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Back Just Thieves Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
  1. Cover
  2. Other Titles
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. 1
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 5
  11. 6
  12. 7
  13. 8
  14. 9
  15. 10
  16. 11
  17. 2
  18. 12
  19. 13
  20. 14
  21. 15
  22. 16
  23. 17
  24. 18
  25. 19
  26. 20
  27. 21
  28. 22
  29. 23
  30. 24
  31. 25
  32. 26
  33. 3
  34. 27
  35. 28
  36. 29
  37. 30
  38. 31
  39. 32
  40. 33
  41. 34
  42. ACCOMPLICES AND EASY MARKS

I don’t know why I thought of it. At another time I would have talked to Frank about it. It was exactly the kind of conversation he liked. I didn’t say anything. Frank was off somewhere else, lost in his reading. I couldn’t concentrate. My head was stuck on something, a shadow of something my father had told me. I thought that maybe I was the only one who cared, and I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to change my own mind for once, to work it out on my own. I fell asleep before anything had changed.

9

THE CAR

WHEN WE’RE ON A JOB, I BET NINETY PERCENT OF OUR TIME IS SPENT IN THE CAR. We might spend more time in the car than we do anywhere else, including our apartment. I had a truck my father bought me when I first started, then a van when I was hauling stuff off work sites, but a van’s no good for what we do now. It draws too much attention sitting around for hours. Besides, I lost everything anyway before I got cleaned up and started over again. I knew we needed something that no one would notice. The last thing Frank and I wanted to spend money on was a car, but we sucked it up and went out and bought a car no one pays any attention to, a car you see everywhere, a nondescript Honda Civic. Frank tinted the windows so we could sit and not be noticed or bothered. We sit and watch and sit and watch for hours and hours, entire days might go by in the car. We eat and sleep in the car when we have to. But mostly we sit and watch, in silence. Frank knows when to keep quiet and when to talk, to break the monotony, to jumpstart the brain, to talk about things we need to talk about.

“I can’t do this forever,” Frank said. It was a conversation we had when Frank was particularly bored, tired of sitting in a car for a couple of days, tired of waiting for Froehmer or someone else to call, tired of whatever routine we had, the way everyone gets tired of their day-to-day. “I can’t do this,” he said. “Not long-term.”

“No one’s asking you.”

“You have plans for us?”

We all know I’m not the planning type. “What would you rather be doing?”

“Go back to teaching, maybe. Go back to Italy. We could live in Italy. We could live anywhere. I don’t know. If I had it figured out, I’d be doing it instead of talking about it. But I know we need to have a plan. This is going to get played out some day, one way or another.”