Art of Theft - Chapter Three

Art of Theft

Chapter Three

by Murray K.

Step.

I love open plan living. It's makes it easy to navigate in the dark
when your only source of light is a red glow-stick bracelet. The
floors are wonderfully bereft of tripping hazards and there are nice
wide spaces between all the furniture. At the speed I'm moving,
detouring around a couch would add another ten minutes to this
business.

And step.

After sitting at the bottom of the pool for 6 hours, getting into the
apartment was a relative breeze. Getting down from the roof was
pretty easily achieved, even in the wetsuit. The only reason I
bothered with a rope was to make getting back up easier.

And step.

As for why I went down to the balcony, one word: Deadlocks. The
front door and the door down from the roof both had them, but the
balcony door didn't. I've played around with picking locks a bit but
I'm no expert. A good deadlock with some trap pins could take me a
lot of time. But a few seconds with a pick gun on the balcony lock
and I was in. That was the easy part.

And step.

When I was a kid I was into birdwatching for a while. I always liked
animals, but one of the challenges with birds was how close I could
get to them. Now, you can't really sneak up on a squirrel, the moment
he notices you move towards him, he's onto you. But birds don't seem
to differentiate much between people and trees. As long as they don't
see you moving when they’re looking at you, they don't care that
you're suddenly a foot closer than you were. So the key was to move
at a snails pace, slowly lift a foot, inch it forward and put it back
down again. Shift weight onto the forward foot...

And step.

And that is pretty much what I'm doing right now. In the corners of
all the rooms and the hallways, the Welshes have security sensors
which I discreetly checked out at the party. The sensors are
infra-red motion detectors, so they detect anything that's a different
temperature to ambient and moving. Basically, I'm treating them like
a flock of birds. I figure if I don't move too quickly, they won't
get startled.

And step.

I’m hoping the wetsuit helps as well, the sensors should really only
see my face and hands, but it’s best not to take any chances. One of
the hardest things is not knocking the plastic bag I’ve got hanging
from my left hand. The plastic shouldn’t set off the sensors, but as
I say, no chances. Each of the sensors has a small red light at the
top of it, and if just one of those goes off, I’m toast.

And step.

It’s slow progress, and it’s taken twenty minutes to get through the
living room, down the hall to the bedroom. Thankfully the Welshes
leave their doors open when they go on holidays. The moment I get
inside the bedroom I shuffle to the right so I’m no longer visible
from the hallway, and then I raise my right arm very slowly and turn
on my laser pointer. It takes a few moments to adjust my wrist but
then I have it pointed directly at the IR sensor.

And relax.

While ever the laser pointer hits the sensor, it’s basically snow
blind. The transition doesn’t set off the sensor, and then it can’t
see a thing. There’s only one sensor in the room so as long as I stay
out of the view of the hallway sensors I can actually move for a bit.
Vigorous stretching is still a bit difficult to do while keeping the
laser pointer focused, but I feel a lot less tense as I walk over to
the Matisse. I have to lower the bag I’m holding to the floor first,
but then I gently ease the Matisse up off the hook and...

I’ve got it!

The laser pointer trembles a little as I struggle to keep it focused
on the motion sensor. Very, very gently I lower it down to the carpet
and reach into the plastic bag. Out comes a square the same size and
shape as the Matisse. The faint light of the glow stick makes it hard
to tell but the frame looks like a perfect replica. Lord knows I
studied the real one for long enough at the party. Inside that frame
is a canvas printed copy of the Matisse, carefully touched up with
varnish to match the brushstrokes. Talk to anyone at Sotherby’s or
Christie’s and they’ll have a dozen stories that all come down to the
same thing, a tale of someone bringing in a painting that they thought
was a minor masterpiece, only to find that it’s a print covered in
varnish. A couple of coats and a hairdryer to crack the surface and
it looks just like oil paint. It’s an old trick, but it works. I
figure, as I carefully place the replica on the wall, the easiest way
to get away with a crime is if no-one knows it’s been committed.

