by Alex Moss
They take a left and filter onto the freeway. The traffic is dense but fluid.
“Meet me at a table in the food court. I’m in all black, sunglasses. No funny biz. You come on your own or you don’t come at all.” She ends the call.
“You never met this guy in person?” Stelson asks.
“He’s never seen my face, but we’ve met a few times.”
“Why does he need to see your face this time?”
“So he’ll believe every word I say. I can’t convince him behind a mask. It just won’t work.”
Anna looks away and latches her attention onto the inanely bored occupants of a classic Pontiac Tempest GTO muscle car in another lane and she sort of wishes she was one of them.
Stelson changes into a faster lane.
They park in the car lot on Figueroa that’s directly opposite the underground shopping mall, pay the attendant for a two-hour stay, and walk out of the lot. Anna gazes across to the entrance marked by signage: escalators and a horseshoe configuration of stores on the ground floor that probably continues downward. Open air, wide walkways on each level.
“This is such a leap,” Anna says.
Stelson squints at her, eyeing her sunglasses with envy–induced by the bright heat of the day. “A leap?”
“Yeah, a leap. This used to be simple. Victor and I were the transporters. We’d make two-hundred and twenty-five grand a time. We were content with that and I was still fearful of getting caught.” She spots the cop that always hangs about the mall. The one that has a bit of a thing for her.
She smiles. “Now I couldn’t give a shit.”
“You’re not scared?”
“About what?”
“The consequences of failure?”
“No, I’m not scared of anything apart from the truth.”
“Let’s go.” Stelson steps out onto Figueroa without looking and forces drivers to swerve or brake hard.
“Stelson,” Anna shouts, concerned.
He turns to her. “It’s fine. Come on.” He reaches out for her hand while walking backwards across the street, parting the sea of traffic at the same time, without any due concern or fear of being mowed down. Anna skips after him and takes his hand, the other gripping the Ralphs bag tightly.
It’s a sweet moment.
Drivers from both direction either seem put out and inconvenienced, or look longingly at the couple.
They jog over to the escalator.
The food court is one level down. Anna pulls out her cell phone and looks at the time: 12:20. “I’ll get a table. You can watch from the walkway across from me or wherever works.”
Stelson nods. “This Andrey guy gonna be cool about all this?”
Anna shrugs.
Stelson probes for more. “If he’s not, what’s the worst that could happen? Just so’s I’m ready.”
“He’ll grab the money and run. Worse than that, he’ll alert others about my attempt to access the safe. Maybe he already has.” Anna scans the area, people, the rooftops, and the familiar cop who’s leaning on a bin eating a falafel sandwich. All seems fine, but then what does she know? Anna licks her drying lips in attempt to restore much needed moisture and steps backwards onto the escalator and drops down toward the food court. “Watch out for me.”
Stelson feigns a smile and then drifts off and around the ground floor walkway. He circles around to a sunglasses store and peruses the display racks while keeping one eye on Anna. He likes looking at her from a distance. She stands out, even though she doesn’t want to at this point in time. She can’t erase her intrigue and what fuels it. It’s deeply ingrained.
Anna finds an empty table in the food court that’s now starting to fill out fast with lunchtime workers. She gets a lot of glances from nearby tables. Mainly guys and jealous girls. She leans over and places the brown paper bag between her ankles.
Stelson tries on different pairs of sunglasses.
Anna is looking at a man in a uniform ascending from level minus three. This must be Andrey. He too has a brown paper bag but smaller–lunch de la maison. His uniform is a black suit with purple lapels and a satin band down each trouser leg. His hair is jet black and short, swept tightly across his head, and a deliberate side parting that defines this man’s anally retentive neatness. He seems stern, but fresh-faced and youthful.
Closer now and he appears neater by the second–his suit is crisp and fleckless, and where there are creases they have been pressed to perfection.
He wanders over to the Food Court and skirts around the tables to get to Anna’s position. He sits and places his lunch bag on the table and then pulls out what looks like a cleaning cloth from his pocket–normally used to polish jewelry–and wipes the table. He still hasn’t really looked at Anna. He places his hands flat and then attends to his lunch bag and rolls out the opening and retrieves a neat, thin sandwich–English high tea style. He takes a bite and then looks at Anna while chewing.
Stelson watches Anna begin to talk.
“Hello, Andrey.” Anna has nervous, fidgety hands.
Andrey nods and finishes his mouthful. “So, do you have my money?”
“Most of it. It’s light by twenty five.”
“Why would you disrespect me in this way?” But he doesn’t seem that bothered. He carries on eating.
Stelson spots someone clumsily approaching Anna and Andrey’s table. He steps out of the sunglasses store, still holding the last pair he tried on. He crosses the walkway and leans against the glass safety barrier. The man approaching is uniformed. A California Pizza Kitchen logo on his polo shirt.
Anna looks up, alert. Andrey just watches her reaction. “You’re paranoid,” he says before the other man has a chance to spew his grievance.
“These tables are for customers only,” says the California Pizza Kitchen manager.
Anna considers him. “We are customers, just not right now.”
“Then you need to leave and let other diners use this seating area.”
