The author at the scene of the crime. One of the bike's orange saddle bags is missing

I’ve always wanted to be inducted into the Legion d’Honneur, and last night I thought I might have the chance to do something worthy to the country of France (or at least to those of my neighborhood—it’s a start). At 3:30 in the morning a racket outside the window of my ground floor studio woke me up. Nudging my boyfriend from his quiet snoring, I listened for 10 minutes to metal clanking, a large chain dropping, and little grunts as things were pried open. Slipping out of bed, I peeked through a crack in my metal shutters and saw an old man riffling through the locked “coffer” behind the seat of a motorcycle. Judging from the sound, he was working his way down the line of parked motorbikes. Coincidentally, my boyfriend and I had the day before discussed that 3:30 is the quietest time of the night, since jets start taking off around 4, and then morning traffic starts up. Burglaries rise in August when so many Parisians are away on vacation, and here in Montmartre, the many staircases—like the one I live on—offer escape routes. So I called the cops. “An old dude is robbing all the moto coffers on my street!” I stage-whispered from my bathroom, so Geezer wouldn’t hear me. She asked me for a description (gray hair, glasses) and my address and if it was OK to call me back. Five minutes later, a van pulled up and three plainclothes cops approached the bandit. They spoke in quiet voices. After a few minutes my boyfriend wondered if they were really cops, since now they were shooting the breeze. Geezer even asked a cop about a possible mutual acquaintance. Through the shutters I saw one cop nose around a bike. “MARY HAD A LIT-TLE LAMB, LIT-TLE LAMB—” My phone blasted its annoying tune, scaring the bejesus out of me. I ran to the bathroom with it.  Maybe it was Sarkozy calling with the Legion D’Honneur for having caught a thief red-handed. No, it was the dispatcher. “The men say nothing seems to be going on,” she said. (J’accuse!) I wondered if Geezer had dropped his booty to a co-conspirator at the base of the staircase. The cops stayed for a few more minutes. They looked in Geezer’s bag, asking, “Does this belong to you? What is this?” Geezer answered, “I go through garbage bags.” The cops told him to “circulate” and everyone left. So much for my medal.