the warehouse and the SWAT truck and listens to Victor at a distance. He eyes the exit. It feels better this way.

  Victor continues, conscious of Stelson’s absence but letting it go for now. His focus is on Anna and making sure she gets the full picture. Wising her up to the facts and the pieces she’s unaware of. The stuff that can get her killed. It’s his indirect way of caring for her. “The advantage we have is that the client doesn’t quite know what they’re dealing with. You are an enigma to them, as you said. They’re guessing that you used to be on my team and you’ve gone out on a limb to break away. Double-cross me, which you have in your own delightful way, Anna. My return to the fold sends that message out. We spent nearly a year apart. That’s why they’ve never come after me. To them you are on your own.”

  “Yeah, screw you, Victor. I’m not trying to double-cross anyone here. You never stood by me. Never. So I had to take matters upon myself to get what I want for once.” Anna storms out of the booth and looks at Stelson. “Let’s get out of here.”

  She grabs his hand and they leave together.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The night is young. The sun’s amber glow spotlights the Verdugo Hills in the east while the rest of the valley around Glendale and Burbank darkens their shadow. The day is cooling off and the fading light accentuates the chill in the air. A small private jet flies fast and low overhead and aims itself toward Bob Hope Airport–its red, white, and green navigation lights tracing a path across Stelson’s watery eye-line. He’s looking up to the heavens, his neck craned backwards and then rotating to track the jet until it disappears beyond the mainly innocuous and nondescript structures of Burbank.

  He blinks a few times to clear the excess moisture from his bright, pale green eyes–and close up it’s like watching the flutter of magnificent glowing butterfly wings that mimic the predatory patterns adopted by nature to warn off aggressors, or to attract life mates.