“We won’t disturb a thing, ma’am,” Frank said. “We would like to look, though.”

“I don’t let you,” Lipton said sullenly, “you gonna get a warrant.”

“We could,” Frank said.

Lipton fixed Frank with a poisonous stare. Then the venom drained away, and only sadness remained.

“Marcus?”

She hadn’t raised her voice, but Marcus instantly appeared in the doorway. She motioned toward Frank and Jose. “Take these… these gentlemen to James’s. They gonna look around.”

Marcus led the two toward the back of the house, through the kitchen and down a short hallway. In what was apparently an addition to the original house, he opened the door. A cathedral ceiling vaulted over a king-size bed that faced a wall-to-wall cabinet filled with stereo gear and a massive flat-panel TV. On the other side of the room, a recliner chair, a leather sectional sofa, a small wet bar, and another flat-panel TV.

“Turn all that stuff on at one time,” Jose said, “you black out the neighborhood.”

Marcus stationed himself by the door and folded his arms across his chest. The only thing that moved were his eyes as he followed the two detectives working their way around the room, Frank to the right, Jose to the left.

Without a warrant, you didn’t get down to squeezing toothpaste out of the tubes, dismantling furniture, or even emptying the contents of drawers on the floor. But there were trade-offs. In the time you took to get a warrant, somebody could go through the place before you.

A walk-in closet: fourteen suits, a dozen or so shirts on hangers under plastic covers, and, Frank counted, twenty-three pairs of Nikes and sixteen athletic jackets of NBA teams.

Frank couldn’t find a Wizards jacket.

With Michael Jordan, you’d think…

The door beside the closet led into a marble-and-tile full bath complete with steam shower and whirlpool tub.