Could it really be possible to meet a complete stranger and read them like a book: to know them so well that one could manipulate them to one’s advantage. Charlie Bowers firmly believed that he had that ability: that he had it honed by long use and the careful study of human behavior. Not study in some university psychology course but out in the field where the real people lived. Airports, the underground, race tracks, anywhere where there was a crowd and the denser the crowd the better. Charlie had served his apprenticeship with his older sister, Ethel. He had diverted the gulls attention while his sister dipped into their pockets and lifted wallets and anything else that might prove useful. She had a gentle touch and could slip through a crowd with the supple grace of an otter while he had the diversionary skills of a magician. They had made a great team. It had been a major asset that both of them were so ordinary looking; so eminently forgettable. You just didn’t see his sister and, if after assisting a seemingly dense Charlie with a problem or giving him directions you found some part of of your property was unaccountably missing, first, you would be unable to believe that such a nice helpless man could have anything to do with it and, second, in reporting your loss to the police you would find it impossible to adequately describe to them the man you had been helping. But like so many partnerships, this one came to an end. His sister had fallen in love and the latest love of her life had to become her new partner and apprentice. Ethel just wouldn’t be told and Charlie had tried really hard. She was smitten, blinded, deaf. Joe, that was the name of her new love, was not particularly bright and looked exactly what he was, a small-time crook, and that scar on his face, that he was so proud of, his badge of honour, was something that even persons in an advanced stage of Alzheimers disease were unlikely to forget. If he was to come
anywhere within range, the natural reaction would be to take an extra tight grip on one’s possessions and that was what Charlie tried to tell her. Not that he had any hope of success. Women never seemed to listen. Women in love least of all. The new team lasted little more than a week before going inside. It gave Charlie no satisfaction to say, " I told you so." He needed a new partner himself. At that stage, lifting wallets was all he knew and even then only the one side of the operation. The usual media for ‘situations vacant’ were unsuitable for his needs and the type of real artist, the professional, that he needed would be snapped up by others should they find them between roles. It quickly became clear that the equal of Ethel was not to be found and, with a succession of accomplices, he turned to diverting the attention of waiting tourists and other travelers while their bags went walkies. It was a heart-stopping business, dangerous. He had not realised until then the low mentality, or perhaps the entire lack of mentality, of the average small-time crook. There were too many close calls and Charlie had decided that a solo operation would be safest. But what? Lacking any immediate ideas, he decided to go straight but just in the short term. It would be a real comedown but he’d come up with a good idea before long. He’d never had a job where the government took a cut through income tax. Ethel had taken him in hand straight from school. The advertisement that caught his eye promised high rewards with the sky as the limit. It claimed that no experience was necessary, that ambition and the will to succeed were everything. Charlie did not see it for what it was, the typical ad for a position requiring house-to-house cold canvassing. A job that people normally take only out of desperation at the bottom of a trough and leave at the first opportunity since the promised riches never do eventuate. The products were
kitchen cabinets and some of the outer reaches of London were the areas that the company intended to blitz, the square miles of 7/6d a week easy-payment housing that mushroomed between the wars when the railway companies worked hard to build their suburban traffic. As with all such positions, there was a small amount of training given with particular emphasis on a memorized speel and the skillful use of the company’s brochures which promised, if anything, more than their job ads. The canvassers were to be simply door-openers and were paid a minimal retainer with a further payment as a proportion of the value of sales made. There was a first call which, with any luck would find the wife at home, she would be courted and an invitation sought to call back in the evening when her husband would be home. At this time the canvasser would sell the product rather than himself unless, of course, the canvasser was a woman and there were several. Kitchen fittings being custom work, made to measure, a third call needed to be made by a qualified tradesman to do the measuring and finalize the actual order. The strange thing was that Charlie did well at this cold-approach work. Not for the first few days when he was ready to give it away which apparently is normal, but even by the end of the first week things began to look hopeful. He found that he had a flair for sales. He could see the way peoples minds were working, when they had doubts, when they agreed, edge them away from sticking points, and could move them ever forward towards the closing of a sale. And finding himself good at it, he also found himself enjoying it. It was a national firm and he became Salesman of the Year for two years running. He was not quite head-hunted away. One of the directors of Kosmic Kitchens also had a major interest in a firm of estate agents, Foster and Norton. Charlie knew nothing of the real estate business and said so when it was suggested that he might like to make the move but it was
