NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. Leaving our hotel at 12:30 to meet Michele for our 1:30 appointment with Luciano, we pass by the San Carlo bus stop; it’s unavoidably on the way to where we’re going. As we approach the bus stop, a bus pulls in and off jumps Franco. We give him a subtle greeting. He’s friendly, polite, but also subtle, just pointing to his watch to indicate our 4:30 meeting time. Clearly, he does not want to linger with us. We keep walking, barely breaking stride. It feels a little like we’re undercover colleagues exchanging a mumbled secret in a black-and-white spy film, pretending we don’t know each other. It really is an odd coincidence though: we and Franco converging unplanned on a single point in this large city.
Talkative pacco men
We continue around a few corners and there at Maritime we run into another team of pacco men, a pair we’ve never seen before. They offer an iPad, quickly adding “no bandito,” only €250. When that doesn’t work they flash an iPhone 5. Both devices are in slim black cases. Bob tells the pair that his friends are pacco men. He pantomimes a few switchy-moves. The duo’s faces go blank, then they smile and say their names: Antonio and Enzo. “No—Francesco!” the one called Enzo corrects quickly. Was it an honest mistake by his pal? An alias? Did Antonio use his partner’s real name by accident? Or did the partner want to forgo aliases?
How the bait-and-switch is done
Antonio suggests coffee; we don’t have time, though we’d have loved to linger with these men. Lacking time to finesse it, Bob just flat-out asks how they do their switch and, to our surprise, they show us, amid much nervous laughter. It’s now basically a one-man job. The seller drops the iPad, in its black cover, into a messenger bag he carries low, in front. Immediately, he pulls out the dummy which is in an identical black cover. The cover’s zipper has been glued shut, which buys the thieves precious minutes to get away after a sale.
Proud of the smooth moves he uses to rip-off buyers
Antonio and Enzo-Francesco are apologetic about their work, explaining that they don’t like it but there are no jobs in Naples. Unemployment among young people is almost 50%. The pacco men ask if we’d like to go eat with them. We point to our watches and to the nearby tram. It’s a shame we don’t have time. We leave them and dash to the tram. Bob has had his glasses camera running.
NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. At the Piazza Garibaldi bus stop outside the main train station Michele goes to buy a bus ticket while Bob and I scrutinize people. We spot a scary-looking hooked-nose pickpocket we’ve filmed but never met. He recognizes us and turns his back, steps behind a column. I inch forward to look at him; he retreats.
Across the street we identify Nuncio, the pickpocket-in-a-business-man-disguise who Bob stole a tie from so many years ago. Last time we saw Nuncio he greeted us with hugs and kisses. Michele and I trot across the street to speak with him. As Nuncio hops on a bus, Michele asks if we can speak for two minutes. “Not even one second!” Nuncio says with venom. Michele is unnerved.
Hooknose remains at the bus stop. Bob pushes Michele to go alone to request a conversation with him. Hooknose says “Get away with your cameras. You’ve already ruined five families!” Gentle Michele is shaken. I am shaken. We’re finding out how Naples’ thieves react to us after the broadcast of our film. Those who were in it: warmly. Those who weren’t: hostile.
The three of us take the subway to Montesanto in Quartieri Spagnoli to meet the famous screenwriters. Five of us settle into a corner table at a nearby nameless restaurant. The meal is simple and delicious: pasta, octopus, fish, and an assortment of vegetables. The restaurant entrance is lined with huge jugs of homemade limoncello. Bob and the screenwriters hit it off and our film is a step closer to reality.
We leave lunch to return to our hotel at 4:30 with little time to spare. Then we tram back to Circumvesuviana station at 5:30 to meet Michele and go back to see Luciano in the market with, hopefully, Angelo. Luciano is there with his wife again, and grown daughter Alessandra (not her real name), who is lounging on her Vespa. Alessandra is married to Mirco, another of the pickpockets in our film, currently in jail. (Mirco used a bank card from a stolen wallet at an ATM, and was IDed by the ATM surveillance video.)
