A middle-aged fat man in a flamboyant purple suit, drenched in sweat, was spinning in place like a top, frantically turning over a dozen pockets all over his body.
William recognized this walking mound of fat at a glance.
Benjamin, a small-time boss in the Gotham black market who specialized in smuggling household appliances.
Last month, this guy’s mother was dumped into William’s underground clinic due to acute heart failure, and he had literally crossed her name off the King of Hell’s list.
At this moment, Benjamin was holding a sexy, scantily-clad young mistress, originally intending to go into the nearby jewelry store to buy an expensive pearl necklace to please her.
However, the moment he reached into his pocket to pay the deposit, he found that his leather wallet, filled with large amounts of cash and black cards, had vanished into thin air.
“Are you playing me?
Pretending to be poor?” The mistress pouted her lips, which were coated in flaming red lipstick, and turned to leave in dissatisfaction.
“Honey!
I swear!
I just stuffed thirty thousand in cash in there before I left!” Benjamin’s features squeezed together in anxiety as he swore oaths while frustratedly pounding his thick thighs, looking as ridiculous as a walrus failing to mate.
Just as Benjamin was at his wit’s end, wishing he could strip-search every onlooker around him, a young girl with neat, dark black curly hair and a dark, slim-fit jacket was walking with an extremely light gait.
Like a lazy cat, she quickly brushed past William.
A waft of cheap perfume mixed with the cold street wind drifted into William’s nostrils.
The girl lowered the brim of her hat and shifted her body, seemingly about to completely merge into the crowded throng of people.
William looked at Benjamin, who was still jumping in anxiety, and sighed helplessly.
He stepped forward and reached out to pat those broad shoulders.
Benjamin was suppressed with a belly full of rage and was about to curse out whichever blind bastard dared to touch him.
But when he turned around and saw that iconic pair of dark circles under the eyes beneath the baseball cap, the profanity at the tip of his tongue took a sharp turn.
The fury on his fat face instantly collapsed, replaced by an extremely fawning smile.
“Oh!
Dr.
William!
What brings you to the Upper East Side?
Is there anything I can do for you?”
William didn’t respond, his wrist flipping with extreme naturalness. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
A bulging black leather wallet appeared in his palm like a magic trick, dangling before the eyes of the stunned Benjamin.
“See if this is yours.
I just picked it up from the steps in front of the pharmacy; it looked familiar.
Check it and see if anything is missing.”
Benjamin’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets as he snatched the wallet, his fat fingers flipping through it rapidly.
Not a single one of the thick stack of hundred-dollar bills was missing, and the several black cards and ID documents were all safe and sound.
He was so excited that his fat trembled all over.
He shoved aside the mistress who was in his way and gripped William’s hands tightly, shouting through flying spit that Dr.
William was an Archangel sent by God to save him.
To express his gratitude, the black market dealer didn’t hesitate.
He pulled a checkbook directly from his inner suit pocket, took out a fountain pen, and scribbled a check for ten thousand dollars, presenting it to William with both hands.
William, who had just extorted a million dollars from Gotham’s richest man, didn’t even bat an eyelid.
He casually brushed the check aside, his tone as flat as if he were discussing today’s weather.
“If you really want to thank me, donate this ten thousand to the orphanage in the East District.
Consider it building some karma for yourself in this hellhole.”
Benjamin’s hand holding the check froze in mid-air, then he nodded repeatedly in agreement.
With a face full of awe, he put his arm around his mistress—who was now smiling again—and disappeared around the street corner with a thousand thanks.
Watching that mound of fat walk away, William lowered his hat brim, a faint trace of mockery spilling from the corner of his lips.
Picked it up?
Only a fool would ‘pick up’ a wallet full of cash on this street.
That wallet was something he had ‘taken’ back from that curly-haired girl who had just brushed past him.
Normally, William wouldn’t have the slightest interest in this kind of Gotham street ‘thief-robbing-thief’ scenario.
But that ungrateful female thief, after stealing from Benjamin, had actually been greedy enough to quietly slip those two long, nimble fingers into his trench coat pocket as she passed him!
Had it been before last night, she might have actually made off with his change for medical equipment without him noticing.
In the 0.1 seconds that the girl’s fingertips touched the edge of his pocket, his neural reflex arc had already completed the full calculation from anticipation to counterattack.
He not only avoided the probe from an extremely hidden angle but also ‘borrowed’ her technique.
Using the superb force-deflection and grappling methods of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, he reached back into the girl’s inner jacket pocket and intercepted Benjamin’s wallet without any resistance.
The entire process took less than half a second.
Even the girl, who considered herself one of Gotham’s top master thieves, didn’t realize that her freshly acquired prey had already changed hands.
However, neither William nor the girl codenamed ‘Cat’ noticed that in the corner cafe across the street, a pair of eyes was staring intently at this spot.
Through a rain-streaked glass window, an eighteen-year-old blonde girl was sitting on a high stool.
She wore a neat high ponytail, and her features were bright and vivid, exuding an unworldly brashness.
She was holding a cup of iced milk tea with double sugar.
Harleen Frances Quinzel.
A freshman who had just been admitted to Gotham University’s psychology program.
Despite the noisy street separating them and the lack of any audible conversation, Harleen’s eyes—which had a great talent for criminal psychology and a pursuit of extreme detail—took in the entire street magic performance just now.
She clearly captured the curly-haired girl’s theft, and more importantly, saw how that Asian man with heavy dark circles under his eyes completed that incredible reverse pickpocketing with a hand speed that defied human logic.
Harleen bit her plastic straw and took a large, forceful sip of the sweet milk tea, her cheeks puffing out.
There was no fear in her eyes like a normal person seeing a crime; instead, there was a flash of almost pathological excitement and fanaticism.
She had a natural obsession with outliers who broke worldly norms.
In her psychological analysis model, the vulgar criminals on the streets of Gotham were boring to death.
But that Asian man, who seemed exhausted but was actually hiding his depths, was like a perfect observation sample full of contradictions and mysteries.
Harleen let go of the flattened straw, pulled a pink hardbound notebook from her canvas bag, and clicked her ballpoint pen.
“Extremely covert counter-surveillance capabilities, superhuman neural reflex speed, and extreme restraint regarding money and trouble.”
The tip of the pen flew across the paper.
She looked up, her gaze crossing the road, trying to catch the back of that black trench coat again, only to find that the other party had already pushed open the glass door of the medical supermarket and completely disappeared from sight.
“Got you, Mr.
Interesting Sample.” Harleen twirled the ballpoint pen in her hand, a hint of neurotic curiosity showing in her bright smile.