Grifters and a Wizbull

I was walking with Oscar O’Lear through the crowds at Hollywood Park where he works during the racing season nailing pickpockets.

“Pickpockets go way back,” he was saying, hazel eyes working the betting mob with a gaze as intense as laser beams. “I’ve traced them to the time of the Romans. In 16th-Century England. . . . “

He stopped talking suddenly. He saw something he didn’t like--a face or a suspicious movement--and said, “Be right back,” and was gone.

We’d been walking along the periphery of the main action when Oscar saw whatever it was he saw, and I could follow his movement until he reached the people milling around the betting windows. But the minute he merged into the crowd I lost him completely because Oscar was wearing a kind of urban camouflage that allowed him to disappear when he wanted to.

Everything about Oscar was nondescript, from his brown shirt to his scuffed shoes to his slouching, indistinctive walk, and that’s just the way he wanted it. Only the eyes with the piercing stare stand out, but he keeps them lowered most of the time, because he’s aware of their intensity.

“I tell trainees to watch their eyes,” he says, “and never to make eye contact with anyone they’re watching. Look right through them, not at them, or they’ll make you.”

I was approaching the crowd looking for Oscar when he suddenly appeared at my side, scowling slightly the way he does, like a man with a bad stomach.

“In 16th-Century England,” he said, as though the conversation had never been interrupted, “they hung pickpockets in public, but you know how effective that was?”

He waited until I said, “No, I don’t,” and then said, “Pickpockets love crowds so they worked the public hangings!” He managed as close to a smile as he ever gets and asked, “Can you beat that?”

Oscar served 28 years with the LAPD until 1976 and became the best pickpocket cop the city has ever known. Some say he’s the best in the country.

Ask him how many dips or spears or cannons or stalls (all names for pickpockets) he’s arrested over the years and Oscar will say he lost count at 2,000.

“They call them fingersmiths in France,” Oscar said. “In England they’re claws. Over here, we also call them grifters. If a guy is grifting with a squealer, that means he’s using a baby as a distraction to pick somebody’s pocket. Distraction is what it’s all about.”

The license plate on Oscar’s old VW bug says WIZBULL. Wizzing is also a term for picking pockets. A wizbull is a pickpocket cop.

We wandered through the crowd. Oscar is 71 but seems tireless. His partner, who didn’t want to be named, told me that it was hard keeping up with the him. “I’ve seen him take on six people at once,” the partner said. “He’s tougher than hell.”

I’ve known Oscar for several years. He’s a funny old guy and sometimes reminds me of Walter Matthau. He lives and breathes pickpocketing. Like a lion stalking prey, he is guided by instinct. Messages transmitted on the laser beams to his brain dictate his movements and sometimes he can’t explain them.

When I asked what he was going after when our conversation was interrupted, he shrugged. “You look for abnormal actions,” he said. “Everybody is watching the race except for one guy who’s watching the mark.” The mark is the victim.

“Sometimes,” Oscar’s partner said, “the mark is watching the race, the pickpocket is watching the mark, Oscar is watching the pickpocket and I’m watching Oscar. We’re like a parade.”

Oscar’s wife used to say that they couldn’t go to the theater without Oscar hanging around the lobby, looking for grifters. They’d be chatting pleasantly and suddenly Oscar would go silent and his eyes would take on that hard intensity. She’d have to elbow him and say “Stop that!” before he’d snap out of it.

“This has become a great town for pickpockets,” Oscar was saying as we moved toward the crowd again. “The World Series, the Lakers playoff games, the Olympics. Pickpockets come from all over. They tell each other to watch out for O’Leary. That’s what they call me, O’Leary.”

He paused at the edge of the crowd. It was between races and they were gathering at the betting windows.

“I busted a guy once who was an astrologer,” Oscar said. “When the judge was about to sentence him he offered to read the judge’s horoscope. ‘No,’ the judge says, ‘but I’ll read your future. Two years in the state pen and two years on probation.’ ”

I was still laughing when Oscar spotted something again and was gone, his partner not far behind. I shrugged and put $2 on a horse named Jungle Maggie. I lost.