It is tortuous creeping back to the balcony when all I want to do is
jump and run and whoop. As soon as I’m out I relock the door and
climb back onto the roof. Then it’s time for a quick change, back
into jeans and a fresh designer shirt from the toolbox. Also from the
toolbox, a Louis Vuitton roll bag. Now before you roll your eyes,
there’s a reason I’ve chosen LV. That pattern on the side is
unmistakable. After all, what’s the point of a status symbol if
no-one knows it’s a status symbol? But that means that when someone
sees a well dressed young man with an LV bag, the last things they’re
going to expect to be in that bag are diving gear, rope and a stolen
painting.

It’s a struggle to get everything in there, especially since I have to
take care of the painting. The large salt tub is staying but I figure
no-one is going to notice a tub of pool salt in a pool shed. The dive
weights also end up underneath a planter box, I’m afraid they’re a few
pounds of weight I just don’t want to carry down. But after a bit of
fighting everything else is put away and I’m ready to go.

The fire escape locks aren’t any harder than the balcony door, but
that’s expected. They make them easy just in case emergency crews
need to get past but aren’t in enough of a hurry to bust the door
down. I pick one to get in and then another a few floors down to get
out, then it’s express lift all the way to the ground. I stare at
myself in the lift mirror and thank god the wet look is in. I look
rumpled, but the kind of rumpled one might expect from someone leaving
an apartment block at 2am.

The doorman, presumably Charlie, gets up from his desk when he sees me.

“Cab, sir?”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

I hoist the bag on my shoulder and follow him to the curb. I’m trying
to think of small talk but before I get the chance the cab’s there, I
had the guy a $5 bill and I’m away. Almost too easy. I keep looking
to see if anyone’s following, and when I get dropped off a block from
my apartment I spend the whole walk home with half an eye over my
shoulder. But there’s no-one. It seems I may have gotten away with
it.

So now the painting is hanging in my bedroom, directly opposite the
bed, sitting comfortably between the Monet and the Boudin. The first
touches of sun are hitting the buildings nearby and the slight glow is
giving the painting a morning feel as well. The adrenaline has worn
off but for the last 4 hours I haven’t been able to stop looking at
it. It’s beautiful, wonderful, I love it. It leaves me with only one
question.

What next?

Art of Theft - Chapter Two

The Art of Theft

Chapter Two
by Murray K.

Friday afternoon has taken an eternity. Ever since the financial
crisis the markets have been working in dog years as they lurch from
one disaster to another. Japan seems to have settled down so the
crisis du jour is the middle east again with a dash of soveriegn debt
and the markets have taken another pasting. The clients always need a
bit of love in these conditions and I'm just finishing my ring around.
The last name on the list is Mr Welsh.

"So how are we looking" he asks after we go through the pleasantries.

"Not bad. The portfolio protection we put in place has worked well,
the option straddles are - "

"I don't need the detail Scott, just tell me, are we winning or losing".

"Well, today's a draw but we're a nose ahead for the week."

"Hell, in this market a draw is a win in my book. Great work Scott.
I'm going to feel a lot happier for the next month knowing you're
looking me."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence sir. When are you off, anyway?" I
ask, glad he's bought it up first.

"We fly out Saturday morning, arrive in St Petersburg Sunday morning.
By this time Monday we'll be on our riverboat cruising down the Volga
river."

"You know Henry, I was going to ask you about that. Why Russia? Was
Paris booked out?"

"Gloria and I have been to Paris a hundred times. We figured it's
time to do something a little more adventurous. It's the route the
Vikings took to get all the way to Baghdad you know?"

"Well, you can bring me back a horned hat if you like. By the way, do
you want me to call you or email you anything?"

"And ruin my holiday? I've told everyone, even my kids, the phone is
off. I might check messages once a week or so. Just let me know if
you've lost my entire fortune, I'll look for a goatherder job on the
Russian steppes."

"Oh, you don't want anything to do with goats. Nasty, foul-smelling,
mean-spirited creatures."

"Sounds like your colleagues at Goldman's, Scott."

"Not a bit of it. Folks here wear cologne. Have a good trip Henry."

