I wanted to tell him that he should have been here yesterday. Instead, I told him that everything was going to be fine. “Tomorrow’s a different day. We don’t know anything about tomorrow. We only know about today. Everyone’s gone. The house is empty. I’ll be in and out in five minutes. Tops.”

Frank wasn’t convinced. He trusted me; he knew I was right, but he hadn’t done the preparation himself, so he wasn’t one hundred percent certain. He hadn’t worked it all out the way he usually did. He hadn’t looked at every gear and figured out how the whole machine worked. We’d been in this situation before. Frank and his superstitions. He only needed a little more time. We sat in the car and waited.

The house was there, empty. We watched for a while more. We watched neighbors leave; the whole block seemed to empty out, with kids off to school and parents off to work. We probably could have walked off with everything. We should have brought a truck, I thought. But that’s not the way we worked. We didn’t want any of their stuff. We only wanted one thing, and I knew what it was and where to find it. Frank did another scan of the house, just to see if anything had changed. Nothing had. He would do this a few more times, right up until I went inside. We watched the man and boy leave the house, and then the woman. If Frank had been here yesterday, I would have followed her. If we’d had more time we would have followed the boy and the man as well. We would know where the man worked, the woman too, and even found out where the boy went to school. We would have called the offices right before I went inside. Just to make sure they were where they were supposed to be. Just so Frank could be sure.

—

It was almost noon by the time Frank was ready. We hadn’t even checked out of the hotel. Frank called and wanted to know if we could get a late checkout. After a brief argument he booked another night. “We should go back today,” I told him. “Right when I get back to the car.”

“Let’s stay,” Frank said. “They’re going to charge us for the room anyway,” he said, “whether we’re there or not.”