A thief might use a tool like this to reach into your personal sphere. More likely, he'd use a bent wire hanger.
On a trip to London, Diane Breitman went to see the hit musical Mamma Mia at Prince Edward’s Theatre in Soho. She had seat #1 in a row near the front: the seat was all the way against the left wall. The row in front of Diane was empty; the row in front of that was occupied.
During the overture, a lone man took the seat directly in front of Diane. He irritated her by humming along with the songs, so she noticed him. He also moved a lot, first slouching back, then leaning way forward, back and forth. After a while, he got up and left, bent over so as not to block others’ views.
Some time later, the woman in front of Diane, two rows ahead and also in the seat against the wall, looked back. Shockingly for a lady at the theater, she clambered over the back of her seat and got into the empty row between her seat and Diane’s. She turned to Diane.
“Did you see the man who was sitting in front of you?”
“Yes, sort of.”
“He stole my wallet!” she hissed. “My purse was on the floor at my feet, against the wall. When I looked for it, it was under and behind my seat. I only noticed because I needed a tissue.”
What sort of thief would buy an expensive ticket to the hottest play in London? Possibly one who expected to collect many rich and neglected wallets. Could he have snuck in without a ticket? Highly unlikely. Prince Edward’s Theatre is one of the few with a security staff. Guards and video surveillance, however, only monitor the lobby and chaotic sidewalk area in front of the theater. My theory is that the perpetrator bought a ticket for pittance after the show had started, from one of the resellers who loiter in front of the theater. He may have changed seats several times, and stolen several wallets. There are no cameras inside the theater. Security officers acknowledged this incident but said reports like this one are extremely rare.
They may not be rare at the Mariinskiy Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, where our friend Vladimir had arranged to take us to see Verdi’s Forces of Destiny. Well-meaning Vladimir, who wanted to treat us, had purchased “Russian” tickets, which cost a fraction of “foreigner” ticket prices. At his suggestion, we stopped speaking English as we entered the theater and tried to effect gloomy Russian expressions, but ticket-takers instantly recognized us as foreigners and rejected our tickets. Vladimir was mortified. We tried to pay full price then, but didn’t have enough rubles and the box office didn’t accept American Express, the only card we had on us. Eventually Vladimir found a sympathetic ear and we were allowed to sneak in. He’d obtained excellent seats in the historic theater.
At intermission we mingled among the audience on the mezzanine, in the lobby, and in the stairwells. We were off duty, but Bob’s trained eyes leapt to a pair of thieves in the stairwell bottleneck. It was an ideal situation for them, and what opera-goer would be on guard inside the gold-leafed glory of the Mariinskiy?
“We have many theaters and museums in St. Petersburg,” Officer Alina Kokina told us in the St. Petersburg police station. “Pickpockets love to work inside them. They like to work on foreigners. They judge from a person’s appearance how much money there might be.” She paused. “To be a pickpocket was a prestigious profession during the war. Now they just do it out of desperation.”
I’m happy to report a bag theft that ended with a smile.
Jay and Lyn Smith, of Tallahassee, took their 18-year-old son on his first trip to New York City. They took the train from the airport to Penn Station and rode the escalator up to street level.
Because they would be attending a family wedding, Lyn had brought some heirloom jewelry with her in a small purse, which she wore strapped across her back and in front of her. At the top of the escalator—classic!—the sandwich. Someone stalled at the top and a pile-up ensued, people squashing into people until the stall moved on.
That’s when Lyn’s bag must have been cut from her shoulder.
She cried, devastated by the loss of the sentimental pieces and angry with herself for having let this happen. As a former police investigator, she felt she should have known better.
Several months later a small box arrived via FedEx. The sender was identified in the top left corner as “Annie Amtrack.” Curious and mystified, Lyn and Jay opened the box. Inside was every item from Lyn’s stolen purse: her credit cards, her checkbook, the diamond bracelet and sapphire ring that had been her mother’s, her nail file, her shopping list—everything except the $300+ in cash she’d carried. All just dumped into the box.
