Thiefhunters in Paradise

My Swedish brother-in-law came to visit us in Las Vegas. While Bob and I were off on a trip, he decided to upgrade our garden. He drove our car to the local nursery to buy some plants. As he approached the nursery, driving slowly, the car was suddenly rushed by a gang of shouting Mexicans. My brother-in-law went cold, he told us later: cold sweat, pounding heart, racing thoughts. The Mexicans were all shouting as they surrounded the car. “If I stop, it’s all over,” my brother-in-law thought, “I’ll lose the car.” So he inched forward, knuckles white on the wheel, staring straight ahead.

The Mexicans fell back and my brother-in-law turned into the nursery, parking safely. He leaned back and let out a huge breath, wondering how this could happen, or almost happen, in Las Vegas, in broad daylight, in a busy street. He sat in the car for a few minutes, gathering his composure. As another car approached the nursery, he watched the scene repeat itself from a comfortable distance, and realized that these were men seeking work. Choose me!, they must have been shouting, in competition with each other. Let me dig your hole!

He now goes into hysterics remembering his misinterpretation of the incident.

It’s not for nothing that my brother-in-law calls himself a Swedish Okie and a country bumpkin. This is the man we brought to a Chinese restaurant once, who scrunched up his face and pulled “some trash” out of his mouth when eating a fortune cookie.

Who’s looking at you when you buy a coffee? It’s creepy, when you know all they can see.

At the World Game Protection Conference in Las Vegas earlier this year, where Bob was a keynote speaker, I saw SmartConnect’s live demo of actual video surveillance. The client we spied on was a coffee chain store at McCarren Airport. No surprise that I saw the employees and customers, but I also saw an image of each customer’s itemized receipt—as it was generated. I could see all stats pertaining to each transaction in real time, as if I were there. Did the cashier apply an employee discount to the sale? Did she leave the cash drawer open for more than x seconds? Just how many employee discounts did that cashier register today, anyway?

It was all there, laid out on one big screen, along with multiple video images of the employees and customers as they interacted. On a giant plasma display with almost life-size images, it truly felt like peeking over the shoulder of the employees.

At the fork in the road I went left.

I can thank the Parsis for my passion for photojournalism.

Another man might have turned away, but when I saw a vulture picking the limbs of a dead child, I raised my camera. Perhaps that says more about me than I should reveal.

Instead of burning their dead and feeding the ashes to the River Ganges as Hindus do, Parsis lay the bodies of their dead on a grid suspended over a high tower. To attract vultures to the burial tower, corpses are smeared with rancid animal fat. The scavenger birds pick away the flesh and the cleaned bones then fall onto the earth, lime, and charcoal floor of the tower to decompose into the soil. How I came to witness this alien rite was through the same set of circumstances that so profoundly impacted my career.

At twenty I hadn’t yet decided whether to become an entertainer or a photographer. My true passion was travel, and the more off-beat and distant the destination, the better. To fund my expeditions, I took engagements as a performer for four to six weeks in faraway countries, and at the end of the gigs I would trek into surrounding villages and countryside.

Performing in the Far East in the sixties gave me a unique opportunity to visit cities that I otherwise would never have had a chance to visit for such extended periods. While my craving for photojournalistic excitement was supported by my show income, I made an effort to meet local authorities and make the right contacts intending to pursue photojournalism with a bent toward the absurd.

Even way back then my show was unusual—pickpocketing had never been seen as entertainment. It was my ticket to the exotic destinations most people only dream of. And on my journeys I witnessed, sometimes inadvertently, headline news. Neither ordinary tourists nor visiting journalists could have had such easy access to behind-the-scenes briefings. For I was tied to the U.S. Military.

I had always had a strange desire to capture macabre images with a camera. It started as a hobby, then became a semi-profession during my first journey to Asia. In 1961 I toured Pakistan, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Japan as an inexperienced entertainer. I augmented my performance salary by taking freelance photography assignments in locations where Western photographers were still a bit of a rarity.