Angelo could not make it: “he is in Roma. Will come tomorrow.” Bob is very disappointed and believes Angelo is avoiding us. But Luciano is full of more stories from his early days. Alessandra listens without much interest. I’m losing interest, too—it’s cold and I’ve been on my feet for days. Luciano says we should return at 1:30 tomorrow to meet Angelo. Bob is certain Angelo will not show up.
Leaving the market we once again pass through the Piazza Garibaldi bus stop outside the main train station, where Michele will catch his train home. Michele and I are a little spooked being there, after the chilling reception of the thieves earlier. I’m queasy standing there as we debrief, and cold, and feeling sensory-overload. We finally say goodnight to Michele. Bob and I walk down Corso Umberto toward our hotel, which is far away. Two blocks later, we find pacco men.
They’re selling iPads. Bob schmoozes with the very handsome seller, but they don’t have a common language. The pacco man phones his friend who is nearby and speaks English. The friend zooms up on a scooter driven by his wife and, before even arriving, waves and shouts that he remembers us from 5-6 years ago. He introduces himself as Carlos. We talk about the pacco business, which is the bait-and-switch business, just another form of stealing. We talk about the job market, or lack thereof, and life in Napoli.
After 15 minutes, I use Carlos’s real name, which I remember from May of 2002: Dante (another fake name I’m using for this story). He’s floored. “How do you know my name?! He’s amazed, shocked, impressed, and this adds a further level of trust and friendliness. Remembering a man’s name goes a long way in a nefarious reunion; even criminals are proud to be remembered.
Dante tells us he makes about €500 a week in the iPhone and iPad pacco trade. He said it’s getting harder because people know the trick. Bob asks the guys to demonstrate the switch. Dante demands €30 apiece for the three of them; we decline.
It’s only 8 p.m. but it’s been a very long, very standing day. An overwhelming day. Still, we choose to walk the long distance back, and decide to try the restaurant Nennella in Quartieri Spagnoli for dinner. We have more valuables on us tonight, but the restaurant is only a few blocks into the danger zone. We’re in luck: though there’s a big crowd waiting to get in, we’re only two and there’s a table for us right away. The place is all about fun. It used to be known for incredibly cheap good food. It’s still cheap, still good, not great. The entertaining waiters sing, dance, pantomime and inspire a lively, disorganized atmosphere. When a diner leaves a tip, he’s asked to throw it into a communal tip basket which is lowered from the ceiling by a rope, and all the waiters yell out “Grazie!”
A spontaneous sing-a-long in Nenella’s little dining room.
A serious security-risk, especially when cavorting with thieves. Stash in pickpocket-proof underwear.
NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. We take the tram to Circumvesuviana train station to meet Michele, with whom we intend to go find Luciano. Michele is late, stuck in traffic, so we go look for Luciano ourselves. The market is gorgeous, in a lively, primitive way. I’m not much use looking for Luciano if I’m ogling lush mounds of vegetables, shallow round trays of exotic shellfish in constantly freshened water, whole huge fish, and octopuses in five sizes. But we’re surprised to actually find Luciano and his cigarette stand. We had no idea what to look for: a shop? a kiosk? All we knew was that he sold cigarettes in the market somewhere.
We find him between the cabbages and bread loaves, across from a table of bras. His “stand” turns out to be a 15 x 20-inch tray containing 25-30 cigarette packs, which is set on an upturned carton. The cigarettes must be counterfeit or stolen, but we don’t know and we don’t ask. We wonder how he can make a living selling this small-profit item in such small numbers. Is it a front for something else?
Luciano is 63 now but he doesn’t look it. He didn’t look like 48 back when we first met him. His hair has almost no gray and his face is smooth, but his eyes are small and sad. I can’t tell if he’s surprised to see us or if he had an underworld heads-up. He introduces us to his wife and she mans the stand while he takes us to get coffee. We clown around a bit with the bartender, who recognizes us from the film. Luciano won’t allow us to pay for the coffee. As always, conversation with him is severely limited without a translator. We leave him at his stand and go wait for Michele at the train station.
Luciano speaks through Michele for hours. He’s taken aback when I remind him that we first met 14 years ago. He reminisces about our past meetings, including details I thought he’d have forgotten. Like the time he ran from us when we found him at work on a tram, then stopped, remembering us four blocks away and waiting for us to catch up.
