Infamous
crime boss Theodore Françoise Thuggady settled back in
his chair at the Hotel d' Truand, warming his cognac in the palm of his
hand. "Crime," he said contemplatively. "I ask
you: what has become of
crime? Where is the art, the finesse, the elan?
The mugger is not an
artist; he is an antic. Crime is merely mugging now, and criminals merely
muggers – hopped-up highwaymen. When did you last read in the paper
about
a truly spectacular heist – twenty men in ballgowns waltzing into the
Louvre and somehow
waltzing out with the Winged Victory of Samothrace,
that sort of thing?" He stared out
across Lake Constance. "Never. No, the
last artist – the last real artist –
was Mandrake Wales. Wales! Why, he folded
Rembrandt's 'Chloe: Reclinging Nude' into his
wallet – frame and all! – at
the Musee d'Orsay, walked out, hailed a cab, caught
the afternoon flight
home to New York City, and had it hanging on the wall of his local pub by
midnight that same night. And there it hangs," Thuggady smiled, sipping
at
this drink, "to this very day."