pointed out to him that a good salesman can sell anything and Charlie was clearly an outstanding salesman. The hours were shorter and the commission from the sale of expensive properties well worth having. It would make what he was getting then no more than a day’s pocket money. Charlie had been easily convinced. Foster and Norton tended to concentrate on the growing trend in acquiring properties in Spain. In spite of all the groans about the slump in the British economy, this market was taking off. Foster and Norton had associate estate agents in Spain who sent them information and photographs of suitable properties coming on the market. It was Charlies’ job to lead people who had perhaps not even considered property offshore to decide that a place in the sun for their retirement would not only be pleasant but vital, a holiday retreat in the meantime. It was basically selling from cold all over again. Those who had already made this decision would be over in Spain visiting Spanish estate agents. To sell people, Charlie had to see the properties for himself. Eulogies of things not seen don’t have quite the same ring. This meant frequent trips to Spain which in these days this can be a day trip. Across on an early morning flight, a reasonable look at the properties, a bit of business, a bit of socializing, and an evening flight home. It was on one of these return flights that Charlie met Lydia. They had adjacent seats and, by one of those coincidences, identical small cases which they had carried on. Although Charlie had never found it necessary to stay overnight in Spain, he always carried the basic needs for such an eventuality. Airlines could never be entirely relied upon. The cases provided an opening for conversation. Charlie chatted her up. It was not that he found her attractive in any way, anything but. He was a full-time salesman and chatted everybody up. She was mousy,
overwhelmed by the world at large, an obvious spinster and life-long virgin. Probably a librarian, a preschool teacher or something similar. He was right about her being a librarian. “Am I good or am I good?” he asked himself. She was not a librarian in a lending library but in the library of a large scientific research laboratory. There had been sensitive papers to be returned to a similar group in Spain which could not be safely entrusted to commercial couriers. Returning them had been her first important assignment and also her first time out of England. On arrival when he took their cases down from the overhead locker, he took a brief peek into his own case just make certain that there was no mix-up. The cases were too much alike. For such a mouse, it was amazing how far ahead of him she managed get when leaving the aircraft. Being small, she seemed to slip through the gaps. In the customs’ hall, it was clear that something was up. There were far more customs officers on duty than usual and they were being much more thorough than usual. Slower too. They had received some sort of tip-off probably. Lydia was well ahead of him in the queue, and he saw her ask the woman behind her, with word and gesture, to save her place. She came back to him clutching her case as though expecting attack by highway men and looking worried. “I brought back 220 cigarettes,” she whispered. " For daddy. I’m not allowed that many? Will they stop me? Will I get charged with smuggling?" She had her list of permissible travellers imports and showed him the place where it said 200 cigarettes. He assured her that with so few over they’d probably just take the twenty and let her go, that ‘she had an honest face’, and, relieved, she went back and reclaimed her place. As it happened, the custom officer that she encountered must have thought so too and did not even ask her to open her case.
As she left, she turned to give Charlie a self-conscious grateful little wave. Charlie was not so lucky. His case had to be opened and, to his surprise, was found to contain women’s underclothes and some toiletries. The look on the officer’s face was an easily read epic. " The woman in the next seat had a case identical to mine. This has to be hers." Such an unlikely excuse that it was in vain that Charlie tried to explain and Lydia was now long out of sight with his own case.. As an obvious pervert, and the officer had a thing about perverts, he was going to get the full treatment and he was taken aside to have everything meticulously examined. A talcum powder container was found to contain a white powder that was definitely not talc below a cardboard partition and a thin layer of the genuine article. Charlie was both a pervert and a drug smuggler. And yet he’d made sure that he had the right case. And so how…..? When she came back!! It was hard to admit to himself that he could be so fooled and that as a former bag-snatch entrepreneur he had forgotten the cardinal rule for travelers. If you can’t hold your bag, keep it between your legs. The king of attention diversion had met with true perfection, with his queen.