Now we learn that Luciano was the first in his gang to start pickpocketing; that he was taught by Massimo Leo (not his real name), who is lionized as the best in town (and therefore the world). Massimo Leo is 56-58 now; in jail—or not, depending on who’s talking. In the beginning of his career Luciano made a lot of money. He bought a nice house, a car, good clothes, and luxuries. His friends saw him with all these things and wanted to join the trade and work with him. Eventually, he got sucked into gambling and lost everything.
Luciano lives just two minutes’ walk away. Bob wants to see his home and, more than that, he wants to meet Luciano’s brother Angelo. Luciano says come back at 5:30, Angelo will come.
NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. At Osteria Tonino, a small family restaurant, we were seated with friends of the owner who recognized us from the film. After lunch, the five of us went to a coffee bar where Bob and I got luscious little pastries. The couple made fun of my tiny sips and bites, explaining that in Naples, people eat the pastry in one bite and down the coffee one gulp (which is especially tiny in Naples—always ristretto). When I turned back to the bar for my next sip of coffee, the cup was gone. Everyone laughed. You pick it up—put it down: done. The bartender made me another coffee when he was realized I hadn’t finished it.
The trattoria Nennella has been repeatedly recommended to us. In preparation for going to this restaurant in the infamous, dangerous Quartieri Spagnoli, Bob carries nothing. I remove even my wedding band. Looking at the wrinkled white finger-skin, I imagine getting mugged and, showing my ring finger, saying “hey, your competition already got me, even my wedding ring.” Only three blocks into the ancient quarter, the buzzing scooters are nerve-wracking. There’s a certain freedom in carrying nothing, but the pickpockets and muggers don’t know we have nothing. Or almost nothing; I have credit cards and a little cash in my pickpocket-proof underwear. [I know I appear to be over-cautious. It looks worse in print, and sounds ridiculous after-the-fact, when nothing has happened.]
But—it’s Sunday. Nennella is closed. A nearby group of people recommend La Pegnada, a few blocks away. It has no character but good food: penne alla sciciliana (con melanzane) and frito misto (squid and shrimps). Pulcinella is mounted high on the wall. Leaving the restaurant we bead directly for Via Toledo, the street that borders Quartieri Spagnoli and is comparatively safe. It’s mobbed with christmas shoppers, tangibly festive.
Between meetings, our goal is to find Angelo, a pickpocket we’ve known more than ten years. His phone number is no longer valid (of course), so we’ll try to find him through his brother, Luciano (whom we first met 14 years ago). Luciano, we know, retired from pickpocketing a few years ago. Both brothers were in our film. Angelo’s the one who wowed us with that beautiful, poetic line at the end: “Bob. You and I do the same thing. The difference is: you make people laugh; I make them cry.”
NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. Everywhere we go, people recognize Bob from the film. They stop in cars in the street (1:30 a.m. last night it was the only way we managed to cross the busy street), pop out of shops, ask for photos, approach us in restaurants. We’re amazed!
This afternoon we’re to meet Michele, who was sound man on our film and, more importantly, translator extraordinaire. He’s from Naples but now lives in London, and he’s flown in to spend three days with us before christmas with his family. He’s also arranged a meeting for us with two filmmakers, one of whom wrote the screenplay for a renown crime film.
Still no luggage and I can’t continue to walk long distances fast in these heels. I buy some flat boots for the sake of speed and endurance on the rough stone streets. Later, I also succumb to a pair of frivolous shoes. Italy—what can I say.
We grab a late lunch before our 5:00 meeting with Michele. We haven’t seen him since the film shoot in September ’10, more than two years ago—but it’s like yesterday. He is sweet, smart, and always good company. As to working with a criminal element, he’s the best. The thieves like him. They trust him. I think he softens Bob’s prickliness, too. We catch up in the hotel lobby for a while before leaving for our appointment with Franco.
Michele has a car (parked miles away—thank goodness for the boots!) and drives us to Franco’s, where we’re to have dinner with his family. Franco was the main pickpocket in our NatGeo film, the thief we’ve been exchanging long emails with for two years. We went to his house for dinner a year and a half ago (with another translator).
