by Alex Moss
Not a sound.
Just the hum from the outside generator.
He thinks about saying something, perhaps calling her name to check if she is having the same pre-event jitters. His heart rate is elevated. He’s hot, even with the sheets thrown back. He sits up and places his feet on the floor. The cooling concrete feels comforting. Stelson wants more of it and leaves his space and steps toward the entrance to the warehouse, padding as lightly as he can.
The door to the side of the vehicle entrance is propped open with a cinder block. Stelson frowns. He steps out and looks both ways along the alley to see if one of the others has come out for some air but there appears to be no one about.
He walks along the middle of the alley a little way, toward North Brighton Street, half naked, bare-footed, and enjoying the cold night air on his skin.
He stops and licks his fingertips and wipes the tops of his lids and closes his eyes to engineer that icy sensation. The exposure is enjoyed and his whole figure is spread out, head back, his legs a foot apart, and his palms splayed out like wings beside him.
When he opens his eyes and looks down, there is a coyote looking up at him just five meters away. Stelson flinches to scare it off but it just stands firm. He tries again but with more animated actions and a soft growl for added effect, and then he kneels down and lets it approach. They’re nearly nose-to-nose and definitely eye-to-eye.
“What can you see, boy?” Stelson thinks about doing what Saint Kenneth did from time to time. He places his hand on top of the coyote’s neck, and masterfully it seems to create a stronger bond between them. The coyote nuzzles up closer to him but then it senses something behind Stelson and snarls and turns and runs off, disappearing behind a dumpster. Stelson’s sad to see the coyote go and the thought of murdering the animal sickens him. He rejects the thought from his mind.
He gets up and looks over his shoulder.
Tilman Greenburg is idling there, near the entrance to the warehouse, smoking a cigarette. He stubs it out with his foot and then goes back inside. Stelson is unsure about how and what he should feel about being this exposed–the oddness of the situation and how it must look. Then again, he knows the night is an excuse for behaviors that the day forgets.
When he returns to his bunk, he effortlessly falls asleep and dreams of getting high on Candy Jacks and bloody bar fights with skanky LA pond life.
THIRTY
At seven AM, nobody needs a shove to wake up with the exception of Stelson. For everyone else, the advanced stress-programmed human body clock is working just fine.
Anna is already dressed in what looks like a bicycle courier’s garb but with a little extra padding–a ballistics vest. The logos and multi-colors detract from the slightly puffed out upper body form it gives.
She squeezes Stelson’s pressure points around the shoulder blade. This does the trick. He groans.
“Is it time?” he says, absorbing her pointed grip while laying with his back to her.
“Get up.” His question sounds stupid to her. She steps away, dropping a messenger bag by her feet. This is his kit. Stelson rolls over and glances at the bag. He knows what’s inside and gets with it.
Stelson slings the bag over his shoulder and joins the others who are drinking coffee and mulling over the day ahead of them. Their cycle courier get-ups are similar but different–the idea being that they don’t necessarily look like a team–and the colors and logos are for distraction more than anything. Their bags are numbered in Spanish lettering that appear as stylized logos when seen apart:
Victor is NUMERO UNO.
Anna DOS.
Kenny TRES.
Tilman CUATRO.
Stelson at CINCO.
Victor glances at his Timex watch and sips his Nescafe. They all do the same. Same watches, synced.
Tilman collects each of the laundry bags containing their old clothes and throws them into the back of the armored van while Kenny checks the monitors.
There’s activity at Bobby Floyd’s unit. Two cars are pulling out of the forecourt onto Wyandotte Street.
“They are rolling,” says Tilman.
Victor nods and glances at his watch again. “A fraction early. Let’s go.”
“Fifteen minutes early,” Anna points out. “Shouldn’t we stick to the plan? Otherwise we’re killing time in the wrong places. Why be out in the open when we don’t need to be?”
Kenny twitches an eyebrow at Victor in an ‘I told you so’ way.
“Tilman will drive slowly. No rush, no issues. We leave now and keep time with the other crew.”
Anna looks at him. The trust thing between them compromised in some minor way so early in the game–an unnecessary wrinkle.
Anna, Stelson, and Kenny climb into the back of the van with Victor while Tilman takes the wheel in the cab. Stelson hesitates as last man in. He pats and strokes the outside of the vehicle as the engine starts up and considers its potential tomb-like qualities. He has so much to live for. So much newfound ability. What if he turned his back on all this and started all over again?
He looks for the flaws in Anna’s face and actually backs away, toying with the idea of a new beginning and a life that forgets all about their collision of bodies and minds.
Anna holds out her hand. “Get in or die here and now. Your choice, Stelson.” She says it with a solemn tone.
But the proposed death is a metaphor for life without her. With a thunderbolt to the chest he knows that he could never forget what they’ve been through, and there is still this desire to discover the truth about their connected pasts.
He would be lost without her.
Stelson climbs in and the rear door closes and then he notices the glint of the knife that Kenny brandishes as a precaution to cut down deserters from the fold.