"Thanks Scott, talk to you in a month."

And with that, motive becomes motive and opportunity.

Saturday morning is spent in my apartment, laying tonight's tools out
on the bed, surrounded by my art collection. Most of what I have on
my walls in prints, but there's the odd minor work that's original.
After our last bonus, when one of my colleagues bought a Masserati, I
bought a beautiful Eugene Boudin seascape of Le Havre. It cost about
the same amount as the car, but where in New York are you going to
park a Masserati?

Next to the Boudin is the product of my first foray into crime, a
small Monet. Actually, that's a bit misleading, it's a lithograph and
the only thing Monet really did was sign it. But it's based on one of
his compositions and that signature is worth something. The motive
was pity as much as desire. The lithograph was one of the many
thousands of pieces in Goldman Sachs' art collection, mostly up and
coming current artists so Goldman can claim to be modern Medicis.
I've no idea how this little piece entered the collection and clearly
neither did Goldman's curator, because he'd relegated it to a small
internal meeting room. With the hundreds of low level management
updates and strategy meetings it had seen, I'm amazed it hadn't
spontaneously combusted. My theft wasn't a particularly bold or quick
affair, first I just took it off the wall and hid it in the computer
cupboard. A month later, after it had been missed by no-one, I
spirited it out in a laptop bag one evening. Easy. Getting the
Matisse, well that would be a very different story.

By the time I leave in the late afternoon I've repacked a dozen times.
An ex of mine used to say that whenever I was stressed I went
borderline OCD, but I prefer to think of it as thoroughness. I leave
my apartment hauling all of my gear in a toolbox and a large plastic
tub that had previously contained 20kg of pool salt. I walk a block
before grabbing a cab uptown to central park and arrive a touch before
half past five. It's awkward lugging everything the three blocks to
the Welsh's apartment, but most of the foot traffic was heading with
me away from the park. I intentionally try to avoid people's eyes,
not that anyone was likely to notice me anyway. I'm dressed in jeans
and the kind of blue button-up shirt one would only wear as a uniform,
emblazoned with the logo of "Skyline Pools". The cap sitting over my
wrap-around shades has the same logo, courtesy of iron on transfers.
I look the regular Joe Tradesman, or so I hope.

Half a block away from the apartment, I get hit by a surge of
adrenaline. It's the same feeling I get standing at the top of a
cliff, about to abseil down. I savour it for a moment and then I'm at
the building, standing in front of the doorman.

"Hey bud," I call to get his attention.

"What's up?"

"I'm Dave from Skyline Pools," I say, pulling out an ID that had been
put together with a colour printer and a laminator. "We got a fault
call from the pool on the roof here. Client by the name of, uh,
Walsh's?"

"Welsh's," replies the doorman absent-mindedly while looking at the
ID. It's amazing what a laser printer and a laminator can knock up
nowadays.

"Yeah, that's them. Can you give them a call, tell them I'm coming up."

"Sorry bud, no can do. They're not in."

"Aw geez, are they gonna be long?"

"Can't say."

"Well, the systems reporting a major fault. Any way you can get me up
there to check it out?" This was the moment of truth. I reckoned I'd
figured the logistics out, but the one variable, the one human factor,
was this doorman letting me up to the roof. He was clearly in two
minds, turning my ID over in his hands. "Have you got any calls of
sudden wet floors from the apartments? Flooding, water leaking from
the light fittings, coming down the walls."

"No, nothing."

"Well, I guess I can come back when they do..."

"Ah, come on, we'll check it out."

A quick trip up the elevator gets us to the top floor and we head into
the fire escape, up the stairs and onto the roof.

"I think the pool's over, uh, there it is," he says, pointing back to the west.

"Yeah, I know, I've been up here before," I say, the first truthful
thing I've said so far. "I'll check the equipment shed, can you have
a quick look at the pool?"

I set my gear down next to the small shed and open it up, reaching for
a couple of things from my jeans pocket as I do. I smear a couple of
the pristine pipes and a patch of floor with a tube of grease and
stick a small box of angry red blinking LEDs underneath one of the
large control boxes. Then I open up the toolbox and grab a spanner
and screwdriver from the top. By the time the guard comes back, I'm
industriously unscrewing what I think is the main filter control.

