The City Man
Howard Akler
Coach House Books
March 6, 1934. Hundreds gather outside City Hall to celebrate the Toronto centenary. In the crowd, pickpocket Mona Kantor and partner Chesler are "in the tip," finding easy pickings among the jostling celebrants. Eli Morenz, reporter for the Daily Star, is covering the festivities and uncovering the pickpocket racket working the scene. When a surreptitious photo drives Eli into the Jewish underworld Mona inhabits, he finds he's stumbled onto the story of his life.
Though their attraction is instant and dangerous, they can express themselves only in the vaguest of ways; Mona, unable to fully trust a man who could ruin her life with the scrawl of a pen, dekes and dodges, using their time together to teach him the subtleties of the grift, while Eli, still adrift in a shallow depression, finds himself smitten but increasingly unstable, torn between the drive for truth and the urge to keep Mona safe.
Moving from a tense newsroom on King Street to the dives of Kensington Market, The City Man is a darkly funny romance about a perilous lust, a desperate time, and the fine art of the grift. With prose as deft as a thief's fingers and as precise and powerful as a heavyweight's punch, Akler evokes a city as dynamic and alive as the lost Toronto of Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion. A novel of exceptional grace, excitement and beauty, The City Man might just be the story of your life, too.
Howard Akler
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Howard Akler was born in Toronto in 1969. He is the co-author (with Sarah B. Hood) of Toronto: The Unknown City (Arsenal Pulp, 2003). The City Man is also nominated for a Commonwealth Writers' Prize in the Canada Caribbean Region, Books in Canada/Amazon.ca First Novel Award. - Photo credit: Soumen Karmakar |
Excerpt from The City Man
Through the bodies they move, scissoring the floor of the station. Two thieves in step with the mark, appearing casual despite the practiced footwork. A shuffling celebrity. Passengers from all directions slowly clog the ramp of the departures concourse. Chesler slides in behind the tall man, a signal to Mona. She positions herself in front of the pair, just off to the left. The pace becomes languid now, each movement huddled around another. Mona removes her hat and wipes her brow. The felt hat dangles in her hand, a good grip on the brim. Her elbow in a hard angle almost touches the wrist beside her.
Chesler keeps one eye on the loose collar of the mark. The jacket is an ill fit, with a noticeable sag down the back. He coughs a gentle back-of-the-throat cough.
Mona drops her elbow, her hat shading Chesler's fingertips as they scurry along the left-hand pockets of the mark, coat and pants, fingertips so sentient they are in fleet accord with all the geometries of scratch. There is a roll of bills in the side pants pocket and a wallet in the back pants pocket. Chesler is set to cop.
Eyes forward, Mona manouvres the mark into a vulnerable position using her back and elbows and buttocks. Plants her prat with gestures incidental but calculated, small moves so ordinary they are overlooked. Her hip brushes the side of the mark's hand and Chesler gets his duke down, fast, hidden behind Mona's hat. With only the first two fingers, he takes pleat after pleat from the lining of the pocket, money rising into his hand with amazing speed. He reefs an easy kick, a small wad of money in his palm. Once more he coughs. Mona shortens her stride. Each step is smaller and smaller, so small the trio is both fluid and inert. The mark is dull to rhythm and he moves into her. A slight swivel of the hips for misdirection. The surest way to get a man's mind off his money is to focus on the space between the pockets. Just for one priapic moment, a sucker epoch. Chesler unbuttons the back pocket with a flip of the first joint of the index finger and the ball of the thumb. He pinches the poke and slips out beyond the jibing bodies. The touch has come off without a flaw, a thing of beauty in twelve seconds, in a whiz.
From The City Man by Howard Akler. Published by Coach House Books. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
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