1973 to 1974, New York, New York

By M. I. Clubb

A few years ago, police in Minnesota arrested a dentist and his wife for conspiracy to commit grand larceny. They had hired a talented shoplifter to make various – shall we say – acquisitions on their behalf. This gentleman had provided for them an expansive lifestyle at a fraction of its retail cost. When I read the details, I thought to myself: Now there was a career path to which I could bring both predilection and experience.

Between the ages of 12 and 15 I engaged in regular thievery from various stores, but always with the same object: books. I loved to read, but buying books was a bit steep on a school kid’s allowance. If I wanted to get the newest comic books and the crispest paperbacks before the public library got its copies, my only choice was to “liberate” them from the capitalist grasp of the bookseller.

It was a mark of the crazy thinking prevailing in the hippie days that a purveyor of literature was viewed as a greedy obstacle to free education for all. Abbie Hoffman wrote Steal This Book to make that goofy point, and it did not take much for youngsters like myself to latch onto this thin rationalization.

Over time I did realize that this was actuarially flawed as an approach to gathering property. Putting moral considerations aside, crime does not pay for the simple reason you need 100 percent success to avoid severe penalty. But for a youngster it was much too attractive a way to a) get what you want and b) get a huge charge out of the experience.

As long as I stayed in the game, I invested a lot of energy into sharpening my technique. While the basic formula of limiting yourself to quick, efficient movements always applied, I developed a number of creative variations to adapt to shifting circumstances. I hesitated to apply for trademarks for obvious reasons, but it is fair to say I left my signature in the field.

Stealing paperbacks is not an exact science because the thickness of the individual book is a factor. The more slender books will go smoothly into a well-cut trousers pocket without the corner peeking out of the side. However, it may show a rectangular outline to the world, more or less pronounced depending on the cloth. If you walk out of a store with your left profile facing the clerk, the bulge in your right pocket is not a concern unless there is a prominent convexity, as in carrying a tennis ball.

A slender book can also make it into an inside jacket pocket without being visible from the front or side. The fit into such a pocket is usually tight, so the object is to get the book smoothly into the cloth sheath using one crosswise motion with your back to the clerk or other shoppers. If it snags at all, don’t fight it by jamming, just abort and try again in a bit.

Since you never want to be noticed holding a book one second and having empty hands the next, the trick is to take two copies of the book from its shelf or receptacle in one motion so you seem to have a single volume. Facing the shelf, put one in each hand, move your right hand across your body to place that book in your left inside pocket, then turn toward the clerk with the remaining copy in your left hand. Take another look inside the book, then close it, hold it up in the air purposefully for a moment, let your hand sag a little, put a quizzical look on your face, give a barely perceptible shrug, and finally replace it where you found it on the bookshelf.

Anyone watching this charade will think you were almost ready to buy it and vetoed your impulse at the last moment. You are home free.

For comic books I usually favored the under-the-shirt method. This requires wearing a button-down shirt. With your back to the clerk as usual, you slowly undo the buttons, leaving only the top and bottom fastened. Then the comic book slides easily under the shirt with the hand motion across the body. It is usually advisable to wait before redoing the buttons until you are no longer standing alongside the comic-book rack.

Ironically, the only time I was ever caught was on a day I had not stolen anything. Stupidly, I still had in my pocket a book I had pilfered the previous day, figuring it was well-thumbed enough to prove prior ownership. When I dithered too long in the area of the detective novels I favored, one of the managers pounced. He grabbed me, patted me down and found the book. My protestations that I had come in with it – ironically true, but more ironically irrelevant – went unheeded, deservedly I suppose. Still, they let me off with a warning.

In some of the smaller establishments, I would have to linger around for long periods until I could get an unnoticed moment. This usually involved befriending the employees, gaining their trust by playing a harmless geek who has no life and becomes a fixture around the place. To assume that role without ever drawing suspicion to yourself calls for thespian abilities of a high order.

