Reel to Real (15 page)

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.”

O
MAR
K
HAYYAM

Sunday, March 3, 1996 12:45 AM

“Go home,” Mylinh said.

“I don’t want to go home,” Sheila said. She was re-shelving tapes and singing — loudly — in-sync with the in-store music. “I want to get this stuff put away.”

Mylinh, the manager, told Sheila to call it a day. At this late hour, three people working, she said, was enough.

“Hey, you’re not getting rid of me that easy. I’m having way too much fun. Besides, if anyone is supposed to get off early it's Zach, not me.”

“Nah, you go,” Zach said, strolling up to join the conversation.

“You look flushed Sheila, like maybe you’re sick or something,” Mylinh said.

“And besides,” Zach chimed in, “You’re scheduled to open in the morning.”

Sheila reached into her pocket, unfolded a sheet of paper and groaned. “Darn, I do have to open.”

“I’m pretty sure the three of us can handle the last hour by ourselves,” Jowanda added, smiling.

Eventually, they convinced her to go home. Sheila admitted she did feel kind of tired, maybe even a little sick.

“Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “But I got a problem.”

“What’s that?” Jowanda asked.

“My sister’s not coming to pick me up ’til two.”

“That’s not a problem,” said Mylinh, pushing Jowanda forward. “This lady right here will drive you home.”

“You sure?” Sheila asked.

“Step into my limo, darling. I am your chauffeur,” Jowanda laughed and pointed to her older brown four-door sedan parked in the parking lot.

“Hey!” Zach held up his hand. “Before you guys leave, can you give us five minutes so me and Mylinh can get in a smoke?”

“No problem, I’ve got to grab my purse anyway. It’s in the back,” Sheila said.

When Sheila finally walked out, Mylinh and Zach were standing in front of the store puffing away and laughing. She saw Zach drawing something in the ashtray sand but didn’t stop to look. “Good night guys,” Sheila said, and slid into Jowanda’s car.

1:30 AM

Parked in the Hollywood Video parking lot, third spot from the door, Esther sat in the Fiero's passenger seat, radio off, saying nothing. She wore blue jeans, a black plaid jacket over a white cotton sweater and thigh high combat boots. Shane was behind the wheel, grinding his teeth, looking at a small square of yellow paper. He wore Jason’s black leather motorcycle jacket, faded blue jeans and a green silk shirt. His eyes flicked back and forth.

He seemed unusually quiet, strangely subdued.
Probably going over scenarios
, Esther thought.

From the car, they could see four or five customers still inside. The sign on the door read OPEN. Minutes passed in silence.

“Are we gonna go in?” Esther asked.

Shane said nothing; instead, he alternated between staring at the window of the brilliantly-lit store and staring at his yellow piece of paper. On the paper was a hand-drawn diagram of the store’s interior. It showed the positions of all the cameras, the three cash registers, and the back office.

Esther put on black cloth gloves.

The front door clunked opened and Shane and Esther watched one of the remaining customers, a balding man wearing a green camo jacket, leave the store.

“Now?” Esther said.

“Let’s hold off for a sec,” Shane said. “The less time we’re in there, the less time we’re noticed. They’re not closing yet.”

Esther studied him, hoping he knew what he was doing. This robbery seemed a lot more complicated than the Mac’s robbery. More people were involved. She asked herself if she should even go through with it. What if she got caught? That seemed like a lot bigger possibility this time. As a felon on parole, she knew she would be looking at some serious prison time.

Then she remembered John. Big hunky, wonderful John. He had made it clear they would never get back together unless she found a way to acquire a considerable amount of money. She had no choice. She
had
to go through with it.

Shane held up his left wrist and checked his watch. “Let’s do it,” he rasped. “Let’s do it like we planned.” He put his gloves on, got out of the car, straightened up and looked around. The only outside lighting was the flickering neon of the red, white and blue Hollywood Video sign. There were a few cars in the parking lot, but they were empty.

With BB guns stuck in their back waistbands, Esther and Shane walked through the glass front door together.