There was also a note. Scrawled on the back of one of Lyn’s own checks, an apology: “Found on Amtrak. Needed the money. Sorry.”
The questions in this case are many; the answers are few. Did Lyn simply forget her purse on the train? (Not possible, she says.) Was it stolen on the train? On the escalator? Was “Annie” the thief, or did she merely find the thief’s leavings? If she was the thief, perhaps she was trying to balance her karma, like the muggers in Mumbai. As finder, should she have given the bag to Amtrak’s lost-and-found? As finder and returner, did she deserve to retain the cash for services rendered?
Your thoughts?
Regardless, Lyn was thrilled to have her belongings back. Now, she said, “my oldest daughter will one day have her grandmother’s ring!”
It”s ten to one in mothville. Raise your antennas.
Coming down. Feels strange trying to write ordinary blog stuff after all the excitement covered in my previous 22 posts. As Bob and I now tackle the editing of photos and video of our encounters with thieves, we feel as if we’re still living the experience, still in that odd and wonderful unmentionable metropolis, and still among the pickpockets. All we’re missing is the food, though I’m not doing too bad a job myself.
Sound guy/translator Michele stayed another week in the den of thieves to be with his family (who, of course, have nothing to do with the business of thievery!). In an email, Michele mentioned an amusing coincidence (and allowed me to share it):
I took my final bus in Xxxxxx, the one that took me out of the city until next return. At the bus stop of Xxxxxxxxx, I met all our friends …“ Clay, Ed, Marc, Andy, and Frank. They were on duty and we only exchanged looks and small signs. Alone, Frank stopped by to share some last words. He once again complained about society, government, and all the universe for their infamous fate, but then, with a big smile on his face, he joined the others for the next steal. He had a final hello for you before diving deep into his daily routine of damage and bravado.
Life goes on. Nothing this primal will change. Only, we hope, the behavior of travelers, those who venture both near and far. Bob and I know our pickpocket comedy affects many and our lectures touch even more, helping to raise the antennas of wanderers. If our documentary is successful, it will put a little dent in the pockets of Frank and friends, and others like them elsewhere.
[dropcap letter=”F”]irst there was skimming, now there’s shimming,” says Kim Thomas, former Las Vegas Metro Detective, now an international authority on forgery. Information on this new credit card acquisition technique comes via a Citibank investigator.
Now, looking for parts stuck onto the front of a cash machine, which might indicate fraudulent activity, is not enough. A shimmer does the work of a skimmer, but is housed completely inside the card slot of an ATM. In other words, entirely invisible to users.
Shimming
Kim Thomas describes the shim-skimmer: “The thief makes a circuit board the size of a credit card, but approximately .1 mm thick. They use a carrier card to insert the device. Basically it is a reader-transmitter. The reader does what the usual credit card skimmer does: capture full track data. The transmitter does what bluetooth does: transmit the track data to a receiver. The technology is pretty sophisticated and will be hard to catch once it goes into mass production.”
According to Jamey Heary, Cisco Security Expert, “effective flexible shims are recently being mass produced and widely used in certain parts of Europe.” He diagrams the physical layout of this “man-in-the-middle” attack as installed inside a card-reader.
I haven’t found anyone who has actually seen one of these shimmers, but no one’s calling it just a proof-of-concept, either. It isn’t clear to me whether or not the shimmer works with U.S. credit cards that lack the chip-and-PIN. Anyone know more about this?
“Door-pushers” are a problem in some cities. These thieves saunter down the long corridors of giant hotels with their arms outstretched, methodically pushing on every door on each side of the hall. Some doors open. In one city I won’t name, police get 300 to 400 reports of theft due to door-pushers every month.
“But we know there are more,” a police officer told me. “Some hotels prefer not to report them to us, but door-pushers we catch tell us they work there.” These are huge, famous hotels that don’t want negative publicity.
The risk is completely preventable. Just make certain your door closes tightly when you leave your room, and when you enter it. Why wouldn’t the door close tightly? Air pressure in hermetically sealed hotels is one possible reason; alignment of door latches or frames is another. Bob and I stayed in one hotel, a phenomenal one in Spokane, where the doors to suites took almost a full minute to close, due to hydraulic systems. We couldn’t pull the doors closed or hurry them along in any way. Patience was the only option. (Ours always closed properly, eventually.)
