by Alex Moss
Andrey seems impressed. “Poetic.”
“So, friend, do you know where I might find such a piece?”
“What you are looking for is not on display. We could look out back?”
Stelson looks at Andrey who has a cold, calculating sullen look that is firing between him and the other uniformed gentleman standing next to the third door along the east edge of the emporium.
“You are welcome to look out back but I wouldn’t want you to be disappointed. If I were you, I’d look elsewhere. It’s just a hunch. But as I said, I would be keen to show you what we have out back.”
Stelson doesn’t like the look in Andrey’s eyes. It’s as though he’s become enchanted or possessed in some way and perhaps there are two voices inside this man’s head opposing one another–the yin and the yang. Stelson is smart enough to know that this is some coded warning amongst the contradictory suggestions.
“Not today. If I have no luck in my hunt I’ll be sure to pay you a visit again and then it might be time to look out back and what-not.”
Andrey seems disappointed but optimistic all the same. He likes the way Stelson has left it with him and respects his tone and politeness. “Naturally. I hope to see you soon. I’m sure you’ll find what you are looking for.”
Stelson turns around and walks calmly out of the store without looking at the security cameras and their blinking blue lights. This time he doesn’t feel them tapping on his shoulder. Once out of the emporium, he sprints up the escalator to ground level and out of the corner of his left eye, he catches a glimpse of a girl in black, seated in the food court sipping on an orange juice who turns out to be Anna. She finishes her juice and he waits for her at the top of the escalator.
They say nothing to each other as they walk to the car and this time they wait for the traffic to clear before crossing Figueroa. Stelson locates their white MPV and they get in and drive out, neither of them wanting to be the first to speak.
As soon as Stelson gets them safely onto the 110 heading toward 5, he puts on his stolen sunglasses and smiles.
“Why are you smiling like an idiot?” Anna asks.
“I dunno. Just smiling, that’s all.”
“Well don’t.”
Stelson smiles bigger and broader.
“Aren’t you going to ask me where I went?” Anna inquires.
“I don’t care. I’m sure you got what you came for.”
“You lost sight of me.”
“I know.”
“You screwed up.”
“I know.”
“You can’t screw up the day after tomorrow.”
“I won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“How do we know anything? I don’t even know what the hell we’re stealing from that place?”
“Yeah you do,” Anna responds.
Stelson takes his eyes off the road for a long time, scoping her manner for tells. “I remember that time in the motel room. When you had the item. Those pearls. They were wrapped around your wrists while you were sleepin’ and they left burns and you still got the scars.”
“They are unrelated, Stelson.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“The math don’t add up. If you wanted fifty-five million dollars worth of jewelry, the last thing you would bag are the pearls.”
“I thought you said you didn’t care about the details.”
“I ain’t sure I said that specifically.”
“Well, stop caring and do what you’re told.”
Stelson smiles again.
It irritates Anna. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Ignorance is bliss. You know that sayin’?”
“Course I do.”
“We seem to be protecting each other from the truth. Only difference is, I don’t remember what the truth is.”
“And when you find out, it’s bye bye, bliss.”
Stelson looks at her, wishing that time would stand still and they could keep driving while hoping for the best. Anna scopes the exit signs on the freeway.
Stelson surveys the newly liveried armored van that has returned to the warehouse unit in the valley. It’s been re-branded as a mobile drug clinic for addicts. The color scheme is psychedelic to make it standout for the intended audience–wacked out baby boomers aimlessly wandering the downtown streets.
“You drive an armored truck downtown without a manifest or approved purpose of business and all hell breaks loose.” Kenny Hackett follows Stelson around the warehouse.
“This is still an armored truck,” Stelson points out.
“We went through proper channels to get this approved as an independent unit funded by a local charity. No red tape involved. The city loves these because they indirectly prevent crime. If the addicts are all getting their fix for free, then everyone’s a happy baby.”
Stelson admires the color scheme. “I used to paint a ton when I was just a brat. Real colorful stuff. I can remember all of them. So freakin’ vivid. But they didn’t seem like my pictures at all. I was told they were mine but they weren’t. It was as though they were satisfactory replacements for the messed up versions that I really used to create. The ones that got discarded for my own protection.”
“You’re probably thinking of your brother. I’m sure your paintings were just swell,” Kenny says with sarcasm.
“I dunno. I’m not so sure at all.”
Kenny pulls Stelson away. “Come on. Forget this shit. I need your help.”
“Where’s Anna?”
She’s sitting in the front passenger seat of the white MPV on Brighton Street. Victor is on the driver’s side and he’s flicking through the photos of the thirty-five Saints. He tosses them back in her lap.
“I don’t even need to say it, do I?” he asks without looking at her.
“I believe Andrey. There is a bond of trust between us. We came up short for him with the money and he came up short for us with these rancid photos. We’re even.”
“I say we’re even when we’re even, Anna.” Victor looks at his watch. “Even now doesn’t mean we’re even after the shit goes down in exactly thirty-eight hours and seventeen minutes.”
“We need to take the risk.”
Victor looks at her, knowing that his better judgment is now clouded by the complications of their relationship.
