Murder Miscalculated

by Andrew Macrae

  “Stop,” Eddie commanded. I froze in place. “You’ve got the walk and you’ve got the arms, but what about my head. What was my head doing while I walked?”

  “You were looking from side to side,” I answered.

  “Then go back and start again and do the same.”

  I went back and started again, wondering if I was crazy for thinking this old guy could teach me to be a master pickpocket.

  I gave it another try. I walked like Eddie had walked. I swung my arms like Eddie had swung his arms. I looked from side to side in that easy nonchalant way he had.

  That was it. As I passed the dummy on my left I looked sharply to my right as though I had heard or seen something. At the same time, I let my left hand drop down and slip the wallet from the jacket without altering my arm’s swinging motion. I kept walking and didn’t break my stride until I reached the other side of the basement, then turned and held the wallet up for Eddie to see. He laughed when he saw the wide smile of triumph on my face.

  “Very good, Kid, very good. You see, it’s all a matter of misdirection. When you look to your right quickly like that, anyone watching you, anyone even slightly aware of you, is going to look over there, too. They can’t help it.”

  That was the start of my training. I spent countless hours in that basement, walking past the dummy and taking its wallet over and over again. I learned to take a wallet from outside pockets and inside pockets. I learned how to scissor my fingers when plucking a wallet so that there was no visible movement in the tendons of my wrist. I graduated from working with the dummy to using Eddie as my victim. He’d put his wallet in one pocket or another without my watching and I had to find a way to steal it without his noticing, lest his hand come down on my wrist like iron.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” he’d say as he tightened his fingers. “That’s what a pair of steel handcuffs are going to feel like if you get caught.” He let go, and I massaged my wrist. “Remember that, Kid. If you get caught, it’s all over.”

  His voice faded from my thoughts, and I found myself massaging my wrist as though Eddie had grabbed hold of it through almost twenty years of time.

  “So this is where you took yourself, Greg.”

  Barbara’s voice brought me back to the present. I turned and saw her standing in the doorway.

  “Lynn told me about your visitor this morning and what he wants you to do.” She peered at me with her wise eyes. “Are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

  “Cochran needs my help, Barbara.”

  “I like Cochran as much as you do, Greg, but is helping him really the reason you are doing this? Or is it because you miss the excitement of being a pickpocket?”

  I found myself unable to answer. Barbara walked over to me. She gently took both my hands and peered at my face with concern. She is at least a foot shorter than me, but to me it felt as if she was looking down at a child.

  “Never mind,” she said. “We all have to do what we’re meant to do. Maybe this is what you are meant to do, or maybe it isn’t. Only time will tell.” Barbara reached up and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I trust you to do the right thing.”

  She looked around the room, and my eyes followed hers. “Look at those posters, Greg. Relics of a time long ago, back when we wore flowers in our hair, bracelets, bells and bare feet, and we thought we could change the world.”

  The faded posters overlapped and covered the walls, leaving little of the original peeling wallpaper exposed. They dated from the late ‘60s through the mid-‘70s and were filled with pop-art images, psychedelic flowers and young people wearing bellbottom pants, long hair and headbands. Several posters were stridently anti-war, anti-establishment and pretty much anti-everything else except free love.

  “You know, Greg, back then my store served as a meeting place and a way station for the civil rights and anti-war movements.” There was pride in Barbara’s voice. “Oh, the times we had here. Everyone who was anyone in those days spent the night here at one time or another. On some nights every room in the building was filled with people. There was music everywhere, all kinds of food being cooked and planning for marches and protests at all hours of the day.” Her smile broadened. “That’s when The Book Nook began staying open all night.” She swept her arm around. “If these rooms could talk, what stories they would tell.”

  She and I stood a minute in silence, listening to the past as it whispered to us, and then Barbara gave my hand a squeeze. “Well, I’d better let you get back to your practicing. You’ve probably got a lot to relearn.” She turned and left the room, blowing me a kiss as she did. I listened to her soft steps on the old wood floor outside the room as she made her way back down the hallway.

