The knock-off purse sellers travelled in packs, always four or five of them together with another standing lookout. Yaya’s crew worked a high-traffic area on Passeig de Gràcia using a complicated system of whistles to warn each other when the Mossos were coming. At a high-pitched double signal, the whole group would move in unison, pulling on the drawstrings that closed their display blankets over the fake Prada and Gucci bags. Then they’d take off fast, sprinting out into traffic where the Mossos didn’t dare to follow.
Yaya had been in Barcelona for over a year, but he was still working to pay off the money he owed to the mob for transporting him to Spain. In Senegal, he’d studied to be an economics professor, but couldn’t find a teaching job. Some afternoons, Manu and I sat with him in
