St. Petersburg, a few weeks later—We loaded ourselves with video equipment this time, and headed straight for the Metro corner. Having spoken with the gang three weeks earlier, we were afraid to get too close. We wanted to observe them in action without being noticed. I found an excellent location just across the canal from the Metro entrance, a perfect stake-out spot with a convenient cement chunk I could hide behind when necessary. Bob wandered, undisguisable, wishing for a height reduction.
Instant gratification! (No, not Bob getting shorter.) First I noticed two of the gang leaning on the canal wall, watching the heavy flow of people going into and out of the Metro.
A pickpocket gang member on the phone
I recognized others loitering in the doorway and on the street corner. Most of them seemed to get or make frequent phone calls. They often disappeared from view, melting into the crowd, ducking into the station, or being obscured by traffic.
Suddenly, they’re off and running. I follow with my video camera. The victim doesn’t have a chance. Six gang members surround him. It’s impossible to see them all at any one moment, but on the video (see Part 2), you can see them dance around the mark like a Russian ballet. Two men maneuver themselves in front of him, impeding his progress. Four others are behind and beside him. Then, to buy more time, the largest of the team, in the gray t-shirt, spins around and shoves his weight against the victim’s chest and stomach, nearly doubling him over.
It was impossible to determine if anything had been taken. I had to choose who to follow with the camera and I chose to follow the thieves, who quickly dispersed, then regrouped. I don’t know how the victim reacted seconds later. He immediately left my field of vision.
I got another pursuit on film, but it ended behind an ice cream kiosk that blocked my view. I wasn’t far away, but I was stationary, with a canal in front of me. I got lots of shots of the thieves positioning themselves among the crowds crossing the street.
An opposing gang of pickpockets in St. Petersburg
Meanwhile, Bob wandered through the danger zone. He watched other thieves display their well-practiced choreography. They also employed the Russian sandwich, with a dropped piece of paper, a bend, a block, and a partner’s pluck from behind.
Mohammed is fine. He’s recovered from his near-arrest and is friendly with us again. We didn’t dare ask him to interpret for us again. But we met a nice Russian woman at the black market who teaches English…
St. Petersburg— “They think I robbed you,” he said.
By then it must have been obvious to the cops that we were not Mohammed’s victims, or anyone else’s, either. But they’d created such a melee they couldn’t let go, didn’t want to believe there really was no problem. Finally, they left with a warning to Mohammed, who was so shaken he just collapsed onto his low stool and hung his head. He wouldn’t look up at us so we left him, thinking he was angry with us for getting him involved.
So the cops had seen us and Mohammed together with a gang of known thieves. Why, then, did they arrest the local underdog, instead of the criminals? In St. Petersburg, where the police are pitifully paid (about 2000 rubles/month, US$70 at the time), payoffs are their bread and butter. Officers routinely roam the streets collecting 100 rubles ($3+) here and there, from unlicensed merchants selling caviar or souvenirs. Pickpockets pay police too. They buy a piece of property for a limited time span. This allows many thieves to work, and keeps them in their own territories. Vladimir, a pickpocket we met some years ago, had a one-hour-a-day claim on a short segment of Nevsky Prospekt. The Mongolian gang seems to own the Metro station corner.
When thieves are caught, they pay 700 or so rubles ($23) to the police and are let go. It’s well known, Mohammed’s friend Anton told us earlier, that police are corrupt and will take bribes for anything. They can be seen on the streets looking for unlicensed merchants in order to shake them down instead of looking for thieves. Why would they arrest thieves? The system works well the way it is, and rich foreign tourists fund it.
Bambi Vincent and Anton at the art market in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Tangentially interesting, Anton, who also works at the art market, told us that when a person is picked up for being drunk, the police steal everything from him: money, watch, and jewelry. Then they put the drunk in a cold shower to wake him up and put him out on the street. If the citizen complains of being robbed, the police claim he must have lost his belongings while he was drunk. Anton described his father’s clever hiding place for cash. He slits the inside of the waistband of his jeans and slips folded money inside. When he’s drunk and shaken down, the police don’t find the money, but take everything else.