The world was hungry for unusual stories from Asia then. As a young and raw journalist with little comprehension of the underlying political issues of the area, I came face to face with the dramatic events of the day. Being in the right place at the right time was at the heart of my earliest photojournalistic adventures.

With the beginning of the war in Vietnam, U.S. forces were building steadily in the Far East. These were the darkest years of the Cold War and the fear was of China’s involvement in the Indo-Chinese conflict. Everyone was concerned about the war escalating and spilling over into the Philippines, Thailand, and Korea. The large U.S. bases in the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Okinawa, and Japan all needed entertainment for the troops.

Most of my performance engagements then were for these American soldiers. My comedy pickpocketing was new and different and audience participation was always a hit. I had long contracts on the military bases, as well as in the civilian clubs—camouflaged girlie-joints, really—which attracted the soldiers. It was this environment which fueled my taste for absurd and offbeat news stories.

Photographers in those early years of the conflict hung out together in the hotel bars of Saigon. That’s how I met Larry Burrows, a British war-journalist who worked for Life magazine and was one of the most-awarded photographers to come out of the Vietnam war. Burrows helped me gain contacts in Saigon, both with the American military command and with the opposing factors. Without leads and the contacts you wouldn’t get “the story.”

It was because of Larry Burrows that I was one of only five photographers in Saigon who were privy to the intelligence-leak that a monk was about to commit suicide. An immolation was to occur in the early hours of June 11, 1963, at a compound outside Saigon in front of a few select journalists. The Bhuddist leaders orchestrating the sacrifice schemed that the global reaction to the front-page photos of the monk setting himself on fire would create an anti-war movement. The goal was to speed up peace negotiations.

At three in the morning, we photographers were rushed from the hotel out to the compound. The unlucky monk who had been selected for the sacrifice had already been drugged into a semi-comatose state and sat on the ground. As soon as the media were ready with their cameras, other monks poured petrol over the “victim,” and he was then set alight. We let our Nikon motordrives spin throughout the ordeal and the resulting pictures, mine included, created enormous impact and news coverage in all major newspapers around the world.

My first photo essay was from Pakistan where I shot the story on the Parsis and their infamous Towers of Silence. Their disposal of the dead isn’t so gruesome when you understand their belief in preserving the purity of fire, water, earth, and air. So as not to pollute these elements, they will not burn, bury, or sink their dead. Still, mine were morbid photos by an immature photographer. It wasn’t the historical perspective of the burial rituals which sold the story, but the stark and grisly images of vultures ripping limbs from human corpses.

In similar stark but shallow style, I photographed Hindu cremations at the burning ghats in Benares on the Ganges River, morning bathing rituals in the Ganges in Calcutta, opium dens in northern Thailand, the Bridge at River Kwaii, faith healers in the Philippines, and leper colonies in India.

One particular photo project had a strong impact on my career path. The story was on beggars and pickpockets accosting foreign visitors in Karachi. This was my introduction to a cynical distraction method based on sympathy and compassion. The pickpockets were lepers, and they were exploiting pity for profit.

In the early sixties leprosy was still a serious threat to the populations of India and Pakistan. It was common to see sufferers in various stages of deterioration roaming the streets of Karachi, Calcutta, Bombay, and New Delhi. Banding together, they often surrounded Western visitors coming out of banks, hotels, and churches. The sight of an outstretched hand with missing or rotting fingers usually caused people to react with horror and drop some coins, if for no other reason to get the infected limbs to go away. Compassion and revulsion metamorphosed into currency. The ploy was effective, diabolical, and unique to Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent.

My story showed a team of lepers who specialized in pickpocketing under the guise of begging. While one tugged at the left side of the mark and held out his diseased hand for baksheesh, his accomplice on the mark’s right fanned—softly felt for the wallet. When the victim looked left, aghast at the touch of such ravaged hands, his reaction would be a sudden jerk to the right to get away from the loathsome encounter. The partner on the right would lift his wallet in that moment of abrupt contact.