[dropcap letter=”W”]as it instinct or anger that made Bob chase my bag snatcher? He rocketed down the street brandishing the famous umbrella weapon that was so ineffectual in Naples. I had managed nothing more than “Hey!,” but my weak protestation was like the starting gun at the Monaco Grand Prix. Two grown men went from zero to sixty in an instant.
Bag snatch!
I can’t say I was caught unaware when the bag snatcher stepped up to meet me, face to face. He calmly looked me in the eyes, seized the strap of my purse with both hands, and yanked it hard enough to break the leather against my shoulder. It happened much faster than you can read that sentence.
I gave my little shout and the creep was off and running, Bob on his tail. It took me several seconds to realize that I still had the purse clutched tightly in my hands. I could have laughed, but for the fact that my husband was in pursuit of a potentially dangerous criminal in a decidedly unsafe neighborhood.
The street we had walked was full of the necessities of life in this non-touristy part of Barcelona, lined with tiny hardware, shoe repair, and paint shops. We had been directed there, without any specific warning, in search of a few pieces of wood. Peeking through doorways seeking the lumberyard, we revealed ourselves as obvious outsiders. As we strayed ever further from the relative safety of La Rambla, we sensed a vague but growing threat of danger.
My antennas were out way before the interloper trespassed so suddenly into my aura. I didn’t see his approach, but I had already assumed a protective posture. Both my hands held the small purse I wore diagonally crossed over my chest.
Bob was a few steps ahead of me and didn’t see the confrontation. It only lasted two seconds. It’s astonishing what analysis and conclusions the brain can manage in those instants. I thought the man looked ordinary but grave. He stood uncomfortably close and made uncommon eye contact. I thought he would speak. I thought he would ask a question, or offer advice. Against my will, I slipped into the trusting attitude of a traveler in a foreign land. And that was my mistake.
Perhaps I’d have reacted quicker or with more suspicion if the bag snatcher had looked sleazy, mean, or desperate. But he didn’t, and I gave him the benefit of any doubt. In those two seconds, the gentleman had all the opportunity he needed to seize the strap of my bag and yank.
My feeble objection was enough to get Bob’s attention. He whirled around and leapt into pursuit, his long stride a clear advantage. When the perp dashed into a crowded alley, I thought it was all over. Bob bellowed “Policia!” at a volume that would fill an amphitheater. I, far behind, expected to see the escaping sprinter blocked or tripped by the local loiterers.
On the contrary. The sea of people opened for his getaway, then closed up again to watch the tall guy run. They didn’t exactly block Bob’s path, but seemed to plant themselves firmly as obstacles. Bob had to give up.
For me, the humiliation suffered by the would-be thief was almost enough. Like a cat with a mouthful of feathers, he ran with nothing more than twelve inches of torn leather strap in his fist. Yet, I was shaken and weak-kneed immediately following the experience, and the after effects lingered for months. Despite the fact that I wasn’t hurt, I lost nothing of value, and Bob hadn’t been tripped in the chase, I felt victimized.
A dozen boys swarmed around Gary Ferrari in front of the Sheraton Hotel in Lima. At least it seemed like a dozen—they’d appeared out of nowhere and were gone in just a few seconds. In that cyclone of baby-faces and a hundred probing fingers, they got his wallet and the gold chain from his neck.
Pickpockets in Lima
“We call them pirañas,” said Dora Pinedo, concierge at the Sheraton. “They are everywhere.”
“I don’t know how they got my chain,” said Gary, rubbing the red welt on his neck. “It was under my shirt.” He didn’t realize that the boys had learned to recognize the telltale ridge of fabric that covers any chain worth stealing.
“They’re usually seven-, eight-, nine-year-old boys,” Dora told us, “and they mob their victim in groups of six to ten. There is nothing one can do with so many little hands all over.”
