by Colin Meloy
Even his father was not safe from his exploratory bings. One morning, using newspaper as a stall and tucking it under his father’s chin in the pretense of showing him some news item, Charlie managed to sneak Charles Sr.’s block and tackle—his watch and chain—from his vest jerve and transfer it to the opposite pocket. Later, when he asked his father what time it was, it was a very befuddled Charles Fisher Sr. who searched his pocket—the same pocket he’d worn a watch in since he was a very young man—only to find the watch in an altogether different place.
“Nine fifteen,” managed Charlie’s father, once he’d found it.
“Thank you, Father,” said Charlie. “That’s all I needed to know.”
Charlie’s father studied the watch a moment curiously, before returning it to its customary place in his vest pocket. He then looked at his son suspiciously.
“What happened to your watch, Charlie?” he asked. “I don’t suppose you’ve given that away to win some new friend.”
“Oh, no, Father,” said Charles. He gave his sleeve a shake, revealing his watch where it always was: on his wrist. “Just making sure I’m showing the correct time.”
“Ah,” said Charles, satisfied.
As you can see from your incredible vantage, Charlie and his father were in the elder Fisher’s study. Charles Sr. had just returned his attention to the telex machine, which had abruptly begun clacking away. He cradled the unspooling paper as a baker would handle his phyllo dough, reading the contents through the lenses of his bifocals. “It appears,” he said, “that the Lumiravian ambassador will be arriving Saturday. . . .” Here he trailed off, quietly reading the code to himself. He then turned to look at Charlie. “There will, no doubt, be a luncheon. Do you think you’ll want to attend?”
“This Saturday?”
Charlie’s father nodded, knowing his son’s answer.
“I just can’t, sir,” said Charlie. “I’m meeting the gang.”
Of course, “the gang” was the name he’d given the Whiz Mob, his newfound compatriots. A fairly elaborate story had grown up around this “gang,” one that Charlie was constantly having to build upon, using every ounce of his storytelling chops. These foreign exchange students and their families that Charlie was palling about with, they had to be wealthy and respectable enough to avoid any concern on his father’s part, yet not so prominent that it would be conspicuous that they’d never fallen into the consul general’s social orbit. Their story must be simple enough so as not to inspire too much investigation, yet interesting enough so as not to sound invented. It was a true novelist’s dilemma if ever there was one. Thankfully, Charlie’s imagination had been, thus far, up to the task.
“It’s Isobel’s birthday Saturday,” continued Charlie.
“Isobel—she’s the Estonian?” asked his father.
“Mm-hmm.”
“The one with the amputated leg.”
“Sadly, yes,” replied Charlie. Admittedly, it had been somewhat of a stretch, that detail, but there was one evening he’d arrived home so late that some kind of extraordinary tale had to be told.
“How’s she faring? That was quite an injury.”
“Doing very well,” replied Charlie. “She’s a real champ.”
“Glad to hear it.” The telex machine noisily disgorged a new length of paper, and Charles’s attention was once again turned to its decoding. As you can no doubt infer, even from where you are standing, Charles Sr. was content to overlook the inconsistencies in Charlie’s reportage of his day-to-day activities—he was mostly just thrilled that his son was not only engaged in a real way with this new and strange city, but had thrown in with what sounded like a pretty interesting flock of kids and their families. Was he being lax in his parenting? Knowing what we know (and we know quite a lot), that answer is a definite yes. However, if you had any experience navigating the complexities of parenting (and maybe you do), you would know that any parent is loath to question their child when that child is happy.
And Charlie was happy.
Watch him. You can see it, can’t you? Even you, having only gotten to know Charlie a couple of weeks before, must see the change. His confidence in the sleight-of-hand trade of the pickpockets was spilling over into every other aspect of his life. He no longer found himself shrinking in the face of every social exchange he was forced to have; his periodic meetings with his father’s friends’ children were no longer torturous stretches of time. Even the boorish Päffgen boys, still in town, still loitering at the Fishers’ residence on a bi-nightly basis for reasons Charlie couldn’t fathom, seemed thrown by Charlie’s renaissance.
