The Good Thief's Guide to Venice Read Online Free PDF Page B

stunned to say anything, and then I remembered that my Italian wasn’t up to the task in any event. I wasn’t sure what I planned to do next, so it was kind of him to save me the trouble. With a nasal grunt and a sudden swing of his foot, he sent the cat yowling across the alley, then lowered the brim of his hat, turned on his heel and limped awkwardly away in the direction of the Rialto.
    I suppose if I was a lesser thief, the encounter might have unsettled me, but the truth is that it takes more than a shambling, overweight chap with a disregard for animal welfare to put me off my stride. Evidently, the same was true of the stray cat, because it stalked along behind its bashful companion until I was all on my lonesome once more.
    Never one to be shy about seizing the moment, I returned to the shop, reached inside my jacket for the spectacles case that contained my torch and my picks, removed my mittens and exposed my hands to the cold. Yes, I had on a pair of plastic disposable gloves, but they provided my arthritic joints with barely any protection. It didn’t help that I’d had to snip away two of the fingers on my right-hand glove to accommodate my gnarled fingers. They were wrapped in surgical tape to prevent my leaving any prints, but my knuckles still had a tendency to seize up all too fast, and that was something I couldn’t readily afford. Speed was of the essence, so I crouched and addressed the first padlock.
    Even though I do say so myself, I was mighty pleased with the way things turned out. Yes, in my pomp I might have been a touch quicker, and perhaps my approach might have been a shade more elegant, but there was no denying that I still had the knack. And heck, when I pulled a can of lubricant from my pocket and squirted it into the shutter mechanism, then hauled up the weighty grille and ducked beneath it with barely a sound, I couldn’t ignore the wave of satisfaction that washed over me.
    Easing the grille back down, I cupped my hands around my eyes and pressed my face against the blackened glass until I was certain that I couldn’t see the infrared blink of any sensors. Then I went down on one knee and offered a heartfelt proposal to the pin and tumbler lock in the middle of the door. At first it played coy, but after a spell of prodding and tickling, it came around to my advances. The bolt down by my feet was of a more stubborn disposition, and for a while it had me debating whether I should break the glass. I’ve never favoured that approach – there’s the risk of cutting oneself, as well as making too much noise – and it has always struck me as the last resort of any self-respecting thief. Eventually, it turned out that a little breathless fumbling was all that was needed before the bolt was putty in my hands, and as soon as I’d withdrawn the thing, the door swung open on its hinges.
    I surprised myself by hesitating. Yes, I might have just picked some locks, but the moment I entered the shop, I really would have reverted to my bad old ways. And granted, I could console myself with the thought that all I was doing was trying to reclaim my own property, rather than stealing someone else’s, but if I were to get caught, I doubted the owner of the shop, or more to the point, the Italian police, would see it that way.
    But despite what I’d said to Victoria, I didn’t trust the shopkeeper. Anyone with a genuine knowledge of books would know the value of a first edition of The Maltese Falcon . If he’d had a copy available to him, he would have been aware of it without needing to consult any records. That made me think that the routine with the ledger had been a way of stalling me while he tried to figure out what my angle might be. And that, in turn, led me to suspect that he knew about my copy of the book.
    I headed for the safe. Now admittedly, there was no reason to think that my book would be inside. He could be keeping it anywhere he pleased. It might be that he lived in a nearby