This was the most primitive of survival instincts, where rules of civility, shame, and respect didn’t apply. Just raw confrontation between the haves and the have-nots. I was only 22 years old when I first witnessed this subterfuge, and I was both stunned and fascinated. Stunned at the callousness of using the primeval emotion, fear, to accomplish distraction. Fascinated by the realization that there were people so desperate they would go to any extent to find money to survive for the next couple of days. It was a rude awakening for a youth raised in the privileged shelter of socialist Sweden.

Watching this base encounter is what inspired my lifelong effort to document, and to unravel, the mind-games which nearly always attend pickpocketing. I was intrigued by the fact that wit was as much a part of it as was technique. This is what challenged me to explore the criminal mind. Pickpocketing is not an activity that one only practices now and then. It’s a daily routine performed several times in a fairly short time span. It’s an intense crime based on dexterity and, equally important, on psychological analysis of the opponent. A good pickpocket must be able to read many signals and make an instant decision on whether to go for the poke or wait for a better opportunity.

I was also intrigued, in those early years, by the cleverness of the set-up. Although the theatrical theft of a wallet on stage is entirely different from lifting one in the street, the principles of distraction are the same. By studying the real thieves, I realized I could incorporate their techniques into my performance. I began a fanatical collection of stratagems, always on the lookout for the clever, devious, cunning, slick, duplicitous, ingenious, innovative, inventive, and creative new trick.

Much later in my career, exactly thirty years later, I would find that the lepers’ technique—begging on one side of a victim, pickpocketing on the other—was nearly identical to the methods used by thieving gangs in southern Europe today.

Another pivotal moment arrived for me that same year in India when I realized that gangs of beggars and pickpockets usually worked under controlling leaders. Not protectors or father-figures to homeless children, these leaders were brutal mutilators who intentionally crippled children in order to make them better beggars, allotted them territories, and demanded daily payments from them. My discovery of this grim reality was the spark that fired my quest to find, understand, and expose the manipulators’ deception.

From Indian beggars to east European gypsy families to American inner-city street toughs to North African pickpockets to Colombian tricksters, I have always asked this question: how did you learn your trade? Was it passed down within the family? Was it learned in prison? Was destitution the motivator?

For more than forty years a rumor has been whispered among police forces in America that an organized school for pickpockets exists. The School of the Seven Bells is said to graduate a certified pickpocket when he can steal from all the pockets of a man’s suit while it hangs on a mannequin, without ringing little warning bells tied to the clothes. A pickpocket in Cartegena told us that the school is nestled high in the mountains of Colombia. An American cop told us of a variation in Chicago, in which razor blades buried in the suit pockets replace the bells. And yet I have never spoken to a policeman who has succeeded in getting any detail from detained pickpockets about the school. Perhaps it is mere myth. My search continues.

One of the most common questions people ask me after they’ve seen my lecture or one of our documentaries on con games is how I got so interested in tracking criminals. The easy answer is that one thing led to another: stage pickpocketing to observing street thieves to adapting their tricks for the stage. But that denies the force of my own personality in steering my expedition through life. It’s far more difficult to define the eccentric quirk in my psyche that attracted me to deceit, deception, and double-dealing—but always on the right side of law and morality. I am fascinated by confidence games and have the great fortune to enjoy my interest as my career.

In my younger years, my trio of passions—travel, photography, and entertaining—seemed to be in conflict; I thought an inevitable choice would have to be made. Maybe I never grew up. I still travel the world non-stop and I still love it. I’m still deeply involved in photography, though it has mostly evolved into videography. And I am still a full-time entertainer working theaters and private corporate events around the world. I’m having a blast. How lucky can one man be?

