The Flight Of Thieves

Back in 1976 I wrote a screenplay on my Olivetti typewriter. D. Descending was a tale of a reclusive hang-glider recruited by a mysterious female to rob a Manhattan skyscraper. I can't remember what they were trying to steal, but the other day I stood on a billionaire's 5th Avenue penthouse terrace installing bronze lockers for his cashmere pillows. Each one cost $3500, which was a little less than I coined in a month. Inside the apartment several museum-class paintings hung on the living room walls. I calculated them to be worth over a $100 million and called up an art dealer to tell him where I was. Dithers was a hound for the rich and famous. "See anything interesting?" The ex-investment banker and I were trying to sell a Picasso to my clients, a gay couple in Dublin. Dithers' private owned the painting. They were having second thoughts about getting rid their Picasso. It was from 1954. "There's an amazing Rothko." "I know the painting." Its purchase had broken records at auction. "Can you get to it?" "Yes." I looked south. All of Manhattan stretched below me. Such a theft would make the headlines around the world, but I wasn't after infamy. "It's two steps from me." The glass door was open. It was a ten-story drop to 66th Street. "Are you up for this?" "What?" Dithers came from a good Washington family, but money also was tight for the rich these days. "Get a truck and I'll throw out a painting. There's no security." "But they'll catch you." "I know, but you;ll escape with the painting and I'll do the time." I was working blue-collar. There was no chance of getting rich through honesty. "Prison?" "Yes, prison, unless we return it for a ransom. We'll split it 50/50" "I don't know." "I know you don't." The year was 2013. Dithers wasn't a thief. He was a rich kid in his 40s. They had no balls. "Don't worry about it. I was just joking about it. The Rothko is too big to hang in the Fort Greene Observatory." My ceiling was very low. I hung up the phone and admired the painting, then turned around to scan the length of Central Park. The view was free of charge same as a glance at the Rothko. They were both the same to me.