We interviewed Petter Infante, 28, and Wilmer Sulca, 17, both grown-up pirañas. We found them at Lima’s University Park, where a comedy presentation was taking place in an entertainment pit, rather like a small amphitheater. Hundreds of people surrounded the pit, transfixed. Others loitered around the audience, more sat on cement benches, and many were asleep in the grass. Petter and Wilmer looked at us skeptically but agreed to talk to us after Gori, our interpreter, paid off a policeman patrolling the park.
Wilmer, a pickpocket in Lima
“But not here,” Wilmer said.
“Anywhere you want,” said Bob. Right, let’s enter their lair, and let’s take our fancy equipment in with us. The five of us piled into a taxi and Wilmer instructed the driver in staccato Spanish. Where were they taking us? I looked at Gori for assurance but our fine-boned archeology-student interpreter was not a bodyguard.
Wilmer led us into a garage-like cantina, dark, deserted, music blaring, disco lights flashing. The boys ordered huge bottles of Cristal beer. Bob wired Petter with a microphone and I set up our video camera, hyper-conscious of our vulnerability—read that: scared. My eyes were glued to Petter’s left arm, a mass of parallel scars, layer upon layer of them. A cut on his wrist was gaping open, infected. I used the gash to focus the camera.
Petter’s arm.
“The first thing I ever stole was a chicken,” Petter said. “I was twelve years old, alone, and hungry. I had small brothers to take care of.” Petter’s expressive face told a many-chaptered tale of violence: his snaggle teeth were edged with gold, his cheeks crosshatched with scars.
“I’m best at stealing watches. I just grab it off someone walking, then run. I’m a very fast runner. The victim could never catch me. We call this arreba tar. It means run-steal.”
He stood to demonstrate his expertise. Bob stood to be victim. “You can see there’s nothing in his front pocket, it’s flat,” Petter said. Then he did a lightning fast dip and grab into Bob’s back pocket. The wallet flew upward with a grand flourish, like the follow-through of a tennis stroke.
“We’ll steal anything,” Wilmer said, “nothing in particular. It’s all easy. It’s like a game.” Wilmer then showed the same method from Bob’s front pocket, finishing with the same exuberant flourish. “Cocagado—I’m already gone. By the time the victim realizes, we’re cocagado.”
The knife scars on Petter’s arm are like stripes on an officer’s shoulders: you have to respect him. You see he’s tough and dangerous. He started cutting himself a few years ago.
“If the police catch you, you cut yourself and they release you. They don’t want you if you’re cut and bleeding.”
“I’m on the street nine years and I never cut myself,” Wilmer said. “I don’t like to do that. We don’t have the same philosophy, Petter and I. He likes to cut himself, I do not. We think differently.”
(A police officer explained that an injured arrestee must be taken to a hospital, which requires hours of paperwork. If an arresting officer is near the end of his shift, he may not want to pursue such lengthy formalities.)
Petter and Wilmer, pickpockets in Lima, are opportunists, pirañas grown into hardened thieves. Petter thinks nothing of threatening his victims with a knife. I don’t know if he ever has or would use it. The boys’ main operative is speed.
Petter’s cuts
“We wait at the bus stops and look for someone with a good watch, or something else to take. We wait until the bus doors are ready to close then grab it and run. And sometimes we grab things through the open windows of the bus. We reach inside and grab cellphones, watches, glasses, purses, anything.”
Opportunists look for sure bets, for temptations, for the fat wallet protruding from a back pocket “like a gift,” as a pickpocket in Prague told me. “We call it …˜the other man’s pocket,'” a Russian thief revealed; “the sucker pocket,” said another. “Tourists make it too easy,” complained a man in Prague whose family members were admitted thieves.
Purses and backpacks go missing at the worst times. Like, when they’re filled with cash, passports, cameras, medications, travel documents, and laptops. Like, when you’re far from home.
