Before exiting the cubicle, and since she was done for the night, Angela first removed the black wig she had on, then her dark contact lenses, and put them away.
Out in the busy bar area, it took her several minutes to finally get served. After skimming through the cocktail menu, Angela decided to go with a classic – the sidecar. Tablewise, she got lucky pretty quickly. Just as she turned away from the bar with her drink, a small, circular, stand-up table vacated just a few feet from her. Angela quickly stepped up to it.
As she sipped her cocktail, her eyes began scanning the crowd. Not that she was reconsidering her decision to call it a night. To Angela, scanning people around her, no matter where she was, had become second nature . . . a reflex . . . a force of habit. It was something she did without even realizing that she was doing it. Within twenty seconds, she had singled out three of the easiest pickings she had ever seen.
Four tables to her right – two forty-something men. Both positively tipsy. The one wearing glasses had placed his wallet in his jacket pocket and then placed the folded jacket on the empty stool to his right, wallet pocket facing up.
Three tables in front of her – two twenty-something women sipping margaritas. The one with her back to Angela had her unzipped handbag hanging from the back of her chair.
Next table along to her right – a tall gentleman whose attention was cemented onto his cellphone. He had placed a very elegant leather bag on the floor, several inches away from his feet. Angela hadn’t seen the contents of the bag, but she was willing to bet that it would be something valuable.
People have absolutely no clue, Angela thought, as she shook her head ever so slightly. It’s like they never learn.
As Angela’s attention moved back from the bag on the floor to the man and his cellphone, an older gentleman, probably in his mid-sixties, approached the man. Angela could hear their conversation.
‘Excuse me,’ the older gentleman said. He was carrying a whisky tumbler. ‘Do you mind if I rest my drink on your table? It’s quite busy tonight.’
The tall man did not break eye contact with his phone.
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
Angela frowned at the man’s reply, as if she’d heard it wrong.
The older gentleman was clearly taken aback, too.
‘I’ll just use a tiny corner of the table,’ the older gentleman tried again. ‘Just to rest my drink. I won’t bother you.’
‘Well, you’re already bothering me,’ the tall man said back, finally locking eyes with the older gentleman. ‘Go find somewhere else to rest your drink, old-timer. This table is taken.’
Angela’s eyes widened as she stared at the tall man in disbelief. What a total dickhead, she thought.
Lost for words, the old man stood still for a moment, not really knowing what to do.
‘I said fuck off, old man,’ the tall man said, his voice firm.
Shocked, the old man turned and walked away.
Angela was just about to offer her table to the older man when ‘Reckless Angela’ whispered in her ear.
‘That guy with the phone is a total and utter dick, Angie. You could teach him a lesson.’
Angela’s eyes went back to the man’s leather bag on the floor.
The tall man’s attention returned to his cellphone.
Angela finished her drink and rounded her table to the other side. She was now standing just behind the tall man. She grabbed her cellphone and brought it to her ear so she would look inconspicuous. As she began her fake phone conversation, her right foot moved out just enough to reach the tip of his leather bag’s shoulder strap on the floor.
The man was ferociously typing something into his cellphone.
As Angela fake-talked on the phone, she rotated her body away from the man and took two steps in that direction. She stretched her neck and looked around the place, as if searching for someone else inside the cocktail bar. As she did, her right foot stealthily dragged the man’s leather bag along with her.
The man was way too occupied with his cellphone to notice his bag moving an extra two feet away from him, but if he had, with the place so busy, Angela could easily just give him the excuse that her foot had got tangled in the shoulder strap by chance, that was all, a simple mistake.
Angela took another step; another bag-drag, and then Lady Luck smiled at her. A few tables in the opposite direction, someone knocked a tray of drinks to the floor. The loud noise of glasses and bottles breaking attracted a multitude of eyes, including the tall man’s. By the time his attention returned to his phone, just a few seconds later, Angela was already exiting the Rendition Room with the man’s leather bag hidden inside her coat. Five minutes after that, she was on board the 237 bus, heading home.
Angela was dying to look inside the bag, but despite getting a seat at the back of the bus, she resisted the urge. She didn’t want any prying eyes checking the contents as well.
From Tujunga Village, it took her a little over forty-five minutes to get home, a small one-bedroom apartment on the south end of Colfax Avenue. As soon as she closed the door behind her, she kicked off her shoes and took a seat on her bed. Legs crossed, yoga style, Angela placed the leather bag in front of her and finally unzipped it open.
Disappointment.
Maybe it was due to the size and shape of the bag, or maybe it was because of how much it weighed, but Angela was almost certain that it would contain something like a laptop or a tablet. It didn’t. The only item inside the bag was an eight-by-eleven-inch black, leather-bound journal, which was surprisingly heavy.
‘Wow, so instead of a laptop, I get a notebook? Awesome.’
Angela laughed at her misfortune, glad that the only reason she had snatched that leather bag had been to teach that dick-head from the bar a lesson.
‘What a rude motherfucker,’ she said with a shake of the head. ‘I hope that this book is important to you.’
Instinctively, she flipped the book open and carelessly leafed through the pages. The first thing she noticed was that the pages were packed with neat, dense handwriting. Not all the pages contained words. A few of them had been filled with crude drawings and sketches, which Angela didn’t pay much attention to. Some had Polaroid photos stapled onto them. As her eyes came to rest on the first photograph she came across, her heart skipped a beat.
She flipped to another page . . . another Polaroid photo. This time, her heart pretty much stopped beating. With shaky hands she lifted up the photo to see if there was anything written at the back of it, or on the page behind the photo. There was nothing.
‘What the fuck?’ Those words dribbled out of Angela’s lips and, reflexively, her eyes moved to the words on the page, directly beneath the photo. A few lines were all that she could manage before her entire body started shaking.
‘Oh God! What the fuck have you done, Angie? What the fuck have you done?’
Two
Monday, December 7th
The LAPD’s Ultra Violent Crimes Unit’s office was located at the far end of the Robbery Homicide Division’s floor, inside the famous Police Administration Building, in downtown Los Angeles. Detective Robert Hunter, who was the head of the UVC Unit, had just returned from his lunch break when the phone on his desk rang.
He answered it after the second ring. ‘Detective Hunter, Ultra Violent Crimes Unit.’