"They're clean and untraceable." As usual Danny stuck out his bottom lip.

I hefted one of the Remington automatic shotguns from the bag. There were two more shotguns one of them a pumpin side and two Glock sixteen-shot pistols, plus ski masks, duct tape, and some kind of electronic device about the size of a shoe box. Danny got this out too.

"This is used for cloning cellular phone numbers," he said. "It's the latest shit so it works even though them companies got what they think are security measures that can block it." He was smiling so I guess he was happy with his toy.

"As long as it stops them dudes from calling out," I said. Then I opened up the nylon bag I'd brought into the room and removed one of the grenades.

"We don't need to blow up the truck, do we?" Wilma said, pointing at the thing I was holding.

"These are flash grenades," I told her. "They'll blind the drivers." I learned about those beauties when I'd done the show on the WB. There was something else I learned doing that cop show, but I kept it to myself.

"Where'd you get those?" Nap asked me.

"From the prop dude on that TV show I did for a hot minute a few years ago."

"You mean they're fake?" Wilma picked one up.

I took the thing out of her hand. "They're real. This dude is hooked into a lot of outrageous shitsurvivalists, NRA nuts, the kind of guys who"

"Does he know about" she broke in.

"No, and he don't want to know what I'm gonna use them for," I said, cutting her off like she had me. "We set on the truck?" I asked Nap.

"Ready for Freddy, baby."

"How we got the route they take?" Danny was messing around with one of the pistols, like maybe that was supposed to intimidate me. Like I wouldn't shove the shotgun butt up his rectum 'cause he was Nap's brother. Shit. Nap would help me.

"We got their files," Wilma said. "Ellison Stadanko is very organized and has his shipments worked out months in advance. The truck will be making a run a week from Thursday. A special run, in fact."

"How much?" Danny asked what all of us were thinking.

"Seven to ten million."

"Damn," I said. "How come so much?"

"He's got the Justice Department breathing down his neck, and we know Weems is up to some shenanigans too. I think Stadanko is suspicious that the commissioner is nosing around in his business. From what I can interpret in his latest file entry, he wants to move a sizable amount of cash for reserves and cool out that part of his operation for a while until things settle down."

"Then let's get busy," Nap said.

"Yeah," I put in, "we need to practice."

Danny and Wilma looked at me and Nap like we were trippin'.

"Y'all didn't think we could just walk up to Stadanko's boys, put a gun on them, and they'd get all weak in the knees and hand the shit over, did you?" I sat on the edge of the desk, folding my arms. "You don't win because you only go over the opposition's moves. You gotta scrimmage, and then scrimmage some more until the shit is reflex in your muscles."

Nap spoke again. "I've secured a couple trucks for us to use for two days. One is the blocker we'll use in the actual robbery and the other is larger, like the garbage truck."

"Won't that draw attention to us?" Wilma frowned at the grenades in the bag.

"There's a reasonably isolated spot out in the desert past Palmdale we can use," Nap said. "I was out there a couple of times for, shall we say, an activity involving flutes, bonfires, and cavorting naked in the open. And we weren't spotted."

Danny shook his head in disgust.

"Plus," I said, tossing a shotgun at Wilma that she caught, "we all gotta get used to handling the equipment. There's no on-the-job training once we're into it."

That Sunday, the Barons beat the Oilers by one point. They were 20 and on a fucking roll. To make things worse, that goddamn Grier caught two touchdown passes. Meanwhile we were doing practice runs for the robbery outside of fucking Palmdale.

Four days later it was game day. I was sitting next to Danny Deuce in an old '83 Cordoba which was idling badly. The seats were torn up and there was a smell coming from below the dash I didn't want to know about. It was close to sunset but we were hardly relaxed.

The cell phone jamming device was in Wilma's ride, a couple of miles down in the flats where she was waiting as lookout. She was to page me when the truck had gone past her.

"What the fuck were you thinking when you got this rig?"

Danny worked his tongue inside his jaw. ''How many times you gonna whine about that? It can't be traced so shut the fuck up."

"I'll keep on you until you get it in your malt liquored head this ain't no Western Avenue mom and pop robbery we're pullin', Danny. This is for all your mama's bags of chips."

"I know that." He showed his teeth to me.

"No you don't, Danny." Wouldn't you know it but coming down the goddamn hill we were hiding behind on the side road was a pair of mountain bikes. "Whatever you do, don't look at them," I warned him.

"Man, I'll do as I motherfuckin' please." Of course he looked at the two like he was gonna bust a cap in them as the man and woman came down the hill and stopped right in front of us. There wasn't much around in this end of Chatsworth except hilly area like this and a couple of power stations. Over the rise behind us was a development of tract houses inside a high wall called Emerald Estates. But none of the houses were green.

The bikers were trying to look relaxed, drinking yuppie bottled water. But I knew they had to be wondering what in the hell two brothers were doing up here in a broke dick ghetto special in the land of the white man near the Ventura County line.

"This is about more money than your brain can count to, Danny," I said under my breath. The couple were dressed in those strange-ass Speedo outfits. They were straddling their bikes, having a conversation. Those two had to be talking about us. I looked at my watch. It was less than three minutes before we had to get the function on. If they didn't get gone in one they were gonna have to be dealt with. I had way too much riding on this to see it go bust. The shotgun was along the side of my seat, down out of view.

Danny was staring straight ahead at them. His Glock was in his lap.

"You think life is gonna be the same for you when you got that kind of green?" Forty seconds.

"Yeah, I'm gonna"

"I know, spend it on hoes, Ferraris, a pad on top of a hill somewhere." He didn't say anything, 'cause I was reading his mind. Those had been my goals too. Thirty seconds.

"Well, you may not want to believe me, young stud, but you better be about puttin' your cut to use for the long term. See, you ain't always gonna be so fly that all the honeys flock to you, or have some scheme come along that'll get you over like a fat rat. This is a one-time thing." Twenty seconds. My hand gently touched the butt of the shotgun like I was pushing up on a chick.

Danny finally looked my way. "I hear you, Zelmont."

We both had a hold of our gats. But like they'd suddenly got ESP, the couple peddled down the incline and went off to the right, out of sight. I had no idea where the police or sheriffs station was and didn't give it much thought. It was two minutes to the biggest game of my life. We eased the guns back into position and waited, saying nothing. Then my pager vibrated.

"It's on," I said.

Like one, we slipped on our ski masks. We already had on our gloves. "Don't forget your goggles," I told him.

I started counting down from ninety as we'd planned. I signaled Danny to put the car in gear on 25 and he did. Once in drive, wouldn't you know it but the engine smoothed out and the Cordoba ran like a top. We came down and around the hill as the Shindar garbage truck passed by on the main road. The thing was chugging uphill like we knew it would. Nap was coming from the other direction at the top of the rise. The roadway was narrow as hell on these twists and turns.