Reggie drove uphill along the winding, serpentine road. Large gated properties flanked the narrow asphalt strip. Behind those tall walls stood villas of various sizes and design. Overhanging palms threw shade over the pavement outside.

"Know what this remind me of?" Reggie said.

Ricky, preoccupied with checking for numbers, and house names. "Huh?"

"Hollywood hills, man."

"What's the name of this house again?"

"Ain't no house, it's a villa," Reggie said, then giving it the Spanish accent, "Villa Martin."

"Uh-huh."

"I keep expecting to see Britney stroll outta one of these gates, in a short-assed tennis skirt, racquet in hand."

Ricky turned his head, eyebrows elevating, "Britney Spears doesn't play tennis."

"Man, all those fine-assed Hollywood women play sports, keep their glutes tight. So when paparazzi snap 'em in their short shorts, out walking their Chihuahuas, they looking wow-wow."

"Nah, man, they all into their pilates. Got their medicine balls and personal trainers."

Reggie laughed. "Medicine ball? You thinking of the Swiss ball, big squishy bastard, look like a space hopper."

"There's a difference?"

"Medicine ball what they use in physio. They smaller, weigh about twenty-five pounds, build arm and core strength. Had us using them when we was in hospital in the Gulf—"

"You were in Iraq?"

"Desert Shield, baby."

"You never mentioned being shot."

"Who said anything about getting shot? Humerus fracture, which is a fancy way of saying I broke my arm."

"In combat?"

"Playing ball. Man, we hardly saw any combat. We sitting on our asses in that burning desert heat with itchy fingers, waiting for shit to happen. More danger of catching melanoma than catching a bullet. Time Desert Storm come about; it's the boys in the bombers got to do all the G.I. Joe shit. All that stuff you saw on your TV, that was air-force boys."

"I remember that," Ricky said. "Must've been about eleven. Used to stay up watching the news every night. Looked like a video-game."

"Not for the poor bastards them bombs landed on. I hear folks talking 'bout the streets resembling the apocalypse when this pandemic kicked in." Reggie shook his head. "They don't know what they be talking about. We went into some of them Iraqi towns, after the air-force boys did their thing—now, that was some apocalyptic shit. You shifting through the rubble, come across an arm just lying there, sleeve on it, an' everything. Arm was waving at their kid, or hugging their moms, just the day before. A hundred and twenty degrees out, and you feel cold as hell."

"All for the black gold," Ricky said. "When it comes to armed-robbery, George Bush was the biggest and badest."

"Man's a bitch. Sent in kids barely outta diapers do his dirty work. My shorty ass still reading comics when I sign up. Bruce Banner and shit. Every night 'fore I go to sleep... Time my second tour finished, I need two roofies and half-a-mutherfuckin' bottle o' whisky to catch any shuteye."

"Stolen dreams..."

"Stolen dreams? I wish they were. What you think the roofies and liquor was for? To erase—"

"This is us." Ricky interrupted, pointed up at the white mid-century home poking out from behind the two large sycamores and the three smaller willows that dominated the rolling lawn. Sprinklers, spinning like rotor blades, watered the earth beneath. A pristine condition silver Jaguar F-Type parked in front of the shuttered two-space garage. Mounted CCTV cameras peered down from either stonework gatepost like mechanical vultures.

They drove on. This is where the MG came in handy. A motor like that didn't look suspect in an exclusive area like this. Sure, not a Porsche or a Ferrari like they had seen in some drives, but it was shiny and new, didn't attract unwanted attention.

They parked up on the next street, had a brief argument over the best course of action. This is where things got tricky. The MG might pass muster in this high-roller enclave, its current occupants not so much. Ricky argued that a Premier League manager had a crib up here, and he hailed from the roughest part of East-London. Reggie pointed out that Michael Caine came from the slums of South-London, but the man as recognizable as a McDonald's logo, and almost as wealthy. And two, how many black men he know managed a team in the Premier League? Or white ones that could pass for destitute.

Finally, they decided, two men loitering in a strange motor looked equally out of place, and exited the car.

A vague hint of eucalyptus permeated the still air. Exotic trees in every garden. So much greenery, like the entire area had been transplanted from another world and plopped down here. Easy to forget this neighborhood formed part of the rolling, sun-baked, brown hills surrounding the coast. Alicante, a semi-desert, with landscape straight out of a Spaghetti Western. Sergio Leone shot The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly a few hundred miles down the coast in Granada. Just went to show, with money, you could transform a barren hinterland into the hanging gardens of Babylon.

"What business is this guy in?" Ricky said, half to himself.

"How would I know. Alls I know is, we in the wrong one," Reggie said, surreptitiously glancing through the black wrought-iron gates.

Inside, a tall, attractive woman of indeterminable age with long blond hair tied in a bun descended the steep stone steps. Leather clutch bag swinging in synch with her hips. Casually dressed in thin flip flops with white cotton sweat shorts. A matching white tank-top clinging to the curves of her well-proportioned body, she looked like an off-duty supermodel. She didn't climb so much as glide into the Jaguar.

Reggie and Ricky, already a short distance away, when the electric-gate swung back and the lunar-gray Jag reversed at speed out into the street. The window down, music blaring. A cheesy Euro-dance tune with baseline pumping like a heart during a panic attack.

