Free Murder Miscalculated by Andrew MacRae

owners. I tried to target people who could get along without those items for a few days until the feds quietly returned them as found property. That didn’t mean I felt good about it.
    “How’s Lynn and married life?” Jay asked.
    “Lynn’s fine,” I answered. “How’s Dave?” Dave is Jay’s partner and runs a small dog grooming business.
    “Dave’s fine. The shop’s keeping him pretty busy these days. I’ve been helping out when I can.” The edges of his mouth dropped. “I might as well. It’s getting harder and harder to work the street.”
    “How so?”
    “Doris Whitaker is making a heavy play to take charge of pickpocketing in the city. She’s dictating who works where and what we fences can charge.”
    I made a note of that.
    Jay surveyed the crowd. “So if you’re back in business, Kid, where are you dropping your merchandise? I’m always willing to deal with you, you know.”
    “Here and there,” I answered. I didn’t want to bring too much scrutiny to the fed’s tame fence. Plus, I had to keep up appearances. “What are you looking for?”
    “The usual. Credit cards, gift cards, driver’s licenses. There’s a couple of outfits from out of town, Russian, I think, that are buying them up as quick as they can.”
    I nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
    We chatted a few more minutes and then shook hands. Jay left, and after a moment I did the same.
    I was half a block down the street from the federal building. I liked the idea of targeting fellow employees of the man who was forcing me back to working the street.
    I spotted a likely mark after a couple of minutes.
    The man wore a nice suit and was walking toward me, perhaps forty feet away and closing fast. He held a cell phone to his ear. Just what the doctor ordered. When a person is talking on a cell phone, fully fifty percent of his attention is on the person at the other end of the connection, making it much easier for me. I made a subtle correction to the course my feet were taking and brushed against the man as we passed.
    “Sorry,” I said as I recovered from a near fall, then continued on my way, his wallet tucked up my sleeve. When he noticed it missing, he would probably have no memory of my bumping into him, let alone be able to describe me.
    I still had an hour to kill before I was due to meet my fence, and to tell the truth I was getting bored. I decided to ratchet things up a notch. I searched the plaza and spotted a man and woman walking together. Both carried slim attaché cases and wore conservative business suits. They were talking to each other in an animated fashion as they walked. I walked straight toward them, a wide smile filling my innocent face.
    “Glenn? Glenn Raeder? How the heck are you?” The man’s surprise was obvious as I shook his hand.
    “No,” he protested. “No, that’s not my name. You have me confused with someone else.” The woman watched with amusement.
    I turned to her in appeal. “Glenn’s always doing that, always pretending to be someone else, especially when he’s with a beautiful woman who’s not his wife.”
    Her smile became a laugh. “Sorry, but he really isn’t Glenn Raeder. His name is Tom. Tom Driscol.”
    I feigned incredulity.
    “Not Glenn?” I stood back a step, and took his left hand by the wrist and held his arm out as though examining him. In reality I was slipping my index finger between the tail of his watchband and the clasp and pushing it back through. In a second I had it free. I dropped his wrist.
    “Wow, I am sorry,” I said to the man, then to the woman. “He’s the spitting image of someone I went to school with.” I named the school, a prestigious law school on the other side of the country.
    The woman smiled again, clearly amused by her colleague’s predicament. “That’s quite all right.”
    The two walked away, and I melted back into the crowd, the man’s watch safely in my pocket.
    It was time to go see my favorite