A man and a boy came out of the house. The man had a messenger bag over his shoulder and the boy had a small backpack. Father and son headed off to work and school. The son was a teenager, a high school kid, we figured. Not college, though he looked old enough. The father was a lot older than the boy. He was around Froehmer’s age, I’d guess. “Second wife,” Frank said and we waited for her to leave. She came out of the house almost a half hour later. At least fifteen years younger than the husband, I thought. I hadn’t noticed it the day before. “Second wife,” Frank said with absolute confidence.

“My father almost had a second wife,” I said.

“I haven’t heard this before,” Frank said. “When was that?”

“About a year after my mother died. He was lonely. That’s what he said. He met this woman, divorced with a couple of kids. He asked her to marry him. My father asked me what I thought about it – I wasn’t even nine – and I asked him if he loved her. He said no, that he didn’t want to be alone. He didn’t want me to be alone. I told him that he shouldn’t get married if he didn’t love her. He asked her anyway.”

“She said no?”

“She said wait. She said it was too soon. So they waited. Then she got tired of waiting, I guess, and moved on. And my father got used to being lonely.”

“Your whole life would have been different, you know.”

“Maybe. Maybe I’d be respectable.”

“Not that different,” Frank said. “You’ve got the blood of a thief in you.”

6

THE FATHER

WE’RE ALL BORN THIEVES. Eve and the apple and all that. Jacob and Esau. The Bible has plenty of thieves in it; Christ is even described as arriving like a thief, and he’s crucified between two thieves, one of them even gets promised Heaven. I’ve been in enough hotels to know the Gideon. And I know that if there’s something to be stolen, it’s been taken at one time or another. Buddha’s tooth, St. Catherine’s head, Jesus’ foreskin, you name it. Museums are filled with the work of thieves, things stolen from ancient civilizations like Greece or Rome or Egypt. The Romans stole from the Egyptians, obelisks and whatever else they wanted. Hell, there’s a pyramid in the middle of Rome. Entire countries have been stolen. America stole most of its land, from Indians and Mexicans and whoever else stood in their way (“Property is theft!”). Everybody steals, especially the rich. What was it that Meyer Lansky said? “Look at the Astors and the Vanderbilts, all those big society people. They were the worst thieves.” Nobody got rich working.