Last month, Ron and Sharon Dasil were renting a car in Barcelona. Very experienced savvy travelers, they took all the precautions. Sharon sat with their four suitcases and two backpacks while Ron stood at the counter in the tiny Hertz office near Sants train station. After resisting up-selling efforts by persistent employees, Ron finished the paperwork and asked for driving directions. To make notes, Sharon joined him at the counter for three minutes, max. When she returned to her chair, her backpack was gone.
The office was only about a 12-foot square; the two employees faced out toward the door. When Sharon exclaimed that her bag was gone, one of the employees took a few steps to the door and closed it, pointing to a sign that the Dasils had not seen: “guard your stuff, thieves are around,” or something to that effect.
Had someone been watching from outside, waiting for the office’s only customers to turn their backs? Was it pure flukey timing? In such a small space, why hadn’t the employees noticed the arrival of a new person? Wouldn’t they greet a potential customer? If thieves are around, why was the door propped open?
These are questions the couple is asking the police and the Hertz headquarters. They also wonder if there was some complicity or collusion between the Hertz agents and the thief. “One of them bent under the counter for a while. He could have been texting someone,” Sharon worried.
The four men who own the luggage at left are far out of sight at the front desk.
At about the same time, Paul Hines was checking into the Holiday Inn Kensington Forum Hotel on Cromwell Road in London. He and his wife piled their luggage next to some chairs in the lobby, with their backpack on top. Mrs. Hines sat with the bags while Mr. Hines checked in. Mrs. Hines was briefly distracted when she noticed a man in the lobby with his fly open. That was all it took. The backpack was gone.
This gaping open purse was ignored for more than ten minutes while its owner checked in.
Who was the man with the open fly? An intentional distraction? Or just a staff member or hapless guest? Holiday Inn staff claimed to have the theft on video, but wouldn’t reveal much else to the Hines’s. Neither were they very helpful after the incident. They marked the location of the police station on a map, but didn’t get a taxi for Mr. Hines, who had no cash for a cab. He walked there and back again in the rain.
Both the Dasils and the Hines’s lost a lot in their backpacks. Both couples spent considerable holiday time filing reports, canceling credit cards, replacing passports, etc. While the Dasils, frequent travelers, took care of the theft business then got back to their adventure, Mr. Hines still seemed angry and frustrated several days later, when I spoke with him.
He could have put his bag anywhere. He put it behind his chair; not only out of his sight, but out of his companions' sight, too.
Now you see it, now you don’t. We all know to guard our stuff, but it’s worth remembering how quickly these thefts happen, and how frequently. The opportunist thief is lurking, waiting for you to drop your guard. The strategist thief turns your head himself, with some devious distraction or other.
Lobby employees don’t know whose luggage is whose. They don’t know every guest or customer. They are not luggage guards—not even the doormen are.
How exactly are purses and backpacks stolen, right out in the open? The technique usually involves a sport coat or jacket. We know some thieves who use an empty garment bag. The thief simply drapes the cover over the object of his desire and walks off with the goodies hidden underneath—often barely breaking stride. Bob Arno has done this many times on television.
I’ve heard about a hundred too many stories like these. Now I’m calling on you, readers, to help put an end to lobby theft. Watch your stuff. Keep a hand on the heap, or some other body contact with your bags.
A tour of the muti market, where witchdoctors sell traditional medicine.
South Africa—It was somewhat of a shock to find nothing but white lines on asphalt in the place we knew we left a van. We couldn’t help but wonder whether our minds were slipping and the van stood undisturbed in a forgotten location. But there it wasn’t, high noon and sixty feet from the entrance of Rustenburg’s busiest supermarket. We stood two and a half hours, groceries dripping and spoiling, staring morosely at our empty parking space as we waited for the South African Police. They never bothered to show up.
So the van was stolen; we shouldn’t have been surprised. We’d read in the local papers how often these vehicles disappear into the taxi trade, and our own experience had provided us with enough warnings. Once we’d returned from an hour in a Johannesburg mall to find the ignition busted by a would-be thief who’d easily entered the vehicle but couldn’t get it started, presumably due to the special electronic safety key system with which the van was equipped. Weeks later in the same parking lot a less-skilled perpetrator was foiled, ruining only the door lock. Then, the week before Christmas, we were jabbed by the foul fingers of crime in a more personal manner.
