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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

[beeps]

[click, static]

Yeah, okay, I guess I really had given up trying to be subtle about it. [click, static]

You didn’t put a question mark at the end, but I’m going to assume it’s a question anyway—or, asking for confirmation at least.

I’m glad you’re okay—thanks for sending me something, even if I’m not totally sure what to say in response. I’ve never really, um...talked about this. At least not to anyone not in it with me.

[click, static]

But, yes, I was an art thief. I mean, that’s the easiest way to describe it anyway. And, you know, it wasn’t always art-art— like with Sylvia, it was sometimes antiques and what-not. I’m sure you’re wondering how I got into it when I’m clearly not an art connoisseur and the answer is really

that I fell backwards into it. To finish my story from the other day, I guess, and completely incriminate myself I met Pete trying to rob him of some jewelry he’d robbed from some Park Ave fat cat—that was mainly my thing at the time. Burglary. Um, I didn’t—when I got to New York, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so I got a job at a hardware store in a really nice part of town and that led to me doing in home repairs for some folks in the neighborhood and...well, you fix enough wall sconces in five bedroom apartments while you’re living with four other people in a shitty downtown box and you start to have some feelings about some things.

I am as good at breaking things as I am at fixing them, so it was easy for me to get into empty apartments, into locked drawers or safes and it was easy for me to case a place if I was already there doing repairs—

[click, static]

God, it’s weird to talk about this out loud and on a public frequency. I don’t know what you might be thinking of me, finding out I’m some kind of common criminal, but I never stole from anyone who really needed it. I always tried to make sure to leave alone the stuff that seemed like it might have real sentimental value to, but of course you can never really tell—

[click, static]

Anyway, Pete—rather than punching me in the jaw for trying to rob him, he offered me a job. He said he liked the way I had broken in, leaving no trace. He needed a yeggman—um, a safecracker—and I wasn’t too shabby at it, even as inexperienced as I was. So that’s what I did.

[click, static]

I was twenty-two years old and I’d been in New York for all of...eighteen months? And I had somehow fallen in with one of the best thieves in a city filled to the brim with expert criminals.

Up until I got stuck with Harry for half a decade, I had pretty good luck with the people I fell in with.

And now I’ve got you, Birdie—or, I hope I do, after all this. So I think my luck is turning back around.

[click, static]

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Art Thief

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