One of the problems was that in Hollywood (called Babelwood by the cops who worked there) the police had no officers to make the same announcement in Arabic, Cambodian, Farsi, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Armenian, Thai, or any of the other languages spoken by the customers inside the supermarket at that moment.
Officers escorted outside the first ten women and kids, and none of those who understood their questions had seen a man with a gun. Then another ten were escorted out with the same result. Then all hell broke loose.
The man known as Arturo Echeverría, who had been very busy inside that store scurrying around looking for a way out, eventually finding himself in the storage area behind the meat counters, had decided that it was time to act. And for the first time, Aaron and Sheila and the other cops at the scene learned that the gun was indeed a real one.
Arturo Echeverría stood behind the mobs of customers at the west exit door, who were hollering and complaining, and he began firing! The customers heard five explosions behind them that shattered glass displays and ricocheted off concrete floors, reverberating from one side of the checkout counters to the other.
And then, pandemonium! Some customers crouched or hit the floor, women with children shielded their young ones with their bodies, and the masses decided, the hell with Sergeant Hermann’s reasonable plan. They charged both exit doors. People screamed, people fell, people were trampled. And the cops stood helplessly while men, women, and children, shouting in languages the cops could not understand, stampeded from the store, shoving officers back as they ran from the gunfire. Aaron Sloane and Sheila Montez tried to visually examine each young man who ran from the supermarket, but it was hopeless.
Many of the men who fled were store employees in white shirts and dark trousers, some wearing aprons and badges, some black baseball caps with the store’s logo on the front. And some others wore meat-stained white aprons as well as the black baseball caps. There were half a dozen of them, as panicked as everyone else, and, like everyone else, they scattered when they got past the first line of cops, running far enough to stop and gather in groups or to duck behind cars in the parking lot or simply to say in Spanish or Tagolog, “Screw this. I don’t get paid to get shot.” These last few raced for their cars in the parking lot.
As it turned out, one of those who fled toward the cars was Arturo Echeverría, dressed as a butcher in a long white coat, a meat-stained apron, and a black baseball cap with the store’s logo on the front. He ran to a car, following behind one of the store’s butchers, and as soon as the butcher unlocked his car, Arturo Echeverría said to him, “I need a ride, compadre.”
When the butcher looked at him and said, “I ain’t never seen you in the store before,” Arturo Echeverría drew the gun from under his apron and said, “You see me now. Vámonos. And do not cry out.”
The terrified butcher drove away with Arturo Echeverría behind him on the floor of the car, promising not to kill the man if he obeyed orders. The butcher was released at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and Vermont Avenue and was not robbed of his money or cell phone. The stolen car was later found in a parking lot near LAX, where the hunted man had no doubt flown out of Los Angeles and possibly the country.
Among the many officers who had responded to the help call that afternoon were Flotsam and Jetsam, who aided in the search of the building after the stampede of customers and market employees had ended. It was determined that nobody was hiding in the store and that none of the customers had been hit by gunfire. Some clothing belonging to the night-shift butchers was missing from a locker, but that was all. And after paramedics had treated several with minor injuries incurred in the stampede, the surfer cops were standing by their car, chatting with Hollywood Nate and Dana Vaughn, who had also responded to the help call.
Flotsam said to them, “You know, that was, like, a way cooleo escape. That dude? He deserved his freedom.”
Sergeant Miriam Hermann, who was sweating and tired and feeling her age, was enormously frustrated that the man with a gun had escaped while she was in charge of the tac alert. And she happened to be walking past the unsuspecting surfer cops at that precise moment.
Sergeant Hermann froze in her tracks. “What… did… you… say? Repeat that.”
Caught unawares, Flotsam turned. “Oh, hi, Sarge! I was only, like… I was sorta… I was just… just…”
“He was just leaving, Sarge,” Jetsam said, grabbing his partner by the arm as they scurried to their black-and-white.
Watching the events at the shopping center along with hundreds of other spectators was Malcolm Rojas, who’d recently finished his workday at the home improvement center warehouse. He found it exciting when the SWAT team showed up with all their equipment. This was like reality TV, and he got so involved in the show that he almost forgot his meeting coming up with Bernie Graham. Malcolm had decided for sure that either he made some money with Bernie Graham tonight or he was through letting the man string him along. Part of him didn’t care one way or the other because part of him wanted to quell the feelings that had been growing inside him all day, feelings that scared and excited him and demanded release.
Something that he’d been realizing more and more was that the stalking of those women was more exciting than the time he had them in his power. He always thought that the sex was what he wanted, but now he wasn’t so sure. He hadn’t gotten any sex yet, because the bitches were so… so… he didn’t know what they were, other than clever and tricky. Stalking them was way better than jerking off, that was for sure. He loved the stalking part. But he knew he’d have to have sex with one of them sooner or later. Just so he’d know. But what would he know? It was all so confusing and frustrating that the rage began to stir within him.
“When was the last time you had a square job?” Tristan wanted to know as he drove to the duplex/office for their meeting.
“I was a hod carrier in El Monte for a couple months,” Jerzy said after he opened his eyes to see if they were getting close to the east Hollywood neighborhood.
“When was that?”
“I don’t know. Two, three, years ago. What the fuck difference does it make?”
“I worked at a Hollywood dance studio for almost three years,” Tristan said. “I did the books and made all the appointments and I was learnin’ to become an instructor. I even got all kinds of promises about becomin’ a partner in the business. And then one day the boss and his wife were gone and the dance studio was taken over by the landlord, and all the promises were like the shit your momma told you when you were little. About how good life was gonna be. I ain’t had a square job since.”
Jerzy smirked and said, “Yeah, well, you can take your half of the money we’re gonna make and go home to New Orleans and show your momma what a success her Creole boy is.”
“My momma ain’t in New Orleans,” Tristan said. “And I ain’t no Creole.”
“And you ain’t never been to college like you said, right?”
“Right,” Tristan said.
“I figgered as much,” Jerzy said. “Jist another refugee from Watts. Come to Hollywood after the fuckin’ greaseballs took over your ghetto.”
“I’m only a thief like you,” Tristan said and then added, “but when we pull off this gag, I’m gettin’ outta the game so I don’t end up like you.”
“You can never be like me,” Jerzy said. “I’m a white man.”
Tristan and Jerzy rode in silence and arrived at the duplex thirty minutes before their boss was due to arrive. They tried to slip the front door lock with a credit card but were unsuccessful. Then they walked along the driveway that led to rear carports and tried to open the bedroom window, finding that it was an old aluminum slider and could be pried open with little trouble.