The next morning, Stelson is finishing lifting some hard-shell packing cases from the back of the armored van. He stacks the last of ten in the corner of the warehouse and then enters the booth with the TV monitors. He sits and watches his brother’s unit in Van Nuys. There are two new cars in the forecourt with their tails facing a sliding entry door to the larger warehouse.
Anna steps inside and sits next to Stelson. She watches the monitors with him. It’s difficult to see from this range, but the trunks of each car seem to be getting loaded up with large packages by people in white overalls.
“The wheels are in motion,” Anna points out.
Stelson seems uncomfortable. “I need to talk to you about what happened in the jewelry store.”
“I thought nothing happened? Andrey sent you to find me.”
“Not exactly.”
“Jesus, Stelson. What the hell do you mean?”
“He was saying one thing but meaning somethin’ else.”
Anna is frustrated. “What?”
“I’m just sayin’ he was kinda conflicted. He sent me on my way but at the same time he was trying to bait me.”
“How?”
“He wanted me to follow him out to the back of the store away from the main floor to look at some other items that were not on display. But he suggested it as though it were some kind of warning, or a trap.”
“Were you being watched?” Anna asks.
Stelson
thinks back. “Yes. I was always being watched. Other staff, like him, popped out from behind pass-coded doors and the security cameras were tracking my every move.”
“You had your sunglasses on, right?”
Stelson nods.
Anna’s leg is jiggling nervously now as she mulls over the scenario that Stelson has described. “I think Andrey was just playing along, so that he wouldn’t raise any suspicions. He was protecting himself.” She’s post-rationalizing. Anna knows there is no turning back now. Not for her at least. She needs to be selfish and she needs the team to work together.
“But I saw some dark and shady shit in his eyes, Anna. He so wanted me to go and follow him out back. I saw it in all of them.”
Anna just brushes it off with a glib response. “You could kick his ass any day of the week. Remember, I’ve seen you in action, killer.” She looks away and bites her lip then gets up and brushes the plastic-sheeted doorway aside. “It’s a shame. You coulda found out where the safe was located, specifically. We got no blueprint for back office. Just what I’ve been told by Andrey.” She walks off.
Stelson looks troubled, as though he’d just been spat out and stomped all over.
TWENTY-EIGHT
A metro bus pulls up to a stop on the corner of Sixth and Mateo just before the bridge that crosses the LA River. The downtown skyline and its tall buildings in the background are a chilling reminder to the fact that Benjamin Koit, who boards the bus at this stop, recently dropped somebody from one of these. The sky is now clear, the morning mist since dispersed like a cleared conscience for the city’s sins.
Koit walks a block east and then crosses the street and heads north and after a couple of minutes, is into a rundown and empty eastern boundary lot with a sliding metal gate that’s half-open. The signage on the side of a warehouse building suggests that this was once Willow Studios, a film production facility. At the north-east corner of the lot on Palmetto Street is a bar called Villains Tavern that seems to have a partial circus tent covering its edges, perhaps to hide an outdoor drinking garden. The irony of its name suits Koit’s subtle sense of humor, so he drinks here occasionally, but mainly to watch and hunt.
He unlocks the main entrance to the warehouse and steps inside, first into a high ceiling corridor. It’s stark, industrial, and fairly gloomy, with soft lighting that fails to reveal every edge and corner. Down the corridor, he makes a turn and meets another door that opens into a large vaulted room with skylights that could contain a sound stage. But in this case, the space has a collection of fine sports cars from multiple decades; a bizarre mechanical contraption with four hydraulic legs that appears to elevate an inverted platform with bindings dangling from its underside; and near the back, where the large payload entrance door is situated, a bank of ten TV monitors at a long desk with a computer keyboard. The monitors are switched on and it’s plainly obvious what they display.
A couple of them pan the outside lot, but the others relay images from the inside of the Morning Star Jewelry Emporium, both recorded and live. One of the recorded sequences playing out on screen clearly shows Stelson Floyd’s earlier confrontation with Andrey.
Koit approaches the bank of screens, and as he does, one of the screens switches to a new image–the troubled, lined face of the prosecutor.
“Tell me what I’m looking at?” The prosecutor inquires wearily, he too seeing what Koit is seeing on screen.
“This is the one you were concerned about.”
“The kid in the shades. Stands out like a sore thumb.”
The image freeze-frames when Stelson looks directly at the camera that recorded this footage. Koit makes a couple of taps on the keyboard and the image is enhanced in a way that penetrates the tint of Stelson’s sunglasses to reveal his molten green gaze.
The prosecutor on the other screen is mesmerized for a moment, but that soon turns to anger and frustration. “You told me the items were safe. If he is there, then we know the Morning Star is a target. You need to be ready, and I want this one’s eyes like the others.”
Koit nods, seeming somewhat noncommittal. He’s not one for being told what to do. His disdain for the prosecutor growing like a vengeful disease inside his mind. He cuts the video feed with the prosecutor in an attempt to hide his emotions and for some reason, or feeling, he turns and stares at the strange contraption with the hydraulic legs behind him.