“I get it,” said Rudolph, wagging a finger in Charlie’s face while his brothers threw billiard balls at each other. “I see what’s happening.”
“What?” Charlie said.
“You’ve done it, haven’t you?”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Charlie could feel himself shrinking, afraid the boy had somehow pieced together the disparate halves of his twin lives.
“Admit it: you’ve been kissed.”
Charlie smiled, unsure of how to reply, but the smile was enough to win a hardy punch on the shoulder from the Bavarian boy. “I knew it. Nice work, Charlie.”
But what had kissed him?
He’d been kissed by something the Whiz Mob called the promise of the pocket.
Granted, there were still some jobs that the Whiz Mob deemed too tricky for Charlie to work—these they called Big Tips. They were carefully planned affairs, many days in the preparation, which often involved Pluto and Michiko, the mob’s two best steers, fanning the time and place of the job with an almost overdone attention to detail. The risk was too great even for Charlie to work center field, and the stakes too high.
These jobs often involved working directly within sight of the police—at some official convention or departmental get-together, or perhaps binging the winnings from a group of high-rolling casino gamblers with ties to organized crime. The sorts of jobs where the consequences of rumbling the mark and getting nabbed wouldn’t likely be limited to a slap on the wrist or a night in the pokey—instead, a tool’s life could be at stake. You will be too young to remember this, but Marseille, at this time, was still the sort of place where the criminal underworld held sway. For this reason, Charlie was all too amenable to declaring himself out for these jobs, in the argot of the mob. You might think, knowing Charlie as you do, that he would stay at home like some bedridden child on a school’s field day, mooning at a rain-streaked window. Quite the contrary. He would use the time to further rehearse his pinches on Dennis, the pickpocketing practice dummy, banging centime coins from its pockets with ever-increasing grace and agility.
But please spin the world back a bit. Let’s see him, now just over a week beyond his inaugural tip job at the Marseille Borély racecourse. The Whiz Mob was walking two abreast down Rue Saint-Michel. They were an imposing sight, even though the median age of the group was close to thirteen. That day, a Wednesday, with no tip formally fanned, the plan was to drift. It was something they did regularly, something that was common among whiz mobs of the Seven Bells. Also called, in French, the dérive, it was a time-honored whiz tradition of wandering, cloudlike, through the streets and avenues of the city, letting the winding thoroughfares guide your feet rather than any sense of direction or intended destination. It was an unconscious celebration of the tie between the city and its cannons. Chances were, you’d arrive at some kind of tip, be it a café crowd spilling into the street or a birthday party for a wealthy banker—it didn’t really matter. The idea was to drift.
And so they were drifting, when Pluto made the following observation after Borra suggested Charlie stall for him and Michiko:
“He’s a sucker. And once a sucker, always a sucker.”
Borra shrugged, replying, “He does not anymore seem like a sucker to me.”
“Maybe you just don’t have a nose for it,” was the one-eyed boy’s response. You see, whi
le the rest of the Whiz Mob had taken to Charlie fairly quickly after his day at the races and subsequent rechristening as the Grenadine Kid, Pluto had held tight to his skepticism about Charlie’s abilities.
“I’m right here,” said Charlie, which he was.
“I know that,” said Pluto. “It smells like chumps.”
Admittedly, he was laying it on a bit thick. He hadn’t made too much objection to Charlie’s running duke a few days earlier, when they’d relieved a post-regatta luncheon crowd of their unneeded cash and jewelry.
This is important, so let’s spin the world back again. Let’s see that job unfold. We’ll come back to the dérive, promise.
