sixty-one pieces
A young thief narrates his own life in his own voice, where discipline, family provision, and professional pride cohere into a life he doesn't see as needing defending.
"A carpenter doesn't apologise for owning a saw."
A life of crime narrated from the inside is fully coherent and self-justifying — the old man keeps searching for the place where the arithmetic breaks, and it isn't there to find.
A smuggler's charm and generosity conceal a life with no moral ledger at all — money is the only entry ever recorded.
"Money arriving was the only entry that mattered, and everything else in his life was simply what happened to be standing near the till when it opened."
Amorality is harder to be angry at than immorality — a man who never weighs harm against gain can't be caught contradicting himself, because there was never a code there to violate.