Michele drives us in his family’s old rickety car. Even so, he’s concerned about leaving the unattractive car on Franco’s street, such is the neighborhood. Franco opens the heavy gate to his apartment complex and locks it behind us. I imagine all his neighbors feeling safe inside—locked in with a thief.
Franco had asked us not to talk business in front of his young children because they don’t know his job. He said we’d go out after dinner to talk thievery stuff. First, he shows off the apartment, which had undergone major remodeling since our last visit, much of which was done by Franco himself.
The apartment is almost unrecognizable. A long stone bar now divides the kitchen. (They call it the “American bar”—why? paid for from an American wallet?) There’s new built-in cabinetry, a wall closed where there had been a door, the door moved to the other side of the room, a closet turned into a passage, etc. It’s all beautifully done. The boys’ room is full of slick built-in furniture, bunk beds, desk, flat screen tv, computer, etc. It’s spotless, and the tan color-palette is calm and mature.
The living room flat screen tv is gigantic. They leave it on during our entire visit, even though the dining table is right in front of it. A wifi router blinks on a shelf. Franco builds large, complicated model ships. Two are on display in glass cases in the living room. I remember one of them being half-built last visit. Franco is good with his hands in more ways than one.
Bob and I are both dying to take photos but, out of politeness, we refrain. The family lives very well. They aspire to an upscale life. Franco must work hard to acquire such luxuries. Or maybe he just works the credit cards.
Eight Margherita pizzas are delivered for dinner. No silverware is offered. Bob and I follow suit when each member of the family folds the lid of his individual pizza box underneath. Michele can barely take a bite since he’s translating everything that’s said by everyone. After dinner, Franco brings out a giant album in a gorgeous leather box which documents his childrens’ recent first communion. The album is beautifully printed, like the ultimate Apple book. After we slowly go through it and admire every photo, he brings out another album-in-a-box. This one is his and his wife’s recent 25th anniversary church ceremony and party.
They’re a stable, upwardly-mobile, almost-ordinary middle-class family. All good-looking and likeable. It’s only Franco’s job that’s objectionable; but is it any worse than a cigarette company executive’s? There are many repugnant jobs, many of which must be held by likeable people. I can like Franco, but not his job. That’s proven.
Bob, Michele, and Franco disappear into a bedroom to talk. The wife has slipped away. I’m left with the children, who struggle to ask me questions using sign language, their limited English, and Italian, of which I speak none. Hopeless. Eventually I grab Bob’s MacBook Air, fire up Google Translate, and we suddenly have all the conversation we want. It’s excellent—though eerily silent.
It’s past midnight by the time we leave the house with Franco. We stand out in the street talking for another 45 minutes, scooters continuously buzzing close by. Michele only tells us later, on the way home, how nervous he was standing there, especially knowing Bob was loaded with computers and cameras hanging from his neck. On a deterrent-scale, neighborhood-resident Franco might not outweigh juicy-target Bob. Still, nothing happened.
Because traffic is crazy in Naples, even after 1 a.m., Michele drops us off in town about a mile from our hotel—against his better judgment, but on our insistence. Driving us to our hotel through choked streets would add another hour to his trip home. I’m nervous, of course, but Bob isn’t. We stand waiting to cross the wild traffic when a car stops and the men inside roll down the window and yell “Bob Arno, you are great!”
NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. POURING rain. 3:30 p.m. and it’s already dark, with gushing rivers flowing through the streets. Our luggage didn’t arrive, so we wear the clothes we flew in. I’m in nice leather boots with heels. Not good for slogging through gushing torrents. Not good for broken up cobblestone streets and cracked pavement. We’re so happy back. Out we go.
We’ve come to explore the possibilities of a second film project, to meet with a renown screen writer, and—as in Pickpocket King—to find the elusive pickpocket Angelo.
Wading through town, we linger at a bus stop and discuss the pros and cons of being seen by thieves so early in our visit. Surely they’ll see us before we see them. We don’t know how they’ll react since the broadcast of our National Geographic documentary about them. The Italian version of the film is on YouTube with 140,000 views and almost 1,000 comments; 600 likes, 150 dislikes. How many times was the film broadcast on Italian tv? Do pickpockets look at YouTube? Are they proud of the film? embarrassed? angry?
