Chapter 10
It is often the case that Sleep imparts to her dozing companion the answer to some trouble that is vexing him. In this case, she became an accomplice to crime—and to many future crimes—as the issue in question was the most efficient manner to part a gentleman from the burden of his wallet.
While Sleep wrapped her loving arms around young Koksun—sleeping dirty, half-fed, and unwashed in an alley in the capital city of Metinvur—a dream came to him. Not a revelation of something to come. But rather a dream in which he recalled a detail his conscious mind had overlooked both when it observed the event in question and when his troubled mind began searching aimlessly for the solution to what was likely to be a tricky bit of business.
But as is so frequently the case, what befuddles a conscious mind to no end is resolved handily by the unconscious mind.
To Koksun’s delight, he woke up with a sense of confidence, the dream still crisply viewable in his mind—unlike other dreams that slip from the awakened mind’s grasp like slippery soap from oily fingers. In it, he recalled a demonstration of pickpocketing finesse that at the time he had not himself even realized for sure it was an act of such. He had suspected it was an attempt, but the subtle body language that seemed unimportant to him then now appeared to be coming from an instruction manual on magic in which each step of a trick is explained in full detail.
With this in mind, he set off confidently—at least far more confidently than he could have imagined the night before when he had considered himself doomed to fail—towards the location in question so that he could be ready in case the target came early. Also, he had a certain item to get.
As he neared the location, he swung by the area where he had noticed a pulley the day before firmly welded into the side of the massive concrete building. To his shock, he saw not only was it gone, but there wasn’t even the slightest trace it had been there. It was at that moment, he realized that food stand owner was either in outright cahoots with The Triad and their higher-ups or was at least paid off to look the other way on this occasion.
He didn’t have a lot of money with him, but he decided to buy a few morning papers. They were going to come in handy for the idea he had in mind.
It was now around 10 a.m. He suddenly decided maybe it would be best not to wait around in the area in question, as those who would be evaluating would likely be waiting for him as well, and he felt he needed to catch them off guard to the best extent possible. He went back to his box home until around 11:15 a.m., then took off briskly towards his destination.
At around 11:45 a.m., he was a stone’s throw from the food stand, keeping as low a profile as possible, hoping to see his target without being seen himself.
Sure enough, at around 11:58 a.m., he saw the aforementioned gentleman with his red hat, white shirt, and blue pants approaching the food stand. He took off hastily in the general direction.
He only had three papers in his possession, and he had the unpleasant task of looking like a genuine newspaper boy while simultaneously making sure he got to his target with at least one paper left before it was too late.
He took the papers out of his coat pocket once he was around fifteen feet away from the gentleman, who was now surveying several fine cuts of fish and steak.
“PAPER! GET YOUR MORNING PAPER!” Koksun said, feeling terribly unconfident, yet unsure of how he was perceived.
But he knew that there was no turning back now, so like a man driving a wagon down a steep hill he tried to steer it as best he could.
“Would you like a morning paper, sir?”
The gentleman turned around with an annoyed look to see what street vermin was molesting him.
Koksun felt a wave of contradictory emotions when he immediately concluded with near certainty that this was the man who had been a police officer yesterday, although he was now a thick moustache short, not to mention his hair had grown six to eight inches over the night—no small feat. Thus, Koksun had near absolute confirmation that he wouldn’t be stealing from a genuine victim but a pretend victim. The flip side to that coin, Koksun’s mind immediately told him, was that that did not at all imply the job would be easier or that the man would hesitate to yell “Thief!” and have him arrested on the spot.
His heart now thumping with the rapidity of stampeding horses’ hooves, he suppressed his fear as best he could and briefly made direct eye contact with the gentleman, saying, “You see, sir,” before then carefully swiveling around to where he and the gentleman were standing side by side with one another, and then pointed out the headline with utmost interest to the gentleman:
DARING HEIST!
THIEVES LIFT THE GOLD . . . LITERALLY!
“You see, sir,” Koksun continued with utmost interest, standing side by side still with the gentleman, “you get to read all about it in this morning’s edition.” Koksun’s right hand came towards the headline and an interesting illustration there for emphasis, and as he did so, his right arm was pressed lightly against the gentleman’s left side. As Koksun’s hand shot back—having done its job of pointing out the headline to the gentleman—his right shoulder lightly pressed against the gentleman’s left side in the same general area his arm had been a moment earlier, although it wasn’t there now; it had made a quick detour down Pocket Lane and grabbed a quick little something in the blink of an eye. As soon as it had done so, he leaned his shoulder away from the gentleman, swiveled back towards him, and said with feigned annoyance, “Well, sir?”
“Scat, you little sewer rat! What’s another crime to read about anyway? I have better things to do with my time!”
A bystander would have thought the poor boy would have likely been brought to tears, but Koksun had perhaps never heard such kind words in his life. In his mind, he had heard, translated: Not bad, kid.
Koksun went scurrying off and then did in fact manage to sell all three papers and picked up a little extra merchandise from two of his three clients, employing a technique he felt likely to come in handy many, many times. Good, exciting times were surely ahead.