  I turned back to the dressmaker’s dummy and adjusted the way the jacket hung on its shoulders. I ran my hands up and down the jacket while looking at the ceiling, at the posters on the wall, anywhere but at the jacket. I let my fingers explore each pocket surreptitiously, probing, removing the wallet from one pocket, placing it back in another and then repeating the process over and over, letting my muscle memory regain its surety.

  Tomorrow morning I would take on the role Fast Eddie had taken with me and begin teaching Cochran the skills needed to pickpockets. I meant what I’d told his boss. I was confident that I could teach him to do what he needed in four weeks, three if he was a quick study. I was glad Barbara trusted me to do the right thing, and I hoped Lynn felt the same. I only wished I knew it, too.

  Chapter Five

  Early the next morning I walked a couple of blocks from Little Knickerbocker Lane into the morning rush hour bustling along Market Street. I joined the river of pedestrians and flowed with them until I came to where I was able to catch one of the vintage streetcars that ran on the F Line. It was painted a bold yellow and blue with a plaque that told me it had first hit the streets in the1940s. The interior was historically accurate to the era, as well, and smelled of leather and varnish. I rode standing up, holding tightly to the leather strap that hung from the overhead rail as we rolled and swayed across town and down toward the wharves. Above us the connectors on the roof snapped and clacked along the high-voltage overhead lines.

  I got off the streetcar at Battery Street across and down the street from Wykowski’s Gym. The buildings in that part of the city dated from the heyday of the sea trade. They were made of red brick and stone, three and four stories high, and sat right up against the sidewalks. Their mullioned, sash-and-counterweight windows had been replaced with energy efficient smoked glass panes that didn’t open. The whole neighborhood, once the realm of stevedores and longshoremen, has become a high-tech ghetto, a place where caffeinated young workers slave over computer workstations and dream of winning the stock option lottery.

  Except Wykowski’s Gym.

  Wykowski’s Gym has squatted in the same location since the turn of the last century, and it’s held fast to the old ways as if in defiance of the changes around it. The short, stout building boasts elaborate deco designs and is made of gleaming, white Portland cement. Along the side of the building I saw faded traces of painted advertisements still visible on its walls, promoting prizefights fought almost eighty years ago. I crossed the street and went inside.

  A very fit man and a very fit woman, both wearing t-shirts so bright and unwrinkled that I half suspected they’d been ironed, were behind the desk in front of the main exercise room. They greeted me with bright smiles and found the passes arranged by Talbot for Lynn and me. They directed me to room 202, up the stairs and first door on the right, only after giving me an obligatory five-minute spiel about the joys of working out at Wykowski’s.

  I escaped their glow and navigated my way across the polished cement floor toward the stairs. I passed through a haphazard collection of heavy, clanking gym equipment, all in use by sweating men and women in gym clothes, towels around their shoulders, plastic water bottles by their sides. I went up the stairs, found room 202 and knocked. A muffled voice from inside invited me in
.

  Cochran was sitting on a bench on one side of the room with a small barbell in each hand. I watched him finish his curls. After a few seconds he put down the weights and wiped his face and hands with a towel.

  “Greg! It’s great to see you. Thanks for helping me with this. I couldn’t think of anyone else who could do it.” We shook hands.

  Cochran, as I should have expected, was dressed in clothes suitable for exercising, sweatpants and a t-shirt. Still, his appearance took me by surprise, as it was the first time I’d seen him in anything other than a conservative business suit. Without it he didn’t look like the squeaky-clean FBI agent I knew him to be. His blond hair was longer than it had been the last time I saw him, not well trimmed, and he needed a shave. Cochran saw me looking him over and laughed.

