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fired our weapons.
    It must be a thousand degrees outside. Even with two fans whirring and all the windows open, the air just lies there, hot and thick as bacon grease. One story below, down on Hollywood, an old Armenian woman is crying. She sits on a bus bench, rocking back and forth, a black scarf wrapped around her head. Her sobs distract me from Moriarty’s presentation. He asks a question, and I don’t even hear him.
    “Hey, man,” he scolds. “Come on. Really.”
    “I’m with you, I’m with you.” I get up off the windowsill and go to the Coke machine he keeps stocked with beer. The can I extract is nice and cold, and I press it to the back of my neck and motion for him to continue.
    It’s the same scenario as the last job and the one before. There’s not much finesse at our level. We’re not blowing vaults or breaching high-tech security systems. Basically it’s hit-and-run stuff. We grab as much cash as we can before someone activates an alarm, then run like hell to our stolen getaway car. Moriarty has always wanted us to look like amateurs. He has a theory that the cops will pay less attention to us that way. We’ve taken other precautions as well. No two jobs are ever less than twenty miles apart, and we vary our disguises: ski masks, nylons, wigs and fake beards. We wore alien heads once, and once we went in turbans and shoe polish, trying to have a little fun with it.
    Moriarty has me trace our route in and out with my finger, then crumples the map and burns it in an ashtray. I admire his thoroughness. It makes me proud to be his partner. And the control he exerts over himself — my God! He has mastered the messy business of life. Every day he eats a banana for breakfast and a tuna sandwich for lunch. Every day! And his whole week is similarly cast in stone. Thursday nights: pool at the Smog Cutter from nine to eleven and two beers — no more, no less. Saturdays, a movie, target practice, an hour of meditation, and the evening spent studying history. Sundays he’s up at six to read the
New York
and
L.A. Times
from cover to cover. I believe him when he says that living this way gives him time to think. It makes perfect sense: He’s a speeding train, and his routine is the track; all he has to concentrate on is moving forward. That doesn’t mean he’s perfect — he still lives with his mother, gets a little too spitty when he talks about guns, and seriously believes Waco was just a taste of things to come. But that will of his!
    “So everybody’s clear?” he asks. “No muss, no fuss?”
    “Clear,
mon commandant
.” This from Belushi, the third member of our crew, who’s lying on the couch, smoking another cigarette.
    Moriarty steps out from behind his desk and opens the office refrigerator. He tosses a Popsicle to Belushi and one to me, and we sit sucking them in silence. The Armenian woman is still crying downstairs, and it starts to get to all of us. Belushi snaps first, growling, “For fuck’s sake, put on some music or something.” Moriarty slips a CD into the boom box, and “Whole Lotta Rosie” blasts out of the speakers.
    “Maybe we should go down and see what’s wrong,” I suggest.
    “I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Belushi says, a chuckle rattling the phlegm coating his throat. “It’s too hot, the air’s for shit, and the world is run by evil old men. You could rip your eyeballs out, and the tears would keep right on coming.”
    He’s one of those hard-core doomsayers, Belushi, and a junkie, too — hence the nickname — but he also understands money like nobody I’ve ever met before. Rumor has it he comes from a rich family, so maybe it’s in his blood. He’s been the driver on all our jobs, and our accountant. Our goal when we started this thing was a quarter million each — serious fuck-you money — and today the balance of my Swiss bank account stands at $248,320. You’d never guess it, seeing him sprawled out like he is now, grinning that yellow,