Winding up a long stay in South Africa, we had packed a few boxes to mail home. The year had seen a natural accumulation of files, notes, photos, and clothing purchased to shield us from a winter for which we were ill-prepared. Though we weren’t sending anything of major value, we were distressed to learn that it wasn’t possible to insure any mail to the U.S. We never completely trust international mail, especially in nations rife with poverty. In addition to sloppy and careless handling, we worry about stamp-stealing, prevalent in many parts of Africa. Postal workers are known to steam stamps off envelopes, discard the letters, and earn pennies for the stamps. But as we couldn’t justify sending everything air cargo, we packed up four twenty-pound boxes of a year’s slough.
In Rustenburg, an hour’s drive from where we lived, we rushed to the post office, as we knew it closed for lunch at one. We parked at the busy entrance, directly in front of the public telephones. I waited in the van with the parcels while Bob went to buy tape for a final touch on the labels. I was engrossed in Newsweek when a sullen man materialized at my open window. He asked where some street or shop was; I couldn’t quite understand, as he spoke in the submissive, barely audible mumble so many South Africans used. I asked him several times to repeat himself—we were always so sensitive about being friendly and courteous to everyone there.
A couple of (former?) thieves describe the powers of the bark and animal-part medicines.
Meanwhile, a second man appeared at the open driver’s side window and asked another unintelligible question. With a stranger on either side of me, open windows, keys dangling in the ignition, I felt frighteningly vulnerable. I casually lowered a hand to my bag and shoved my watch wrist down and out of sight, trying to look at both men at once while politely saying I don’t know, sorry, no. I was definitely nervous.
Both the lost souls wandered innocently away in seemingly separate directions and Bob returned with his purchase. Being an unpredictable land, the post office closed at 12:30, not 1:00 that day, so we missed it after all, and only by two minutes. While we taped labels, I told Bob what had happened, and we discussed how close we’d come to being ripped off.
We locked and left the van, and walked to our usual lunch place two blocks away, grumbling about what a shame it was that we had to suspect people who are most likely decent and honest. We did feel certain we were almost robbed, even though the gentlemen merely asked for directions. Did they appear shady? By our cultural standards, yes. But in South Africa, the downcast eyes, low mumbled speech, and meek stance seem to be the product of generations of oppression and domination, if not their own aboriginal behavior. As we analyzed the origin of the character traits, we felt guilty. Were we prejudiced, or merely wise?
Bathe with this stuff and you'll become invisible to police, we're told.
Not wise. We returned forty minutes later to find only one of our four boxes left in the locked-tight van. Yes, in retrospect, leaving the boxes in the unattended van was stupid. We should have known. But in broad daylight, on a crowded street, right in front of a government building—who would think they’d have the nerve? We half-expected to lose a box or two in the mailing, but not before the mailing.
Of course none of the people at the telephones or waiting for the post office to reopen saw anything. Off we went to the police station, where officers assured us we’d never see our things again. Our clothing would be put to good use and our files, photos, and books would most likely fuel an evening’s cooking fire.
We’d had the privilege of using a borrowed van for weekly treks into town from where we lived in the bush. Careful and conscientious, we treated the van as if it were our own; that is, we parked it in the busiest, closest, and best-lit places, and always ensured it was locked securely. Despite this, the statistics were shocking. In 45 weeks we borrowed the van about 40 times, almost once a week. With our four occurrences, we were victimized ten percent of the times we drove. This would translate to 36 times a year, an intolerable figure, if we had driven every day, as we do at home.
We were not virginal victims. In California, our house had been robbed, our car stereo stolen, and an illegal alien once tried to get into my bedroom window while I was home alone. In the latter case, the police arrived swiftly, apprehended the creep and, before my eyes, dispossessed him of a knife, a screwdriver, and a few hundred pornographic pictures. But these three affronts were spread over seven years and, until South Africa, comprised our entire experience as victims of crime.
