Going Postal - Terry Pratchett [21]
There’s a secret art to forgery, and Moist had discovered it: in a hurry, or when excited, people will complete the forgery by their own cupidity. They’ll be so keen to snatch the money from the obvious idiot that their own eyes filled in all the little details that weren’t quite there on the coins they so quickly pocketed. All you needed to do was hint at them.
But that was just for starters. Some customers never even discovered that they’d put fake coins in their purse, thus revealing to the incompetent Streep in which pocket they kept it. Later on they learned that Streep might be rubbish with a deck of cards but also that his lack was more than made up for by his exceptional skill as a pickpocket.
Now Moist felt like a peeled prawn. He felt as though he’d stepped out naked. And yet, still, no one was taking any notice. There were no cries of “Hey, you!”, no shouts of “That’s him!” He was just another face in the crowd. It was a strange new feeling. He’d never really had to be himself before.
He celebrated by buying a street directory from the Guild of Merchants, and had a coffee and a bacon sandwich while he thumbed, greasily, through it for the list of bars. He didn’t find what he was looking for there, but he did find it in the list of hairdressers, and grinned when he did so. It was nice to be right.
He also found a mention of Dave’s Pin Exchange, up in Dolly Sisters, in an alley between a house of negotiable affection and a massage parlor. It bought and sold pins to pin fanciers.
Moist finished his coffee with a look on his face that those who knew him well—a group consisting, in fact, of absolutely nobody—would have recognized as the formation of a plan. Ultimately, everything was all about people. If he was going to be staying here for a while, he’d make himself comfortable.
He went for a walk to the self-styled “Home of Acuphilia!!!!!”
It was like lifting an unregarded stone and finding a whole new world. Dave’s Pin Exchange was the kind of small shop where the owner knows every single one of his customers by name. It was a wonderful world, the world of pins. It was a hobby that could last you a lifetime. Moist knew this because he expended one dollar on Pins by J. Lanugo Owlsbury, apparently the last word on the subject. Everyone had their funny little ways, Moist conceded, but he wasn’t entirely at home among people who, if they saw a pinup, would pay attention to the pins. Some of the customers browsing the book racks (Misdraws, Double Pointers, and Flaws, Pins of Uberwald and Genua, First Steps in Pins, Adventures in Acuphilia…) and staring covetously at the rack of pins laid out under glass, had an intensity of expression that frightened him. They looked a bit like Stanley. They were all male. Clearly, women weren’t natural “pinheads.”
He found Total Pins on the bottom rack. It had a smudgy, home-produced look, and the print was small and dense and lacked such subtleties as paragraphs and, in many cases, punctuation. The common comma had looked at Stanley’s expression and decided not to disturb him.
When Moist put the little magazine onto the counter, the shop’s owner, a huge bearded man with dreadlocks, a pin through his nose, a beer belly belonging to three other people, and the words DEATH OR PINS tattooed on a bicep, picked it up and tossed it back down dismissively.
“Sure about that, sir?” he said. “We’ve got Pins Monthly, New Pins, Practical Pins, Modern Pins, Pins Extra, Pins International, Talking Pins, Pins World, World Pins, World of Pins, Pins and Pinneries…” Moist’s attention wandered off for a while but came back in time to catch “The Acuphile Digest, Extreme Pins, Stifte!, that’s from Uberwald, very good if you collect foreign pins, Beginning Pins, that’s a part-work, sir, with a new pin every week, Pin Times and”—here the big man winked—“Back Alley