"Hey, you'd better see this," says the doorman with genuine concern,
"there's water spilling over the edge."

I follow him to the pool and it takes me a second to realise that the
guy has never seen an infinity pool before. On one side the wall is
lower and there's a steady stream of water cascading over the top, so
that anyone inside has the sensation that the pool never ends, just
goes off into the horizon. The doorman is looking at it with quiet
alarm, and I say a small prayer of thanks to whatever gods look after
thieves.

"Yeah, thought so. Problem with the pump, it's overflowing."

"Is it flooding the apartment?"

"No, don't worry, there's a secondary containment for just this sort
of thing," and I point out the small area where the water is meant to
collect. "Give me a second."

I head back to the equipment shed and spend a couple of seconds trying
to work out which machine is the pump. Then I just turn everything
off at the wall switches and the steady hum goes silent. Sure enough,
by the time I head back to the pool edge there's a lot less water
coming over, and after a minute there's just a tiny trickle.

"Good thing we got here when we did, that would have filled up
quickly," I lie to the much relieved doorman, and head back to the
pool shed with him in tow. "I can see what's wrong with the pump and
I reckon I can fix it, it'll take about half an hour."

"Oh," says the doorman, looking at his watch. "My shift ends in 15
minutes." And I was relying on that as well, 6pm on the dot. Try
getting a New York doorman to work 5 minutes more than he has to.
"I've got to get down and tell Charlie what's going on."

"That's fine," I reply. "Look, this shouldn't be a problem. You can
tell Charlie to come up or I'll just head down when I'm finished."

"Yeah, ok," he says, looking at his watch again. "Charlie'll be up in
15 or 20." And with that he walks back to the fire escape.

The moment the door clicks shut I'm up and moving. I strip off my
shirt and clean off the grease, then pull everything out of the tub.
I've got a 3 mil wetsuit top in their that I throw on, then strip off
my jeans to reveal the wetsuit bottoms. Surprisingly comfortable,
they stop chaffing, but they don't breath well, probably won't wear
them the next time I'm clubbing. I put together the rebreather tank
and fit two 5 litre oxygen canisters and my weight belt, that's half
the weight of the tub right there. I get a large piece of blue
plastic and a roll of roofing tape out of the tub and then stow the
toolkit and my clothes in it, then put it at the back of the pool
shed. It looks like it belongs there. Then it's goggles on,
mouthpiece in, and into the water.

As I hit the water I'm glad it's been sunny the last couple of days,
even so it's unpleasantly chilly. But I haven't got time to think of
that as I spread out the blue plastic on the water's surface. This
was a test of my colour sense, but the plastic is pretty close to the
colour of the pool. I bring it down to the bottom and have to
straighten it out underwater, the hardest part of the whole deal. A
series of steps come down into the pool, and I tape the plastic so
that it sticks out from the last of these. Then I tape it one side to
form a new step. The pool is about as wide as I am tall, and when I
get in under this plastic I'm able to rest my feet against the side
and tape the other end of the plastic.

So now I'm sitting, cocooned in a piece of plastic pretending to be a
pool step, trying to slow my breath in the respirator. The rebreather
puts out only a fraction of the bubbles of a normal scuba tank, and
I'm hoping that to the casual observer I'm invisible. After an hour
has passed I figure that Charlie the doorman must have come up to
check. Will they just check the roof, or will they open up the
aparment? Will they even search through the building? I've got no
idea, but since there's no sudden splashing and tearing back of my
plastic sheet, I at least know they haven't spotted me yet. I figure
6 hours more than long enough for any heat to do down, the hardest
thing now is that my hands are starting to freeze. I hope they're not
too numb to get past the locks.

The Art of Theft - Chapter One

Art of Theft

Chapter One

by Murray K.

Kleptomania: A compulsion to steal but, and here's the interesting thing, without any economic benefit.

Monomania: A pathological obsession with a single item, thought or emotion.

