“Good morning, boss.”
“Mornin’, Sneaky Matt. They tell me you’re the one’s been tailing our mark for the last month, is that right?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Studyin’ his moves and whatnot, stickin’ to him like white on rice and so forth, is that right, Sneaky Matt?”
“It’s Sneaky Matthew, but yes, sir.”
“That’s real good, Sneaky Matthew. I hear this guy’s a machine of efficiency and routine. I want to know everything; when he sleeps, when he eats, when he yawns—the guy so much as closes his eyes when he farts we need to know about it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s these rare moments of carelessness that we need. If we’re lucky, our window will be open just long enough to make our move and pull off the heist of the century! But only when he’s indisposed.”
“I understand the plan, sir.”
“It’s when he’s otherwise occupied by his daily routine that we strike.”
“Sir.”
“All right, Sneaky Matthew. Tell me about this guy, this machine. When does this high-level operator take a break, give me every detail.”
“At exactly 5:59 a.m. his alarm goes off, every day.”
“Even on weekends?”
“Every single day.”
“So it’s true. The man is a machine.”
“Well, the alarm goes off. Somedays, he gets up, somedays he’ll hit snooze once and then get up, somedays he’ll hit snooze every nine minutes for like an hour. On Sundays, he just turns it off the second it wakes him and falls back asleep.”
“Does he know you can program alarms to not go off on Sundays?”
“Shall I continue?”
“Yes, of course, sorry. I’m sure the sleep-snooze issue increases his brain capabilities. Some advanced-level stuff that we couldn’t even comprehend. They say da Vinci used to take micro naps, you know? Genius stuff. We don’t need to know how it works, we just need to know his every move.”
“Right. So he gets up and sets his coffee maker to make his first cup of coffee of the day. While it’s brewing he takes his dog and walks exactly twenty steps to the left while his dog does his business. By the time the dog’s done, the coffee is ready.”
“And he keeps his eye on the front door the whole time. Smart. All right, what else?”
“He drinks his coffee and checks the Times.”
“New York? LA? Both?”
“Sorry, the Times app. Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections. The Crossword, but never after Wednesday.”
“Ah, yes, because after Wednesday…?”
“Puzzle’s too hard for him.”
“Oh. Even Thursday’s too hard?”
“Continuing: Every morning between 7:22 and 7:38 a.m., he sprints to the bathroom to relieve himself for roughly twelve minutes.”
“Amazing, he even SHITS like clockwork! He—wait, you say he sprints?”
“Yes. The… defecation itself happens with remarkable consistency, but it somehow always seems to catch him by surprise.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah. There’s not a lot to say about it.”
“Okay.”
“After that, he has a protein bar for breakfast and typically goes for a six-mile run.”
“A health nut. Impressive.”
“Unless it’s raining, windy, too cold, or too hot.”
“So… on average… ballpark, would you say—”
“Roughly 1.5 times per month he runs.”
“Less impressive.”
“When he returns, he makes the exact same salad for lunch: greens, pomegranate seeds, chicken, and plant-based cheese, no dressing. Lean, healthy. That is what he eats when his wife is working from home.”
“And when she’s not?”
“He eats two pickles out of a jar and a half-sleeve of birthday-cake-flavored Oreos he keeps hidden in a cabinet his wife can’t reach.”
“They make birthday-cake-flavored Oreos?”
“You have to order them.”
“Christ. And the pickles?”
“My assumption is that he thinks, Green, that counts as salad.”
“No—I mean, sure, I just meant the combination. What time is it at this point?”
“12:10.”
“You haven’t mentioned him brushing his teeth yet.”
“No, sir, I have not.”
“Coffee, protein bar…”
“Pickles and birthday cookie.”
“Woof.”
“If his wife’s home, he’ll read or do vague internet scrolling, and if she’s out, he tries on a bunch of outfits he’s already worn, or he takes his shirt off and practices bass guitar in the mirror. He plays around with tabs on YouTube, but it’s mostly ‘Hot to Go!’”
“A musician. Is he…?”
“I don’t want to be rude. I’ll say he’s not interested in improving. So. It seems like he must know what he wants to get out of the whole… thing. After that, some days he goes to the gym—”
“A run and the gym on the same day, what a—sorry, on days that he runs, has he showered yet at this point?”
“No, he changes out of the sweaty clothes into other clothes. He’s pretty confident that as long as he’s dry he’s not dirty anymore. It seems to be a real source of tension between him and the wife.”
“I can imagine.”
“Continuing, some days he goes to the gym, some days he gets dressed for the gym but just drives around listening to either ‘Hot To Go!’ or podcasts about wrestling.”
“Gosh, he really likes that song.”
“He’s home every day at exactly 5:13, except for the days when he gets home several hours before or after that, depending on—I mean, it depends. He goes to a midday movie, goes to a bar. Target, spends a lot of time at Target.”
“Goddammit. He’s got us beat, this guy. Don’t you see? It’s genius! His erratic schedule, the unpredictability, the lack of consistency—it seems like chaos because to us it IS! But to him? A controlled chaos. A consistent inconsistency, a pattern only he understands. It makes him impossible to plan around, impossible to stay one step ahead of! The bastard’s got us beat. You can’t rob what you can’t track. He’s made himself… unheistable.”
“I should point out that every time he goes out, he leaves the apartment unlocked. So he doesn’t have to bother fumbling with his keys when he gets back.”
“Even at night?”
“Every time.”
“Every single time! The man is a machine!”
