But there was still something unsettling about it all, still something missing—in my life, at least—and despite our best attempts to believe otherwise, despite our earnest efforts to reassure ourselves that we were happy, that we were luckier than everyone else, I don’t think any of us really thought that was the case.
We were never bored, however, and we did not lack for things to do. We were the national average and America was made for us. We loved shopping at malls. We loved eating at restaurants. Amusement parks amused us, tourist attractions attracted us, popular music was popular with us, hit movies were a hit with us. Everything was aimed at our level.
And when we tired of legitimate ways of whiling away our hours, we could always rob, steal, and vandalize.
We could always be terrorists.
After the rape, we laid low for a couple of weeks. There was no mention of the rape in the papers or on the TV news—I was not even sure it had been reported—but it was not the possibility of getting caught that compelled Philipe to make us take time off anyway.
It was because he wanted to win back my confidence.
It was stupid, but it was true. My opinion was important to him. Most of the others were thrilled by what had happened. They had already snagged Playboys and Penthouses, Hustlers, and Cavaliers, and were busily picking out the types of women they wanted to take down next, but Philipe made it clear that there were to be no more sexual assaults. At least not for a while. Instead, he attempted to convince me that rape was a legitimate weapon at our disposal. He seemed aware of the fact that my opinion of him had dropped, that I no longer had the respect for him that I’d previously had, and he seemed desperately anxious to reinstate himself in my eyes.
That was an ego boost, of course. Such personal attention made me feel important. And, I had to admit, his arguments were persuasive. I understood where he was coming from, and I even agreed with him—on a purely theoretical level. But I also believed that it was wrong to punish innocent individuals for general wrongs perpetuated by the group to which they belonged, and I think I made him see my point. I got him to agree that the rape of the Asian woman had been only peripherally political, and he said that from now on we would only use rape if it would legitimately and specifically accomplish one of our goals.
If we just wanted to get ourselves off, we’d go to prostitutes or something.
We both thought that was fair.
It was in July that we performed our first big terrorist act, that we finally got on TV.
We were staying at Bill’s place, a comfortable three-bedroom house in Fountain Valley, and we were awakened by the sound of a chain saw. The noise was loud, outrageously so, and frighteningly close. Instinctively scared, my heart pounding, I jumped out of my sleeping bag and opened the door of the bedroom.
Philipe stood in the hallway, wielding a gas-powered chain saw that smelled of burning oil, and waving it above his head like Leatherface. He saw me and grinned.
James emerged from the bedroom behind me, wide-eyed and frightened. The others came into the hall from the living room and the other bedrooms.
Philipe lowered his chain saw, turned it off. His grin grew wider. “Get dressed, kiddies. We’re going into town.”
At his feet, I saw hammers and screwdrivers, a tire iron, an ax, a baseball bat. My ears were still ringing from the chain saw noise. “What?” I said.
“Get dressed and get ready,” he said. “I have a plan.”
We drove into L.A. in a caravan of three cars, Philipe’s Dodge leading the way. It was Sunday, and the traffic was light. There’d been wind the night before, and for once we could see both the San Gabriel Mountains and the Hollywood Hills. The Los Angeles skyline looked the way it did in movies and on TV, backed by pale blue sky, only a faint haze of smog obscuring the details of the buildings.
We followed Philipe’s car off the freeway and down Vermont Avenue, through gang-graffitied neighborhoods, past run-down grocery stores and dilapidated hooker hotels. We turned left on Sunset and headed through Hollywood to Beverly Hills. The chain saw and tools had been put in my trunk, and they rattled as I bumped over each dip in the road, shifted as I turned each corner. Buster, next to me in the passenger seat, held his Nikon camera on his lap. Philipe had told him to bring it.
“What do you think he has planned?” Buster asked.
I shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Isn’t this great? Don’t you love it?” The old man chuckled. “If anyone’d told me that at my age I’d be cruising around with a… a gang, kicking ass and raising hell, I’d’ve thought… well, I’d’ve said they were full of horse pucky.”