Hypomania: A condition of continual heightened emotions, including euphoria, hyperactivity and sometimes, I should admit, feelings of grandeur.

What they all have in common apart the suffix "mania" is that just about every psychiatrist in this town would diagnose me with all three in a heartbeat. Which could be handy if the authorities find me at the bottom of this pool.

It's a mostly pleasant feeling lying here in the dark, listening the steady rhythm of my breath going through the regulator. Limbs weightless, the rebreather tank resting lightly on my back, 8 pounds of lead on my dive belt keeping me stationary. After the initial adrenaline has worn off, my greatest worry is falling asleep. I spend the time running through the plan in my head, trying to visualize it, especially my route. It's only my second visit to this penthouse, although a fortnight ago I had a bit more company. The cocktail party was held to show off the renovations and although it was a little dull at times it was a very thorough tour.

"All the cabinets, here and the study, they're all custom made from mahogany and macassar ebony. Cost well into the six figures but they did it, flawlessly mind you, in just three months. You can say what you like about the global financial crisis but when Lehman's went bust it got a lot easier to hire a carpenter in Manhattan. Come and see the kitchen."

As we follow the house proud host I notice a few people grimace at that last comment and I know why. A lot of people in this room lost a packet on the Lehman's crash, on top of Bear Stearns before it. Yet our host made a small fortune, because she and her husband were short the stock to the gunnels. How do I know? I sold it for them.

"It's a joy to cook in, so much space. These benchtops come from the same Tuscan marble quarry as Michelangelo's David. I told Henry that if he wants inspired cooking..."

You see, I look after a reasonable sized fortune on behalf of Mr and Mrs... in the interest of client confidentiality, lets call them Mr and Mrs Welsh. Early 60's, he made his first millions in property, now they've renovated their dream pad for retirement. My advice is at least partly to thank for that. In markets, timing is everything. For the past 4 years mine has been perfect. Skill, luck, the will of the Gods? Really, it doesn't matter.
"And these ovens are, surprisingly enough, Swiss. Turns out they don't just make watches. And then we get to the living room."

Short Lehmans in August 2008. Loaded up on Citigroup at a dollar. Rode 10 year treasuries down to 2.5%. Big holdings in Caterpillar and Apple. An allocation in physical gold throughout.

"We got that wall knocked out and put the glass in the whole length of the balcony. It's got a great view of central park."

If you look between the canyon of buildings and squint a bit you can definitely see a couple of trees. That's a little harsh I guess. It's a good enough view that a real estate agent wouldn't need to resort to "park glimpses" to keep a straight face.

"And it looks even better from the roof."

As we move to the stairs I realize I'm probably the youngest person in the room. Forget 'probably', I'm the only one under 40. But as I hang back to let the others up the stairs first it's not just out of deference for my elders. Nearly half of these people are clients, and most of the rest are definite prospects. I wait at the bottom of the stairs as they file past and shake a few hands, ask about children and holidays, the usual chit-chat.

Sorry, I haven't introduced myself. Scott Redford. Goldman Sachs, account manager for high net worth clients. I'd give you a business card but I left them in my other wetsuit. The reason I was invited to this shindig is because, without me, instead of celebrating the beautiful renovation of this two storey brownstone penthouse on the upper east side they'd be trying to fit all these guests into a one bedroom apartment in SoHo the size of, well, mine.

"Isn't this deck gorgeous? We raised it so it looks over the infinity pool towards the park."

"Do you share the roof with the rest of the building?"

"No Neville, that's the best thing about this place. The roof went with the penthouse title. We just put in these stairs and shut off the fire stair, and now we've got it all to ourselves."

I wonder how they got that one past the building board, but the view is definitely worth it. When you're down at ground level in New York everywhere feels like a closed room, 4 walls around you and the sky is an eternity away. But once you're on the roof, staring at the buildings at their eye level... Standing here in the twilight, the roofs undulate like low hills and give way to sky scrapers that look like the fading mountains of a Chinese silk painting. Block out the traffic noise below and it's almost possible to forget you're in Manhattan.

