“I have a gun in my pocket. Get out of the fucking car or I’ll blow a hole through your fucking gut.” Philipe had slipped a hand into his windbreaker pocket and he was holding it there, finger pointing outward.
All trace of unctuousness was gone from the salesman’s voice. He was a frightened baby, and he was practically blubbering as he fumbled with the door lock. “Don’t shoot me,” he begged. “I’ll go… Take the car… Do what you want… Just don’t… shoot me….” He successfully managed to open the door and stumbled outside, closing the door behind him.
Philipe took off.
He was laughing as he sped down the street toward the freeway. “What a dick!”
Through the back windshield, I could see the salesman running crazily down the sidewalk away from us. “You think he’ll remember us?”
I looked up front, saw Philipe’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Sorry,” I said. “Dumb question.”
We were the first of the new car owners to make it back to Bill’s house, our prearranged meeting place. The others were already there, waiting outside on the porch, and they came walking across the lawn to admire the Mercedes.
John and Steve arrived with the Z about fifteen minutes later. Bill and Don and the Jeep pulled up soon after that.
Buster looked at the old cars, the new cars, and shook his head. “It’s a damn fleet,” he said.
Don patted the hood of the Jeep. “We’re moving up in the world.”
Philipe had gone inside the house to get a beer, and he came back out, drinking straight from the bottle. He stood next to Junior, eyed the new cars, and shook his head. “You know,” he said, “it’s a shame to let these new wheels go to waste. Let’s do something with them.”
“Like what?” Pete asked.
“Road trip!” John said.
“I was thinking of something a little more appropriate, a little more fitting for the Terrorists for the Common Man.”
“Like what?” Pete asked.
“Like knocking over some banks.”
There was silence.
“Banks?” James repeated nervously.
“Well, ATM machines. Same difference.”
No one said anything.
“What are you, a bunch of old ladies? Come on, you pussies. We just stole a hundred thousand dollars worth of vehicles here, and you’re afraid of kyping a little cash from a teller machine?”
“Bank robbers?” James said.
“Don’t think we can do it?”
“We can do it,” I said. “We’ve killed and not been caught. We’ve vandalized; we’ve stolen from stores; we’ve looted Rodeo Drive. We can sure as hell pick off a few bank machines.”
“That’s true,” James admitted.
“He has a point,” Steve said.
Junior let out a whoop. “Let’s do it!”
“Let’s do it,” Philipe agreed.
We went first to a hardware store, walked out with sledgehammers and crowbars, exiting through the unattended nursery section on the side of the building. Then we drove around Orange County, picking out banks that were not in open, populated areas, that had instant teller machines hidden by trees or bushes. Following Philipe’s lead, we walked straight up to the machines, pushed aside whoever was there, and smashed the hell out of the metal withdrawal drawers. At that point, an alarm usually went off and the other customers began running, but we continued to bash in the machine until the entire front facade was gone, and then took the money from within before leaving our cards and walking calmly back to the cars.
We hit six banks that first day.
Ten more the next day.
Our haul was somewhere around forty thousand dollars.
We split it up, then deposited it in the ATMs of our own banks.
The ATM robberies were high profile, big news, and we began reading about ourselves in the newspapers consistently, seeing the aftermath of our exploits on TV. It was downright creepy. There were the people who’d watched us commit our crimes, who were witnesses to what we’d done, and they remembered nothing. Some recalled seeing a group of people, but had no specific descriptions to provide. Some out-and-out lied, usually white middle-aged macho men who invariably recalled seeing black or Hispanic gang members.
“Yeah!” Philipe would jeer, throwing pretzels at the television. “Blame the minorities!”
It was even more unnerving a few days later watching the police arrest two Hispanic men for committing the robberies. The men looked rough, were definitely not upstanding-citizen material, and if I had not known better, I, too, would probably have believed them guilty.
I thought of Frederick’s of Hollywood, of the “perps” who had been “caught.”
“I guess they needed scapegoats,” James said quietly.
“Fuck ’em,” Philipe said. “Let’s prove those men innocent. Let’s knock off a few more ATMs.”
“One of these days those video cameras are going to capture our pictures,” Don said. “What’ll we do then?”
“They’ve got our pictures already. But no one can remember what we look like. Don’t worry.”
The next day we did rob three ATMs, all of them in the city of Long Beach, and that night at my apartment we tuned into the news, VCR at the ready, to see the results. The ATM robberies were not the top story — that went to a shooting outside a Westwood theater showing a new gang-themed movie — but they were second, and an obviously frustrated police spokesman said that the men arrested yesterday in connection with the crimes were now being released.
Philipe grinned. “Kicked their ass.”
“But we’re still not getting credit,” I said. “We’re a goddamn crime epidemic, and we’re still not getting the credit for it.”
“Maybe the police are just trying to keep our names out of the news,” Buster suggested. “Maybe they don’t want to give us any publicity.”
“Maybe,” I said.
James was sitting in one of the chairs, staring thoughtfully at the television as a camera showed the police rounding up suspects in a drug sweep in Compton. He looked up. “You know,” he said, pointing to the TV, “we could solve this gang problem.”
Philipe turned to face him. “What?”
“We could get into places even the cops couldn’t go. We could walk in, confiscate drugs and weapons, walk out.”
“We’re not superheroes, dipshit. We’re average, we’re not memorable, we don’t make an impression, but we’re not fucking invisible.”
“What’s with you?” I asked Philipe. “It was just a suggestion.”
He stared at me, and for a moment our eyes locked. I had the feeling that he expected me to understand why he was angry, what was bothering him, but I was completely at a loss, and he broke contact and looked away.
I felt as though I’d missed something. “Are you okay?” I asked.
He nodded. He looked suddenly tired, worn out. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” he said wearily. “I’m going to bed.”
Before anybody could say anything, he was heading down the short hallway to the bedroom.
“What the hell was that about?” Tommy asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
John looked around conspiratorially. “You think he’s like…?” He tapped his forehead, rolled his eyeballs.
Junior looked at him disgustedly. “Shut the hell up.”
