Den of Thieves Read Online Free PDF Page A

ever have.”
    â€œSit down. You may be here awhile,” Cutbill told him. Malden chose a chair near the door. “You lived in a bawdy house for most of your youth, performing small tasks and running errands for the madam. In that time you probably saw your fair share of illicit activity. I daresay you might have engaged in some yourself—rolling drunks, cheating paying clients—or at least tricking them into overpaying—procuring small quantities of various illegal drugs for the harlots. It wasn’t until after your mother died that you began extending your activities to the larger sphere of the city, though.”
    â€œThere wasn’t much choice in the matter,” Malden confirmed. “There’s not much room in a brothel for a young man—not when there are so many unwanted boys around to clean the place and run errands. I was given a few coins but told to go forth and find my own fortune. I decided I’d see how honest folk lived. It turned out the city had little use for a whoreson with no estate. This place isn’t kind to those who were born on the wrong side of the sheet.”
    If he’d been hoping to evince sympathy from Cutbill, he was disappointed. The clerkish man didn’t even look up.
    â€œI looked for work in various trades. I was too old already—no guild would take me on for prenticing at the advanced age of fifteen. I tried to find occupation as a bricklayer, as a carpenter, even as a stevedore down at the wharves. Each place turned me away—or demanded bribes. The gang bosses who organized such labor all wanted a cut of the pennies I would earn.”
    â€œAnd you were unwilling to pay such fees.”
    â€œHow could I, and survive? It takes money to live in this world, money to eat, money for rent, money for taxes and tithes. The pay that work offered would have put me in debt the first week, and it would only have gotten worse. I’d seen this scheme before, and the ruin it caused.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œIt is exactly how the pimps keep their stables of women in line.”
    â€œIndeed,” Cutbill said.
    Malden fidgeted with the sleeve of his shirt. “There were no opportunities for one like me. None at all. Yet I needed money to survive. I could go out on the streets and become a beggar. Or I could turn to a life of crime. You know which I chose.”
    â€œAnd found you had a flair for it.”
    â€œYou wish to know my life story entire?”
    â€œI already know it. I’m simply confirming it. For the last five years you’ve been making a paltry living pilfering coppers from the unwary. Occasionally you’ve run a trick of confidence, but your real skills seem to lie in your fingers, not your voice. It was only recently you turned to burglary. For only a few months now you’ve been breaking into houses. Care to tell my why you changed your game?”
    â€œPeople in this city know better than to carry much money when they go out. They know no purse is ever safe. The real money they leave behind, at home. It only seemed logical to follow the money, not the people.”
    The master of thieves made a small notation in his ledger. “You know who I am,” Cutbill said. “You spoke my name outside.”
    Malden waved one hand in the air. “All of the Free City knows the exploits of great Cutbill, master of thieves, procurer extraordinaire, purveyor of unlawful euphoria, betrayer of confidences, extortionist to the high and mighty—”
    â€œSpare me.”
    Malden sat back in his chair, a little dumbfounded. He had not expected the man to speak so plainly—or so abruptly. It was all he could do to keep up.
    â€œYou know that I run this city, or, at least, the clandestine commerce within it. That I have organized and consolidated the criminal class. That I have taken in hand the scattered gangs and crews that exist in any city of this size and made of them something more