I laughed.
“I feel so… so young. You know?”
Truth to tell, I felt the same way myself. I was young—compared to Buster, at least—but being a terrorist made me feel excited, exhilarated, exuberant. I felt good this morning, jazzed, almost giddy, and I knew the others felt the same way.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I know what you mean.”
We passed a brown WELCOME TO BEVERLY HILLS sign, passed several import car dealers. Philipe’s right-turn signal started blinking, and a hand shot out from the driver’s side of his car, pointing up and over his roof toward the street sign on the corner: RODEO DRIVE.
He turned onto the street, parked his car.
I pulled in behind him and got out. I’d heard of Rodeo Drive, of course, but I’d never been there, and it wasn’t quite what I’d expected. The stores seemed ordinary, mundane, more like the normal stores you’d see in the downtown of any average city than the glitz and glamor you’d expect from the most exclusive shopping district in the world. The entire area seemed a little shabbier than I’d been led to believe, and though the names were there on the storefronts—Gucci, Carrier, Armani—I still found myself a little disappointed.
Philipe walked back to my car, accompanied by Don, Bill, and Steve. “Open the trunk,” he said. “Let’s get that stuff out.”
“What’s the plan?” I asked, unlocking the trunk.
“We’re going to rob Frederick’s of Hollywood.”
I frowned. “Frederick’s of Hollywood? Why? What’s the point? What’ll we do with stolen underwear?”
“Why? For fun. The point? To show them that we can. The underwear? We’ll keep what we want and toss the rest. Donate it. Leave it on the street or something, give it to the Goodwill.”
“Like Robin Hood!” Steve piped up.
“Yeah, like Robin Hood. Taking from the known and giving to the Ignored.” Philipe grabbed his chain saw out of the trunk. “Frederick’s of Hollywood has national name recognition, and because it sells sexy lingerie, it’s titillating enough to be newsworthy. It’ll be noticed.”
The other terrorists had just walked up behind us. “What?” John asked. “We’re going to hit Frederick’s?”
“Yeah,” I said. I picked up the baseball bat.
“Let’s loot the whole fuckin’ street!” Junior said, and there was a gleam in his eye that I hadn’t seen there before and didn’t much like.
Philipe shook his head. “The cops’d be here by then. We’ll pick one store, do what we can, and get the hell out.”
I looked up Rodeo Drive. It was after ten, but all of the stores were still closed. I was not sure if they opened after noon or if they were closed all day Sunday. I saw one man and two couples walking up the sidewalk on the left side of the street. A few cars passed by.
“Come on,” Philipe said. “It’s getting late. Let’s do it.” He stepped aside, and the others began grabbing tools from the trunk.
None of us knew where Frederick’s was, so we walked up the street until we found it. I couldn’t help thinking how comical we looked—eleven men, walking along Rodeo Drive on Sunday morning carrying bats, axes, and chain saws—but, as always, no one paid any attention to us at all.
A police car cruised by, signaled left, turned down a side street.
We stopped halfway up the block, in front of a window
displaying lifelike female mannequins wearing red G-strings and lace push-up bras and black crotchless panties. The rest of us looked toward Philipe. He nodded, motioning toward Don, who held the ax. “You do the honors,” he said.
“What should—”
“Smash the glass.”
Don stood before the door, hefted the ax over his shoulder, brought it down squarely at chest level. The glass shattered, thousands of small safety shards falling inward. Lights went on in the store, and an alarm. A bank of security cameras swiveled conspicuously in our direction. Philipe reached through the door, turned the lock, pushed open the frame, and walked inside. A few remaining pieces of glass fell from the sides of the door.
Philipe said nothing but started his chain saw.
I didn’t know if anyone else planned to do anything about those security cameras, so I walked over to the shelf on which they were stationed and began smashing them with the bat. I didn’t care if we were Ignored, after five minutes on videotape, we would be identified. I finished with the cameras, looked around, spotted the alarm—a small white plastic box in the corner above the fitting rooms—and walked over, jumped up, and smashed the thing to hell.