St. Petersburg—Pseudo-cops!” we thought: bandits who pretend to be police. We’re about to be robbed! At the same time, I thought: no, we’re about to be robbed by real cops of the corrupt variety. The four of us in that deserted alley made a huge commotion.
Bob pointed to the entrance we had come from and shouted “You’re police? Okay, over there!” I shouted “in the public area!” and they shouted in Russian. We had no idea what they wanted. We carried a $1,000 digital still camera, but no video equipment and, thankfully, no hidden video equipment, which might have been considered illegal.
As our captors escorted us back to the art market alley entrance we heard the bleeping of police radios and saw police equipment under their shirts. Yet, knowing they were real cops did not put us at ease. We were still four agitated, confused, and rather scared people, unable to communicate. My thoughts were, get to a public place so we won’t be ripped off; find Mohammed to translate.
The cops allowed us to lead them into public view, or they led us. Just outside the alley gate, in the art market, we saw Mohammed on the ground with a gun to his stomach. Four other plainclothes cops had him surrounded. Everyone was yelling and a crowd had gathered. Mohammed was the only one capable of translating for us and he was beside himself, terrified and at gunpoint. As soon as we arrived he was hauled up and shoved against a wall, the gun still at his belly.
My reaction was to grab onto Mohammed. I hugged him, trying to show the cops that he didn’t do anything wrong to us, that he was our friend. Bob tried to reason with the cops, but none spoke English. Then six uniformed cops joined the fracas and our concern escalated. How far could this thing go, and what is it? For a few minutes, the uniforms were more interested in the plainclothes than in the civilians. With machine guns pointed, they demanded IDs from the plainclothes officers and scrutinized them intensely.
Mohammed had told us the previous day that because of his looks, he is frequently stopped and challenged by the police. With everyone still shouting and confused, including him, we couldn’t find out if this was one of those “challenges.” Why did Mohammed have a gun in his stomach? Why were we hauled into this business?
Bob dropped the name of an ex-KGB officer we know, with no idea where it would lead. Like a silent fart mysteriously clearing a room, the officers scattered and disappeared. The only Russian sounds we could dredge up turned out to be powerful, indeed.
“What is the accusation?” I asked Mohammed, several times before he quieted and paid attention.
St. Petersburg—we were surrounded by five hostile faces. Shaking inside, we stood firm until the men stalked off. Bob and I crossed the street to photograph the scene of the crime. Since the gangsters were still at work, I ducked into a shop doorway to be less obtrusive. Two men followed me in. They were thieves ready to snatch my camera, so I threw its strap over my head, pirouetted in the vestibule, and stepped back onto the street. The suspicious pair trailed me out, gave Bob the once-over, and wandered off. It was a cosmetics shop I had entered, filled with only female customers.
Bob Arno and translator Mohammed
We returned to the subway station with an ad hoc interpreter. Mohammed is a law student with a summer job selling paintings at the art market on Nevsky Prospekt. We’d met him the day before. He’s soft-spoken, a bit shy, black-haired and olive-complected; a Muslim Russian from the south of the country.
He was skittish about getting involved with a criminal gang, but in the end his curiosity got the better of him, or he couldn’t resist our pressure. Off we went to the Metro station, a block away. When we found them, all five predators were in the station lobby, watching for lucrative marks.
Here’s a bit of video. It’s confusing and hard to follow, but try. You’ll see the team of six St. Petersburg pickpockets at work outside the Metro station. It’s hard to spot them all. One wears a red hat, one a white hat, and the others are pointed out with arrows. You’ll see them start out fast after a victim, then go out of view. In the second sequence, all six surround a victim, then the biggest of them crashes into his chest to delay him. Then they turn and meet beside the canal to divvy up the swag.
Mohammed’s first timid overtures were rejected with disinterest. Then he used the words “Las Vegas,” and vor, Russian for thief, and the gangsters turned to look us up and down. A moment later we had them outside, and suggested we get out of the crowd. The eight of us walked a block away and around a corner, where there was less traffic.
