So picture this. You’re shopping with your wife and child. Nordstrom. Because you’re fucking rich. She’s looking for a dress, or whatever, and you’re in charge of the boy. He’s three and a half, maybe a bit more. This section of the store is dotted with circular racks, great for hiding if you’re three feet tall. Your boy runs down the aisle with his hands up in the air yelling, “Can’t catch me” and banks left, disappearing behind one of the racks. You run after him; he pops out and says, “Boo!” Laughing hysterically. For fifteen minutes this goes on.

Your wife is absorbed in the inspection of the designer jeans on sale in a corner. Your boy runs down the same aisle for the tenth time and disappears behind an unattended cash register stand. You follow. You think he’s being especially crafty, for he doesn’t pop out—no “boo,” no laughing. You walk around the stand. Where is he? You try the adjacent rack, a collection of discounted sweaters, and the next. You cross the aisle and check out more racks, suddenly nervous, insecure. What if he found the escalator?

But no, he probably just got tired of the game and homed in on his mother. You approach the designer jeans corner and call out, “Honey?” She turns around. Draped over her arm are three pairs of jeans, new but carefully bleached to look old, or worn, or whatever that look is about. “How’s it going?”

She looks past you, then to your right and to your left. She says, “Where’s Timmy?” and now you’re in trouble. Where the hell is he? You retrace every step of your game of hide-and-seek while your wife runs through the aisles yelling, “Timmy? Timmy!”

Two hours later, after store security, after the police, after the search, you’re numb. Even to your wife’s accusatory silence.

You never even saw me there, standing by the jewelry display near the door that leads to the maintenance room and employees’ lounge. We took that way out, your boy flailing, biting my hand, his yelling muffled. There’s a stairway beyond the lounge.

Lilah was waiting for me in the basement parking level. I got in the car with the boy and she gunned it up the twisting ramps and out into the afternoon sunlight.

Timmy was a good kid. Lilah wanted to keep him and find another kid to swap for cash. Three days later, though, we gave him back to you for half a million dollars. It was a breeze.

Within two weeks, Lilah was so strung out I left her in a motel in Long Beach and split for the islands. She must have blasted through the twenty grand I gave her because, eight days later, she turned state’s evidence. They found me in a rented condo in a sleepy town called Koloa. The rest is police blotter history.

I told them I blew the money in Vegas. They gave me five years. Every year, they offer me time off if I give back the bread. I don’t think so. Five years, four hundred and fifty grand stashed, works out to ninety grand a year, tax-free. Beats working.