When I stopped for couscous in a Tunisian cafe, I stepped into the toilet and counted the money. It was a decent take, almost a thousand francs.
I wondered if the serene young musician had lost his composure. I hoped not. But he really was so careless and the temptation was too great. Even artists should show a little responsibility.
~ * ~
The final incident pertains to the current state of my craft. Forgive me if I complain. It dismays me to watch the people in the trade today, especially the younger ones. They are clumsy and unprepared. They have no self-respect.
Practice, much less real apprenticeship, never occurs to them. One need only see them work. One morning they decide to become a pickpocket, that evening they grab for a wallet. These impostors have no idea what is required. They lack subtlety. Instead of skill they depend on violence. If their victim protests they pull a razor or knife. They pick on the elderly, on single women. They work at night. Naturally, their takings are small, so they double their efforts. Soon everyone feels frightened.
In my opinion, this decadence parallels the decline in the culture. We French are a democratic culture built on aristocratic forms. Hugo warned against erosion, Spengler predicted it. Who listened? Now the debasement of form has become a popular pastime, a disease we import. We send the sun to the west, it sends darkness back.
No doubt some will express astonishment to hear a pickpocket deploring the loss of values, quoting Hugo and Spengler. Such incredulity merely reflects the decline to which I refer. Nowadays we presume only intellectuals and the upper crust are literate, and the latter I seriously doubt. It wasn’t always that way. In my generation, even thieves and pimps read books, went to the theatre, listened to Mozart as well as Piaf. I knew a burglar who was a closet poet. Genet became a famous author. So much for stereotypes.
But occasionally a young pickpocket completely surprises me. I recall one day when I had worked the tourist crowds on the Right Bank. Tourists are easy marks for the most part, especially Americans. I always know where an American keeps his wallet. He touches it too often. He is so excited to arrive in the City of Lights that a kind of elation overcomes him and he neglects to think. The brochures warn him but he ignores the precautions.
He is a strangely naive creature, this American. Everything takes him by surprise. He expresses great optimism and is continually disappointed. He considers pessimism a weakness. But he is well organized. In that respect he surpasses even a German. Such a view contradicts orthodox notions, but it is true.
On the day to which I refer, my work had gone especially well. It was the height of tourist season. Sidewalks along the Rue de Rivoli were crowded. Wallets leaped from their pockets. My fingers had never felt so nimble. Near the Louvre, I went from one mark to another. It was like picking grapes. At one point I went home and emptied my pockets, then returned to the street.
In the mid-afternoon I passed an hour in a cafe. Things were going so well, I had become nervous and needed to calm my nerves. I went back to work and found nothing had changed. I was at the top of my game. Nothing was safe. My fingertips had eyes.
Normally I keep a sharp watch for undercover cops. They are easy enough to spot, like unmarked police cars. Still, one must look for them. Some are cagey and hide behind posts or doorways. That day I felt so confident that when I saw one standing near the Hotel Meurice, I passed behind him and took his wallet.
Such insolence! How audacious! I never would have dared but was possessed by a kind of euphoria, like a golfer who follows one hole-in-one with another. My only regret was that I could not loiter to watch him discover the casualty. I felt tempted to approach him and ask for change just to see his face. But I showed some common sense and resisted. I had had my pleasure. Why tempt fate?
At the intersection of Rue de Rivoli and Place des Pyramides I saw a young man bungle a pick. The pigeon was a stout German tourist wearing loose trousers and a Hawaiian shirt. He started across the street when the signal was still red and jerked the young man’s hand. That sort of mistake denotes a novice at work. Never depend on a mark to behave predictably. The German jumped back to the curb and yelled, pointing into the crowd.
But the young man had disappeared. On that score, he performed admirably. I followed him along the sidewalk for several blocks. He turned right onto Rue d’Alger, leaned against a plastered wall, and lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking.
When I approached him he almost bolted. He thought I was an undercover flic. He denied the entire affair, claimed he hadn’t been near the Place des Pyramides all day. He was adamant. In that way, at least, he showed good judgment. He had reason to be afraid. He easily could have ended up in jail.
I smoked a cigarette with him. He calmed down. We talked. He was a handsome kid, dark hair and blue eyes with long lashes. He had the angular and delicate boyish features so many women seem to favor in men. At the same time, his bearing exuded a certain brazen confidence that appealed to me. He wore a gold earring in his left ear.
It turned out the young man was from Lyon, had recently arrived in Paris, was determined not to work in a deadly nine-to-five job. I took him over to the Au Chien Qui Fume on the Rue du Pont Neuf and bought him dinner. He evidently had not eaten in some time.
