I stopped in the market and paid twenty dollars for a small red canvas backpack just large enough to hold the contents of the blue bag Coogan had given me. Lunch was at an open-air cafe across the street from the two elephants. A new set of vacationers passed between them every twenty minutes or so, by the clock high above the gallery's front doors.

At 5:30, I crossed the street and walked around back into the alley. Taking a deep breath, I braved the barrage of buzzing flies and wedged the guitar case into a three-foot-high pile of refuse next to the back door of the gallery. I pulled up pieces of garbage around it so that only the inconspicuous handle showed. The alley was empty as I placed the last camouflaging sheets of newspaper over it. I shoved my arm through a strap on the red pack and walked back around the corner.

I pushed open the glass door and walked in long quick strides through the foyer, past the guard desk, and into the gallery. Both guards watched a small television sitting next to the blank security monitor. Neither of them noticed me as I passed, then lingered in the open hallway behind them. Their gray uniforms and pistols instilled an automatic fear in me that curiously waned the longer I secretly stared at them. The confidence that had so often been my ally slowly flowed back into me with the simple realization that the two men before me did not know.

I stood as a stalking wolf in their presence, the very air around me thick with larceny, and still, they did not know. They deserved the contempt I silently heaped on them. Standing there, I couldn't help but feel that my swelling bravado mocked them and the order they represented. I smiled and chuckled to myself, having almost forgotten the inherent advantages all assailants enjoy.

I turned away and hovered around the sculptures, standing in the center of the room so that I could keep one eye on the guards and the other on the prize. I watched the vacationers as they milled in front of the Vermeer, their idle conversations barely reaching my ears. They would be the last ones to see it before it returned to the blank spot on Samas' wall. The two elderly women, arm in arm, the young couple with their sleeping baby, all three sunburned, and the young man talking on a portable phone, all of them would tell stories in their nights to come about how they were the last to see 'The Rendezvous' by Jan Vermeer, that they were there the day it was stolen. And I, unknown I, there in their midst, would be the cause of it. I was the anonymous individual they would admire for what I was about to give them. Take a good look.