When I turned around, Philipe was chain-sawing through the checkout counter, having already knocked over the cash register. Bill and Don were breaking display cases; James and John and Steve were pushing over racks; the others were filling bags and baskets with lingerie. I walked over to a mannequin, unsnapped its bra, ripped off its panties.
Philipe suddenly turned off his chain saw. The silence was jarring. We all looked toward him. He cocked his head, listening.
Outside, from several streets over, we heard sirens.
“They respond fast in good neighborhoods,” Buster said.
“Out!” Philipe ordered. “Everyone out!”
We moved quickly toward the front of the store, scattering our cards on the floor and on what remained of the register.
“Drop your weapons,” Philipe said. “Leave them. We can’t afford to draw attention to ourselves on the street. Cops’ll be swarming all over this area in a few minutes.”
“What do we do with this stuff?” Tommy asked, holding up his bag of lingerie.
“Toss it,” Philipe told him. “Throw it out on the street. Throw everything you can onto the street. It’ll make a better picture on the news.”
We all grabbed handfuls of teddies and chemises. As we left the store, we tossed them into the air, onto the sidewalk, into the street.
Two police cars rounded the far corner.
“Stay cool,” Philipe said. “Act casual. Here they come.”
We were the only ones walking on Rodeo Drive, but the cops did not notice us. They sped past, pulled to braking catty-corner stops in the middle of the street in front of Frederick’s, and emerged from their vehicles drawing revolvers. Two more patrol cars came speeding down the street from the opposite direction.
We said nothing, did not talk, walked slowly but surely toward our cars. I got out my keys, unlocked and opened my door, got in. I reached across the seat and opened the passenger door for Buster. Through the windshield, I saw three policemen, guns drawn, walk into the store, while five others stood in a semicircle in the street out front.
Following Philipe, we turned the cars around and returned down Sunset the way we’d come.
Back home in Orange County, we went to our usual Denny’s to celebrate. Philipe placed himself in the path of our usual waitress, confronted her, asked her to take our orders. As always, she was surprised to see us, and as always, she took and brought our orders and then immediately forgot about us.
We hogged the back booth, laughing and talking loudly. We were pumped, both proud of and excited by what we had done. The damage we’d caused at our former places of employment had been more extensive, more thorough, but none of those incidents had had the marquee value of this exploit, and we continued to speculate on what was happening right now in Beverly Hills, what the police were doing, what they were saying to the press as we ate our lunches.
Junior was laughingly describing a particularly exotic undergarment he’d come across in his looting, when I suddenly thought of something. “Let’s write a note,” I said. “A letter.”
“We left cards,” Don said.
“The cards haven’t worked yet. It’s time to try something new.”
The others looked toward Philipe. He nodded, slowly. “Not a bad idea,” he admitted. “We need to take credit for this. Even if they pick up on the cards, this is added insurance.
“You write it,” Philipe told me. “Address it to the Beverly Hills police chief. Tell him who we are, what we’re doing. Make it clear that we’ll strike again. I want those bastards thinking about us.”
I nodded.
“I want to proofread it before you send it out.”
“Okay.”
He smiled to himself, nodding. “Pretty soon everyone is going to know about the Terrorists for the Common Man.”
The ransacking of Frederick’s made the local NBC and ABC newscasts. Both segments were short, long on snickering innuendo and short on factual details, but they received prominent placement and were repeated on both eleven o’clock newscasts. I taped all showings.
The CBS station didn’t lower itself to cover such sensationalism.
I wrote the letter that night, Philipe read it, we all signed it, and I sent it off.
We waited.
A day. Two. Four. A week.
There was nothing on the news, no follow-up story on television or in the papers.