1:40 AM

The phone rang in the store, Zach took a step to answer it but Jowanda already had the receiver in her hand. He heard her say hello to Sheila and he laughed. Sheila was like that; if she wasn’t working, she was calling in to check on everyone.

Zach and the other employees had already completed most of the closing procedures, and now it was all about getting the last few customers out the door. A couple he had noticed earlier in “new releases” was still handing each other various video tapes and shaking their heads. She wanted a chick flick and he wanted an action movie. Zach had witnessed this type of dispute between couples many times. He made a bet with himself that the woman would prevail.

“Of course, you should have gone home,” he heard Jowanda say into the telephone. Obviously, Sheila was still lamenting about not being at work. He shook his head. Didn’t Sheila know she should be sleeping? She had to be back at the store in less than eight hours.

A young guy was checking out at register #2 with Mylinh. She was helping him count out a bunch of coins. This too, happened all the time. People needing a late night movie fix would scrounge around their houses for spare change and then head to the video store with a pocket full of dimes and quarters.

“No, the cute guy in my math class has not asked me out,” Jowanda giggled. “I probably scare him.” She bent over in laughter.

Girls!
Zach thought. He began his nightly walk around the store, looking for trash, out of place video tapes and, of course, customers.  There was a guy watching the Japanimation movie Zach had put in earlier. He looked totally engrossed. Zach wished he could stand next to him and watch it, too.

He circled back to the front register to grab some scraps of paper off the floor. “Yeah, it’s pretty dead in here,” Jowanda said, still on the phone. “There’s hardly anyone left.”

Zach saw the man and woman who had been arguing approach the front register. Looked like they compromised after all. The man placed “Thelma and Louise” on the counter.

“Oops, sorry,” Jowanda said. “Customers. Gotta go.”

1:45 AM

After entering the store, Shane walked casually to the left and Esther went to the right, as planned.

She walked around to the back, to the drama section. No particular reason except it was on the right. She picked up a random tape, ran her hand over it, adjusted her glasses and squinted to read the print. But she was only pretending to read. After a fake minute or two, she put the tape back on the shelf and repeated the process, moving through the store.

While Esther attempted to act normal, to blend in with other customers, she was actually monitoring the people near her, checking them out. An older Hispanic guy with a sagging mustache was standing in line at the front register. Over by the foreign films a young woman was reading out loud in French.

Then there was the guy with the short brown hair, maybe in his 30s, who stood under a monitor near the front registers watching a weird animation. It was some kind of heavy metal Japanese cartoon. The audio was cranked up and the guy watching it looked transfixed. He seemed in no hurry either. Esther did not understand the interest.

Across the room, she saw Shane walking around. He looked stiff and nervous. That puzzled her. She wasn’t sure why he was so uptight. He hadn’t been like that at Mac’s. Maybe it was because this was something new. To her knowledge, he hadn’t robbed a video store before.

“Can I help you with anything?” a woman’s voice came from behind.

Esther jumped a little and then caught herself. Without turning around, she calmly said, “No, thank you. I’m just looking.”

She immediately walked across the store to where Shane stood.

1:55 AM

Ryan Spicher, an American Airlines flight attendant, was still inside the store. He was watching a Japanese animation movie playing on the monitor.

Earlier, Ryan had gone to Smith’s grocery on Lomas Boulevard to buy microwave popcorn, but the clerk hadn’t shown up. So with no one to run the register, he had left empty-handed. He then went to a nearby Albertson’s to buy his popcorn and noticed that the Hollywood Video across the street was still open. He decided to stop by and pick up a movie.

Ryan originally arrived at Hollywood Video a little after 1:30 AM. He was specifically looking for Japanese animation videos — Japanimations they called them. To his surprise, one was playing on the front ceiling-mounted monitor when he arrived. He watched the animation entitled “Affair of Neon da” for several minutes.

“Do you have any more Japanimations?” Ryan asked the clerk, whose name tag read Zach.

