Decorum in Grand Larceny and Other Such Criminal Courtesies: An Instructional Guide
Story by charles_they on SoFurry
daniel handler was like half of my childhood, enjoy
Decorum in Grand Larceny and Other Such Criminal Courtesies: An Instructional Guide
by
C.M. Averin
FOREWORD
If you are reading this, then in all likelihood you are a mammal of fine moral sensibility and pleasant disposition who, like so many others, has had their outlook on this world soured not unlike an infant cub whose parent(s) and/or guardian(s) have presented them with a fresh-cut lemon for the first time. And, much like that cub, you have been disabused of your erstwhile notion that, having been imbued with all the marvelous faculties innate in every mammal by nature of birth, one would never stoop to incivilities practiced predominately by carnivorous plants, omnivorous reptiles, and most forms of waterfowl. Yet as you are no doubt well aware, the lemon is woefully not sweet, and mammals are woefully not kind. Though I loathe to do so, I must regretfully inform you this truth is evermore prominent during the commission of grand larceny.
While it does no good and in fact does significant evil to blame those engaging in larcenous acts and other illegalities for the lacking decorum that now governs these once-esteemed disciplines, it stands nonetheless that a field's improvement without its complete and utter destruction requires internal effort in addition to any external pressure—one needs only look to the steep decline of Canadian semi-professional curling after rooting out the significant corruption and conspiracy therewith for proof. For this reason, I, Robin Sylver, a notorious weasel well-versed in the arts of courteous criminality and criminal courtesy, have put together an instructional guide for your quotidian, biannual, or one-off, entirely impulsive lawbreaking needs. And it is with utmost certainty that I assure this resource is not, and will never be, a lemon.
A guide beginning at the beginning of a criminal commission would presume a crime's commission to begin at the beginning of that criminal commission rather than the beginning of that criminal commission's planning, which, as law-enforcement agencies and legal institutions across the ill-fitted globe would assert, is the true beginning of a criminal commission. For that reason among many others, that guide's beginning would be well-intentioned but misplaced, and this is not that guide, for the only things we look to misplace are the contents of safety deposit boxes—namely, discretely fenceable heirlooms and classified government documents—and the often-cautious hearts of those we encounter along the way. To achieve this goal, however, it is imperative we begin before the beginning, lest our beginning be cut short before it can truly begin.
PART I: THE BEGINNING
Begin by selecting the financial institution you wish to burgle and engaging in thorough research practices aided by your extensive library of employee records, secret passages constructed by more secret societies, and humiliating family anecdotes. If you do not possess such a collection or are unable to access it due to foreign government occupation or inclement weather, the resources available at your public library or municipal administrative buildings will suffice. Note down all pertinent information (vault model, building height, plot size, structural integrity, vulnerability to plastic explosives, average police response time, tail-door entrapment statistics, gravitational orientation, employee orientation, etc), the most important of which is their dates of operation, as if you schedule the robbery for February 2nd, 1976, and the bank does not open until February 11th, 1979, you will find nothing but an empty vault and a crowd of confused construction foxes. I personally find that it works best to store this information on an index card.
(If you have chosen to instead commit the details of your selected establishment to memory, please send notice ahead of time to your local and federal law-enforcement that this is only a dress rehearsal. This will ensure that, should you err and misremember one or more key items, you can try again tomorrow.)
Having filled your index card with a variety of appropriate or inappropriate material—depending on whom you ask—the next appropriate and inappropriate materials—depending on whom you ask—you must acquire are a variety of physical rather than abstract items. While the particularities will vary from institution to institution, among the most common items required for the commission of grand larceny are: a reflective vest (though the bank will most likely be well-lit), a hard hat (preferably white), a clipboard (index card attached), plastic explosives (if you cannot make your own, store-bought are fine), a weapon of some sort (user choice), one hundred feet of wire (copper, not the bastard kind), and a paw-held toolbox (in which to store valuables and any additional physical, not abstract, items). Do ensure that all of the items are appropriate or inappropriate—depending on whom you ask—for personal use, as for example an ill-fitting hardhat will chafe the ears and leave a terribly offensive rash, whereas a fitted hardhat may deflect physical attacks such as stray fruit, rubble, or, if lined properly with tinfoil, abstract attacks on the mammalian psyche.