Afterward we walked in the Jardin des Tuileries and I gave him some pointers. It was basic information: how to recognize an undercover cop, not to try anything on an elevator where there’s no escape route, never work the same place two days in a row. These I had learned from Moses Marchant long ago. For me they had become second nature. Repeating them brought back fond memories of Moses, and I began to consider taking on the young man — his name was Sebastien — as an apprentice, much as Moses had done for me.
But something Sebastien said turned me against the idea. He said he intended to get rich quick and retire to Corsica. Before the age of thirty, he said. He was quite serious. He wanted to live on a boat and lie in the sun all day sipping pastis.
If there is a single greatest danger in my trade, it is greed. A greedy person takes absurd risks, puts himself in peril too often. Inevitably, he gets caught. Before that happens, he is apt to hurt someone. He is in too much of a hurry. Usually such impatience results from ambition and youth. But ambition can be too large and youth can fail to mature. That dangerous mixture was the weakness I detected in Sebastien. In the end, I kept my thoughts to myself and wished him luck. We parted by the garden gate at Place de la Concorde and I walked home.
The day had passed magnificendy. Never had I worked with such precision or felt so much the master of my craft. As for Sebastien, I had not let nostalgic sentiment carry me away. I had made a wise decision. I whistled all the way home. There I put Bach’s Violin Concerto in A Minor on the stereo, opened a bottle of La Bacholle Camay, lit a cigarette, and stretched out on the sofa.
As soon as I relaxed, the most unusual feeling came over me. I sat up and went to my coat, which lay draped over the back of a chair. I reached into the pocket where I had put my afternoon earnings. The pocket was empty.
At first you could have tipped me over with a feather. I felt dizzy, forgot to breathe, took one step sideways, staggered, caught myself. Once I found my breath, I fell into a rage. I paced up and down swearing. I pounded my fist and slapped my thighs furiously. Such an outrage! I cursed Sebastien, then cursed myself. I kicked the door, the sofa, the chairs. I even bit my fist like a madman. It was quite a scene, with no one to see it.
Finally, I settled down. For a while I stood by the window shaking my head with disbelief. I watched the passersby below on the street. I smoked a cigarette. I smoked another.
Then I began to laugh. It was marvelous. He had really fooled me, that young man, a remarkable performance.
In the end, I lay back on the sofa, finished my wine, and listened to Bach.
I had lost half a day’s take. But what can you do? The world is full of thieves.
<
~ * ~
JOHN PEYTON CO
OKE
After You’ve Gone
from Stranger
I loved it so much I was cradling it in my hands, fondling its stock, bracing its chamber between my thumbs, staring into its barrel like you’d look into a lover’s eyes, in search of some kind of truth. It stared back at me deeply and gave me the ultimate truth: Yeah, you got it right, Grant. I’m your trusty Glock. You can count on me. I’m going to kill you.
I kissed its muzzle. My tongue tasted oil; and I could smell powder traces on my fingers. I’d cleaned it out after being down at the firing range all afternoon, blasting at all those black hanging targets, trying to get rid of all my black thoughts but only making them blacker. It was all I could do to keep from turning my Glock on myself then and there.
I didn’t want to go out that way, in front of everybody. I wanted to have some privacy and leave a note — three notes, maybe, addressed to different people and taped up on my bathroom mirror. One to my landlord, saying sorry about the mess and take what you want. Another to Captain Feliciano, telling him thanks for your support when the going got tough, but face the facts, guy, I’m a screwup. The last to Mom, saying love you lots and none of this is your fault, even if you did put Poncho to sleep.
I loved my Glock so much I was laying four of its six inches on my tongue, forming my lips around it, hooking my thumbs around its safe-action trigger. There’s no such thing as a safety catch on a Glock — you have to apply direct pressure in the right spot, or the trigger acts like a safety and refuses to fire.
My thumb was in the right spot. The rest ought to be cake.
I was telling myself that if I was a real man, I’d do it.
I was sweating bullets, staring down at the trigger cross-eyed. The last thing I’d see would be the knuckly creases on my thumb parting ever so slightly.
I depressed the safe action so it wouldn’t be safe anymore — and I wouldn’t be depressed anymore.
I did it. I squeezed the trigger.
It should have fired. But it didn’t. It jammed on me.
For the first time in my career, my Glock had let me down.
And now my hands were shaking and my heart was beating so fast I thought I was going to have a heart attack. If I tried again, I was going to screw it up. And I didn’t want to fail.
I set the gun down. My stomach churned in disgust. With fumbling fingers, I tapped out a cigarette and lit it on the third match. It felt good to have that smoke in my lungs. The nicotine got my mind to thinking — maybe the ol’ Glock was giving me a sign, that I needed help, that something was terribly wrong with me. And you don’t argue with a Glock.