Four pickpocket thugs in St. Petersburg, RussiaFour pickpocket thugs in St. Petersburg, Russia
By then Mohammed had warmed them up and the gang members were smiling and curious, though not comfortable. Bob got a two-fingered grip on the big guy’s wallet and gave him a little shove from behind, neatly extracting the wallet. That’s when they relaxed half a notch. We stood around small-talking for ten minutes, but nothing of substance was discussed. They claimed they throw away credit cards instead of using or selling them, but we’re not convinced. Mohammed said their Russian was not very good. Soon a well-dressed man with a briefcase joined us. “Professional,” one of the thugs said in English, and he made a gesture for pickpocket, stroking the back of the index finger with the tip of the middle finger.
You just tried it, didn’t you!
One by one, cell phones started ringing. I think the thugs were speaking with each other. A group of tourists paraded by, and two thieves caboosed them around the corner. Our conference dispersed, but ice had been broken.
Entrance of alley behind Nevsky Prospekt
Bob and I walked Mohammed back to the art market. He led us down a street parallel to Nevsky Prospekt, then cut through a long narrow alley to the back of the art market. After saying goodbye, Bob and I headed back into the alley.
Halfway through it, two scrawny young men came running up from behind us, shouting “Police!” They flashed ID at us. “Pseudo-cops,” we thought, bandits who pretend to be police. We’re about to be robbed!…
St. Petersburg— The beefiest of the five Mongolian thugs shoved his fist in front of Bob’s face, thrust forward his chin, and stared. Bob stared back and so did I. Two more brutes joined the first. One pointed to our camera and said “No!” The other swept his hand as in “get out of here, scram!”
Experienced at this sort of confrontation, we didn’t back down. That doesn’t mean we weren’t nervous and aware of the danger. We’ve been threatened before, not to mention spat upon and mooned. But pickpockets, by our own definition, are nonviolent. Sure, there are the unpredictable drug addicts desperate for money for a fix, but these five fixed us with alert and stone-cold eyes. They did not look harmless.
We’d spotted two of the gang within minutes of reaching Nevsky Prospekt, the broad boulevard of St. Petersburg. They stood on the corner of what might be the city’s busiest intersection, where tourists get their first glimpse of the magnificent Church on the Spilled Blood, a subway station upchucks clotted streams of humans, and tinny, battery-operated speakers screech the muffled pitches of Russian barkers selling canal cruises.
We picked the pair out of the crowd as we crossed the street toward them. They crossed and passed us, then u-ied and immediately separated, one in front, one behind us. The Russian sandwich. Instead of worry, we felt glee. Bob had a prop wallet stuffed with newspaper in his back pocket. Bait.
As Bob and I paused outside the subway station, the crew ditched us, ducked inside, and came out following a tourist. Bob managed to snap two blatant frames with a camera, one of which shows the gang leader looking straight into the lens as a partner shields a backpack for another’s grope.
Did they get anything? We don’t know because, as always, the thieves cover their moves. But a moment later…
In a quick visit to Rome last month, Bob and I found it pretty quiet on the streets, theft-wise. Granted, we only spent a few hours on the prowl, but given our 15 years experience thiefhunting in Rome, we know where to look. We usually find an eclectic mix of Italian, Roma, North African, and East European thieves, plus many we don’t speak to, many who won’t tell, and many who lie.
On this visit, we spent at least half an hour shadowing a mixed-gender threesome halfheartedly preying. As they trudged along the tourist trail, one of their members entered each souvenir shop along the way and stood among the customers. Another spent time among the postcard stands. They were an extraordinarily scruffy group, whose appearance certainly limits their access and proximity to targets. After a lethargic effort, they disbanded at a bus stop. We engaged two of them as they scattered, and learned that they were Polish.
Gang of three in Rome
Other than this group, we saw very few “suspects” in the Metro, on Bus 64, hanging around at the usual favorite bus stops, or on the streets. Termini, the main train station, was littered with dodgy characters, as usual, but we didn’t linger, preferring to survey the scene outside the station.
Are Italians finally fed up enough to do something about crime? At least crime committed by immigrants, it seems. A couple of telling surveys reported in The Guardian hint to a new, anti-immigrant climate in Italy, and especially anti-Gypsy.
