I took the elevator back to the lobby and walked out onto the street. Frank was nowhere around. I walked toward the car and passing a garbage bin, threw the fortune away.

—

I sat in the backseat of the rental car, more obscured by the tinted windows, and picked at a carton of takeout and took a look at the target property. It’s what I hated about the job, one of the main reasons I worked with Frank and not alone. It’s boring. You sit for a day or two and watch. You watch who comes and goes and when, how long they are gone, what do they do when they leave. Sometimes we might follow them. Sometimes we just sit for hours and hours and look. Frank, almost always Frank, takes a look at any alarms or surveillance systems. He takes a look at the network, wi-fi, whatever, anything that might be used to monitor the place. Nine times out of ten there’s nothing complicated. People get lazy. Some people lock their windows and leave a door open. People who have a security system they operate with their phone are locking the door while leaving the windows alone. It’s easy. We don’t do much of that. We’re not burglars, we’re thieves. But we do what we have to. The chances of someone being robbed are about twenty-six in a thousand. Not very likely. So people get lazy. They stop turning on their alarms; they don’t fix them once they break; they don’t renew their contract with a security company; they stop locking all doors and windows. They live their life without worry and nothing happens so they get comfortable and happier and lazier, and all we have to do is sit and wait. We’re a little lazy ourselves; we don’t want a challenge, just a quick grab and go. You’d be surprised how well it works. “There’s a guy in France who stole five paintings worth more than one hundred million dollars,” Frank told me one night as we waited in the car. “All he used was a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, a knife, and a couple of plungers. Stole it all from the same museum on the same night. Braque, Picasso, Léger, Matisse, and Modigliani. All with a handful of tools and a little smarts. That’s all it takes.”

“That’s all it takes.”

—