This is the second of my little short stories based on the prompts in a book of writing prompts I got recently. This is the third prompt in the book. The second one, I have an idea for a story for that one, but it will be longer than the sort of short story length I am going for with these, as it would have to incorporate this prompt as well to make it a story that isn't just fleshing out the second prompt.
The Prompt:
While pulling off a high-stakes heist... a thief steals something that was not on the agenda.
"Someone" actually.
"Someone" actually.
Mart checked his watch. It was 12:03am on the 29th of April. The time had come. Months of planning had led to this. Mart was sitting in the back of a van, it had the logo of a local lighting company blazoned over it. That was his cover, he was here on the Warner Brothers lot to light a night shoot for the ultra popular TV show Eastern Lane. This shoot was starting at one am on the WB backlot, and Mart had gotten himself in to light the production.
The plan was elaborate. It had to be. Mart was here with Stuart, his "assistant" officially. Stuart was actually in The Industry, what people in Hollywood, and Los Angeles more generally, called the whole process of making movies. Stuart actually knew how to light a set, he was going to be the person doing the lighting, while Mart and the rest of the team focused on more important things.
The team was made up of Mart and Stuart, on lighting; then Annika was there as part of the craft services team for the evening, which allowed her to bring in sharp things. She was deadly with a kitchen knife, and might be needed if they ran into any issues. Then there was Paul, Paul was here as an extra. He was planning to slip off set and he was our controlled conditions expert. A vital part of the team. It was a small team, which was a risk, but the rewards were better.
The target this evening was the ever dwindling stock of original films kept on Warner Brothers' property in Burbank. Everything in Warner Brothers looks like something else, so the writer's room can double as the hospital Joker blows up in The Dark Knight, the production office can also be an apartment block, the office of the show runner is a house façade. That sort of thing. It can make finding things in Warner Brothers' extensive 110 acre lot a chore in itself. Luckily for the team, they took the Warner Brothers' Studio Tour and some of those buildings were explained to them, like the target for tonight's heist. The target was a building that looked a little like a prison, a little like a motel. It had two floors of large metal doors with a balcony running along the second floor. You can shoot outside it, but inside it's climate controlled, constantly cooled and kept at about 40% humidity in order to store the films.
In recent years, this stock has been dwindling. This is because of a salt mine, still active, but with large, carved out, underground caverns from which salt has been extracted. The mine is located outside Hutchinson, Kansas. It's a constant 68 degrees 650 feet below the surface, and the humidity level is always 40%. The bonus for Warner Brothers, they don't have to pay to keep it this cool like they do in the hot SoCal Sun typical of Burbank in the Los Angeles valley.
That Sun is nowhere to be seen now of course. It's 12:23am. Stuart is setting up the lights while Mart listens to the others through his earpiece. There is a guard change in the vicinity of the vaults that usually means, assuming there is no filming in that area, that it will be out of anyone's sight between 1:03am and 1:18am. A short window, but all they need.
When Mart first suggested this plan to the team they scoffed. Original films, you can buy this shit on DVD, who needs the dailies of Jurassic Park? Then Mart showed them the sort of money just one of these, B level, original films makes on the black market and they were in. Paul was added to the team shortly afterward. Paul owned a large warehouse, just down the road in Studio City. It was the perfect spot to store their stolen goods until they could sell them. Paul even had some movie studio clients using his space to store their original films. Nothing as historic as Warner Brothers, but they knew the space would work because of it.
Annika, for catering purposes of course, had a refrigerated van. She needed to unload her catering supplies, set up, swap out Mart's van for hers, and get her van over to the motel/prison/vault building in the next 38 minutes.
Mart looked up to the Hollywood Hills. Warner Brothers was positioned right behind the Hollywood Sign. You couldn't see it from here, but you could clearly see the blinking light of the signal tower on top of Mount Lee, which was positioned just above, and slightly east of, the sign itself.
Mart shook his head, reflecting on the ridiculousness of the film industry, and the demand for unique and original items from movies. He didn't get it himself, but it would certainly make him filthy rich.
Annika called to him over his headset. It was time to make the van swap. Mart nodded to Stuart. Right on queue one of the larger lights, on the other side of the set from the van, came crashing down. Everyone's attention was drawn to the disaster. The director yelled "CUT!" This gave Mart just the opportunity he needed to slip away.
Annika was in her catering van when Mart pulled up around the corner, somewhere on New York Street, not too far from the little alley in which Peter Parker and Mary Jane had their upside down kiss, and close to where Tom Holland's Spider-Man attempted to make a call on the balcony of a building to Happy Hogan, reporting in on how his day as the Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man was going.
He signalled to Annika and she pulled out of her spot, and once she was around the corner he zipped in. He ran from his van, leaving it where Annika's had been, and jumped into hers. Paul was already seated beside her. The light coming crashing down meant he could sneak off set, saying it looked like a food break to him as they sorted this.