“Yeah, I do. And I have some of the newer ones, too,” Zach said. He told Ryan that they had a small section of the newer releases located just in front of the doors.

Ryan said later that he saw three clerks in the store. One was the young male named Zach, one was a female with longer hair, and the third one was an Asian female. He thought they were all about 20 years old.

While in the store, he noticed one particular couple that seemed mismatched. The man wore a black leather jacket and had a rugged, unshaved appearance, while the woman wore a white cotton sweater, that might have been a sweatshirt.

In Ryan’s opinion, the leather jacket and the white cotton didn’t go together. He thought the man was between 25 and 30 and the woman seemed to be older than that. He was standing near a stack of tapes when they walked in front of him, within four or five feet. He did not see either one of them from the front.

Ryan watched them walk to the back of the store, the woman behind the man. He later described the man as tall – about 5’11”, slender, narrow face, rough complexion, with dark brown hair, long and pulled back into a ponytail. He said the woman was heavy set, half a head shorter than the man, somewhat plain features, and brown hair. They were both white. The jacket the man wore was a biker-style jacket with wide sleeves.

Ryan stayed at the store about half an hour and ended up renting three videos. He wasn’t a Hollywood Video member but after he showed his driver’s license and filled out an application, he became one. He left right about 2AM — closing time.

***

When the guy watching the Japanese animation finally left, Esther dropped the video tape in her hand and looked over at Shane. He nodded. It was time.

As planned, Esther walked directly toward Mylinh, a thirty-year-old Vietnamese immigrant who was standing at a front computer station punching numbers on a keyboard.

Shane’s hands shook slightly.
Stop thinking so much
, he told himself, but he couldn’t help it. This was definitely the biggest robbery of his young career.

He was ready to prove that he could scale up. No one had ever given him any credit for his talents. No one had ever taken him seriously. Not at school, not at home, and certainly not at any of the so-called jobs he had held in his life. Maybe no one could see it except him, but he knew he had leadership potential. The PNM job had been his best shot, but that had been snatched away.

Well, no one was going to snatch tonight away. He had a lifetime of grudges to settle.

He had envisioned this job for a while now; a version of it anyway. He had his plan, he had his diagram and he knew the closing procedures. He was ready, but still he was nervous. Esther was a problem. She was a wild card. She might do anything. Even though he had worked with her before and she did okay, he did not trust her. He did not trust anyone, women in particular.

But he couldn’t think about any of that now. It was show time. Shane felt a shot of pure adrenaline course through his body as he picked up a stack of VHS tapes, and ambled up front toward the open register, where Jowanda stood.

***

“Are you the store manager?” Esther asked, glancing sideways.

“Yes,” Mylinh replied, smile fading.

Esther, wasting no time, reached underneath her sweater and drew her BB gun. Holding it low and close to her body, she showed it to Mylinh. To the untrained eye, the gun was indistinguishable from an actual 9mm pistol. Mylinh’s expression showed she believed it to be real.

“We’re going to walk quietly over to the office now,” Esther said, and moved behind Mylinh. “Don’t make the mistake of drawing attention to yourself.”

They trudged to the far rear of the store in silence. Once inside, Esther noticed how tiny the back office was. It was maybe nine feet by three. Hardly anything in there either. Other than a wall of stacked boxes, the room contained only a metal desk, a coat rack, and a filing cabinet with a VCR and monitor on top.

Esther saw herself on the video monitor with the gun in her hand, standing in the office doorway. She wasn’t sure she liked what she saw. The video image simultaneously made the situation feel both real and unreal.

“Where’s the security tape?” she asked, eyes moving around the room.

“There, behind the door,” the manager said, glancing in that direction.

“Are there any other tapes?”

“For today, no.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“We use only one a day. That’s today in the recorder.”

“Take it out for me,” Esther said.

Mylinh bit her lip. “You do it.”

“What?” Esther said, stunned that Mylinh was anything less than one hundred percent cooperative.

“I said, you want it out, you take it out.” Mylinh’s face was hard.