  “Kind of a change, isn’t it?” He held up a finger, then crossed to the door and opened it, peered out and closed it again. He turned back to me with an embarrassed smile. “I know, it seems silly, but I’ve been building up an undercover identity for the past four months, and I have to be careful not to blow it.” He motioned to a chair in the corner of the small room. I sat down, and he sat back on the weight bench. “Did Talbot explain what we’re trying to do?”

  “Not exactly, just some nonsense about a data card in a wallet.”

  Cochran gave a short laugh. That laugh told me all I needed to know as to how he felt about his new boss. “Yes, that sounds like Mister Special Agent Talbot. Everything on a need-to -know basis, and apparently only he needs to know.”

  “He told me Riley is back east teaching a course.” The news of this had surprised me. “He made it sound like Riley was in the doghouse.”

  Cochran made a face. “That’s his assignment. Two hours a day teaching a class on the fundamentals of investigations, and nothing to do the rest of the time. He’s too senior, and he’s cracked too many big cases to be forced out of the Bureau, but they can make him miserable enough to quit. I’m afraid that my boss—my old boss, that is—stepped on too many toes.”

  That wasn’t difficult to believe. Riley had pulled all kinds of strings and bent quite a few corners getting me a clean record. Of course, I like to think I earned it. I started to ask Cochran more about what happened to Riley, but the uncomfortable look on his face caused me to decide to wait until later. I changed the subject to the matter at hand.

  “So what is the story? What are you and Talbot up to, and what am I doing here?”

  Cochran leaned back against the wall. “Ever hear of a guy named John Wolfe?”

  I searched my memory. “He’s that financier who ran away to the Cayman Islands or someplace like that. Looted his bank and got away with millions.”

  “It’s closer to a billion, but that’s about right. He loaded the bank up with sub-prime mortgages and sold them off to other banks. Lots of banks did that, but at least they kept a veneer of legality to it. Wolfe didn’t bother. His outfit had teams of people faking documents and cooking the books. So far, twenty-seven people have been convicted of fraud, and some are getting serious jail time.

  “But Wolfe got away.”

  “Yes, it’s amazing what a few million in bribes will buy you. In his case it bought him a twenty-four hour warning, a home on a Caribbean island and a guarantee against extradition.”

  “Okay, that’s who. What about why?”

  Cochran chewed his lip. “I’m not certain how much I can tell you without the wrath of Talbot descending.”

  “He’s that bad?”

  “It’s like he’s looking for a reason to write me up. Kruger and Miss Yee have already jumped ship. They transferred together to another team down in LA.”

  Agents Kruger and Yee comprised the rest of the FBI team with whom I had worked last year.

  “Okay, I won’t press you, but you’re going to have to give me details about the actual operation. I need to know as much as possible about who you are targeting and what the physical set-up will be.”

  “Do you really think you can teach me to lift a wallet without being caught?”

  “Talbot tells me we have a month. I don’t see why not, but it depends on the set-up, so give.”

  Cochran took a breath and dove into the story. “The target works for Wolfe. He’s a trusted aide who hasn’t been indicted yet, so he’s able to fly into the city once a month from that island in the Caribbean. Wolfe is smart. He doesn’t use email or call anyone on the telephone, so there’s no way to set up a tap. Instead, he relies on this courier to carry those data cards.”

  “Who does he take them to?”

  “Wolfe still controls a network of interlocking corporations here in the States. The courier takes the data card to Wolfe’s stateside lawyer, and he distributes them. We believe those cards contain enough information for us to indict and extradite Wolfe.”

  I started to ask why Talbot didn’t simply arrest Wolfe’s lawyer, but Cochran was ahead of me. “Per Talbot, the lawyer, a guy named Dennis Metcalf, is off limits for us. Talbot says he doesn’t want to contaminate the investigation by violating lawyer-client confidentiality. So that leaves the courier as the only avenue for us to get the data card. It’s going to be tricky. The courier doesn’t take a cab from the airport. He uses a private limo service. The same car and driver picks him up at the hotel in the morning, and he goes about whatever tasks Wolfe has assigned for him.”