The regatta job was a greenhorn’s tip, that’s what Jackie had called it. A recipe for easy binging: wealthy men in loose-fitting clothing, sun-drenched and tipsy on rosé. Every spring, the Bar de la Marine would host the race, and every spring, every able-bodied yachtsman would throw in his hat to be the first to weave through the coastal isles and into the thronging Old Port. The winner, as always, was summarily showered in champagne on arrival back at the bar. A crowd of enthusiasts and bettors collected outside on the bar’s quayside terrace; wine and spirits flowed. The pickings were so easy that Charlie, having been duke for the first fifteen minutes and given a moment’s reprieve, began fanning the crush for—perhaps—an easy kick.
A man in a garishly striped boating jacket was fishing in his pants pocket for something, all the while holding an animated conversation with two young women; his other hand was occupied holding a champagne flute that was perhaps over capacity. When he removed his hand, his right, from his pocket, a corner of his money clip was revealed. Charlie, seeing it transpire, felt a nudge at his side. It was Sembene.
“There’s an easy bang,” the boy said. “A hanger.”
“I see it,” said Charlie.
“Make your frame. It may take a little reefing, but a kick out like that is easy.”
“I won’t get in trouble with the mob?”
“Why would you get in trouble, Charlie?”
“’Cause I’m supposed to be duking.” He gave a quick look around their surroundings before half whispering, “I’m not a cannon.”
Sembene gave him a wink. “Just between us.”
Charlie took a deep breath and sized up the challenge once more—little had changed. Molière’s wigged head could be seen peeking from the opening of the man’s pocket, announcing the size of the score: at least five hundred French francs. Certainly, gauged Charlie, someone who was so careless with that amount of money would not miss it, should it go missing. He moved forward, his lips puckered in a mock whistle, and awaited his moment. The man began waving his hand, describing some facet of the race, or perhaps some other great conquest, and Charlie struck. Sembene was right: the clip was big and heavy enough that Charlie was forced to reef the kick—creating pleats in the fabric to push the okus toward the opening of the pit—but luckily it was a move he’d been practicing at home on his dummy. The man shifted his hip and the clip fell into Charlie’s awaiting hand.
He nearly shouted in celebration. He turned to walk away when he saw that one of the girls the man had been talking to had left the conversation and had rounded on Charlie. She cleared her throat; Charlie looked up and saw that it was Jackie.
Charlie smiled. Jackie glared. She jerked her head angrily toward the bar, some twenty feet in the distance. The two walked silently to the open doors of the café.
“What are you doing, Charlie?” asked Jackie in an enraged whisper once they’d gotten out of earshot of the quayside crowd.
“Sorry, Jackie,” replied Charlie. “I’m really sorry.”
“That was my chump. That was my pit.” Her face was flushed beyond the layer of blush she’d applied to her cheeks for the occasion.
“I—I . . . ,” stammered Charlie.
“He beat you to it,” came a voice. They both turned and saw Amir, leaning against the facade of the building, sipping at a bulbous Orangina bottle with a bright yellow straw.
“I was making the frame, Amir,” said Jackie. “I was fronting the mark, I had him steered already.” Here she turned to Charlie, saying, “You think that okus was sitting there, half out his pit, by accident? You did, didn’t you. Like God himself came down and just handed that kick to you, like you’re some chosen cannon or something.”
“Relax, Jackie,” said Amir.
“Do your own jobs, Charlie,” said Jackie. “Don’t step in on someone else’s.”
“Got it,” replied Charlie, shocked and scandalized.
The girl gave one last angry look at both of the boys and then stormed back to the crowd. Charlie stood silently, his mind thrown between the ecstasy of having managed his first bing—even if it had been assisted by Jackie’s steer—and the shame of having been lectured so publicly by the mob’s class cannon.
“Interesting,” said Amir, pushing away from the wall. He gave another tug on his straw until the bottle sounded a resigned gurgle. He overturned it, gave it a few shakes, and dropped it to the pavement.
“What’s interesting?” asked Charlie.
“What she said. ‘Do your own jobs.’ Seems, in some way, you’ve won over the Southern belle. You may have just graduated, Charlie Fisher.” He slapped Charlie on the back and wandered, aimlessly, toward a huddle of stumbling sailors, falling in with them as if he were some long-lost comrade at arms.