After a moment, his gaze is diverted to one of the sports cars in his collection. A new addition–a black Lamborghini Huracán.
He drives like the devil heading east down the 10. He has to change lanes from the inside, middle, and outside to maintain a speed of well over one hundred miles per hour. Koit is letting off some steam but at the same time enjoying a guilty pleasure.
The bright blue sky seems to darken in the distance, somewhere beyond San Bernardino and the mountains.
It doesn’t seem natural.
The pitch black degrading from the blue, as though this was the edge of the world.
Koit slows and takes the next off-ramp so that he can return to his lair downtown.
TWENTY-NINE
Nine Hours until the score
The whole gang is gathered around the fold-out table with the blueprint of the city. Various lines, arrows, and times have been drawn over it to mark the entry and exit routes and timeline of planned events. There is a cluster of markings around Figueroa between Fifth and Seventh streets and the exchange point at Olympic and Bixel.
They’ve been studying it for a while, going over the details multiple times. They’re looking jaded as a result.
Victor’s voice is low and extremely calm. He tails off and points to Anna. It’s her turn to contribute to the briefing. She nods and tugs on the map and flips it over to the blank white side. She grabs a black sharpie marker pen and starts drawing the morning star logo of the jewelry emporium in the top right hand corner.
“The Morning Star is shaped like a clam shell,” she says, and draws it with the marker filling most of the page. “As you look into the space, there are five product display lines fanning out. The shortest on the outside edge at ten and two o’clock, two longer cases at eleven and one o’clock, and the single longest case at twelve o’clock.” Anna then draws a dashed line within the clamshell as a pentagon around the fanned out display cases. “Looking at the blueprint for the shopping mall suggests that the area between the shop floor–this area inside the pentagon–and the edge of the clam shell is huge. There are eight equidistant pass-code entry doors to enter that space.” She then marks these doors along the edges of the dashed pentagon. “The bad news is we have little knowledge of what’s behind these doorways. There are no plans available.”
“There is a safe, right?” asks Kenny.
Anna says nothing. She just looks at the blank space within the clamshell walls.
Victor pipes up. “Yeah, Kenny. Of course there’s a safe. Anna’s guy is going to crack it open for us.”
Anna nods and looks at all of them. “This is where the wheels could fall off. Might take too long to find the safe. Andrey says it’s obvious but we can’t one hundred percent trust this guy.” Anna then eyes Stelson accusingly, pissed that he’s compromised her confidence and turned her into a doubter.
“What?” asks Stelson, deflecting her gaze.
Victor watches both of them. “What are you two not tellin’ me?”
“Nothing. It’s fine,” Anna says, reassuringly.
“So continue, Anna,” Victor prompts.
She does.
“There’s a possibility that they manufacture some of their product in-house so there will be a facility, offices, etcetera.”
“Don’t you need a factory for that?” Kenny asks.
“More like a lab,” Victor says.
Anna nods. “We should all get some sleep. We rise at seven and leave at eight, right Victor?”
> Victor nods and waves them all away. He looks tired and stressed as he continues to stare at the next-to-useless diagram that Anna has outlined. Stelson studies him for a moment while Kenny, Tilman, and Anna retire to their makeshift bedrooms and bunks.
“You think we’re gonna pull this off?” Stelson whispers to Victor. He doesn’t care that Victor wants space and time to reflect.
Victor looks up and clenches his teeth, irritated. He doesn’t want to talk about their chances. “Let’s just talk about you for un momento,” he says. “I chose you to be our fifth man because I think you got what it takes.”
“Thanks.”
“No. Not thanks. You need to get serious. If you sleep peacefully tonight, I’m goin’ to get worried. Your role is simple but tough.”
“I know, I close the doors from the inside and don’t let anyone out until you say so. Simple.”
“Not under any circumstance.”
“I know.”
“And people will try to get out and what will you do?”
“I fight ‘em off.”
“Yeah, you do, with all the rage you got inside of you. You’re like a defensive linebacker. This is about stealth and strength.”
There is a glint in Stelson’s eye. “I got it. Don’t worry.”
Victor lowers his voice so that it is barely audible now. “And you look after Anna, you got me?”
Stelson tries to hide a smile. This is the role he wants the most: protecting the enigma.
“Because I will be too focused on what I gotta do.” Victor turns away. “Sleep if you can.” He too retires to this booth and bunk. Stelson is left standing, bright-eyed in the dark as the lights in the warehouse dim to a faint glow.
He takes off his clothes and folds them neatly before placing them in the laundry bag provided.
After tomorrow, they’ll be incinerated.
Stelson is used to the idea. He’s just standing in his boxer briefs now and he climbs onto his bunk and lays on his side. He finds the covers immediately abrasive. He slept here last night but now that Victor’s said it–reinforced the notion–he’s detracted from the routine of sleep as though it were a polar opposite to his nature. He squirms and wrestles with the position he should take to optimize his chances of descending into slumber. He breathes in the odors of the bunk, seeking some comforting familiarity and then lays still to listen out for the others–their depth of breathing and restlessness.