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter One (part-l): High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere

I did not intend to dwell on random negativity here, but when I came across this sign a few days ago, I took it as an open invitation. So here are a couple of gripes aimed against a new trend in corporate mentality.

1. “Yes, we owe our customers money, but make it difficult and they’ll go away.” This seems to be a growing, despicable, yet profitable attitude. Real examples:

a. Rebates. You send in all required forms and original box parts, but no rebate arrives. After many months, you are given endless runarounds, required to make endless phone calls, and send more letters re-documenting your claim. This has happened to us more than once. It really isn’t worth it. And who has time to fight for the principle?

b. Airlines. Due to mechanical problems, a flight is canceled and we are told to book a hotel. Send in the receipt with this form, and we will be reimbursed this (minimal) amount, and this (insufficient) sum for taxi. Took nine months of letters and phone calls to get our lousy $120.

c. Insurance. A mistake was made by a pharmacy, which resulted in the repeated denial of claims. Send in a form, document everything with originals etc., and the claims are denied again, except a check for $8.11, and instructions on how to appeal. Appeal. Denied. Write more letters, get another $150. Write more letters, get a promise of payment. This situation, ongoing for six months now, has not played itself out.

2. Front desk stoneface. I don’t know this, but I believe there must be some sort of staff training program making the rounds which trains front desk and customer service employees how to be helpless. They do not have access to billing records, a supervisor is not available, they will pass along the complaint, etc. Worse, I believe they are taught to document everything in reports, in which they are told to include random generic character attacks, in order to cast aspersions and denigrate the customer, the better to CYA. I have fresh evidence of this theory, too. They try to sidestep responsibility by accusing the complainant of spurious, irrelevant minutia. What happened to “the customer is always right”?

I’ve been listening to essays by George Orwell. Terry, a voracious reader, devoured Orwell after Proust and Vidal, and he’s now working on Paul Bowles. I downloaded some Orwell essays here, but I find that when I’m in front of my computer (which is a lot), I’m either working or making use of the internet, rather than reading material safely stowed on my hard drive. I can read those documents any time. Somehow, though, I don’t.

Then I ran across this hint, which makes it a cinch to convert text to an iTunes audiobook. The hint contains a downloadable script that practically installs itself, then shows up under the Mac’s Services menu. (Although this hint is for Leopard only, it can be tweaked for Tiger.) I’m sure my programmer friends are privately chiding me, but I’m glad that someone wrote and provided a script to make the text-to-audiobook conversion dead simple.

With the stories on my iPod, they’re sure to be listened to, and planes are the ideal place. I can only read so many hours in the dry air of airports and airplanes, before my contacts start sticking to my eyeballs. Right after converting a few files, I flew to Ireland.

At first, the pleasure of listening was only about half the pleasure of reading. I expected that for two reasons. First is that I prefer to read good writing, linger over it, reread lovely phrases. But okay, there’s deep-seated pleasure in being read to, too. I’ve listened to a few audio books lately, all read by their authors, and I enjoyed them, though more for their stories than their writing.

Listening to synthesized speech is not the same as being read to by an author. The lauded new Leopard voice Alex is synthesized and, though his diction is not bad, Alex lacks style, grace, sensitivity, timing, mellifluence, drama, and every other quality that makes George Guidall, my sister’s uncle-in-law, an award-winning reader of audiobooks (more than 800 books to his credit). But…

I got used to Alex’s style. And though it’s not like reading, nor the same as being read to, it’s better than osmosis. It’s better than not knowing the texts at all. It’s like the Cliff Notes version, but delivered slowly, a fleeting association to reunite with later. Maybe.

And now, after listening to a few more essays, I’m happy enough with Alex. I found that slowing his speech by about 15% improves the experience. I’ve converted a 13,000-word article on cybercrime to digest on my next flight.

…

Later: The cybercrime article was good, but I didn’t listen to it on a plane. I listened during a 2+ hour taxi ride from the south of England to London. It was too bumpy to read, too much strobe effect from the shade of trees on a rare sunny day. The cybercrime article, from Wired, was an hour and 22 minutes long. Perfect for the drive.