We watch a few buses come and go, then plod through Piazza Municipio to another bus stop and stand in the dark, in the downpour under our hotel’s borrowed umbrellas (unmarked!), observing. We debate: would pickpockets be out in force targeting holiday shoppers? Or stay out of the rain? We loiter there in the dark, in the deluge, getting the feel of the city and just enjoying being back. The traffic is as wild as ever. The gutters are overflowing with wide, deep rivers, making it impossible to cross the street. I mourn my formerly-fancy aubergine-colored boots.
Next morning we get an email from Franco, the pickpocket in our film we’ve been communicating with these past two years. “So you’re in town! Clay [another pickpocket; not his real name] called me when he saw you in heavy rain in Piazza Municipio last night. I rushed down there but you were gone.”
Word spreads fast! If Clay knows we’re in town, and Franco knows, we can be pretty sure the whole criminal underworld knows. We don’t know their true reaction to the film, except that Franco is very unhappy that it’s up on Italian YouTube and is demanding we get it taken down. I can’t believe the thieves are concerned about being recognized—they’ve been doing what they do for decades. Everyone knows who they are and what they do. The film must have inspired a little pride—and some amount of jealousy.
My boots have dried up perfectly (with a lot of help from the hairdryer). We go out for a stroll, heading for the main train station—a very long walk. We pass through several pickpocket hot spots along the way, but we don’t dally. As we walk, a young man pops out of a shoe store: “Hey! I know you—you’re the guy in the pickpocket film!” In Italian, of course. Bob waves and we keep walking. Later, passing again, we let the man take some pictures of Bob. Strange that Bob would be recognized out of context like that. The film called him an American—there’s no reason he should be noticed at a distance.
Close to the train station the action picks up. We approach a sidewalk three-shell game. The players refuse to speak to Bob—unless he pays them. We walk another block and an iPad is quietly offered for sale. We let the seller give us a complete demo and all the specs. Bob explains he knows all the “pacco man” bait-and-switch tricks and just wants a demonstration of the switch. The thief’s not ready to admit anything, until—Franco zooms up on his scooter and greets Bob and me with hugs and kisses. Franco the pickpocket—his warm greeting instantly gives us street-cred. The pacco man goes boggle-eyed.
If this doesn’t make you drool, well, try the lower photo. Sfogliatelli must be the most exquisite pastry ever invented. Found only in Naples, Italy, unless you know the few secret bakeries beyond that make or import this special treat. The one pictured above is a two-inch giant (but not too much to eat, no!). I prefer the smaller version—then I can eat them twice as often!
The crisp, flakey pastry holds a delicate, aromatic surprise:
a creamy ricotta filling, only slightly sweet, scented with bits of candied orange rind.
Sfogliatelle Mary, the most famous purveyor, doles them out warm, as they should be. Powdered sugar is an option—unnecessary in my opinion. All that’s needed is coffee which, in Naples, is the smallest, darkest, strongest, richest of any I’ve had anywhere. I can’t bring home sfogliatelli, but I always have a pound or two of Caffè Kimbo stashed in my luggage.
Sfogliatelli make me happy. They make me happy to visit this unique part of Italy. I especially like place-specific delectables, and I even like that they must be enjoyed in their native locale.
Oh, I can smell the warm, delicate orange perfume, I can taste it, I can hear the pastry crackle as I bite through the hundred paper-thin layers. But where great things lurk, confusion abounds, waiting to trip us up. Be sure you get “sfogliatella riccia,” and not the vastly inferior, unflakey sfogliatelle frolla. Perfection in a pastry.
Sharif spat a mouthful of blood as he laid his right arm across a wide tree stump. He had chewed the inside of his cheeks to shreds in the days since he’d been caught picking pockets in the Grand Mosque at Mecca. As an Egyptian man in Saudi Arabia, he was not entitled to extradition for his crime. He was to be punished swiftly and in public.