Andrey blows up without warning, yelling something in Russian while slowly rising to his feet and throwing back his chair so that it collides with the now-terrified diners behind them. He pushes his youthful looks into the manager’s face.
Andrey has not one hair out of place.
“Andrey?” She doesn’t want the attention but everyone is looking.
The manager is waiting for Andrey to say something and when he’s ready he whispers something to the man that is barely audible, “Have you ever heard about the Therapy for Demons?”
The manager shakes his head, unsure.
“I have friends who will cut that nasty part out of you. Then you can be a good boy and run off and play with your friends at your fucking California Pizza Kitchen.”
“So you want to keep the table?” the manager offers, nervously.
“Bingo. Let me eat my simple cucumber sandwich and talk to this lady.”
The manager, flustered, nods, turns, and retreats while other customers aren’t too shy to ask: “What did that asshole say to you?”
Andrey feels like going up to them. His eyes are flicking over in their direction and he’s clenching his fists.
“Let it go,” Anna says. “Sit down or you’ll get us arrested and you’ll lose your job and then where the hell would we be?”
Andrey nods and sits. “Hell, probably.” He carries on eating the cucumber sandwich. Anna kicks the brown paper bag toward him. He collects it between his ankles.
“You are absolutely right, Anna F. It is a little bit light. So what are we going to do about it?”
Anna just looks at him.
Stelson watches the pair staring each other down. He’s convinced that Anna has an attraction to Andrey but her sunglasses hide the truth, so he’s guessing. It’s just plain simple youthful jealousy. Andrey starts to look around to di
scover who’s watching him. He’s not dumb. Stelson moves off and peruses the storefronts.
He puts the stolen sunglasses on.
He looks for their reflections in glass panes but becomes disoriented. He’s lost sight of Anna and panics, returning to the glass safety barrier.
The table is vacant.
Not even a half-eaten cucumber sandwich. Andrey had time to polish the table and another couple has wandered over to take their place.
Stelson scans the shopping mall, frantically. He lingers on women in black, toting sunglasses, those with great legs, hair, or whatever draws his attention to them. He’s wasting his time. He needs to move. Takes a quick guess as to the way they must have headed. He jumps on an escalator, skips down it, and approaches a nearby table to ask someone for help. Two men in blue suits.
“Excuse me. Do you know in which direction the couple that were sitting right there went in?”
The blue suits shake their heads and continue with their conversation. Stelson shifts back to the barrier and looks up toward ground level and then down toward the jewelry emporium on minus three.
He looks at ground level again and imagines them screwing each other in a motel room down the street somewhere. Anna bent over the bed. Him behind her. His hair all messed up. He imagines kicking the door in to the motel room and then finding something blunt to use and burying it into Andrey’s skull. Andrey flopping backwards in every sense of the word. Anna, naked, looking at Stelson in shame and then groveling at his knees and reaching for the zipper on his trousers.
Stelson snaps out of it.
He would like to think better of her and he does. He looks down at level minus three and then walks over to the escalator to the jewelry emporium that seems to have no name–just a logo that’s a stenciled, intricate three-dimensional morning star.
As he drifts down below the parapet of the upper floors, he scopes out the bottom level. It has only three vendor outlets arranged in a horseshoe shape, but recessed further back under the parapet. Either side of the jewelry emporium is a large dry cleaning company and a lock and key store, which Stelson finds a little ironic considering the task ahead. There is much less natural light and the space is almost designed to dissuade customers from venturing this far below street level.
The jewelry emporium’s advantage is that it is windowless. Just a granite wall with some narrow, lit display units protected by toughened glass and accessed from somewhere inside the store. You can’t see in this way–the units are glass fronted white boxes containing necklaces, hoops, and rings for big occasions–tasteful, discreet, but expensive. Right now the double doors are wide open. But closed, one would have no idea what was going on inside. The walls and door are probably thick enough to contain any cacophony.
He wanders inside the emporium, passing beneath the morning star. It’s busy inside. There’s a melee of live trade–emporium is an appropriate way to describe it. The place is a hidden gem offering tasteful product in bulk, but with class and panache. The staff are slick and they never need to say much. It’s configured as ten straight rows of display cases that, with perspective and the overwhelming depth of the space, appear to converge. It could be an illusion but the display cases fan out and the inside of the emporium is similar in shape to a clamshell.
Stelson picks a row and peruses the emporium and contents of each display while looking for Anna and Andrey. Men in identical black and purple suits dart around the floor, tending to customers or disappearing behind the scenes–spaced out doorways along each wall–difficult to say whether they would lead to the same place–all accessed using an ID card on a retractable keychain.
Cameras are everywhere and they make Stelson feel closely watched and scrutinized, acutely aware that he’s not engaging like the other customers on the floor. He stands out like a baboon’s ass. No one else inside is wearing a pair of sunglasses, but he makes sure they are firmly resting on the bridge of his nose. He keeps glancing at the cameras and one appears to rotate toward him. He can’t help his discomfort but he tries a belated attempt to blend in and leans over a display case for a close look inside–pearl necklaces caressed by velvet. His nose is nearly pressed on the glass and the surface mists up under his hot breath. He wipes it with his sleeve and looks at a one hundred and seventy thousand dollar price tag for a set of pearls.
