Page 5 of The One-Night Heist

Opportunity rarely came knocking for unwanted orphans like me, so I’d muscled my way to the top the only way I knew how: With grit, hustle, and a laundry list of misdemeanors along the way.

I hadn’t set out to be an art thief. If I was being honest—which I rarely was—I hadn’t set out to be much of anything, but then I caught my first whiff of real possibility and everything changed.

I was fourteen or fifteen at the time, running a shell game near the aquarium in hopes of scamming the tourists passing through town. My foster siblings sometimes came along to act as shills, but on that particular day I was alone. The weather had been the right kind of hot to send people beelining directly from the air-conditioned aquarium to the ice cream stand I was strategically set up next to, and I’d raked in a thick stack of cash to show for it. In fact, I’d done so well, I was considering packing up early.

Especially since I’d noticed I was being watched.

He wasn’t a cop—not even in plainclothes. No cop dressed in a suit that nice, with the gold of his no-doubt astronomically expensive watch catching the light from beneath his jacket cuff. Either way, I didn’t like the attention, but as I stood to begin breaking down my scrap wood table, he approached.

“What do you say to one last game, kid? I bet I can win.”

I’d scoffed, mostly because there was no winning the shell game, but also because, who did that guy think he was? Even though my instincts were screaming at me to ignore the asshole and be on my way, I could never resist a challenge.

Especially coming from a hot man in a nice suit.

I’d gestured for him to take the overturned bucket across from mine as we both sat. “All right. Since I’m doin’ you a favor, that’ll be twenty.”

The man had dismissively glanced at the “ten dollars per game” scrawled on my handwritten sign before smirking. “I’ll wager more than that.”

Before I could haggle for higher than whatever he was thinking, that motherfucker removed his watch—which I later learned was a Piguet worth more than most made in a year—and laid it on the table.

My shock must have been apparent, because he’d openly laughed. “Since you’re doing me a favor, you may have this keepsake if you win. But if I win, I get whatever cash you made today.”

“That’s not how—” I’d started to argue, but he’d abruptly held up a hand before removing his ring and slipping it into his suit jacket pocket.

The unexpected movement was enough to shush me, which I’d assumed was the point. In reality, it was a distraction—a slick sleight of hand—and it would be years before I forgave myself for missing it. At the time, I’d greedily agreed to the wager, because that watch was calling my name like a siren’s song and, as I said, there was no winning the shell game—not unless you were a hustler like me.

Or a hustler far more skilled than me.

The trick was found in your mark believing you’d actually left the ping pong ball under a cup in the first place, instead of palming it in your hand. Once you’d stopped moving the three cups around the table, you waited for them to pick one before deftly slipping the ball beneath another.

I’d done it a million times—could do it in my sleep—so imagine my surprise when this man who looked like he’d been born with an entire drawer full of silver spoons lifted the correct cup, revealing the ball I most definitely hadn’t put there.

My jaw was still on the floor when he’d picked his watch up off the table with one hand while expectantly holding out the other. “Time to pay up.”

I’d done as he’d asked without argument, because a deal was a deal. My only saving grace was that I’d managed to hide a few bills in my worn out sneaker when I bent down to retrieve the rest.

Unfortunately, the victor hadn’t immediately walked away after my crushing defeat. Instead, he’d stood over me while slowly refastening the watch around his wrist, dangling that impossible prize in front of my face until my shock and humiliation had transformed into a seething rage.

“Word of advice, kid,” he’d drawled, reaching into the pocket where he’d stashed his ring before tossing another ping pong ball onto the table. “Never let ‘em touch the cup.”

With that, he’d strode away, and I’d had enough sense to realize—beneath my embarrassment—that I’d just been taught a valuable lesson.

An expensive lesson, but still.

From that day forward, I assumed everyone I met was exactly as crooked as I was. I also realized that if I wanted to be the kind of man who looked like they didn’t need to steal while smoothly robbing others blind, I would have to take several steps up from running the shell game. This meant I needed to prove I could handle more serious crimes, and the pressure that came along with it—but I was young and dumb. More importantly, I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

My newfound ambition, and connections I made along the way, opened doors for me I otherwise wouldn’t have been allowed near, and by the time I outgrew the foster system, my light-fingered services were already in high demand. What started as petty crime grew more refined as the years went on, and it wasn’t long before I was acquiring art for black market buyers—liberating it from various museums with laughable security systems.

Until the day I got caught.

It was an amateur mistake, and one I’d been kicking myself for ever since. About three years ago, I’d lifted a small bronze statue from a Gilded Age mansion and museum for a buyer in South America. The heist went off without a hitch, but another piece had caught my eye while I was in there—one I knew a regular client of mine would agree to pay top dollar for.

So I went back for it.

Like a fool.

I should have learned my lesson the first time—during that hot summer’s day outside the aquarium—but it took real consequences to finally hammer it home.