From the Thief to His Daughter

Dear Isabel,

Here's a lie about thieving. You’ve probably heard it before.

A man in a suit wants to hang the Mona Lisa on the bare wall of his mansion. So he pulls together his closest friends, and they wine and dine their way into the museum; and elegantly—oh so elegantly—they lift the Mona Lisa from the exhibit. It sits in the mansion for the rest of its cold, still life, surrounded by chandeliers and gold leaf.

Here's the truth: the man in the suit doesn’t exist. Neither does his mansion. If you want to live the life—the real life, the heister life, my life—you have to get him out of your brain. Be ready for alternating periods of abundance and leanness, for a month working over a glamorous cruise ship followed by a month lying low in a leaky apartment. Prepare to leave behind everything you cannot carry. Prepare to run. You are not allowed the extravagance of thinking phrases like “coming back” or “going home.”

Here's the truth: You will be free—free of the constraints of society, free of the concerns of the world. But you will also be a marginal person. A ghost. A goner.