Which brings us to my crowning achievement. My most masterful performance ever. Although in hindsight I recognize what a lowlife I was, I marvel at my handling of this terrifying crisis with the coolest head.

Here is what happened. In the night time, my favorite place to prey upon was a small kiosk situated near the entrance to the subway station. These stores have half their frontage open to the street, so newspapers and cigarettes are sold by a man standing inside, handing the products outside. The other half of the store (usually the left-hand side) can be seen by that cashier looking sideways, right to left with his left profile to the street. To the outside customer, it can only be seen on a diagonal. The books were located in that partially obscured corner, so when the counterman looked outside to make a sale, I could generally pocket a book unobserved.

In this particular establishment, there were two people working behind the counter. One faced the street and handled transactions with people who walked up to the window. The other one faced sideways toward the books and soda coolers and took money from the customers who had entered to get a drink or a paperback. To have two observers in that narrow an area made my job all the more daunting.

Still, most nights I succeeded. I would hang out with the inside worker, who happened to be the brother of the owner. He was an Italian named Sal who was a fanatical bodybuilder. His chest was so developed that he needed to have his suits custom-tailored; regular sizes were too tight around his pectorals. Had he ever caught me, he would have crushed me like a bug. But I was a virtuoso at getting him to relax around me and tell his life story. He even revealed his given name was Sylvester, but he hated it so badly he would pummel anyone who addressed him that way.

When he turned away for a split-second I would grab my prize. Stay around for another 10, 15 minutes of conversation, leave calmly, and seconds later I was through the turnstile, up the stairs, and on the platform, waiting for my train.

This night I tucked the book into my clothes with the usual prestidigitation. But out of the corner of my eye I picked up a startled look on the face of a customer out on the sidewalk. He must have detected my maneuver from his vantage point. I took a quick survey of his appearance. He looked like a tough man, not too tall, about 60 years old. A man who would not let something like this go without reporting what he had seen.

My next move was pure blessed instinct. I locked eyes with him and would not let go. There was no way he could say anything to either of the cashiers without me seeing and hearing. My gamble paid off; he was either not sure enough to risk confrontation or he just shied away from a direct showdown. After an interminable period of this relentless staring match, he turned from the window and walked out of sight.

The way I had him sized up he would not surrender; he was probably taking evasive action. He would reappear a minute later palming a note perhaps, which he could then hand over along with the change for some small purchase. Since I knew the scene was not over, I used the instant of his disappearance from view to quickly remove the book from my person and redeposit it on the shelf. Throughout all this, I maintained an easygoing conversation with Sal about his workout schedule and his brother the owner and his brother’s girlfriend.

Suddenly the phone rang behind the counter. Sal picked up and said, “Hmmm … hmm … oh, no, you must be mistaken.” Steals a glance at me. “No, no, I know this guy…. OK, I hear you, I’ll check it out. Thanks a lot.”

He came out from behind the counter and approached me. About a foot away, he stopped and said, “Kid, I hate to do this, but I need to search you.”

“Search me? For what?”

“You know that phone call I just got? It was from this guy, an old friend of my brother’s, an ex-cop, he was just out there by the window and he says he saw you steal one of the books.”

“You’re kidding. Oh, OK, go ahead and search me. I’m clean.”

When his search yielded nothing, he became terribly apologetic.

“I knew it all along. I told him you were not the type. But he thought he was sure so I had to go with it. But I knew you were clean, kid. Sorry to put you through that.”

“No problem, man, I understand. You gotta do what you gotta do.”

From that day on I had a free pass to rob the guy blind, betraying his trust, taking advantage of his niceness, trampling on his kindness, spitting on his loyalty. And as if that was not bad enough –

Yep, you guessed it. Once he had searched me and was overcome by contrition, I took advantage of a distracted moment to cash in. I stole the same book again … on the very same night.

M. I. Clubb is the pseudonym of a successful entrepreneur who wouldn’t steal ‘em anymore even if he had time to read ‘em.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 | Email This Post

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