6. The heist
After Stephan finished giving Michael all sorts of instructions, we followed them downstairs and exited the building through a different way then the one we came in. I found myself standing in a parking lot where Dave, just as Stephan told him to, had prepared two cars for us. Now I use the term “car” very loosely here because the objects in front of us, which we were supposed to drive, could only be described as “death traps”. Dave had prepared the two most rundown, beaten, excuses for cars that ever existed in this world. I swear, the doors on those things couldn’t open properly because of the sheer magnitude of rust and dents in them. It felt almost inhumane to even keep those things, much less have someone drive them. I didn’t know if I should get inside one of them or take it out back and put a bullet through it.
– What the hell are these things?! asked George.
– Is this some sort of joke?! added Andreea.
– Dave assures me that both cars work, replied Stephan. This is another way for me to rest easy, knowing you can’t drive off. Well that and I also told Dave not to put in more then seven liters of gas. I doubt you’ll be needing more to get there and back.
– And if we get into trouble and have to make a quick escape, what are we to do then? asked Andreea.
Stephan smiled, leaned in and said:
– Well then, you’d better make sure not to get into any trouble.
With Stephan‘s encouraging words, and having turned off our sense of good judgment, we got inside the cars and drove off to rob some mobsters. Because we had only two guns, Michael holding one of them and George loosing at rock-paper-scissors, George was left having to ride with Michael, while I was riding with Andreea. Now I know what you, the reader, might be thinking at this point: “That’s great news Toni, now you can talk to Andreea alone, you can even ask her out sometime.” Well, as much as I hate to disappoint my readers, that idea never crossed my mind at the time. I was preoccupied with driving a death trap, so, as you can imagine, I was a bit distracted at the time. Besides, it’s not like I could spark a conversation with a joke and then amaze her with my knowledge of bears. The mood wasn’t right for something like that and to be perfectly honest, I was still fearing for my life.
Getting back on track, we arrived at the casino at 3:03 A.M., just as the workers were loading the laundry van with the final bags of money. When the van started moving we tailed it with our car lights turned off. Dangerous, I know, those lights are there for a reason, but Andreea insisted and I wasn’t going to argue with a woman holding a gun, especially one with such a short temper.
The overall tailing was pretty standard… not that I usually tail cars… but you know what I mean. In the movies they make it seem interesting, but in real life you just follow a car around, trying not to give yourself away. That last part was a bit difficult, I’ll admit. It’s hard to go unseen when the vehicle you’re in looks like the unholy offspring of something that once resembled a car and an iron maiden. Now someone might say: “Okay, the car looked like shit, but how did it handle?” That depends on what you expect a car to do. If you expect a car to slow down when you press the break, or the engine not to die out when it miraculously manages to reach it’s top speed of 60 km/h, then no, the car did not handle well.
Don’t worry though, the death trap on wheels ended up being the highlight of this entire fiasco. What? Did you expect everything to go down smooth as silk? Fuck no, I’m not George Clooney and this wasn’t “Oceans 11”. Actually, if I have to compare my experience with that of a movie, I guess I felt like a character from “Snatch”, I had no clue as to what was happening, but I was along for the ride.
After about eight minutes of following this car around it eventually stopped at a red light and I knew what that meant: the heist was on. I pulled up our car in front of the van, while George and Michael stopped behind it, thus preventing it from trying to escape. Before the van driver even knew what was happening, Andreea was pointing her gun at the guy, ordering him to put his hands behind his head. Meanwhile, Michael walked up to the driver, took his car keys and opened the back doors of the van. The guy standing next to the driver seemed pissed off, rather then scared, which should have been a sign of trouble, but we didn’t pay any attention to him at the time. Everything was going according to plan.
While George was delegated with the task of sifting around through the bags of laundry, trying to find where the money was, I started feeling kind of bad about what we were doing. I didn’t mind the stealing money part of the plan, but the driver seemed really scared and I kinda wanted to reassure him that we weren’t going to hurt him or anything. I should probably mention that I took a few courses in psychology in college and so I knew that a person could develop PTSD from a traumatic experience like this. As you can imagine, I felt really shitty about this entire mess. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to voice any of my concerns about the psychological wellbeing of the driver because the guy next to him said this:
– You people have no fucking clue as to what you’re getting yourselves involved in!
– Shut up and keep your hands where I can see them, replied Michael while pointing his gun at the man.
The fact that even a simple laundry van driver was threatening us got me worried that people weren’t considering me intimidating, even dressed up in the bad-ass way that I was. Disconcerting as that was, I noticed George loading up the car with bags of money, so, again, I didn’t give it much thought. We were nearly done.
No sooner then having thought that, seemingly out of nowhere, four police cars showed up. The officers got out and shouted:
– Put your guns down slowly and step away from the van!
“Why is this happening to me?” was my first thought, but then I realized this was a good thing. I could explain to the police what happened, tell them how Stephan threatened us and ask them to put me in a witness protection program. “Hell, if I play my cards right, I might end up co-writing a film with Martin Scorsese. I just have to make sure that bastard doesn’t steal all the attention and glory of my brave deeds.” All I had to do was wait for the police take us in and make sure I was the first one to rat out the rest. If we got lucky, I might even be able to cut a deal for Andreea and George.
There was one problem in my plan: “What if Andreea doesn’t want to turn herself in? She did try to start a gun fight with a bunch of mobsters…” I hoped she could see clearly enough to realize that this was not a fight she could win.
My worries were starting to fade away when I saw that both Andreea and Michael started lowering their guns. It felt like the glimmer of hope, brought on by the dawn of a new day, was finally pushing back the darkness of this despair-filled night… or that would have been the case if fate wasn’t such a wretched bitch.
Before you could say “shattered dreams”, the guy next to the van driver pulls out – from what I can only assume was his ass – a shotgun and starts firing at us. In response, the police start firing at both the van and us. Andreea and Michael, almost immediately, jumped behind the cars and opened fire on the police and the van. George simply fell to the ground and crawled over to my car. Meanwhile, I was just standing in the car, unable to open the stupid door because… you guessed it: that wasn’t really a car, but fucking death trap!
You know how people say that in a near death experience you look back on your life. Well I have to say, with so many bullets flying past me, I think I had a similar experience, except it wasn’t my life flashing before my eyes, but rather, all my regrets. The biggest regret I had was the possibility that I might never get the chance to tell Andreea how hot she was. In what felt like five seconds – though it could have been less – I knew what I had to do, so I rolled down the window and shouted:
– Maybe we should go out sometime!
To which she replied:
– Start the fucking car and get us out of here!
Her response seemed odd at first, but I soon realized she had a point. So even though I am not a religious man, I quickly prayed to Joe Satriani and Jimi Hendrix for the car to start. And wouldn’t you know it, I turned the key and the car started, George and Andreea jumped in and we drove off, respecting the speed limit and all.
Comically Short 