Meanwhile, in Spain, Kharem dusted himself off after a police beating, gave a fleeting wistful thought to the cash he surrendered, and went back to work.
“I never hear of pickpockets,” said Dina, an Egyptian woman who works as a tour guide with Abercrombie & Kent in Cairo. “I have never had a tourist in my charge complain of theft. Neither have my colleagues. If someone were to try to steal, the people around would beat him black and blue. They would knock him down and kick him, even burn his fingertips. It just does not happen here. Cairo is such a crowded city, we must live like brothers and sisters.”
Contrast Egypt with Italy, where there are just too many thieves for the police to deal with. Without exception, every police officer we interviewed throughout Italy (and much of Europe), threw up his hands and blew a jetstream of air at our first mention of pickpockets.
And while each officer showed a thorough knowledge of the perpetrators and their methods, we found a serious lack of record-keeping. No information is shared among countries, among agencies, even among stations in a single city. In fact, most officers do not even have computers into which to feed the data.
In Venice, the Municipale Police told us they are only interested in Venice, not in Italy or Europe. Because they never see the actual crime, the squad can’t arrest or jail; they “just open the door to the next city” so the problem becomes someone else’s.
Still, what’s the value of numbers, patterns, and percentages? Italy’s laws work against pickpocket police, and this is typical across Europe. Almost every European official we interviewed (with the notable exceptions of those in Naples and St. Petersburg) blamed the preponderance of pickpocketing and bag-snatching on illegal immigrants. But the countries simply cannot get rid of their illegal aliens.
In Italy, the first problem is administrative. When immigrants are caught without papers, they are politely given 15 days to pack up and leave the country. They are released. And that’s the end of it. The immigrants just do not leave. They do not choose to return to the hellholes from which they came.
Secondly, many of the foreigners have no passports or identification. And without documentation, the north African countries from which many of these people come refuse to accept their repatriation. We cannot expect to see a reduction in street crime thanks to law enforcement without the laws to back them. Their hands are tied.
In Egypt, where people live “like brothers and sisters,” Cairenes live side by side in rivalry and harmony; even men stroll arm in arm, holding hands. Across Egypt, a quasi-vigilantism controls low-level crimes. Misdemeanors and serious offenses are dealt with according to criminal code.
Egypt’s judicial system is based on British and Italian models, but modified to suit the country’s Islamic heritage and influenced by its ancient laws. Most of Egypt’s laws are consistent with or at least derived from Islamic law, the sharia.
If Egyptian pickpocket Sharif Ali Ibrahim had committed his crime in Egypt and had been caught by alert citizens, he would have been severely beaten. If he’d been caught by the police, he’d serve a significant prison term. And if he’d been found guilty of stealing from one of Egypt’s precious tourists, his sentence would have been trebled.
But Sharif committed his crime in Saudi Arabia, in fact at Islam’s holiest place. He had picked the pockets of worshippers praying in the Grand Mosque at Mecca. Therefore, following strict Islamic sharia, Sharif Ali Ibrahim’s right hand was chopped off with a sword, in public.
The San Francesco al Monte hotel in Naples, Italy, a former monastery originally carved into the mountain in the 16th century, is a warren of rock tunnels and hidden staircases. The clean, newly plastered surfaces are a stark contrast against the ancient rough stone parts of the property. Nooks and crannies and almost-hidden accessways beg for exploration with a flashlight.
Our room—even our bathroom—had incredible views of the city, the bay, and Mount Vesuvius, from multiple windows. It also came with beautifully packaged amenities, including a large jar of fragrant bath salt. All the room lacked was a bathtub.
Denouement. None of us wanted to leave the park. After the demos, the dinner, and the as-yet-untold experience on the buses, after the conversation, the exchange of trade secrets, the trust, and yes, the new friendships, we sort of bonded. And I mean all of us: the band of thieves, the filmmaking crew, and the Arnos in the middle.
We stand there in the park in two concentric circles. The inner circle is Bob, Michele, Frank, Andy, and Marc. The outer circle is Van with the Red on his shoulder and his assistant holding his shoulders to guide him, director Kun, producer Kath, fixer Rosie, and me. None of us want to say goodbye.