Reggie dipped down his shades as the Jag blew by, "Damn, woman so hot she could melt the polar ice-caps."

"Yeah, I could go halves on a bastard with her," Ricky said, tossing out the line, not thinking about the words. His mind on the job, visualizing himself scaling that stone-faced wall. And circumnavigating the motion-sensors, getting the fluttery guts. The planning and preparation, the part of the job that got him juiced. Reggie's laughter barely registered.

"You Irish boys have a way of putting things."

They got back to the MG, Reggie still waxing lyrical about the blond, like a schoolboy crushing on his teacher. All this talk about that monied honey working Ricky's last nerve, cannabinoid-receptors in his brain screaming out for their daily dosage. He slammed the car-door harder than he'd intended to.

"Careful with the damned door," Reggie said, royally pissed. "What's crawling up your ass?"

"Listening to you, eulogizing over some stuck-up rich bitch."

"I been in the belly of the beast for four years. That's a long time for a man to go without warm hair-pie. You lucky I ain't going the full Lionel Richie."

Constantly slinging that in his face, not Ricky's fault the breaks went his way that morning. Chalk that up to the randomness of the universe. "You didn't try experimenting when you were inside?" he asked, lips twisting into a grin.

"Scientists experiment. Me, I put my pizza in a microwave, I don't got to know the mechanics of how it heat it up. I just know it taste good when it's done."

"No muchacho try—"

"Any sissy soft punk so much as smiled at me, they got the look. Look that say, you even think about my candy, boy, Reggie gonna bring the pain." He tapped his fingers on the wheel. "Must be a lot of that going on. I ain't verified it, but there must be. First day in, guard hands me a jimmy-hat as he's showing me to the cell. I'm like, what in the fuck? He hand one to the big Russian next to me. Big white bear, look like he gonna tear the guard's head clean off his shoulders... Fucking Spanish, man."

Reggie bust out a story about the big Ruskie stomping some skinny Spaniard in the showers. Ricky, only half-listening, eyes drifting to a luxury motor in a drive, his mind back to the randomness of the Universe. "You think we woulda turned out the way we turned out, we hadda been born into money?"

"You mean like we in some Hollywood movie, where some Richard Gere-type millionaire fuck our moms after she change the Egyptian linen sheets on his hotel bed?"

"I was thinking alternate-universe situation, but cheers for the mental-image."

"You think I'd be knocking over banks, if my account had hundred thousand times what the bank holding in ready cash? What kind of—"

"Naw, man, I mean, you think we would still be crooked?"

"Huh?"

"Take this fella we're gonna snatch. He's rich, and obviously up to his eyebrows in devious shit."

"Why you say that?"

"Think about it, people paying us ain't concerned about this man, or anyone he knows, bringing the law into it. Man must be dirtier than a two-day-old diaper."

"I ain't thought of it like that."

"My point is, even if I had money, I'd probably be messing around with something illegal. Get the adrenaline pumping."

Reggie took his eyes off the road, hit his pal with a long look. "Boy, you had money, you'd spend your days getting blazed watching TV. What you do now, only difference is, you'd not be worrying where your next rent-check coming from."

"I don't know..."

"I do. You know how rich folk get their adrenaline flowing? They go skiing in Switzerland, or abseiling in Antigua. Hell, they really loaded, they buy themselves a ticket on Richard Branson's space-shuttle, take a trip to the moon."

Ricky kicked off his flip-flops, threw his left leg up on the dash. Back to running over the details of the job in his head.

"The hell you think you doing?" Ricky turned his head, Reggie staring at his bare foot.

"I'm assuming the crash position."

"Boy, you don't get your stinking-assed foot of my spanking-clean dash, I put you through the windshield my own goddamn self."

Ricky returned his foot to the floor. "Mister Greene certain those CCTV cameras and alarm will be out of action?"

"He, or whoever he's working for, got someone on the inside."

"Who?"

"He was sketchy on the particulars—"

"Bit sketchy on lots of things, you ask me."

"—Someone on the man's staff."

"Like a maid, or butler?"

"A butler?" Reggie said. "This ain't no Agatha Christie mystery."

"Wanna grab a bite?"

"I thought everywhere shut?"

"Asian restaurants still do takeaway."

"We'll grab something, head back to yours."

"Thought we were hanging around till the witching hour. Check out the activity here at night."

"We are. But if you think I'm gonna sit here, watch you get Madras sauce all over my seats, you dumber than you look."

Ricky shook his head. "Anal retentive."

"Civilized is what I am. You're basic, eating with your fingers, talking with your mouth full. You're like one of them tribal motherfuckers. Probably walk around naked all day too, it wasn't illegal."

"Pretty much what I do all summer...cook nekkid, clean nekkid—"

Reggie looking at him like he wasn't certain if Ricky was clowning. "Best you don't be doing none that funky shit 'round me. Last four years, I've seen more bare-assed hombres than a fluffer on a porn-set. That's mo—"

"You are right, though."

Reggie stiffened, eyes narrowing to a slit. "About what?"

Ricky nodding to himself, lost in thought. "It's a three-man job."

"Oh... Mos' def."

"Got someone in mind?"

"Chris."

"Not that degenerate lunatic. I swore I'd never work with him again. He dances to a different drumbeat, that one."