And: My computer suddenly lost all input and output audio devices. After a little troubleshooting, I removed the SpeakToItunesAudiobook.service from my system and all’s well again. If that was not an anomaly, I will just drop the service in when I need it.

Lastly: In his essay “How the Poor Die,” I was delighted to hear Orwell mention Axel Munthe’s The Story of San Michele.  Axel Munthe was a great-grand-uncle of Bob’s, and The Story of San Michele is a great grand-read.

What is on my ceiling? Looks like a thumbprint—gray, like newsprint. Except… my kitchen ceiling is the cottage cheese type. A thumbprint isn’t possible.

In the back of my mind was a recent dinner party, at which a bottle of zinfandel misbehaved or, rather, its cork did, and red splattered the ceiling. But not there. And anyway, I cleaned it all, didn’t I? Could this have been a remnant? I couldn’t imagine what caused the gray smudge. I made a mental note to clean it somehow.

Next day, having forgotten all about it, I did a double take. Was it that large yesterday? Looks like two thumbprints today. I got up on a ladder and looked through a magnifying glass.

Oh, it’s a dusting of something. Mold? In the desert? I rubbed my finger across the spot. Wait a minute, use the high-power portion of the glass. Yikes! Are those microscopic heads? They’re moving! They’re alive.

I got a camera and snapped a macro photo, having much trouble focusing while wavering on the ladder. I sent the photo off to Uncle Lenny. Handy to have an entomologist in the family. Lenny always responds right away, but he must have been teaching a class.

“You know I’m not the hysterical type,” I wrote him hours later, “but now that I know there are critters multiplying on my ceiling, right over my head in fact, I can’t think of much else.”

“It was likely a single egg sac that hatched. Chances are they’ll die anyway since there’s nothing to eat.”

A mist of diluted bleach took care of them. But what were they? Caterpillars, Lenny said. Probably laid by a moth.

Right. I leave the doors and windows open and we always have moths fluttering around. A moth laid an egg sac on my kitchen ceiling. I had caterpillar hatchlings. Cute.

Can anyone tell me what this contraption is? I took this picture through a window in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, after a dinner at Spring Deer, the famous and fabulous house of Peking duck. What are they doing to those poor women? Does it hurt? Click the picture for a larger view. I saw several shops in the neighborhood with this weird torture unit visible through the window.

A cougar on the loose in Chicago today met its unfortunate end, poor thing. Was it stalking an epicurean meal, or lost in a cement labyrinth?

My parents live in Scottsdale, Arizona. Not long ago, they were overjoyed to find a cougar lounging on the wall of their front porch. They called it a puma. They shot theirs, too, and these photos are the result. Click on one for a slide show.

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that law firms are curtailing their associate programs. Some are delaying the start dates of new hires, and some have actually rescinded employment offers to law students about to graduate. The salary for new lawyers at major firms is around $160,000.

This interests me because I was in the law biz pre-Bob Arno. But more so because my nephew, about to graduate from Harvard Law School, has one of those lucrative job deals, offered a year ago near the end of his second year of law school. I’m not worried about my nephew—he’ll graduate at or near the top of his class. I’m just astonished at how crass and cold-hearted employers can be, especially in a small segment of business in which everyone makes relatively big bucks.

The article paraphrases

…James Jones, senior vice president at legal consulting firm Hildebrandt International. Law firms, he says, are reluctant to lay off people because it is expensive and time-consuming to staff up when the market regains its vigor.

What about being reluctant because you’d be putting people out of work in hard times, because they’ve worked hard for you and you feel a modicum of loyalty, because you like them?

Granted, the WSJ has only paraphrased Mr. Jones, who may well have said more than what makes a good read. I hope so. Associate lawyers in competitive firms work themselves to the bone and, for some, it never gets better.