Reggie watched the shining caustics caused by the sunlight refracting on the rippling blue water in the swimming pool. Reminded him of that blue Tie Dye tee Dee used to wear. Had MAMA printed in glittering lettering across the chest. Damn, if she didn't look fine as hell in that top, hanging over her cut off white denim shorts. A real fine mama.

Reggie eased back on the lounger. Heard Ricky coming before he saw him. Ricky's bare feet slapping the tiles, glass bottles clinking in his hand. "'Bout time," he said without looking up, "you brewing that in there or what?"

"I hadda drop a deuce," Ricky said, blunt as a butter-knife.

"Best you washed those paws before you handling my beer," Reggie said, taking the cold bottle in his hand.

Ricky, not bothering to answer, plonked himself in the empty sun-lounger. Papers out, rolling himself a number.

Reggie drew a pull on the bottle, watching a lone puff of white cloud pass underneath the glaring yellow sun. "This here is the life."

"Uh-huh." Ricky concentrated on building a flawless joint. The man could not be bothered tying a knot in the strings of his Bermuda shorts but can roll a number look like it made by a machine.

"So, what do you make of Casa del Reggie?"

"Not bad. Grand a month, though. I'm paying three-fifty for my place."

"It's got four bedrooms, and an under-build."

"What you need four bedrooms for, you only sleep in one."

"Say I throw a party, where the guests gonna sleep?"

"If it's a party, they gonna be wasted, so on the couch. Or the floor."

Reggie shook his head. "You are the dictionary definition of primitive."

Ricky shrugged, put a light to the joint.

"You see that real-estate lady? Top buttons on her blouse undone so you see her white frilly bra every time she lean over."

Ricky blew out a cloud of resinous smoke. "Yeah."

"She putting on that big play for your benefit, eying you like you the last Rolo in the packet, and your stoned ass too stupid to notice."

"I can't be thinking 'bout women right now. Can't have nothing interfering with the thought process." Ricky inhaled a lungful of smoke.

Reggie pointed at the rose-leaved Hibiscus flowering along the lawn border and said: "That plant possess more self-awareness than you."

"You heard from Chris yet?" Ricky said.

"Three days and zip. Zilch. Nada. I don't get it."

"I told ya."

"What you tell me? You ain't tell me shit."

"I told you not to call him."

"Excuse me, Nostradamus, who we should get?"

"Dan the driver is always up for a bit of work."

"Only thing Dan is up for is a five-year bid."

Ricky sat up straight. "Whatcha ya mean?"

"Got busted yesterday," Reggie said. "The man collecting a consignment from those Dutch boys. They loading his truck with five kilos of yayo. When a bunch of scary motherfuckers with MP-five submachine guns make you shit yourself surround them like it Custer's last stand. Way I hear, that's exactly what Dan did."

"Huh?"

"Man defecated in his pants."

"Shit."

"So I hear."

The two men fell silent.

"What about that oversized Paddy you used to knock around with?" Reggie said.

"Big Mick," Ricky said. "The fella has a glandular problem."

"He also have a Guinness and fried-food problem."

"Not anymore."

"Don't tell me, he's gone tee-total, too. And started following the Atkins diet."

"Nah, he's killing time at a five-star Valencian spa as we speak."

"He got sent down? For what?"

"B and E."

"I didn't think that was his style," Reggie said.

"It isn't," Ricky said. "He drove the missus up to Valencia. To her sisters place. Her husbands laid up in intensive-care hooked up to a ventilator. Got a crippling dose of Covid. Anyway, while the two women are consoling each other, the sister mentions a local bar operating on the down low. Where she believes hubby contracted the virus. After that three-hour drive, Big Mick is in the mood for a liquid lunch. Except Eileen won't give him the car-keys, so he buses it into town. Leaves the pub that night with a bag of cans. Now, at this stage, the silly bastard is already ten beers past wasted. Has no clue where he is, so he starts walking."

"Why didn't he ring his woman?" Reggie said.