He takes it in and frowns. He knew little about pearls before and not much more now, but his expectation was that they’d be worth so much more. It doesn’t relate in any way to the figures thrown around by Anna and Victor. He withdraws and moves further down the row, the camera tracking him, a blue light blinking–a constant tapping on Stelson’s shoulder. He’s starting to sweat and he imagines the camera operator zooming in on the beads that trickle from his forehead to his cheek, capturing their journey as evidence of guilty intent.
Anna follows Andrey along a row of cars in the parking lot on the other side of Figueroa. He stops when he gets to an old beige Nissan and opens the trunk with his keys. He pulls up the clean synthetic covering and fumbles around inside the spare wheel cavity and pulls out a large vanilla envelope. He replaces it with the brown Ralphs bag containing his first stage payment.
“You wanted proof. Here is your proof.” He presses the envelope against Anna’s chest and she takes it.
Anna opens the envelope and peers inside.
“Don’t worry. There’s nothing inside that will bite you. Well, not literally anyway. There’s a good reason why I didn’t want your boyfriend to see these,” says Andrey.
Anna is a little reluctant to withdraw the contents of the envelope. She does it slowly, teasing out the sheets of paper that turn out to be a set of photo prints.
“I only printed six to save ink,” Andrey says dryly.
Anna is looking at a tile of six images and focuses on one. It’s a close up of man’s face with a stripe of blood across his empty, gaping eye sockets, and another red stripe from forehead to chin. You can see the deep lines and crags of this poor man’s face.
He’s lived a thousand lives.
A bright red bloody cross, painted prominently but messily, probably with the aid of quivering fingers and thumbs.
“Saints. Thirty-five of them to be precise. Thirty-five pairs at black market rate is fifty-five million dollars.”
Anna flicks through the five photo pages. Each one with a tile of six disturbing mug shots of the same bloody cross, hand-painted on each victim. The absence of their eyes makes it impossible to determine whether they are alive or dead. Anna glares at Andrey. She has so many questions she doesn’t even attempt to ask them all now.
“You wanted proof. You got proof,” says Andrey persuasively.
“But they don’t actually show the product. Just the source.”
“Well, you got to kill a chicken to get its liver. Here are your chickens.”
“I don’t care about the goddamn chickens, Andrey. They got what they wanted. Anyway, they’re probably all alive living like…Saints. Because that’s what they believe. They’re happy with what they lost. I’m not happy. I need to see the product.”
“I cannot get away with photographing them. I’m sorry. Suspicion would follow quickly. You’ll need to trust me that they are in the safe waiting for you. If you ask me, I think you are crazy to even attempt this. But still. I have faith in you and your team. If the score goes south, as they say, I lose and you lose. They will cut my balls off and I will never see oblivion. Not in this shitty life.”
Anna bites her lip. She doesn’t really have a choice. Andrey holds out his hand to shake on it. “Are we good?”
“Yes, we are.” Anna shakes his hand. “We need to get back. My friend,” she thinks about the choice of the term, friend, for a moment and continues, “my colleague could be in a shit loada trouble ‘cause of what we’ve done here.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
The all-seeing eyes of
the emporium are watching Stelson. A camera zooms in on his face. Can they see through the lenses of these cheap sunglasses? He considers a swift exit until he sees Andrey step inside and return to his station behind a display cabinet. Anna is not with him.
Stelson considers a quick confrontation. Grab the slimy asshole and drag him out of the emporium to some dark recess outside where they can be alone and he can knock the wind out of the Russian’s sails. But other uniformed observers appear from behind the scenes. They step onto the floor and eye Stelson with rabid intensity. They don’t need to say or do anything. They look as serious as hell and Stelson rapidly reconsiders and tries another smarter tact.
He ambles toward Andrey while focusing on the display case containing strings of pearls, and contemporary silverish colored charms with odd industrial designs, or of no true design at all–just hunks of metal. These charms seem to purposefully oppose the old-fashioned orbs best carried off by the more mature and conservative members of a country club. Andrey is first to lock horns.
“Is there a particular piece you are looking for, sir?”
Stelson considers the question. “I guess there is but I can’t seem to find it here.”
“That’s a shame. I’m sure it exists. Perhaps you can describe it to me?”
Stelson bites his lip in the same way Anna does from time to time. He realizes that he’s picked this character tic up from her and stops doing it. He hates the outward display of nerves. He clenches his jaw instead. “Okay. I’ll try and describe. Let me see.” He clears his throat. “Hard edges. Soft everywhere else.” He smiles and shakes his head. “Hard to figure out but it doesn’t matter because the contours are kinda fascinating.” He takes a big breath. “There are some flaws, naturally. But that’s what makes this piece worth so much more. There is nothing like it. The image of it in my mind is hard to give up.”
He plays out the image of Anna in his mind and smiles again. Andrey is patient with Stelson and takes it all in.
“If it had a heart, which I guess is possible, I would be a slave to its freaky rhythm my friend.” Another little half-smile–and then a quick return to being serious and concerned for her.