The Ignored (25 page)

“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.

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.”

“I… I’m sorry,” the salesman said, his phony smile faltering.

“It was a toss-up anyway. You just threw it into the Porsche’s corner.
Thanks. You made my decision for me.”

“Wait!” the salesman said.

“Yes?” Philipe looked at him coolly.

“Give us another chance. I know you’d be much happier with a
Mercedes-Benz, and I can really get you a hell of a deal.”

Philipe appeared to think for a minute. “All right,” he said. “Let’s
test-drive that blue one there.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll just go get the keys.”

Philipe and I looked at each other as Chris hurried into the office. I
quickly turned away so I wouldn’t burst out laughing.