Finally, following Philipe’s directions, I made an anonymous call to the Beverly Hills Police Department from a pay phone outside a 7-Eleven. I claimed responsibility for the looting of Frederick’s of Hollywood in the name of the Terrorists for the Common Man.
The sergeant on the other end of the line laughed at me. “Nice try, bud. But we caught the perps on that three days ago. Better luck next time.”
He hung up.
Slowly, I placed the receiver in its cradle. I turned to face the others. “He said that they caught the guys who did it three days ago.”
“That’s impossible!” Junior said.
Steve frowned. “Call them back. Tell ’em they got the wrong men.”
Philipe shook his head. “That’s it. Case closed.”
“I don’t even think they got my letter,” I said.
“They got it,” Philipe said softly. “They just ignored it. I was afraid of that.”
He walked away from us, into the 7-Eleven, and we stood there, confused and silent, waiting for him, as around us a group of kids who’d gotten off school went into the convenience store to play video games, paying no attention to us at all.
SIX
Philipe went out alone that night and did not return until it was almost dawn, but he was back to his normal self the next day. We’d spent the night at my apartment, and in the morning we went outside before deciding where we were going to eat breakfast. I’d been home so infrequently the past few months that I never bought groceries anymore, and there was no food in the apartment. Philipe, as always, took charge of the situation. “All right,” he said, and there was no trace in his voice or attitude of the melancholy defeatism of the night before. “We have three choices. We can grab some fast food. We can go to a coffee shop.” He paused. “Or we can get new cars.”
Buster frowned. “New cars?”
Philipe grinned. “Our wheels are looking pretty raggedy. I think it’s time we get some new ones. I myself would like a Mercedes.”
“What do you mean?” Don asked. “We’re supposed to steal ourselves some cars?”
“I have a plan,” Philipe said. “I’ll tell it to you over breakfast.” He looked around the group. “Who votes for Jack-in-the-Box; who votes for IHOP?”
He did indeed have a plan. And it was a good one.
We ate breakfast at the International House of Pancakes, commandeering two tables that we pushed together
in the rear of the restaurant, and he explained what he wanted to do. The plan was definitely workable, brilliant in its simplicity, and it was exciting to realize that we were probably the only people in the world who could pull it off.
After breakfast, we went looking for cars. The dealerships were closed, would not open until ten, but that did not prevent us from doing a little window-shopping. We drove to the Cerritos Auto Square, a two-block section in the city of Cerritos that had been specifically set aside for car dealers. We walked past the Mazda showroom, the Jeep dealer, Porsche, Pontiac, Mercedes, Nissan, Volkswagen, Chevrolet, Lincoln, and Cadillac. By the time we finished walking past the Cadillac lot, it was ten o’clock and the showrooms were opening for business.
“We drove here in three cars; we’ll pick out three new ones today,” Philipe said. “Has everybody decided what they want? I’m still going with the Mercedes. I like the light blue one we saw.”
We decided on the Mercedes, a red Jeep Wrangler, and a black 280Z.
We paired off. Philipe and I would get the Mercedes, Bill and Don would take the Jeep, and John and Steve would go for the Z. The others would drive our old cars home.
“How come we’re not in on it?” Junior complained.
“Next time,” Philipe promised.
We split up, and I accompanied Philipe to the Mercedes dealer. Salesmen were pouncing on people the second they stepped onto the lot, but we had no such problem. Philipe, in fact, had to hunt down a salesman in the office, an oily sleaze wearing an inappropriately expensive suit and a gaudy set of large gold rings. He introduced himself as Chris, enthusiastically pumped both of our arms, asked what sort of car we were interested in. Philipe pointed toward the blue car we’d looked at earlier. “That one there,” he said.
Chris looked him over, took in his jeans, his faded T-shirt, his windbreaker, and smiled indulgently. “That’s our top of the line. May I ask what price range you’re looking at?”
Philipe turned away. “I came here to buy a car, not be harassed about my appearance.” He motioned for me to follow him. “Come on, let’s go to the Porsche dealer.”
The Ignored Page 19