  “How confident are you that the card will be in the courier’s wallet?”

  “Talbot is one hundred percent certain.”

  “And you?”

  “Whoever it is that he’s got working as a mole inside Wolfe’s organization is close enough to the inner operation that his info is good.”

  Cochran took a drink from his water bottle and then continued. “We’re thinking we can lift his wallet as he leaves his hotel, before he gets into the limo. The thing is,” he leaned toward me, “it’s critical to our plan that both the courier and Wolfe are confident the wallet was stolen by a street thief wanting a wallet, not by someone like us after the data card.”

  He gestured to his unkempt hair and the stubble on his face. “That’s why I’ve been undercover the past few months. I’ve been building an identity as a small-time sneak thief. If Wolfe’s people start checking things out, there will be enough people around who will identify me as such.” He gave a slight smile. “Of course, I’ll have to keep low afterwards. Wolfe is known to play for keeps.”

  I studied him anew. “Cochran, you have a devious mind. Now what do you say we get to work?”

  I began by showing Cochran the basic concepts of picking pockets, using the same words that Fast Eddie had used all those years ago.

  “It’s all about misdirection. You have to give the mark something else to notice. That can be bumping into them, a loud noise, a pretty girl, a couple of people getting into a shouting match. Watch, the first time I saw Fast Eddie in action, this is what he did.” I got down on one knee and pretended to tie my shoe.

  “Then, when the mark is next to you,” I stood up. “You bump into them and in the process take his wallet.”

  “Is that what you suggest I do?”

  “No, there’s too much chance of missing him if he veers around you. That’s no problem when you’re targeting strangers, but it won’t work for you.”

  “So?”

  I took off my coat. It was the same sports coat I’d practiced with the day before. I handed it to Cochran. “Here, put this on.” He did.

  “Does it fit?” I pulled the shoulders tight and straightened the lapels, moving around him like a tailor fitting a customer.

  “Pretty much.” Cochran seemed amused by my activity. I stepped back.

  “Did you see what I was doing?”

  “Not really. What were you doing?”

  I held out my hand. There was a slim billfold in it. I held out my other hand. A silver pen and matching mechanical pencil were in it. Understanding dawned in Cochran’s eyes.

  “Those were in the coat, and
you took them from me while you were moving around me.”

  I put the matching pen and pencil back into the jacket but kept the billfold. “Yes. Of course, I had the advantage of knowing where they were. That’s really the first step. There are even ways of getting the mark to show you himself. It’s pretty hard to steal something if you don’t know where it is.”

  “Our man carries his wallet in the left inside pocket of his coat.”

  “Don’t tell me, Talbot’s pet mole again?”

  “Who else?”

  “Okay,” I said. “That makes it easier already. Let’s try that.” I put the wallet back into the coat pocket on the left side, placing Cochran’s hand on the breast of the coat so that he could feel the wallet and confirm that it was in place. “Now watch what I do.”

  I went through the motions again of adjusting the coat, walking around him and touching and pulling. Cochran’s eyes followed my hands carefully. As I began tugging at the lapels, he grabbed my left hand. “There! You’ve got it in your hand now.”

  I slowly opened my fingers and showed him that they were empty. He checked my right hand but could see that it was empty, too. Cochran felt for the wallet through his coat. “But it’s not there. You have it, don’t you?”

  I smiled and reached into my back pocket. I handed him the wallet. “I cheated,” I admitted. “I never put it back in, only made it seem that way.”

  “But I felt it.”

  “You felt it, but I had my fingers inside the jacket and was holding it in place. As soon as you felt it and confirmed that it was back in the pocket, I let it drop down and caught it with my other hand.”

  Cochran shook his head. “I don’t think I’m ever going to learn to do this.”

  I gave him a comforting pat on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Cochran. I’ll make a thief of you yet.”

  Chapter Six

  “Oh, no. This won’t do at all.”