Doug Allyn - The Best American Mystery Stories 2003

Miranda stood then, and gathered herself and the dry cleaning. She walked over to Duff and handed him his shirts, but one. He stood as if struck deaf and dumb.

“Go call an ambulance, honey.”

She knelt next to the young man who lay wide-eyed on their lawn with his hand wetly to his stomach. She cradled his head in her lap, gently straightened his wig, and pressed a clean white shirt to the dark wound.

“Go on, Duff.”

And Duff went dumbly. The front door closed behind him, and the sirens came louder.

“I’m dying, aren’t I?” said Josh.

“Yes,” said Miranda, who believed in being truthful at times like this.

“I had to see you again.”

“I wish that you hadn’t.”

“The first volume,” said Josh, “is yours to keep, and, I think, I love you.”

Miranda picked up the book from where it had sprawled on the lawn, and with it, the letter and all it contained.

“Thank you, Josh,” she said. She brushed gently the blue leatherette. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

But she knew that everything would not. Those were only words from a song she used to know. Miranda once more touched his face. She held him as she would Duff Jr. until an ambulance came and took the boy away. She went inside, carrying Aardvark to Aztec. On the empty front lawn, a blue-white shirt, darkly stained, forgotten.

Miranda made a pot of coffee for Duff, and for the cops when they arrived. In the living room they asked Duff the perfunctory questions, sympathetic of a man in defense of his wife and his home. One had played ball with Duff back at High. They talked. The old, good times. The wanton state of kids today. Firepower and home defense. A compliment on the elaborate martial pattern of the sofa.

Miranda, meanwhile, sat on the back steps, thinking about Australia, its climate, economy, quality of education. She smoked one of Duff s cigarettes, the first volume of the encyclopedia in her lap, heavy with facts and possibility. She thought and smoked, and carefully burned the handwritten letter in the barbecue grill, gently feeding it into the small blue flame one page at a time.

From Measures of Poison

My name is Christian Richelieu. A good name, all in all, and famous on both counts, though neither appreciably influenced my life.

That I don’t believe in a Messiah practically goes without saying. The notion that a Saviour will rescue us from loneliness and despair would amuse me if not for the misery. But the yearning I see etched on troubled faces in the street is sincere and I don’t laugh.

The cardinal at least was French, like me, and being a politician and a pragmatist, he did not wait but sought solace in this life. Perhaps he found it. Who knows? Still, he was first a great moralist, then a tireless sinner, and I am neither.

I am simply amoral.

So much for my name, which is more interesting than my appearance. In looks I am suitably ordinary, an advantage in my profession, and that’s all that needs saying.

I have been a pickpocket since I was a boy when Moses Marchant taught me the trade. A native of Algiers, Moses had reached his twilight years by then. He was a stoop-shouldered pied-noir who emigrated to Paris just after the war and lived in the same rundown tenement building as my parents near Place d’Italie. He smelled of patchouli and belched garlic and smoked a filthy clay pipe. He muttered constantly.

Moses lived on the floor above us. I used to watch him in the stairwell, shuffling up the steps in a cloud of tobacco smoke mingled with an incomprehensible amalgam of mumbled Arabic and French. My parents were young and my grandparents were dead, so Moses represented for me that decrepitude of old age so difficult to comprehend in youth. Indoors and out, he wore a tattered burgundy fez.

I must have been fifteen or sixteen when Moses took an interest in me. Cataracts had ruined his eyesight and he was crippled from the arthritis that put him out of business, but he was a good teacher, very thorough and demanding. If I sometimes seem critical of the way others behave nowadays, it’s because Moses taught me that pride in one’s work gives purpose in a world abandoned by both God and man. He preached that tenet tirelessly and I’ve never found reason to disagree.

Back then the practitioners of my trade respected the craft. In the argot, we called ourselves voleurs à la tire, which means “pulling thieves.” When we met one another in the street we tilted our heads in mutual and silent recognition. We were courteous. In those days the civilized world had not yet begun its decline. Even a pickpocket took pride in his profession. He acquired his skills by hard work. It required self-discipline. Initiation demanded a price, a commitment. Frankly, we considered our vocation a kind of art.

In the beginning, Moses made me practice in his apartment. Day after day I played truant from school, learning the tricks on a dummy constructed by stuffing an old suit with a blanket. Then Moses pulled on a red velvet smoking jacket I had never seen before — it smelled of mold and mothballs — and I practiced on him. It was tedious work, very demanding. Moses was especially critical and boxed my ears when my attention wandered. “Learn to concentrate!” he scolded me. “A man who controls his mind controls his destiny.” Naturally, this was difficult. The adolescent mind is a wild horse. But I tried and with time my ears became less tender. The idea of controlling my destiny appealed to me. Even now, after all this time, it attracts me.

After six months, Moses began to drill me in public. He insisted I pick his pockets on the Métro, in the markets, on street corners. Finally he permitted a real pick. He called it my baptism.

I lifted the wallet of a hulking giant of a man in Gare St. Lazare during rush hour. He was running for a train and Moses stepped in front of him. The man tripped and fell, cursing. I helped him to his feet and he angrily pushed me away. In the men’s room I opened the wallet and found six hundred francs, a faded picture of his wife, the telephone numbers of several prostitutes listed with their going rates, and a packet of condoms. I kept everything but the wallet and photo, though his wife was not a bad-looking woman, with blond curls and a sad smile.

That was long ago. I will turn sixty-three next month. The work is exacting but does not wear a person down like physical labor or an office job with its politics. I could retire today if I wished. I have been careful with my money, certainly more careful than others.

To tell my life’s story would take too long. Besides, most of it is humdrum, the same as any other life. I was married but we argued and divorced. My two children are grown now. They lead conventional lives and I see them but they have their own concerns. I live in an apartment. I have been betrayed in love and have acted badly myself. I am quite selfish. I vacation on the coast, watch my weight, eat fish instead of meat, and exercise by walking in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Gravity has exacted its customary dues and my lower back often aches. My prostate acts up, nothing unusual at my age. I live alone but have a mistress who complains and several close friends. I appreciate good wine and enjoy music. I lead a quiet life. I don’t expect much from others and have not been disappointed. So, as I said, it is an ordinary life in almost every respect.

It is the work — my work — which is of interest. No doubt, it seems romantic in a way. No boss, no set hours. Plenty of time to think or daydream. Living by one’s wits, a real challenge. While all that is true, it is still work. It is my profession, my trade, full of demands like any other. I do not let myself forget that. The person who forgets, who becomes lazy, who practices the craft by habit, lands in jail. He becomes his own victim.