Archives for May 2011

This is a continuation of this post:

Who in their right mind would name a daughter Remorse? Although that wasn’t so bad; her big brother was called Regret, which is a sorry name for a man.

The old thief espied their shack from afar, and counted his blessings.

There was a reason why he had lived to be an old thief who walked free of fetters and shackles and not one who lived in chains.

He never let ego get in the way of doing a proper job. Too many other men had made the mistake of trying to leave a signature behind and had paid the price for it.

Ego and the movie industry were responsible for that. Ego made you want to to show how smart you were and movies made you think that it would turn you into some kind of icon.

For a moment he paused to wipe his brow and considered the best way to approach the shack. A smart man didn’t get lost pondering why someone would name their children Regret and Remorse, at least not from 100 yards a way.

That sort of wool gathering was best done at home in front of a warm fire and with your favorite drink in hand. His chosen profession required attention to detail as the consequences for mistakes could be quite severe.

Some of the younger guys would laugh and say that doing a job in the states wasn’t as risky as doing it in Saudi Arabia. And while it was true that if you got caught here they wouldn’t cut off your hand it was also true that lots of other bad thing could happen.

Few if any of the young guys had seen what an angry homeowner could do with a baseball bat or golf club. Some of those guys would beat you so badly your arms and legs never worked quite right again.

In his mind that was far worse than being locked in a cage or killed. Death wasn’t something that he feared or welcomed but he had a list of things to do so he preferred to wait a good while longer before that came about.

Nor was he interested in serving as the chew toy of any dog large or small. Hollywood didn’t make movies that showed what happened to thieves that were caught by some of the specially trained watch dogs. It was more exciting to see a dog chase a thief than to watch the dog savage him.

And savage was exactly what would happen. If the owner gave the proper command that dog or dogs would use their jaws to maul you in ways that would excite the National Geographic crowd. .

Once years before he had seen three Rottweiler’s kill one of his partners. It didn’t happen in a vacuum. The owner had been there too…encouraging the dogs. He could still hear the guy laughing about how no one would miss a thief and he was right because no one did.

It was a hard thing to watch but one of many good lessons about the value of preparation and the need for caution. This was probably the one area that Hollywood did portray with real accuracy.

The need for preparation couldn’t be overstated and thanks to modern technology it was becoming easier all the time. Digital photography, satellite imagery and a host of other gadgets were all part of his magic bag of tricks.

And let us not forget the wonderful world of social media which made it exceptionally easy to gather more information and details about the places and people he would go visit.

Facebook, Twitter and blogging told more tales about people and their habits than most would imagine. There were a million different fragments of information that he could use in a million different ways.

If you mentioned social media and crime what most people thought of was Identity Theft. And had that been within his sphere it would have been quite easy to get involved in. But that wasn’t his focus and for good reason.

It had turned into big business and as a result it had gained the attention of both state and federal law enforcement. That meant that an enormous amount of attention and resources were being focused upon its perpetrators and that wasn’t good for him.

He preferred to work in the shadows where less attention meant fewer people trying to catch him. Identity Theft left too many cyber crumbs and he wanted no part of it.

Speaking of shadows it wouldn’t be long before the sun set behind the mountains and he would get a chance to get a closer look at the shack.