Free The Art of the Heist by Myles J. Connor

hair concealed by an old tam-o’-shanter, my shoulders in an octogenarian’s hunch, I set off for our meeting. As I approached Symphony Hall, I saw Al waiting on the sidewalk just outside the performers’ entrance. He glanced my way as I made my way across the street toward him, his eyes skimming across me without the vaguest hint of recognition.
    Chuckling to myself, I hobbled right up to him. “Excuse me,” I said, putting on my best Irish brogue. “Could you tell me where Symphony Hall is?”
    He motioned to the building behind him, still not realizing it was me. Then, slowly, his eyes widened in recognition. “You asshole!” he exclaimed. No longer able to keep a straight face, I burst out laughing.
     
    T he summer of love was still a good year away at that time, and the term hippies had yet to become a household word, but the crowd at Peter’s apartment, a fifth-floor walk-up in one of the neighborhood’s many Victorian town houses, definitely fit that description. Brotherhood was in the air, as well as the sweet odor of marijuana smoke and the tang of unwashed bodies.
    Al and I were given a warm, if somewhat low-key, welcome, and more than one person offered us a joint. Several people asked me for an impromptu concert, but I quickly demurred, saying the viola wassensitive to heat and I couldn’t dare expose it to the elements. It was an excuse that would have aroused suspicion anywhere else, but the freethinking hippies took it in stride. Clearly, these were my kind of people: they knew how to have a good time and didn’t ask too many questions.
    Not long after we arrived, however, I started to get a bad feeling. I had nothing concrete to go on, just the sense that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    “Let’s get out of here,” I told Al. “Now.”
    Quickly excusing ourselves, we started down the narrow staircase.
    No sooner had we passed the third floor on our descent than a phalanx of Boston police officers came rushing up the stairs. I couldn’t help it; as they ran past I pointed in the direction of the fourth floor. “They’re up there,” I said, scowling in disapproval of whatever was going on in the apartment.
    After busting their way into the apartment, the cops were eventually informed by someone in the startled crowd that an old man with a viola had just left. Realizing they’d walked right past me, the men rushed down the stairs, but they were too late.
    Understandably, the police were not amused by this incident, or by any of the other near misses that winter. With each close call, their frustration and, consequently, their hatred of me grew.
    No one understood this more then my father. On a cold night in March I met with him in the backyard of his house in Milton. A cop himself, he knew it was only a matter of time before my luck ran out.
    “They’re talking about shooting you, Myles,” he said, pleading with me to give myself up.
    It was a heartbreaking appeal, coming from the father I loved and the cop I respected above all others, but I wasn’t yet willing to admit defeat.
    “They’d better be prepared to kill me,” I told him. “If they do catch up with me, they’re going to have a hell of a fight on their hands.”
    I would soon get the chance to follow through on my promise.
     
    O n the night of April 27 I was again with Bonnie Sue Garian, this time at her apartment in the Back Bay. Situated just west of the oldest part of the city, bounded on the north by the Charles River, the Back Bay neighborhood consists mainly of elegant, five-and six-story Victorian brownstones. Bonnie’s apartment was in one of these buildings, not far from the Public Garden.
    Just before eleven o’clock that night I left Bonnie’s place to make a call from a phone booth on Beacon Street. It was chilly out, the weather typical of early spring in New England. There had been a mixture of sleet and light snow on and off all day, and the streets and sidewalks were wet with slush. As I