“Excuse me, mister, do you need some help? You look a little lost.”

Mila delivered the line sweetly and innocently, with charm that comes only with youth and practice. Yet Janet remarked that her body language left something to be desired.

“Thank you! I’m looking for the Harbour Bridge, I’m meant to climb it with a tour…”

The young girl smiled kindly without betraying a hint of a fox in her eye. “You’re not far. Just keep walking in this direction, cross the street-”

“Now!” Janet whispered to Rafi, who immediately and noiselessly approached the befuddled man bewitched by his sister.

In the last ten years, Janet had perfected the routine to an art form. Finding in the tourism industry the perfect niche, she and her two children positioned themselves at exactly the spot that attracts the lost, the gullible, and went to work.

Watching Rafi slip his deft hand into the stranger’s pocket, Janet felt invigorated. As he removed a wallet, she felt her pulse quicken, and her demons were satiated.