If you have succeeded in completing these two preparatory tasks, you may rest easy in knowing that there remains only one further to complete before your larcenous engagement becomes infallible (excepting mammalian error), though it is the most trying and troubling of trials, and one that I'm sorry to say is nigh-impossible if you are vampire unless of course you are also a twin, triplet, or necromantic plastic surgeon.
Simply approach a reflective surface of some sort, whether the mirror of an armoire, an especially still and sizeable puddle, or the desk on which Poe wrote. Utter a greeting appropriate to whomever or whatever you see reflected. I prefer “How do you do?" but ultimately, this will depend on your own circumstances as well as those of the bank teller you will shortly threaten, so authenticity surmounts any chivalrous charade regardless of greeting, whether “Howdy y'all!" or even “Might I lift your tail?" if you are so daring.
Carry out a polite conversation spanning no less than two minutes fifteen seconds but no more than two minutes twenty seconds, during which the perceived awkward silence sums up ten seconds or less and during which there is no mention of the weather or political affiliation, as while it is true that if the bank teller you happen upon happens to be an esteemed member of your fomenting rebellion, you will be greatly advantage, it is equally true that if the bank teller you happen upon happens to be a once-esteemed member of your fomenting rebellion turned traitor, you will instead be greatly disadvantaged. The risk of incarceration for abstract political crimes and causing inclement weather in addition to grand larceny is difficult to justify, in this weasel's humble opinion.
If you are having difficulty conversing with the thing you find in the mirror, I have here a list of helpful introductory queries and topics for your discussion:
Name?
Pronouns (personal)?
Pronouns (linguistics)?
The contents of one's safety deposit box?
Thoughts on grooming, lemons, and vampirism?
Have they ever considered robbing a bank before?
If so, would they care to be an accomplice?
In practice, do remember to surreptitiously verify the teller's responses against the information noted on your index card, and if you uncover any errors, provide them with the correct line and try again.
PART II: THE SECOND BEGINNING
Now, for the sole purpose of instruction (as boasting is unbecoming though not unexpected of a mustelid, and I am anything but unbecoming, if I do say so myself, which I do—that is, say so myself), I will take up a hypothetical example well-enshrined in the mythos of larcenous deeds that, according to an exceptionally well-read amateur ornithologist mouse and two lesser-read mouse attorneys who will themselves attempt to collect any unpaid consulting fees, cannot be lawfully used as evidence in a court of law or a court of crows. This exemplary robbery, scheduled for February 29th, 1993, at The Singular Bank in a Town Well-Known for Financial Enterprising, will put into relief the importance of proper preparation in property-purloining propriety, as well as provide a practical preview of the purportedly-punishing problems in your pilfering purview.
The hour was noon, for the majority of law-enforcement would be having lunch, or perhaps brunch if they had a particularly eventful morning with their partner(s) and left in a hurry. Having already donned my mechanical repair disguise of white hardhat and reflective vest as well as other miscellaneous clothing items given that it hampers ones efforts if they are wearing nothing but the aforementioned, I attached my index card to my clipboard and took up my toolbox in my free paw. As I entered the establishment, I noted the various entrances, pawprint-stained windows, and neocapitalist symbologies adorning the bank, corroborating them with the information on my index card. This habit of counting external exits had developed after a series of less-ambitious and less-successful endeavours in similarly-ensorcelled structures where I learned that while a bank may appear to have seven separate entrances, it may indeed have only one exit that asks a codephrase and the DNA of the bank manager as tribute for safe passage. This is particularly inconvenient if the windows on the first and second floor are bulletproof, if you have not prepared a crashmat in the parking lot ahead of time, and if the manager bear is in a committed relationship or just not that into you.
Inside, the queue was an acceptable length of twelve hyenas and seven foxes, thus I kept my weapon stowed in the toolbox and used the ample time to compose a letter to the architect, giving my compliments for her expert drafting abilities, as the entrance/exit doors had either been shunted from my perception or truly vanished after closing—thankfully, without trapping my tail therein. (It is in my experience difficult to remove a trapped appendage if you cannot see in what or whom it is trapped, or if you cannot see at all and have not become habituated to that mode of navigation.) By the time my reminiscent reverie and letter-writing drew to an end, I found myself at the front of the queue and faced with a bank-telling badger of short tail and long face.
Being the villainous virtuoso that only a weasel can be, the ill-tempered mammals behind me were treated to a spectacle not unlike watching Neal McLeod paint or Takashi Murakami consume his own leg.
