Diversions

We were in Sydney on a lovely fall Sunday, which was also Mother’s Day. [Remember: Southern Hemisphere = seasons opposite from the US.] Our group got off to an early morning start on our walking tour of the Rocks, and we encountered few other people then. But by mid-day the streets, plazas and parks were thronged with locals and tourists out for fun.

At lunch time some of us stopped at an ATM in a covered plaza area which provided a passageway from the street to the docks, and which contained shops and other amenities. The ATM was near the street, next to a staffed currency exchange operating behind a glass walk-up window. (We were nowhere near Luna Park, by the way; I just like this picture I took later that day.)

Just then our attention was drawn to an argument occurring a few feet away from the ATM, out near the sidewalk. A middle-aged woman (whom I had noticed a few minutes earlier in the crowd around the corner, given her heavy makeup, messy red hair and overall look that was notably unique in the crowds) was loudly berating a slight youth (he was probably in the late teens but hard to say), who was giving back as good as he got. The subject of the argument wasn’t clear; she was gesturing with one hand and holding a plastic carrier bag, contents unknown, in the other.

We stood there, about a dozen bystanders in a rough line, beginning to watch and listen to the argument. And immediately my devious little mind – trained (or warped) by 30 years practicing law and a lifetime reading crime fiction – snapped to attention with the thought “Uh-oh, this argument is probably being staged as a diversion!”

So I just quietly turned around, literally turned my back on the scene that was absorbing everyone’s attention, facing opposite the rest of the line, and looked around. I noticed a man in his 30’s or 40’s, solidly built, wearing casual clothes and carrying nothing, standing just outside the entrance to the plaza, behind and off to the left of the bystanders. As I watched, he started walking toward the group and then he saw that I was watching the scene behind us, including him. He walked over to the exchange rate board on the wall next to the currency exchange, and seemed to peruse it. I kept scanning the plaza and kept him in view. He glanced over at the arguing couple, then back at the exchange rate board. After a minute, he walked away. The argument wound down and the other two also faded away.

I am convinced that the argument was a diversion, intended to distract a group of women while a purse-snatcher went for one or more of their more easily grabbed bags. All it took was one person looking the other way, to foil the theft.