Vidal, like the clever fellow he was, managed to Convince El Bizco that he was the most gifted of the three for the work. The cross-eyed thug, out of sheer vanity, always undertook the most difficult part of the task, seizing the booty, while Vidal and Manuel kept a sharp lookout.
Vidal would say to Manuel, at the very moment of the robbery, when El
Bizco already had the stolen sheet or chemise under his coat:
"If anyone happens along, don't say a word; nothing. Let them arrest him; we'll shut up tight as clams, absolutely motionless; if they ask anything, we know nothing. Right-o?"
"Agreed."
Sheets, chemises, cloaks and all the other articles they robbed they would sell at the second-hand shop on La Ribera de Curtidores, which Don Telmo used to visit. The owner, employé or whatever he was of the shop, would purchase everything the thieves brought, at a very low price.
This "fence," which profited by the oversight of some base officer (for the police lists did not bother with these things), was presided over by a fellow called Uncle Pérquique. He spent his whole life passing to and fro in front of his establishment. To deceive the municipal guard he sold shoe-laces and bargains that came from the old-clothes shop he conducted.
In the spring this fellow would don a cook's white cap and cry out his tarts with a word that he scarcely pronounced and which he liked to alter constantly. Sometimes the word seemed to be Pérquique! Pérquique! but at once it would change sound and be transformed into Pérqueque or Párquique, and these phonetic modifications were extended to infinity.
The origin of this word Pérquique, which cannot be found in the dictionary, was as follows: The cream tarts sold by the man in the white cap brought five céntimos apiece and he would cry "A perra chica! A perra Chica! Only five pesetas apiece! A five-peseta piece!" As a result of his lazy enunciation he suppressed the first A and converted the other two into E, thus transforming his cry into "Perre chique! Perre chique!" Later, Perre chique turned into Pérquique.
The "fence" guard, a jolly soul, was a specialist in crying wares; he shaded his cries most artistically; he would go from the highest notes to the lowest or vice versa. He would begin, for example, on a very high note, shouting:
"Look here! A real! Only one real! Ladies' and gents' hosiery at a real a pair! Look-a-here now! A real a pair!" Then, lowering his register, he would continue, gravely: "A nice Bayonne waistcoat. A splendid bargain!" And as a finale, he would add in a basso profundo: "Only twenty pesetas!"