After my introduction and small-talk lasting two minutes thirty-three seconds, much to the awe of those behind me, I asked the teller to show me to the vault, as I had received word it was having difficulty with closure.
The teller expressed her deepest regrets and sympathy for the vault and its family in such trying times but was hesitant to let me see it due to vulnerability issues.
I of course reassured the teller that I possessed all proper certifications for bank vault therapy, and that I had had many a success with vaults in similar albeit not identical emotional predicaments.
The teller in turn replied that she hadn't intended to call my credentials into question as to do so would be impolite at best and an act of war at worst, but nonetheless insisted that she use the desk phone to call her manager as she wasn't aware of any closure difficulties or therapy appointments that week.
Moments later when her cellphone rang, she answered, then asked herself to enquire as to who had sent the repairweasel and bank vault therapist, which she then relayed to me.
I replied that the union had sent me, to which she nodded and asked no further questions, said a quick goodbye and I-love-you to the manager, then escorted me to the bank vault.
If you have ever been inside a bank vault as the majority of mammals have at one point or another during their youth, you will know that it is only ever one of two things. First, the common thing, is a maddening, unplumbed cavern of secrets, most of which would be better left stricken from this story and left to lay sleeping undisturbed like your canid ex-lover. The second, the uncommon thing, is like a cavern of secrets but deeper, an infinite fang-and-molar fissure in the suffocating black hollow of earth, where light of day behind you is blocked out by collapsing conspiracy stalactites overhead and scheming stalagmites underpaw. Yet, the latter is only the uncommon thing until you have on paw the necessary keyrings, a scroll containing a powerful entropic curse, or a supply of plastic explosives, all of which face the frustrating paradox of normally being within the safety deposit boxes rather than without.
Due to proper planning and good fortune, I had in my toolbox at that time two of the aforementioned three solutions as well a heavy spool of copper wire. After sequestering myself in the vault (and, of course, minding my tail and shutting the vault door behind me, as while euphemistically criminality often occurs behind closed doors, grand larceny is a crime where occurring very literally behind closed doors is a significant advantage), I began my work. My steps were as follows:
Attached plastic explosives to the desired safety deposit boxes.
Unscrew a lightbulb that has been depowered.
Attach one end of your copper wire to the lighting fixture.
Attach the other end(s) to the detonators within the plastic explosives.
(optional) If there is insufficient cover by the lightswitch, use copper wire to create a method of remote switchpulling.
Flick the same lightswitch to the “ON" position.
Flick the same lightswitch to the “OFF" position.
Collect classified government documents and discretely-fenceable jewelry.
Attached plastic explosives to the desired safety deposit boxes.
Locate a lightswitch and flick it to the “OFF" position.
At this point, the teller had very likely deduced that the explosion heard within the vault was not the result of a tremendous emotional breakthrough and alerted the local and federal authorities to my courteous criminal practice, although in truth I am unsure to this day if this is true, as I did not stop to enquire with her on my way out and since then I have been banned from the Town Well-Known for Financial Enterprising Which Possesses but a Singular Bank. In all verity, the badger may have been innocent of my accused and figurative crime and it may well have been her manager who alerted the police.
If you are the teller in question and would like to clear the air, please open your window and contact me by way of letter stored within your (presumably refurbished) safety deposit box.
PART III: THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Once outside the vault, my escape plan began, although once again, it had technically begun before that particular moment. To the mammalian crowd wracked with both fright and fascination, I asked for a moment of quiet, then for one or more of them to volunteer as a willing hostage to facilitate my escape and negotiation with the authorities. While I am sure the banks you frequent, being of course a mammal of fine moral sensibility and pleasant disposition, are full of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed mammals of equal sensibility and disposition, I must regrettably inform you that the bank I was hypothetically robbing for educational purposes was more so filled with mammalian lemons. This is, of course, why I brought along my weapon of choice: just as with a cub, you achieve greater success by offering two differing options with similar outcomes (e.g., would you like to play for ten more minutes then go to bed, or go to bed now and have me read you a story?), a well-chosen weapon will similarly motivate adults who would otherwise opt to do neither.
Having informed my present company that they could either volunteer to be a hostage in case I ran afoul of the authorities or volunteer to read aloud the last thirty pages of James Joyce's Ulysses, I was swarmed by a combined dozen of hyenas and foxes volunteering for service, which I'm told is a not uncommon phenomenon. The teller—and her manager, both admirers of agrammaticality, I presume—remained behind, opting for the latter. I, however, escorted my escorts to the basement to continue my escape, although not before securing her cellphone on indefinite loan so as to negotiate with the authorities if needed.
