"Trapped with Pantera" AKA "Neil's PETA Caper"
San Francisco, 1996. Pine Street across from the First Republic Bank
We were in a van that used to be white, until someone had left on the street in a wrong part of town, and was now covered with graffiti. My brother Matt was driving, and I was riding shotgun, which was ironic, because the chick in the back kneeling and holding on to our seats (because there were no seats in the back) was actually carrying guns.
We met her only a half an hour earlier. Wait, let me back up.
In the Tenderloin of San Francisco where I lived, I had befriended a guy named Neil who was a bartender for banquets at the convention center. He was also a petty crook and hustler. Anyways, Neil had planned a crazy heist that I was an integral component. A friend of mine's roommate worked at PETA. My initial job was to find out where PETA kept the furs and steal the roommate's keys. What furs? PETA takes fur donations and then uses them in publicity stunts and protests. Neil wanted to steal them and sell them. Actually, it would be more accurate to say Neil wanted me to steal them and he would sell them. Due to his mannerisms and behavior, a lot of people thought that Neil was mentally retarded, or at least had some kind of learning disability, but it was all an act. It's hard to explain how he acted, you'd have to see him in action to know what I'm talking about. I think it may have come from some coping mechanism to avoid being teased when he was a kid. My brother thought he was brain damaged because Neil used to be an amateur boxer, but I still think it was all an act. Mainly because when it was just me and him, he seemed pretty sharp.
I easily got my friend's roommate to disclose the location of the furs (some lockers in the basement of their office building), and stealing her keys while we are all at dinner was not hard either. Convincing my brother to "find" a truck was the hard part, primarily because he was really into some video game at the time (Mortal Kombat, maybe).
A not so close but very sleazy friend of Neil's named Frankie was supplying the muscle, encase something went wrong. None of us were very tough and none of us wanted to get caught with guns or weapons while doing one of Neil's "capers," so Frankie supplied the person who would take the fall if it all went bad while at the same time covering our asses. We were waiting at the bar under my apartment, called Deco, when Frankie walked in with his arm around a petite Hispanic girl who looked no older than 19.
"This is Pantera. She'll be carrying the weapons."
Matt chuckled. "Pantera?"
"Pantera."
"I call bullshit."
"Damn it, Matt. It's an alias. A codename." Frankie was using a tone that was usually reserved to explaining things to small children.
"How come we don't get codenames?
"I thought your names were aliases! My real name is sure the hell not "Frankie.""
"Yeah, ours are aliases, too." I lied. "Just not cool ones like Pantera and Frankie."
"Pantera" was wearing black jeans, a black tank top, and a red and white leather motorcycle jacket and looked like she might weigh 100 pounds if that included the jacket. . . as well as her clunky boots. She was attractive, but I couldn't help but think that if she smiled she would probably be very attractive.
"She's the muscle. . .this Pantera?" Matt asked.
Frankie stood behind her, a good 2 feet taller and had both his hands on her shoulders. "Yeah, don't be deceived by her small stature, boys. Pantera here was a MP in the marines for 4 years."
Matt's expression said "No way." But that was the last he questioned her qualifications.
By the way she had a blank expression while the three of us talked about her as if she wasn't there, I was starting to think she couldn't speak English. But then she said, "Let's go. I got things to do tonight."
"Ok, good luck." Frankie turned her around and kissed her forehead, "You guys meet me in Daly City." And he left.
So, the three of us were sitting in the van outside PETA's San Francisco offices around 11PM. Despite what you may think, San Francisco is NOT one of those cities that never sleeps. It shuts down by 11PM, I think because of all the commuters, so Pine Street was deserted. Matt dropped us off and was drove around to the back of the 15 story tall building to the loading docks in the alley.
We walked into the building's dark foyer after I fumbled with the key ring trying to find the right key. Luckily, there were only 5 possible keys and I got it right with Key 3. There were no security cameras that I could tell. There were two elevators, so we pressed down and got into one. The doors closed with a little ding, and I had three likely buttons to choose from (2-15 were obviously not the basement). L was the lobby, so it had to B1 or B2. One of the B's was probably a parking garage so I randomly picked B1. We felt the elevator lurch a bit and then it stopped. A small light came on next to little sign that said "Call Elevator Service" and listed a number.
"Oh shit." I said, my mind scrambling for options.
"It's stuck?!?" Pantera asked while simultaneously stating the obvious.
"Yeah, but it has a service number available. And this big red "Alarm" button, too."
"We can't do that! Either of those."
"Right." I looked up at the impossibly high elevator ceiling for the infamous "emergency trap door" and after seeing its outline, I doubted a loaf of bread would fit through it. "So, what kind of gun are you carrying?" I was thinking, I do not want to be caught in this elevator with a woman with a gun.
She turned a round and lifted her jacket exposing two beefy automatic pistols criss-crossed in the small of her back in black canvas holsters. She also revealed a tattoo on her lower back of what appeared to be a hand flipping me off while holding a fist full of money.
"Two guns? Why do you carry two guns?"
She turned back around. "They're automatics. They might jam. So one's a back up."
"Why not use a revolver? They don't jam."
"Cause it only holds 6 shots."
"You could aim, that way you don't need all those bullets. Are you a bad shot or something?"
"Can you quit with the questions and fix this elevator?"
"Well. . .I'm not actually a skilled type of thief. This is the only tool I have" I opened my jacket revealing the bolt cutters I brought for the lockers' pad locks.
If I had a cell phone back then I would have called Matt to come in and see what he could do, but I just got my first cell phone in 2006. But what could he do? Knowing him he would laugh and say "just your luck!"
"Stand back, lady, let me try something." I couldn't get the nerve up to actually call her Pantera. She was chewing on her right thumbnail.
I got my fingertips into the crack of the elevator doors and pulled it open. I was hoping that we were halfway to B1 and could just drop down the rest of the way, but all we saw was a concrete wall. Someone had written "K19" in chalk about eye level.
"Crap." I said and let the doors shut. However, as soon as they shut the elevator lurched and the service light went off. And the doors opened a second later with us staring at an empty parking garage.
"Did you do that on purpose?" She asked, apparently thinking the whole incident was a practical joke.
"Nope. Let's take the stairs to B2."
We found the stairs, the key that fit the door at the bottom of the stairs, and eventually the storage room that another key opened. We also found the lockers, and emptied them of all their furs and transported the furs to the loading dock where Matt was waiting. I looked at my watch and it was only 11:22.
My cut of the furs was $2500 and paid for three months rent.
I never saw Pantera again.
