The horse nuzzled its foal's head gently to wake him up.

Once the car is in a chop shop, a skilled cutter can reduce it to salable parts in half an hour to 45 minutes.

[…] I rigged up a kind of mannikin with old coats and a cushion—something to cast a shadow on the blind. All you fellows were used to seeing my shadow there in the small hours—I counted on that, and knew you’d take any vague outline as mine.

In those moments thus spent in composing myself for sleep, I sometimes wondered in the last human occupant of the room were not a dead one. I was senselessly spookish about such things.