I didn’t know where to begin. The brass always encouraged us to use the departmental psychiatrists — but everyone knew what that was about. I couldn’t count on total confidentiality. Whatever was wrong with me might get leaked to IA. It might get subpoenaed in some future court case if my policing skills were called into question, and such a case was not outside the realm of possibility. It might simply get spread around as interprecinct gossip: Officer Grant’s a loose cannon. Yeah, you can’t trust Tom Grant as your backup. The guy’s nuts. Let’s find, him a nice desk job and pull him off the streets.
I couldn’t turn to the department. No sir, not on my life.
Facedown on the kitchen table in front of me lay the Village Voice. One of the classified ads on the back page caught my eye:
LONELY? DEPRESSED? SUICIDAL?
CALL THE 24-HOUR HELP LINE!
555-HELP 555-HELP 555-HELP
It looked like what I needed. Help was only a phone call away. Even though it was two in the morning, somebody would be there on the other end of the line to talk me down.
I picked up the phone and called.
“Hello?” A man’s voice, exceedingly mild, somewhat sleepy.
“Um, yes, is this the help line?” I croaked.
“Yeah, sure.” He cleared his throat. “How can I help you?”
“I — I just tried to kill myself.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“What happened? Why didn’t it work?”
“My gun jammed.”
“Oh, you’re using a gun? What kind?”
“What kind? Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters. What kind of gun do you own?”
“Well, it’s a Glock.”
“Mmm,” said the guy on the help line. “What model?”
“It’s a seventeen-L. Semiauto, six-inch barrel.”
“What does that use? Nine-millimeters? Forty-caliber Smith & Wessons? Or forty-fives?”
“Nine-millimeters,” I said.
“How many in the clip?”
“I’ve got seventeen in the clip and one in the chamber. The one in the chamber jammed. I’m going to have to start all over.”
“How much does a gun like that cost?” the help line wanted to know.
“I don’t know what it costs now. I got mine, what, four years ago, when I joined the academy. It set me back about eight hundred.”
“The academy?” he said. “You mean the police academy?”
“Yes, I’m a policeman.”
“How interesting.”
“Listen, I’m serious about this. I’m going to take my Glock apart, clean it all up, reload it, and try again. Probably one chance in a billion that it’ll jam again.”
“Probably,” the help line said.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Aren’t you going to try to talk me out of it?”
“Why should I?”
“I thought that’s what you were there for.”
“If you want to kill yourself and you thought I was going to try to talk you out of it, why would you call?” he asked.
“I don’t follow,” I said.
“Why don’t you do it right now, while I’m on the phone?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Talk to me while you’re unjamming your gun or whatever it is you have to do. I’ll wait. Get it all nice and ready, and then do it. Just do it. I want to hear it.”
“Listen, maybe I dialed the wrong number, buddy.”
“No, you didn’t. You dialed five-five-five-H-E-L-P, didn’t you? That’s me. I’m the help line. You got what you wanted.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Who cares whether you understand? You’re about to kill yourself. In a few minutes, no one’s going to give a damn about you anymore. You’ll be gone, and we’ll still be here. It’s not for you to understand. Are you beginning to see my logic?”
“Not exactly.”
“How are you going to do it? Side of the head? In the mouth? Through the chest?”
“In the mouth.”
“Good,” he said. “That’s best. Side of the head, there’s too much chance you’ll turn yourself into a vegetable. Through the chest, you’re not guaranteed to hit the heart. You might only wound yourself, pass out, and wind up in the hospital. “
“I don’t need your advice,” I said. “I want help.”
“Help? You want help? What do you think I’m giving you?”
“Not that kind of help.”
“I didn’t specify what kind of help in my ad, now, did I?”
“No, but—”
“Everyone always assumes I’m here to rescue them. I’m not. You want to kill yourself, that’s fine by me. I can’t abide suicides who get halfway there and then can’t finish the job. Some of them only need a little push to be on their way. So I put the number in the paper. I want them to call me at that moment of crisis, when all they need is a little encouragement.”
“You’re sick.”
“Ho-ho!” he said. “You’re the one who’s already tried to kill himself once this evening, and you want to do it again. Which one of us do you think is sick?”
“Wait a minute,” I said, and began to laugh. “I see what you’re doing. I can see right through you. You’re smart, you know that? You really take the cake. You’r
e using reverse psychology, just like my mother used to do when I was a kid.”
“Oh?” the help line said. “Just how am I doing that?”
“By pretending you want me to go ahead and do it, acting like you get some kind of kick out of other people dying while you hang there on the line. You think all we’re doing is feeling sorry for ourselves and looking for someone to hold our hands and tell us it’s okay, tell us we’re somebody special, tell us there’s a brighter day dawning somewhere over the rainbow.”
The Best American Mystery Stories 2003 Page 7