Work finally pulls Marc and Andy away, but Frank remains. And finally, after two complete rounds of hugs and kisses, Frank straddles his bike, snaps on his helmet, and rides away. Van follows him with the camera until he’s out of sight.
We’re all physically and mentally exhausted; spent. I don’t know how the crew kept going; they were up hours before us every day and working for hours after we said goodnight. Yesterday they went nonstop from the market to the thieves’ restaurant to the second restaurant without a break, setting up and taking down equipment repeatedly. They are champions, all of them.
Making this documentary allowed Bob and me to fulfill certain long-held dreams. It allowed us the time in which to develop relationships with our subjects. It allowed us to have top-notch translators, especially my hero Michele. It enabled us to host our gang of thieves at a meal that Bob and I alone would need investors to fund, but which was integral to the building or our relationship, which gave us the ability to dig deeper into the life and times of pickpockets. And lastly, the documentary gives a soapbox to the subjects, a platform for the pickpockets themselves to explain their methods and motivations, their regrets and their desires.
Writing these stories has been difficult for me. The “easy difficulty,” if there is such a thing, has been simply finding the time to write in the midst of our action-packed days, and then finding an internet connection to get them online. But that’s just a technicality. The true difficulties have been several.
First, whitewashing our incredible host city [Naples!], and by necessity, the characters and true identities of the men in our story. How I had to restrain myself! As a writer, I tend to be of the descriptive sort. I would never say we drank “liqueur!” I want to say what kind [Limoncello], what color [sunshine yellow], and how lovely the fruit it was made from [lemons]. I want to tell about the marvelous restaurants we visited and the wonders of the local cuisine. I want to praise our cliffside hotel [San Francesco al Monte] and describe the view from its terraces, that you can see all the way to …
Sigh.
And—wait a minute! What will this film do to tourism in this mystery town? Will we repel visitors, or intrigue them? Our goal is to balance the stardust with the dirt, to spotlight the unique riches this place has to offer. We hope it comes through in the film. I certainly left it out of these stories.
And there is something of a moral dilemma. In an exchange of thievery techniques, are we teaching known criminals how to steal more and better? We don’t think so, but how do you see it? What about the techniques the general public will learn from watching the film—should we be concerned about how that knowledge may be used? We don’t think so, but we agree that it looks bad—as if we’re teaching how to steal.
I’m afraid of what the public will think of Bob and me in our pursuit of thieves. Will you chastise us for not stopping thefts when we see them? Or will you understand that our method, getting “in” with these criminals, has a greater end? Will you think us awful for liking the pickpockets, despite knowing what havoc they wreak, what distress they cause? In the film, it will be up to Kun to portray us honestly alongside our motives. But here in these writings, it was my responsibility. Do you think it’s all fun and games for us, that we dine with thieves for a lark? Do you understand that as outsiders, allowed into an underground brotherhood of thieves, we are able to gather knowledge for the greater good? Please comment. We need to know if we should hide under a rock when the film comes out.
We are incredibly grateful to film director Kun Chang, who has pushed this project forward for more than four years already. Bob and I have complete faith in him and have no doubt that he’ll put together a documentary that is as beautiful and dramatic as it is fascinating and educational.
While the shooting isn’t over, the exciting part is. What’s left is hard work, mostly by Kun and his editing team. It’s impossible for me to imagine how they’ll make sense of the vast amount of gripping footage we have accumulated. I also recognize that my perception of the experience is not the same as Kun’s. The sterile, stripped-down story I told here, missing highlights (believe it or not), missing local color (of which there’s tons), genericizing everything for the sake of the eventual film, may have little resemblance to Kun’s vision. We will all be surprised at the film: you, readers; and Bob and I.
This is Part 21 of THE MAKING OF OUR NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTARY, PICKPOCKET KING. The film is about us, Bob Arno and Bambi Vincent. We are “thiefhunters in paradise.” The paradise we chose for the story is the warm and wild city of Naples, Italy, home to the world’s best pickpockets. The documentary premieres December 2 at 8pm ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel.
—Originally posted 10/5/10 and soon thereafter password-protected at the request of the producer.
