CHAPTER 10
Ziggy Stardust was good at camouflage.
He was capable of being a perfect nobody among the millions of New York nobodies. He was a perfect example of neither-nor: neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin, neither handsome nor ugly. He was the kind of person you didn’t notice, didn’t remember, didn’t love.
The king of nobodies.
But he had turned being a nobody into an art. In his own way he considered himself an artist. In the same way as he called himself a traveller. On average he rode more miles on the subway every day than most passengers in a week. In Ziggy’s opinion, the subway was a place for suckers. Which made it the ideal place for one of his many activities: bag snatching. Another of his activities, more of a fringe activity but no less important, was being the dealer of choice for those who loved white powder but didn’t like risks or problems.
With Ziggy, they never had any problems.
He wasn’t a big time dealer, but the income, though small, was regular. All these grand ladies and gentlemen had to do was call a safe number and they’d get a home delivery of whatever they needed for their parties or be given an address to go to for fun and games. They had the money – he had what they were willing to pay for. This meshing of supply and demand was so natural, it wiped out any possible scruples – not that Ziggy had ever had any.
Occasionally, when he was able to, he also sold information to anyone who needed it. Sometimes even to the police, who in return for a few useful tip-offs – strictly confidential, of course – turned a blind eye to Ziggy’s frequent subway trips.
Obviously, that wasn’t his real name. Nobody remembered what his real name was. Even he forgot it sometimes. The nickname had been given him, when someone had remarked on his resemblance to David Bowie at the time the record Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars had come out. He couldn’t remember who it had been, but the name had remained.
It was the only thing that removed him a little from the anonymity in which he had always tried to live. He never walked in the middle of the sidewalk, but always hugged the walls and kept to the most shadowy areas. If he could choose, he preferred to be forgotten, rather than remembered. In the evenings he went back to his hole in Brooklyn, watched TV, surfed the internet and only went out to make phone calls. All calls related to work he made from a public phone booth. At home, on a cabinet, he always kept a roll of quarters, for every eventuality. There were a lot of people who hadn’t realized there was a good reason cellphones were called cellphones. They were telephones but they were also what landed you in jail. And those who ended up in jail because their calls had been intercepted got what they deserved. Not because they were criminals, but because they were stupid.
Even now, as he descended the stairs to Bleecker Street station, he couldn’t help feeling justified in his conviction. Better to make everyone believe you were a nobody than have someone sooner or later decide that they’d prove it to you.
He reached the platform and got on the green express line going uptown. The opening and closing of the sliding doors, the constant getting on and off of weary passengers who wanted only to be somewhere else, meant a lot of pushing and shoving, the contact of bodies, the smell of sweat. But it also meant wallets and distraction, the two basic elements of his work. There was always a purse slightly open, a pocket not well closed, a bag next to someone immersed in a book so engrossing they forgot everything else.
Of course the good old days were long over. Credit cards were everywhere now, and there was less and less cash in circulation. That was why he had decided to branch out – to diversify his activities.
The door is closing, came the voice of the loudspeaker.
He moved towards the rear of the carriage, where it was more crowded, making his way between hanging elbows and whiffs of garlic. Sitting next to the door was a guy in a green military jacket. He found it hard to judge his age. From where he was standing, he couldn’t see him well because the blue hood of a coverall came up from under the jacket to partly hide his face. His head was slightly tilted to the side, and it looked as if the swaying of the carriage had made him doze off. Next to his feet was a dark canvas bag.
Ziggy felt a slight sense of pins and needles in his fingertips. There was part of him that displayed something close to extrasensory perception when he singled out a victim. It was a knack, a gift, which had sometimes given him the idea that he had been born to do this work. Of course, the clothes the man was wearing didn’t suggest there might be something of value in that bag. But the hands resting in his lap weren’t the hands of a man who did heavy work, and his watch looked like a good one.
In his opinion, there was something here that went beyond the guy’s appearance. His instinct had rarely let him down, and over time he had learned to trust it.
He had once removed a wallet from a guy in a jacket and tie only because, in brushing against him, he had felt, by touch alone, a cashmere overcoat that must have been worth more than four thousand dollars. Trusting to nothing but the texture of the material, he had made his move. A few minutes later, going through the guy’s wallet, he had found seven dollars, a fake credit card and a subway season ticket.
Cheapskate!
He went closer to the man in the green jacket, although staying on the other side of the door. He waited a couple of stops. The number of passengers was increasing. He moved into the middle and then, as if shifting to leave the door clear, he moved next to him.
The canvas bag was on the floor. It was on his left, close to his feet, the handle in the perfect position to be
grabbed at the right stop
getting out while the other passengers got on. He checked that the man still had his head in the same position. He hadn’t moved. Many people dozed off on the trains, especially those who had a long way to go. Ziggy was convinced that this guy belonged to that category of person. He waited until they got to Grand Central, where the number of people getting on and off was usually greater. As soon as the doors opened he grabbed the bag in an extremely rapid but natural movement, and got off. He immediately hid it with his body.
Out of the corner of his eye, as he was trying to melt into the crowd, he thought he saw a green jacket getting out of the carriage a moment before the train left.
Shit.
Grand Central was always full of cops and if that guy had sussed him, there was the possibility there would be quite a scene. And maybe a few days in the cooler. He passed a couple of police officers, an older man and a black girl, who were chatting just outside the station. Nothing happened. Nobody came running, crying ‘Stop thief!’ to attract the attention of the two officers. He preferred not to turn around. Better to let the guy who was following him think he hadn’t noticed anything.
He came out onto 42nd and immediately turned right and then right again, onto Vanderbilt. There was a stretch where there wasn’t much traffic and that was the right place to check if the guy in the military jacket really was following him or not. He went back into the terminal through the side entrance, taking advantage of the opportunity to throw a casual glance to his right. He didn’t see anybody come around the corner who looked anything like him. But that still didn’t mean anything. If the guy was clever, he knew how to follow someone without being spotted. Just as he himself knew the best way to throw someone who was tailing him. He wondered again how come the guy hadn’t told the two cops. If he’d noticed the theft and had followed him to get the bag back personally, that could mean two things.