Now, a brief interlude on negotiating with the authorities when you like I may or may not have what a weasel therapist, parent/guardian, or amateur ornithologist mouse would describe as a problem with authority. There are several things to keep in mind: for instance, if you have recently ended a long-term relationship with a policebun who often pretended that their ears were not the size of oval dinner platters when you fomented rebellion and committed fraud without a government license, you will face increased difficulty in your negotiations if they are indeed the chosen representative of the authorities. If that policebun has on retainer an elite S.W.A.T. swine or otherwise a trained team of special boarces, it will be unwise (no matter how correct the nomenclature, figuratively or literally) to refer to them as dirty pigs. And, if all of the above have taken their luncheon at a recently-opened carrot café positioned across the street from the bank you are in the process of burgling, the response times on your index card will be woefully inaccurate, and you will have to close the door on negotiations.
What was not inaccurate at that time, however, were the structural integrity values I had taken for the basement door, which I blocked using a broom that one particulary posh vulpine produced from somewhere on his person, though to this day I cannot say from where. This, thankfully, allowed me and my hyena-and-fox retinue to move aside approximately two hundred boxes of unfiled customer complaint documents and uncover the hole in the plot through which I had intended to make my escape. I sent my dozen volunteer hostages ahead of me for purely criminal reasons, as if they were behind me, they would be able to grab onto my footpaws and/or legs until the authorities, too, crawled through the hole, and as most if not all of them were something to behold when viewed from behind, and the lot of them had had ample time to do the same to me.
It never does well to waste an opportunity for lechery during a criminal commission, though it is equally worth mentioning that one should take care to never break the law when breaking the law. For example, being in the commission of grand larceny and being in need of a larger vehicle given that the thirteen of us were unlikely to fit in the taxi in which I had arrived, I located the closest stretch limousine and paid the panther chauffer in discretely-fenceable jewelry in exchange for safe passage to the dive bar underneath which I made my home at the time. If I had instead coerced the driver by means of aloud reading of modernist literature, I would have been breaking the law while breaking the law, in which case the driver may have sold me out to the authorities instead of the jewelry to an eager buyer, which in turn would have put me in prison instead of the chauffer on a plane to the West Andes to discover what had truly happened to his great aunt three years prior.
Very similarly, if I had threatened my volunteer hostages into silence instead of inviting them to the ball I would soon throw (ostensibly as a show of money but in truth to distribute the classified government documents to an ornithologist mouse of remarkable legal acumen, an erstwhile bank manager bear of considerable charm, and, regrettably, a panther's great aunt who was not and would not ever be anywhere near the West Andes), then I would have been breaking the law while breaking the law, in which case the volunteer hostages might have described the bank thief as a literal weasel in a reflective vest and white hardhat instead of a figurative weasel and literal coyote found wearing such attire and carrying a bank manager's cellphone in a nearby alleyway. And, arguably most importantly, those same volunteer hostages might've retired in old age with little accrued wealth in their accounts instead of to my chambers for an after-ball afterparty with a significantly less-restrictive dress code.
AFTERWORD
If you have followed this instructional guide on the art of criminal courtesy and courteous criminality, then you have in all likelihood begun down the path of great wealth and greater importance still. Indeed, the lack of formal complaints submitted to your local criminal enterprises of which any mundane person is aware will serve as testament to your decorum and distaste of things and mammals that claim to be sweet but in all truth taste sour. As such, if you encounter a lemon perched upon your doorstep, inside your coatpocket, or perhaps the paw-held toolbox during yet another criminal commission if you have chosen to continue, do not bite into it, as you like so many others know already what will happen if you do. The difference, I hope, is that they will bite because they know nothing else to do with the lemon, while you will at this point will know that, having been imbued with all the marvelous faculties innate in every mammal by nature of birth, one needs never stoop to incivilities practiced predominately against oneself for lack of knowing a better future.
You will add sugar, water, and perhaps ice, and, if you intend to move forward with a weasel, a bear, a mouse, and a panther who wish only for more decency and fewer conspiracies in the world, you will serve it to those twelve-some volunteers, hopefully while they peruse the copy of this guide they found mysteriously tucked into their discarded socks after the afterparty.