"He tried," Ricky said, "but she's so pissed at him she's switched her phone off. So this drunken lunatic's wandering about like a lost soul. It's two in the morning. He's knackered, and his tins are getting warm. So, he breaks into a house, puts his beers in the fridge and slaps the TV on."

"For real?"

"Conks out in the armchair." Ricky laughed. "Wakes up with a semi-automatic tapping against his temple. Musclebound chap aiming at his face not only owns the house, he's also a Municipal Police sergeant. It was his night off."

The two men roared with laughter. The laughter trailed off, and they fell into an easy quiet, Ricky puffing on the blunt, Reggie slugging from the bottle. Reggie's mind occupied with the errant Christian. Couldn't figure that one out, the crazy cracker enthusiastic as a puppy when Reggie had him on the phone. Three days later and still no noise. Chris' cell, not in service.

"Other night, you say you swear you never gonna work with that fool again," Reggie said. "What he do, try and stiff you?"

"Chris?" Ricky said, eyes so red from the Kush they were practically glowing.

"Who else we be talking about?" Irritation creeping into his Reggie's tone. Goddamn stoners, brains an hour behind while the rest of the planet on Daylight Saving Time.

"Guy's a nut-job."

"We stopped working with people on account they a little unhinged, we'd be working solo."

"Few years back, Chris came to me with some work. Cast-iron, he says. This kid he buys blow from used to work in a drive-thru. Reckons they take down over thirty large on a decent weekend. Keep it all neat and tidy in the overnight safe 'til the security-truck come collect on a Monday afternoon."

"Ain't those time-locked?" Reggie said.

"That's what I thought," Ricky said. "But times are hard, so I agree to meet the kid. This Rico Suave punk. Got more chains on him than a bicycle-store, and he's sitting there coked to the gills, swearing on every holy book you can think of, that the safe ain't got a time-lock."

"But it did."

"You know it. But I look the place over and I can see it's a quick in-and-out job."

"So, you figure, what the hell?" Reggie said, a grin curling the edge of his mouth.

"Right," Ricky said, giving a slow headshake. "We march in, eight in the morning, all business-like, locked and loaded, scream masks on and—"

"Scream masks?"

"This was back in oh nine, when you could still get them in toy stores. Kiddies be trick-or-treating in 'em."

"Stoned motherfuckers be putting videos of themselves saying, Whazzup, on their Facebook page."

"Never understood that," Ricky said, "you dumb enough as it is, you gotta let the whole internet know as well... where was I..."

"I'll be celebrating my eightieth birthday," Reggie said, "'fore you finish this story."

"Yeah, so I'm on point by the main doors making sure everything's kosher. I hear this screaming and hollering. Three girls in their uniforms and paper hats bawling their eyes out. I dash behind the counter, there's this psycho wigging out with his hatchet raised—"

"He brought a hatchet on the job?"

"Chris's not normal. Brings hatchets and Samurai swords on jobs. Brought a crossbow, onetime. Goes in like a medieval invader."

"He got a problem with guns?"

"You been listening, man's got multiple problems. Mostly mental. He's holding the manager's hand on top of the safe, about to take off fingers. Girls are hysterical, the manager screaming, Cerradura de Tiempo, his tan turning alabaster."

"Chris not realizing that meant time-locked," Reggie said.

"Chris so into playing Spanish Inquisitor," Ricky said, "he don't even realize I'm there."

"Sometimes you need to do what you need to do, to get people to do what you need them to do. You know that."

"I also know we made the papers the following day. Ask Chris, he saved the cuttings. Guy can't speak a word of Spanish and he's ripping out the articles. Probably jacks-off to the blown-up CCTV pic of us in our scream masks."

"You remember we made the papers?" Reggie said, grinning.

"The time we hit that bank on Christmas Eve?" Ricky said with a smirk.

"You shouting Feliz Navidad to that teller with them big ol' titties as you running out the door. Girl all giggly, showing no fear, like shit is a movie and you might be Johnny Depp under that ski-mask."

