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