81% of Italian respondents said they found all Gypsies, Romanian or not, “barely likeable or not likeable at all”, a greater number than the 64% who said they felt the same way about non-Gypsy Romanians.
and
Romanians were among the 268 immigrants rounded up in a nationwide police crackdown on prostitution and drug dealing this week, after new prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s likening of foreign criminals to “an army of evil”.
Word has been out on the street for some time. “Jaga” and Ana, a Romanian pickpocket couple we interviewed at length in Rome in 2003, told us they were planning to move to Spain, where it is easier to live and to conduct their business. They are not the only thieves to express this sentiment, which helps explain why Spain has such a preponderance of pickpockets.
Leaning tower of Pisa and cherries for sale
Pisa, too, was empty of the sticky-fingered women and children we usually find at the train station, bus station, and all around the Piazza del Duomo. Locals there said they had noticed the pickpockets’ disappearance about a month ago.
But just when we thought Italy might be cracking down on crime, we heard last month’s terrible story of the American couple served drugged cappuccino in a Rome train station, where they were then robbed. Upon awaking, the man stumbled onto the tracks and was killed by a train. The article continues:
Gangs using narcotic spray to carry out train robberies are also on the rise in Italy, police said. The gangs board sleeper trains and drug passengers in couchettes before hopping off at stations with valuables.
Pizza by weight in Rome
I tend to think the crime lull we sensed in our short survey of Rome’s previous hot spots was actually an anomaly. Or the balloon has been squeezed and the thieves are just elsewhere. I hope that we soon find another opportunity to re-investigate Rome.
Sadly, though, porcini season will be over by our next visit. There is nothing like porcini pizza, especially in Pisa.
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.
Bob Arno’s path to pickpocketing
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.
Bob Arno, 24
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.
[EDIT 1/2/13: See comments below for Bob Arno’s elucidation on this experience.]
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?
What’s more charming than a leisurely break at an outdoor café? Coffee, a beer, a glass of wine, maybe lunch… You chat with friends and watch the people-parade, safe within the lush green walls separating you from the commotion and concerns of traffic and humanity. A cool oasis with a feeling of privacy and exclusivity—at least to some level.
This is where a great number of bag thefts occur, thanks to that false sense of security one naturally gets from the perimeter of potted plants. Thieves may use a special tool or a mangled wire hanger to snag a purse or backpack from between the planters. The use of a tool allows them to pierce your private sphere without setting off your personal alarm system. The most popular sites for this M.O. are right beside a subway entrance or other easy getaway—a gateway to disappear with the swag.
Café plants with chicken wire
Thankfully, restaurants are beginning to counteract with simple preventative measures. This summer I’ve noticed many café perimeters reinforced with wooden lathing, chicken wire, or bigger planters close together.
An outdoor café with a little more protection from bag snatchers
Barcelona, Spain—They look like any ordinary girls, right? Walking down La Rambla, tossing their long braids, empty hands swinging casually. We only saw this view of them, from the back. So what made us perk up? What raised our antennas?
It was evening. We followed them on La Rambla for a minute or two, then they made a beeline to a trash can on the edge of the street. Peering into the can, the shorter girl reached in and extracted a perfect piece of cardboard. Perfect for her needs, anyway. Bob and I looked at each other. That was all we needed to see. The game was on.
The girls entered the elegant Plaça Reial, a beautiful plaza lined with outdoor cafés. The restaurants are first class, but the plaza’s loiterers can be pretty seedy. The girls entered with practice and purpose, turning to the right and walking quickly around the entire perimeter, right along the occupied tables. Bob and I split, so if one of us was spotted, the other could still film.
They walked around and around, eyes always on the tables, at times stopping to watch a particular table of diners. At some point the short girl gave her cardboard to her partner. She then wandered until she found a new suitable “tool” for herself, what looked like a take-away menu. She returned to the other girl, and they continued scouting.
I shouldn’t really call them girls. They looked young, but these two are women—not that I would hazard a guess of their ages.