"So Henry," I ask as I sidle up to Mr Welsh standing next to the small pool, "can you do laps in that thing?"

"Ha. You think you're kidding Scott, but I do you know. I got one of those jets put in so I can swim against the current."

"Really? How well does that work?"

"For a fit young thing like yourself it might not be any use but let me tell you, 15 minutes swimming against it and I need a lie down."

"Well sir, it's a very impressive setup. Where did you hide all the equipment?"

"It's all just over here. Actually, you've got to see this."

He opens a little cupboard next to the stairs to show a surgically white space full of pipes and blinking LEDs.

"So that's the pool filter and the like?"

"Pool filter, heater, jets, the whole kit and kaboodle. Looks like the engine of a space ship, doesn't it? All automated, the pool guys can monitor everything from the shop, I don't have to do a thing. Shame really, it looks like the kind of thing I'd like to have a tinker with."

"No fear, sir. I don't think Gloria would take kindly to the pool blowing up and flooding her beautiful renovations."

"Oh yeah, ain't that the truth. Speaking of which, we'd better catch her up. I think she's going to show everyone the bathrooms."

Let me get something straight right at the outset. I don't hate these people or begrudge them their money. None of this is about class warfare or righteous anger or even envy. I work for Goldman Sachs for chris'sake, I didn't join them because of their extensive charity work. I'm here to make money and these people have money. By my measures they're successful, they're my role models even. And despite odd pretensions none of them are particularly nasty or annoying. The Welshes are lovely people, even if Gloria is a little too keen to make sure people notice the very expensive pearl handled Italian taps. A little status conscious, sure, but you try living in this town for more than a month and avoiding that. They're not even in the same league as the fashion industry types I know, and don't get me started on the art dealers. No, on the whole these are decent people who, through hard work, good luck and good management, partly my management, happen to have an extremely large amount of cash. It's the way the world works. If you don't like it, go into politics.

"And finally, through here, the master bedroom. Believe it or not, this was is the most expensive room in the house. But as Henry says, we do spend a third of our lives here."

The rest of the guests file in dutifully but this time I have to hide impatience. Here, in this room, is reason I was eager to attend this evening, besides glad handing present and future clients. It's not the spa-bath in the ensuite or the ambient colour changing LED lighting setup. No, my attention is fixed on a small rectangle about a foot a side on the wall opposite the bed.

"And of course, here's where we keep the Matisse. Scott seems to have found it."

Belle Ile en Mer, Beautiful island in the sea. It's a landscape painting but the orientation is portrait, the better to capture the movement of the cliffs falling into the sea. The whole is achieved with short, obvious brushstrokes in a hand full of colours, violets and aquamarine for the ocean, teal green, khaki and burnt umber for the cliffs and islands. Deep shadows in the water and the distant cliffs are the only solid colour. Focus on any one stroke or detail and it looks, well, almost childish. And yet, looking at the whole, it is alive, full of the movement of the waves, the windswept grasses, and the magnificent volume of space to the far cliffs. Signed and dated 1897, the year Matisse discovered impressionism, the works of Van Gogh and colour theory. This is the work of young man whose eyes have just been opened to the vibrancy of the world around him and how he may capture that in paint on canvas.

"Pretty, isn't it."
The room is empty apart from myself and Mrs Welsh, and I realise I've been staring at the painting for five minutes while the others have all filed back out and onto the deck for champagne and nibblies.

"It is quite magnificent."

"Scott, you are a flatterer. It's lovely and all, but it's barely a study. Still, it is a Matisse. We could have bought something more expensive but, you know, Henry and I aren't the biggest art buffs. Come on dear."

Besides, I think as I file out of the room, more expensive art would have meant fewer of those 'six figures' to spend on the cabinetry. But hey, that sounds bitter. Like I said, this isn't about their wealth, nor is it that these people are somehow too uncultured to truly appreciate art. There's no highbrow snobbery or Robin Hood argument here. There's no justification at all. I just have to have that painting.

That's why I'm sitting at the bottom of the swimming pool at five to midnight. I'm going to steal the Matisse.