My brother shakes his head. Eddy must be getting soft. He didn’t even put on the hard top. He’s only got the canvas one on.

It has been cold and rainy today and over the past couple of days, though the sun came out this afternoon. I do not mention to Tomas that Eddy might have taken the top off after the clouds blew out of LA, east toward San Bernardino.

Get yourself ready, he says.

II

The first time I went on one of his trips, my brother picked a place in the Palisades owned by a speculator who buys houses, remodels them, and sells them for a profit. It stood empty whenever the workers left, and Tomas knew a guy who did carpentry work on it, so we knew when they would be gone. No one had even installed an alarm system yet. When we entered, I was surprised: the house had no furniture—just its intricately laid hardwood floors, in octagon patterns, still unsanded. Tomas seemed to know where he was going and went straight upstairs and found a brass sink and we broke up the marble countertop to get it out. The plumbing had not even been hooked up to the chrome faucets, so we took those too. It surprised me he would bother to break into a house just for a sink and faucets, and I assumed he could sell them for a bundle. But a few days later I went into our mother’s bathroom to find some Tylenol, and discovered that he had replaced her grimy old plastic sink with the brass one. In place of the worn plastic faucet knobs he had installed the shiny chrome handles.

I then realized where the new couch had come from, and our mother’s new bed that replaced her musty old hand-me-down futon.