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no talent. But we both got a job to do, and we’re behind for the month. So let’s do it.”
    Joe cut off the music in his head; his lyrics put to an old Fats Domino tune, “Suicide Hill” substituted for “Blueberry Hill.” Leave it to Bobby to puncture both their balloons with one shot, so he wouldn’t have a good comeback. “Tomorrow’s December first. The Christmas rush and the rainy season. We’ll double up on Bibles and prayer kits, and siding jobs.” Bobby’s jaw clenched at the last words, and Joe added, “And we’ll give some money to Saint Sebastian’s. A tithe. We’ll find some suckers with bucks, and rip them off and give the dinero to earthquake re—”
    Bobby stopped him with a slow finger across the throat. “Not earthquake relief, puto !It’s a scam! You don’t do penance for one scam by giving bucks to another one!”
    â€œBut Henderson gave two grand to that priest from the archdiocese for earthquake relief. He—”
    Bobby shook his head. “A scam within a scam within a scam, pindejo. He gave the priest a check for two K and got a receipt for three. That priest has got a brother in the D.A.’s office. The Fraud Division. Need I say fucking more?”
    Joe tightened his collar, feeling his nice guy/musician self slip back into Father Hernandez, the phone scam padre. He grabbed a stack of Naugahyde-bound Bibles off the floor and carried them out to the car, wondering for the ten millionth time how Bobby could love hating his brother and his job and his life as much as he did.
    Bobby and Joe worked for Henderson Enterprises, Inc., purveyors of aluminum siding and Bibles in Spanish. The scam originated in a phone room, where salesmen pitched rustproof patios and eternal salvation through Jesus to unsophisticated and semi-impoverished Angelenos, offering them free gas coupons as a come-on to get the “field representatives” out to their homes, where he signed them up for “lifetime protection guarantees,” which in reality meant a new siding job or Bible on a “regular installation basis”—meaning debilitating permanent monthly payments to whoever was gullible enough to sign on the dotted line.
    Which was where Bobby and Joe, as Father Gonzalez and Father Hernandez, L.A.-based “free-lance” priests, came in. They were the “heavy closers”—psychological intimidation specialists who sized up weaknesses on the follow-up calls and made the sucker sign, setting in motion a string of kickbacks originating in the main office of U.S. Aluminum, Inc., and its subsidiary company, the Truth and Light Publishing House.
    With the trunk of their ’77 Camaro stuffed with Bibles, siding samples and wall hangings of Jesus, the Garcias drove to a “close” in El Monte on the Pomona Freeway. Joe was at the wheel, humming Springsteen under his breath so his brother wouldn’t hear; Bobby threw short punches toward the windshield and stared out at the dark clouds that were forming, hoping for thundershowers to spook their closees into buying. When raindrops spattered the glass in front of him, he closed his eyes and thought of how everything important in his life happened when it was raining.
    Like the time he sparred with Little Red Lopez and knocked him through the ropes with a perfect right cross. Red said his timing was off because bad weather made his old knife scars ache.
    Like the time Joe and his garage band won the “Battle of the Bands” at El Monte Legion Stadium. He played adoring older brother and glommed a groupie who gave him head in his car while he smoked weed and kept the wipers going so he could eyeball prowling fuzz.
    Like the righteous burglaries he and Joe pulled in West L.A. during the ’77-’78 floods, when the L.A.P.D. and C.H.P. were all evacuating hillsides and mopping blood off the freeways.
    Like the time he felt guilty