“Yeah, screw you, asshole,” Stelson says as he places his butt down on the bench facing Kenny. Kenny grins and returns the knife to the sheath inside his messenger bag.
They pull out of the warehouse unit. Some new tinted windows have been fitted into the rear door so that they at least get some sense of location.
Interstate 5 is free flowing at this hour but instead of taking his time, Tilman hits it hard and they’re balling along at well over the speed limit. Victor and Kenny seem to have no concern. Anna frowns, watching them eat up and spit out the freeway via the rear window.
“No issues?” she says.
Victor hits the back of the cab. The truck slows but not by much. “If we’re early, we’re early.”
They exit the 110 for downtown at Fourth Street at an easy pace, then lurch forward as Tilman steps on the gas.
Anna and Stelson look at each other, holding onto their seats. Tilman is executing an overtaking maneuver and it becomes obvious why. He shifts the truck in front of two black Lexuses rolling slowly down Fourth. They lead them out for a right hand turn that takes them one-way south past the City National Bank–a monolithic glass and marble building with a large circular water fountain and sculpture at its center. Anna is looking at the driver of the front Lexus and the way he scopes the bank.
“That’s our money, right?”
“That’s the distraction. Just showing them we mean business and we got eyes on ‘em.”
The cars carry on past the bank and circle round, blending into the early morning traffic. Their cloaked armored truck continues on down Flower Street.
“We should have no expectations that we’re going to get any of the haul, if they make it. But the product we hang onto for dear life,” Victor clarifies.
“But can we snatch the money if there’s opportunity?” Stelson asks boldly.
Victor glares at him. “We stick to the plan, okay?”
Stelson nods. Anna seems disheartened.
“It’s not worth the risk.”
“Risks are variable.”
/> “Yes they are, Stelson. Yes they are,” Kenny says, pulling the knife from his messenger bag. He wants Stelson to cease his persistent suggestion of the idea.
Stelson looks away and smiles at Anna.
They all sit in silence with stony faces as the truck takes a right onto Pico Boulevard and the next onto Figueroa circling past the Staples Center.
Victor glances at his watch. Tick-tock. The perception of time is warping–the seconds turning over at half-speed. Stopping at lights at cross streets, feet tapping, some deep breaths.
It’s 9 a.m.
Victor nods at Kenny as they pull up to the underground shopping mall at Seventh.
“Okay, we got about ten minutes to put our game faces on.” Victor says, opening up his messenger bag. Anna and Kenny follow suit and pull out tiny mirrors and small contact lens containers. They unscrew the caps, bend over each mirror, and carefully insert the lenses. When ready, they look at Stelson with their bright, luminescent replica pale green snake-like eyes.
He nods. “You all look like freaks.”
Victor looks at his watch again. He’s counting under his breath–uno, dos, tres–as Tilman opens up the rear door and they file out, placing headscarves and clear sports-glasses on and they shift away from the van to quickly disassociate themselves from it but leaving Tilman to fend for himself. The rest of them aimlessly blend in with the early morning footfall, as they appear to wait for another signal.
Anna sees the regular mall cop hanging around near the down escalators, and she deflects one of his glances. He appears to linger on her, Anna holding her breath, hoping he just goes away, but he starts moving toward her, sidestepping some office workers–but then he’s distracted by Tilman who’s waving and hollering at him–something about permission to stop and wait.
The cop looks at Anna one last time and frowns and then shakes his head and Tilman shrugs with a confused stance on the subject of parking and waiting permissions and jumps back into the driver’s cab once he knows full well that the cop is not going to let the miscommunication continue.
The cop moves around the vehicle to talk to Tilman who leans out the window and mutters something that doesn’t seem to help his cause as the cop gestures to move the truck along.
The eyes of Uno, Dos, Tres, and Cinco are all on this moment but then as the clock ticks 9:05 a.m….
There is a deep, ground-shaking BOOM–immediately followed by the sounds of a multitude of car alarms merging to form their own contemporary symphony of chaos.
That was the signal.
The cop immediately cuts his conversation short and looks dumbfounded in the direction of Flower Street, shading his brow with his palm as if it would better his view.
In fact, everyone in the close vicinity does this. It’s like when someone in a crowd points toward a non-existent subject and eventually everyone adopts the herd mentality, but here it’s sped-up one hundred-fold, like falling dominos.
Victor nods and the crew un-blends itself from the frozen masses on Figueroa and funnel onto the escalator down to level minus three.
Stelson steps on last, descending, eyeing the darkness below ground. His senses are now on overdrive, his eyes flickering from one subject to another–moving bodies, the flocking masses of birds flying over-head, displaced by the explosion that was created by his brother, and for a brief moment Stelson considers the huge impact that he and Bobby are making on this day and the ripples that may follow.
When he sees the Morning Star Emporium ahead, his mind is focused again. The strobing sun-light created by the huge flocks up above helps the distractive nature of their advance as the bodies milling about outside the jewelry emporium seem deeply confused, possibly dreaming of Armageddon and how that could spice things up around here.