It was now 12:57. Time was pressing on. Once Annika joined them, they drove to the prison/motel/vault block. Right on schedule, the security guard walked in the other direction. He was changing shifts at 1:00am and his replacement wouldn't get here on his rounds until 1:18am.
Paul was out of the van within seconds, practically diving over Mart to get out. Mart was the strategist. He left Paul to this part, because he knew what he was doing. A noise drew Mart's attention to their left. He and Annika looked in that direction. Annika slowly got out of the van herself. Mart noticed she already had the knife in her hand, poised and waiting.
Movement brought Mart's attention back to the alley. There was definitely someone there. Annika was already on the move. Mart scrunched up his face. He felt sorry for whoever it was. About fifteen seconds later Mart heard a whistle sound, and he knew Annika had brought the mystery person's life to an end. He sighed and climbed out of the van. They couldn't just leave a body lying around. Annika reappeared in the headlights of the van. She was cleaning her kitchen knife on a dish towel. Her posture was an interesting mix. She was walking slowly and her cleaning movements were very exact, practiced, perfected even, Mart noted. But her face and her gait communicated something different, something Mart had not seen in any of the times he had worked with her. Was it fear? Was it excitement?
"You'll never guess what this clown was doing," Annika said when they were about three feet apart.
"What?" Mart asked.
"He was bringing film to the vault," Annika said, monotone, but she glanced up at him and smiled.
"I wonder what they were doing with it and why it was out of the vault?" Mart said, more to himself.
"Whatever, it's ours now," Annika shrugged.
Mart and Annika briskly walked towards the body. They had brought a dinner wagon from the back of the van with them to help wheel the body. Mart placed the film reels on top and he and Annika slid the body onto one of the lower shelves. Then they loaded him into the van.
It was now 1:13am, there were mere minutes left, five in fact, to get the rest of their treasure and hightail it out of there.
"I better go check on Paul's progress," Mart said and left Annika with the van.
When he came to the furthest door down on the vault/motel/prison building, he saw Paul was already inside.
"We don't have long," Mart said as he walked inside. "What's your status?"
"We have a new problem," Paul said and nodded, indicating a direction that Mart should look.
He did, and there was another person in the room.
"It seemed easy to get in to," Paul said, "this is why. Someone already opened the door."
"Annika killed a guy with some film reel just minutes ago," Mart said.
"You failed to inform us there would be warmies," Paul said, through gritted teeth.
Warmies was what the team called living people. Mart bit his own lip. These vaults were barely ever used, no one used film these days, he couldn't understand what a person would be doing here, at midnight. His observations told him film left in trucks for the cave every second Wednesday, the trucks left about midday, meaning Wednesday mornings, and Tuesday nights, were not the night for this job. He was meticulous.
"There shouldn't be warmies, I checked and double checked. No one uses these anymore," Mart said, the frustration deep in his brow, and audible in his tone.
"Ah..." the warmie interrupted... "it's our director, Wes Anderson, he films on film. We were bringing in the dailies from today for storage until the editing process begins."
"Hipster directors," Paul said as he huffed, "wasting our best made plans."
It was 1:14am.
"We don't have time for this. Get all you can and get in the van," Mart said as he turned to get Annika.
A minute later Paul had his second dinner wagon in the back of the van. The warmie was weeping gently in the corner, mourning his deep colleague and friend. Annika, occasionally, flashed her knife at him if his tears got too loud, this made him whimper a bit more silently as he curled into a ball. But then, blood would drip from the body of this friend, or something else would draw his attention back there. And his weeping would be louder again.
"We could always just kill him," Annika suggested.
"I didn't sign up for murder," Paul objected.
"You're already in it to your chest," Annika shrugged, "what's two bodies when we already have one?"
"I can cause these films to deteriorate in minutes if I want to," Paul threatened.
"We'll just add another body to the pile if you do," Annika said as she menacingly waved her knife in front of her face.
"It's 1:17am," Mart said. "No more death. We need to get out of here."
Paul sighed a sigh of relief, the Warmie did a happy whimper, Mart closed the back doors of the van and hopped into the front himself, alone, with some silence. Then he pulled the van out and drove the opposite way that the shift guard would come.
He meandered through the backlot, until he got to the gate Annika drove in. Security waved him through, lifted the barrier, and they were out on to Riverside Drive in seconds. It was all so easy. Mart stuck the location of Paul's warehouse into the sat nav, turned left, and began heading west towards Studio City. Overall, this job was a success, he told himself. He heard a bang, followed by a thud, and a whimper with an audible tap after it in the back in quick succession. Maybe Annika had found a way to successfully deal with the added item on their treasure agenda. Mart relaxed into the seat of the van and smiled. The job had gone well, he could see the money already, and not only did they nab some classics, they had an unreleased film in the back as well. He sighed and put his foot on the peddle, speeding toward Studio City.
