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.”