Nobody clocks Uno, Dos, Tres, and Cinco as a unit pulling on disposable respirator masks.
The sound of police sirens adds another layer of chaos.
Victor, Anna, and Kenny rush into the emporium; as they do, they pull smoke canisters from their messenger bags.
Stelson pushes up behind them and once inside he’s closing the double doors. They are weighty, even on well-oiled hinges, a layer of metal reinforcement sandwiched between the hard wood surfaces. They shut with a satisfying chunk and he applies the lower and upper main door bolts and turns to face the floor that’s now filling rapidly with thick glue-like white smoke, obscuring the layout of the emporium.
He remembers the respirator mask and fumbles for it inside his bag but someone grabs his arm. Stelson shakes off his assailant. A customer. The man has a hand full of gem-stoned rings and necklaces and wants to leave with the goods.
“Please?” The man has the cheek to be polite.
Stelson just looks at him.
The man starts coughing in fits as he breathes in the white smoke.
“Get down on the floor,” Stelson advises the man.
The man collapses to the floor and crawls onto his belly to find a thin layer of clean air.
Stelson finds his respirator mask, pulls it on, and searches for Anna through the fog while remaining on point and guarding the exit. He can see Kenny beating one of the staff members to the floor, stripping and degrading him from his smart black suit. Victor is somewhere else and the other bodies he can see through the smoke are obscured to ghostly shadow status.
Anna is looking about, making sure that there are no lines of sight between her, Andrey, and the security cameras. Andrey is coughing his lungs inside out and she hands him a mask that he pulls on. She waits patiently for him to recover enough breath to talk and he looks at her, accusingly.
Her voice is smothered and monotone when she tells him, “It’s just a lung and throat irritant. It won’t harm you.”
“Screw you,” he says, as Victor bursts through the fog and thwacks Andrey on the back of the head, pummeling him into a display case. Victor grabs the back of his head and pulls him upright again.
“Remember who your master is, Andrey.” He shows him the wrapped-up brick of money–the remaining one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. “You get this on completion; now guide us to the safe like we agreed.”
Andrey doesn’t look at Victor. He only has eyes for her.
“He was on it, Victor,” Anna says.
“We don’t have time to screw about.” Victor shoves Andrey through the white smoke. Anna pauses and lets them go until Kenny gives her a nudge, scanning her hawkishly.
Andrey flicks his pass card out from under his cuff like a magician and inserts it into the reader on the chosen door that will lead them off the floor space into unknown territory. Victor is reticent. He grabs Andrey’s arm.
“I assume you’ve chosen this door from all the others because it takes us to the safe, right?” Victor’s voice is muffled.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Andrey?” Anna is next to him now.
“The safe is not always in the same place. It moves.” He retrieves the pass card. An LED light goes green and the door clicks open.
“What do you mean it moves? Safes don’t move.” Victor responds.
“Such is the convention.” Andrey enters and the rest of them follow. “I will show you.”
They move down a five-meter-long tunnel with a door at the end. Anna is observing the space they’re in. The walls and low ceiling are metallic and industrial by design and nothing like the merchandised store area that they came from.
Kenny primes another smoke canister as Andrey slides open the metallic door with a light touch and that leads to the next space which is, in essence, a metallic box with the same size door on the opposite side and much larger garage doors on the left and right walls. The ceiling has a dull glow created by a luminescent opaque ceramic surface that flickers intermittently.
Anna is phased by the emptiness of the box-like room. She crouches down to recover
her anxious breathing rhythms and notices that the floor has a track made up of two rails and a central ratchet that runs between and under the two hanger doors.
“Where the hell are we, Andrey?”
“We had a one-in-six chance.”
Kenny pins him against the wall. “Start making sense.”
Andrey is looking at Anna who is touching the floor track. “The safe runs on a track between six containment rooms like this.”
“And you’re telling us this now because?” Victor pulls Kenny away from Andrey, concerned by this added complication and the rising conflict between unknowns and successful execution.
“I didn’t want to give away all my cards.”
“This is not what I was expecting.” Victor looks at the space again. It’s retro-modern starkness. “Not one bit.” He glances at his watch. It shoots a cruel blow–time is being sucked out of the room and that rattles his nerves. He moves to the next door and expects an obvious mechanism to open it. There isn’t one.
Anna watches the floor move. She blinks. A panel lifts up and a man’s head seems to rise from underneath, remaining there, his eyes just above the parapet, observing the bodies in the room. He looks up at Anna and his eyes widen, excited. She considers him–his piqued interest and the way in which he is enamored by her costume retinas, the fakeness convincing enough.
“Are you here for revenge?” the man asks without rising any further from the space below.
But before he can answer, Kenny wades in and kicks his teeth in, knocking him from whatever he was standing on and follows through by dropping a triggered smoke canister down the hole in the floor, filling that space and theirs with the thick white fog.
Violent choking fits from down below follow from about a half dozen bodies. Kenny holds the floor hatch down until they pass out.