“Do your own jobs,” repeated Charlie, like a mantra.
But it was always Pluto who was the holdout, who’d always been the holdout, who grumbled anytime Charlie’s name was volunteered for doing anything but center field or—at the very least—running duke. And so it was that day, just a week after the regatta tip, as they were walking through the Panier’s dusty warren of streets like a pack of wild dogs on the prowl. If you remember, and you should, Pluto had just made mention that it smelled like chumps, referring, of course, to Charlie, who was walking just behind him.
“So what’s a chump smell like, Pluto?” asked Molly.
“Expensive cologne. Freshly washed linens. Soap,” was the boy’s reply.
“Someone who has good hygiene, basically, is what you’re saying,” lobbed Amir.
“That would count you out, Pluto,” put in Jackie.
“Ha!” This was ejected from Borra; it hurled from his chest like a pipe bomb, and it made Charlie jump.
Pluto ignored them. “All I’m saying is that we’re putting the mob at risk when we put him up. Even running duke. But now he fancies himself a cannon?”
“I was gonna have him stall a bit is only, Pluto,” said Borra.
“He’ll throw the mob,” said Pluto, unconvinced. “It ain’t safe.”
“I’m not going to throw the mob,” said Charlie. He’d been hesitant to dive in; he didn’t feel like he had much standing to argue. “If I get caught—if I rumble someone, I’ll take the blame. I wouldn’t throw anyone.”
“How can we know?” asked Pluto.
“Don’t be a nag, Pluto,” said Amir.
“I would never do that,” replied Charlie, ignoring Amir’s interjection. And then, quite unexpectedly, Charlie said something very brave—which might’ve surprised you, knowing the Charlie you once knew. But remember, a change was occurring, a transformation beginning. “Besides,” he said, “I can’t get caught.”
“Can’t?” asked Pluto.
“Can’t. Won’t.”
“Prove it,” said Pluto. He had stopped in the street and was now facing Charlie.
“Okay,” said Charlie. “How?”
“Run lone wolf. We’ll shadow you,” said Pluto. “Drift us somewhere. See what your whiz know picks up.”
These were two things Charlie had never done before: lead a drift and work alone, without the net of a stall and a duke. He hesitated in his response, painfully aware of the fact that the entire Whiz Mob had stopped in the street and were all watching him closely. He glanced at Amir; the boy’s face was expressionless.
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br /> “Fine,” said Charlie.
Molly and Sembene clapped their hands excitedly. Borra suppressed a laugh. Pluto stepped off to the side of the street and waved his hand forward, ushering Charlie into the lead position in the group. “Please, to begin,” he said.
Charlie took in his surroundings. He was on a narrow street in the Panier; several streets careened off it in various haphazard directions—streets that might be indistinguishable from alleyways to the eye unaccustomed to the Panier’s labyrinthine layout.
“I say . . . ,” Charlie began. Something caught his eye at the elbow-jog of one of the side streets: a hastily drawn bit of graffiti on a wall that resembled an arrow. “That way.”
And so the dérive began.
They climbed the lazy, winding slope of the street and clambered single file through a tight passageway between two looming buildings; they crossed a deserted playground and dodged the chairs and tables of an outdoor café. With every new direction Charlie guided them on, he gained new confidence in his lead of the drift. He was letting himself go, letting the streets and alleys decide his course, watching for small signs in the layout of the city and allowing his mind to interpret them. They dashed through private gardens and tightroped along the tops of walls. Before long, they hopped a retaining wall and landed, like creatures arriving from another planet, in the middle of simple city plaza, one that had attracted a large group of people to watch a magician who was setting up his show by a water fountain.
Landing by Charlie’s side, Pluto gave him a strained look. “Lucky,” he said.
Of course, by this time, Charlie knew a good press when he saw one. A spellbound crowd, their collective attentions all ensnared by a single preoccupation, a crowd that was more than likely made up of predominantly moneyed tourists—it had all the markings of a proper jug touch, in the parlance of the mob.