When the pair noticed an opportunity, they strolled up to a table full of people. They casually laid their shield tools on the table, then seemed to have a little chat with the diners. Bob and I were both too far away to know what happened. The women lingered a while, then left. Bob or I should have approached the people at the table, but we didn’t. I don’t remember why we didn’t, but now I miss the information we might have gained. In any case, this is classic behavior, which we have seen over and over. Perhaps we were a bit bored with it.
The two prowled about the square, then plopped down on the edge of the fountain. Bob sat opposite them, observing. The fountain scene looked ordinary: people relaxing, admiring, resting, chatting. No one would have suspected the spy vs. spy game in progress. Or—were there more games going on around the fountain? Which other ordinary loungers had ulterior motives? We’d never know.
The women looked tired, bored, and defeated. They made another halfhearted round or two of the plaza, then meandered out. The light was fading. Bob and I, too, were tired, after successive days of beating the pavement. We had dinner reservations. So we left.
We did not see this pair steal, but they appeared to be practicing a laid-back, easy-going version of the M.O. of the boy postcard thief, and similar to Kharem’s style. Although they looked bored and tired, they also seemed to be comfortable and experienced, if not proficient.
The old gypsy cardboard trick
These are all expanded uses of the old gypsy cardboard routine, which is still widely in use. Yes, we saw that trick, too. The woman pictured is using cardboard, but just as often, the shield is a piece of newspaper or a map. In Russia, they used puzzles, already put together and glued onto board, which they pretended to offer for sale. They were very, very good with those puzzles, and under them, too.
Barcelona, Spain—We’re walking along Carrer de Ferran, a block off La Rambla. Instead of paying attention to the street scene, I’m looking for a wine shop. Ana is cooking dinner for us and we’re already anticipating the cozy evening. (Dinner turned out to include a sensational artichoke risotto, the cheesy sort that begs for overindulgence.)
So we’re ambling among the eclectic mob on Ferran when half a block ahead I notice a boy unfurl a piece of paper. It could have been a folded brochure or magazine page. He unfurls it with purpose, turns and walks toward me, but on the other side of the street. He’s got my attention. In a few seconds, he reaches the bar directly across the street from me, where people sit behind small tables at the open front. The boy lays his paper on top of a table, waits half a beat, then picks up his paper and scuttles back to the corner where I first noticed him. I see an empty spot on the table.
Carrer de Ferran
I grab Bob, who is ten feet ahead of me. “Postcard thief,” I say, “let’s follow!” I don’t mean someone who steals postcards. I’m referring to the method Kharem demonstrated years ago.
Meanwhile, the thief has met a girl on the corner, and he gives her something. We rush to catch up with them, pulling out cameras that had been retired for the evening. The boy and girl turn down an alley. Bob and I trot to get close, then stay ten or so feet behind them as we strategize. I want to confront them right away since I know they just took something. We close in and I come around the girl’s side.
The pickpocket\’s accomplice
“Give me the wallet,” I say, my hand out. I know she still has it. I know she has no choice. We’re in a plaça now, with lots of people around. I repeat my demand a couple of times.
The girl looks at me like I’m crazy, her fingers to her chest, shoulders hunched. “No have,” she says, or something like that. I put my hand on her. She immediately twirls out of my grasp so I turn to the boy.
“Give it to me,” I say. “I saw you take the wallet.” I hold up my camera. “I have photos,” I lied. “He has video.” I point to Bob, who is filming.
The pickpocket denies that he stole a wallet.
I reach for the boy, and they both take off, full-speed. “Cartaristas!” Bob shouts, mostly as an experiment. His Swedish-accented Spanish reverberates throughout the land. Every head in the plaça turns to look at us. No one seems to look at the fleeing thieves. We let them go.
Backtracking, we return to the bar. The victim is clearly looking for something. He’s only just discovered his loss.
Bar table in open window
“Is your wallet gone?” I ask him in a breathless rush. “I saw the thief who took it! I’ve just been chasing him!”
“No, my mobile is gone,” he said. “It was right here.”
Shit! If I had demanded they give me the phone I would probably have gotten it back!
