It's Not Whether You Win Or Lose, It's How.

I went to the 2009 Sollie Awards dinner on Friday night. For those who've never been, the Sollies are the Oscars of the underworld. Any criminal with an expired Statute of Limitations is eligible to present his crime story and have it ranked by his peers. Points are given for style, evil, execution, and originality. At the end of the night, the previous year's champ tallies the score cards and announces the winner. The prize is a miniature gold bar the size of a deck of cards, stamped with a tiny hat, shoe, car, or dog. To, you know, emphasize how it's all a game.

I've been to a few with JD and Al. The first time they didn't tell me where we were going. They just gave me orders to doll up to the nines. Translation, tame the hair and nix the pencil skirt; forget about the gun-kitted trench coat. Good advice, as it turned out. A room full of masterminds and their trusted friends is no place to get caught with a .38 snub. Wearing the wrong dress would be almost as bad.

So, while I do know what to expect, and accordingly got ready for my close-up, this year was my first time competing. I presented my crime well, I thought. It just wasn't the best crime of the night. Maybe not even second best. In any event, we all lost to a real pro, Kurt the Smoke.

As in other years, Kurt arrived at the Sollies with his security detail, the Night Sisters, his band of terrifying female impersonators. They're known as Ms Ross, Ms Kitt, and Ms Latifah. Ms Kitt drives, Ms Latifah knocks heads, and Ms Ross pushes Kurt around. Not that Kurt's disabled. He's not. He's just a fat man who really doesn't like to pant and sweat. To that end, Kurt has wheelchairs like most crooks have suits. His favorite is a 1972 chrome and leather manual model - the chair he took to the Sollies. It's fine and stylish but needs a lot of care. When Kurt visits the barber across the street from my bookstore, he always drops off a chair for tuning up at the bike shop next door. The '72 is temperamental, I saw it more than the others.

Anyway, Kurt became Kurt the Smoke right around the time he started planning all his heists to not require his massive wheeled presence. His caving in to the seductive trappings of the chair wound up being the key to his criminal success. He'd had to figure out how to A - assemble a crew that takes orders just once, B - execute plans without any contact with the scene, and C - beat a polygraph. With these skills under his 70-inch belt, Kurt blossomed. Nothing could stick to him. For the crime he won his previous Sollie with, he'd constructed a forty-man job, a corporate crime, in which no member of his crew performed anything worse than a misdemeanor. Not that that mattered, of course. No one was caught. It was the sweetest, smartest, cleanest heist I knew. I admired it like crazy.

Kurt the Smoke's win on Friday night was for a burglary of a stolen painting from another thief. Not his finest work, since he didn't make any money on the deal. But all told, it was original, for a switcheroo. No easy feat. I have to admit, there was a great double stinger of karma and cool.

First, he stole the replica of the painting. He took it right from the house of the original owner, an older woman, now twice victimized. A woman he refused to name. She'd commissioned the thing as a stand in for the swiped one, which evidently she missed. Next, Kurt hit the thief's house. He stole the stolen painting, and replaced it with the replica. Then, he returned the original painting to its original owner. A total of three break-ins, without detection. The true owner of the painting was the only one who could have nailed him. She may have realized her replica had been switched with the original, since, when she died a few months back, she left it to Kurt.

Although, as JD noted, she might have also been inclined to leave Kurt the replica, if that's what she thought she still had. Either way the maybe flipped, it was still cool. But it irritated me, losing to this crime. Unanswered questions nagged at me. Did the true owner know at the end what she had or not? In all this time, the original thief suspected nothing was amiss? He never had it appraised? Never tried to sell it? Was the inherited painting the original or the replica? How the hell did the owner know to leave it to Kurt? And didn't his mother pass away last year?

It sounded like a bad short story I might have written in high school. I beefed it to JD and Al. They agreed. They encouraged me to ring a ding on my glass and stick it to Kurt. I felt uncertain. Causing a scene seemed over the top, and it would put me squarely on Kurt's bad side. More, I didn't want to seem a sore loser. But they egged me on, smoking and taunting and refusing to light my cigarettes. In the end, JD simply dared me to do it. My glare said fine. I rang my dirty spoon in JD's water glass. People automatically hushed and turned to our table.

"Mr. Smoke, if you don't mind, I have a question."

"Oh, yeah, sweetheart? All right. What? What the fuck do you want?"

"Can you prove you're not the original thief, that you haven't had the original painting all this time?"

The room exploded in laughter, shouting and hooting, cat calls. At me, at my sass, my ignorance. But not from Kurt the Smoke. He was just sitting there under the spotlight, staring me down from his wheelchair.

"Mr. Smoke?"

It got quiet. All eyes were on him.

"Mr. Smoke, who was the original thief then? You can tell us."

Kurt looked as though he might launch himself right down my throat.

"Mr. Smoke, did you lie to your friends here? Because I'm pretty sure you only stole the painting once, from your mom. And you replaced it with a replica, and were never caught, or even spanked for it. End of crime. End of story. And a neat, plausible, eligible crime it was, too. Just not necessarily a story to beat a girl's teenage blackmailing of, oh, say, a priest."

Well. For a big man, Kurt the Smoke sure can move fast. He jumped out of his wheelchair and whipped his prize at my head like a skipping stone. It crashed into our table, shattering all the glasses. JD, Al and I covered our eyes. When we peeked, we saw it was JD's dessert that finally stopped it. Diana Ross hustled Kurt the Smoke out the side door, Ms Latifah and Ms Kitt backed out after them. The crowd sat in stunned silence.

I looked around and didn't like much what I saw. Trust in the room was degrading fast. A hundred people were rolling over just one thought: "Who else here has lied?"

JD, Al and I lit cigarettes, three to the match. We divided the room and observed our respective thirds. Everyone was suspicious, but no one looked guilty. It was going to be fine. Eventually. I picked up my purse and tried to hand JD his hat. He ignored me.

"Don't say a thing, JD," I said. "Please. Don't."

"Baby, I've got to."

"No, JD," said Al, "you don't. It's funny enough."

"Not...quite." JD brandished his fork.

"Oh, God," I said, "here he goes."

"Mmm! Eighteen carat cake. It is the Dessert of Champions."

"Yeah, okay," said Al. "We're done here. And leave the prize where it is. Let's go, you two."

"JD?"

"All right, Kitten, hat me."

I did, and we left. A slow, sparse applause followed us out to the street. I know. I can hardly wait until next year.