"I was feeling festive."

"We all in the holiday spirit after that job. Pulled down thirty-two big ones."

"That was a sweet score."

"What did you and Tonto come away with from the drive-thru?"

"Three grand from the floats. And a couple of hundred in coins."

Reggie stood over the sausages and steaks sizzling on the grill, getting tipsy from the smoke wafting through the air. He'd been waiting to get to grips with the stone barbeque since the cute realtor lady showed him around the villa yesterday. A chance to show of his culinary skills. Ricky sat on a rattan stool on the opposite side of the concrete counter. Arms flailing like windmills, trying to swat away a persistent bluebottle.

"Know why it is barbeques appeal to us?" Reggie said, remembering a show he had seen on Discovery. "It taps into our collective unconsciousness. Cave-men cooked their meals over an open fire. Why, the smell of smoke stimulate that connection in our brains. It's an ageless scent."

Ricky put his arms down and lit up a joint. "Yeah, I've always been partial to a good smoke."

"Damn, your ass is remedial. I'm here trying to lay some knowledge on you, and..." Reggie's voice trailed off, his cell-phone ringing.

Reggie finished the call and said: "That's Chris. He's coming over."

"Best get a hurry on with those steaks," Ricky said, sleepy eyes widening with apprehension, "before that gannet gets here."

"I tell you Chris' coming, and food's the first thing comes into your mind."

"I get hungry when I'm high."

"Must be hungry all the time. What I want to know is where you put it?"

Ricky patted his lean stomach, trying to be cool about it, not let his pride show. "Press-ups in the morning, jogging in the afternoon, and a metabolism that still behaves like I'm sixteen."

Reggie watched the man pick up a smoked sausage in his sticky fingers and put it away in two bites when they heard the pounding music coming from outside the gate. Reggie, a little pissed, thinking about the neighbors. He planned on staying here a while, in this nice villa with its tile roof, and oval windows with the black bars. One thing he hated about Spanish houses, those bars on the windows. Still, it wasn't like you woke up to see them, had the shutters rolled down.

You could make this place a home. When the job got done, he'd invest in Ricky's dope business, expand it so they could live comfortably on the earnings. Retire from the heavy stuff altogether.

Soon as they had indulged in the back-slapping and jokes, Chris sat down. After asking if that last steak was up for grabs, Chris rolled out a story about his girlfriend's mother taking ill. How he had to drive her up to Calpe to see her family. Made it all sound plausible. And he looked like shit. On account of all that driving and lack of sleep. No real reason to doubt his story.

They got down to discussing the job, Chris' foot tapping at a mile a minute, like he ready to do it now.

"You got a piece?" Reggie asked Chris when they had finished.

"Not my thing," Chris said. "Don't like the idea of having to toss them after a job. Waste of money. Axes and knives you can keep, no way they're leaving a trail. Unless you put 'em to work, and then, when you get shot of 'em, you're only out of pocket about twenty quid."

"So, I'm the only one with a piece," Ricky said. "Looks like we've got to call those fellas for the steel. Christ, I hope they're not Russians. Got them unpronounceable names. Like they're allergic to vowels, so to compensate, they mash a butt-load of consonants together."

"You don't know the chaps you're buying the shooters off?" Chris asked.

"They're pals of mister Greene." Ricky said, catching Reggie's sharp stare too late.

Chris chuckled. "Mister Green? He Eco-friendly?"

"Something like that," Reggie said.

Later that evening, as he relieved himself on a bush, Chris' inebriated brain made the connection. That lawyer, his name was Green. Spelled with an e. He stopped mid-flow. Coincidence? Reggie's voice derailed his train of thought, shouting about the villa coming equipped with indoor plumbing. "What?"

"Use the head," Reggie said.

"Whatever, mate."

"This ain't the middle-ages."

Punch him in his smart mouth. No, couldn't jeopardize that twenty grand. But, soon as this job was over and he'd gotten paid, all bets were off. And if that smarmy lawyer was involved, Chris could use that to his advantage.