With the frequency of our South African incidents, it became difficult to give the benefit of the doubt to the average man on the street, the man who wouldn’t meet our gaze and mumbled incoherently into the ground. Of course it could be argued that our logic was flawed, that there was no proof who our thieves were. True. But aren’t we all susceptible to hunches and assumptions that grow from experience? We tend to generalize, to the detriment of many, and judge a whole by its most visible parts. The people who indulge in violence and crime poison our perception of the group.
Johannesburg children
Bob and I left that country with a unique South African souvenir tucked safely away, an unfortunate byproduct of the chronic crime we experienced there. Not rare but valuable, we took away a useful and lasting kernel of cynicism, planted by thieves. As we continue living the lives of expatriates, and even in our own country, we’re more suspicious of and aloof to everyone who approaches us.
It’s a tricky business, filming thieves—you can’t shove a giant television camera in their faces and expect cooperation. Bob and I know this from many years of experience, but Kun’s history of criminal interviews included just one hour off-camera with a pre-buttered “friend.” Kun’s priority was getting the high sound and video quality required by our (still secret) investor-distributor, whose standards are ultimate. Bob and I just wanted the meeting; we wanted Pierre and his friend to demonstrate how they pick pockets, and tell us about their work; and we wanted to film it if possible. Kun wanted the same, but only if he could record audio and video at the required standards. Otherwise, none of it was of any use to him—he couldn’t put it in the film.
This little conflict was settled by way of two compromises. First, Kun would shoot video on an unobtrusive camera himself, without an additional cameraman. He thought his Canon EOS 5D Mark II would do. Second, he’d keep his soundman and assistant at a distance and only call them in at the last moment, so as not to present a large, offensive front that would overwhelm the casual atmosphere we hoped to maintain.
The crew was booked. The time and place were set.
Meanwhile, my skepticism had not been dissipated by our clandestine rendezvous. What skepticism? Well, why should I believe that “Pickpocket from Paris since 13 year old” is who he says he is? He could be any old leg-puller with a sense of humor. Pierre’s second letter admitted “yes i also speak english , litle just for my job ( rires [laughs] ),” though most subsequent letters were in French. In his third letter, Pierre claimed to work in a car factory during the week, pickpocketing only on weekends and holidays.
If true, he’s a man on the grid, with a reputation and a job to protect. He’d be much cagier than a full-blooded thief who owns up to his livelihood. More careful. More fearful of entrapment, with more to lose.
On the other hand, he’d described some pretty sophisticated M.O.s in his letters and at our cafe meeting. The man definitely knows what he’s talking about. We were all three eager to see his demonstrations, and how he works with his partner.
Kun arrived early at our hotel. He’d slept little, he said, excited by yesterday’s meeting with his first pickpocket. He’d carefully packed his equipment and was ready for the first shoot on the project. We were ready to go when Kun’s phone buzzed.
Pierre sent a text message. Sorry, something’s come up. Have to cancel today.
Oh, what disappointment! We scared him off, we said to ourselves. No, he’s just busy, we tried to convince each other; he told us his parents were visiting from abroad. Why so vague then? Should we call him? Email him? No, let’s wait.
“It’s funny to say, but I actually trust this guy,” Kun said. “He’s emailed for months, he phoned twice to confirm our meeting yesterday, then he showed up 45 minutes early. He bailed today, but I think he’ll come through.”
“My take’s different,” Bob countered. “They’re nervous that they’ll be recognized on television. They have regular jobs, and their work will be in jeopardy.”
Later, Pierre called. “My friend wants money to talk.” We can’t do that, Kun insisted. Then it’s over, Pierre said. Kun consulted our producer, who approved small consulting fees for Pierre and his friend. Negotiations began and tensions rose. Pierre, we sensed, was being pressured by his partner, who had no relationship with us, no reason to cooperate. The partner, too, was on the grid—he drove a bus, Pierre had said.
Eventually, an agreement was reached. We thought. That’s what Pierre and his friend said. We had a deal. Then they canceled. Pierre didn’t return our phone calls. Our email bounced.
Pierre was history. Welcome to the world of thieves.
