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about treating Joe like dirt, and agreed to rip off the guitars and amplifiers from the J. Geils bass player’s pad in Benedict Canyon. Halfway down to Sunset with the loot, the car fishtails and sideswipes a sheriffs nark ark. Joe freaks at the badge and cocked magnum in his face and starts blabbing how a hitchhiker left the stuff in the trunk. No way, Jose, the cop said. Bingo: nine months in the laundry at Wayside.
    Like the times when they were kids, and Joe got terrified of thunder and woke him up and made him promise always to protect him.
    Bobby switched to left jabs aimed at the wiper blades, pulling his fist back a split second before it hit the glass, watching Joe flinch out of the corner of his eye. “I always carried you, ain’t I? Like I promised to when we were kids?”
    Joe kept his eyes on the road, but clenched his elbows to his side, like he always did when Bobby started talking scary. “Sure, Bobby, that’s true.”
    â€œAnd you’ve always watchdogged me when I got off too deep into my weird shit. Ain’t that true?”
    Joe saw what was coming and swallowed so his voice would be steady. “That’s true.”
    â€œYou’ve got to say it.”
    Tightening his hands on the wheel, Joe fought an image of their last B&E, of the woman with her skirt up over her head, Bobby with his knife at her throat as he raped her. “Y-you’d be … you’d hurt people.”
    â€œWhat kind of people?”
    Joe stared straight ahead. The sky was getting darker and taillights began flashing on. Concentrating on their reflections off the wet pavement gave him a moment to think up a new answer that would satisfy Bobby’s weirdness and let him keep a piece of his pride. He was about to speak when a station wagon swerved in front of them.
    Joe flinched backward and Bobby grabbed the wheel out of his hands and yanked it hard right. The car lurched forward, missing the station wagon’s rear bumper by inches. Bobby jammed his foot onto the accelerator, looked over his shoulder, saw a tight passing space and jerked the car across four lanes and down a darkened off-ramp. He slowly applied the brake, and when they came to a stop at the flooded intersection, Joe was brushing tears from his eyes.
    â€œSay it,” Bobby said.
    Joe screamed the words, his voice breaking: “You’re a rape-o! You’re a mind fuck! You’re on a wacko guilt trip, and I’m not kicking out any more of my money for your penance!” He swung the car out into the stream of traffic, punching the gas, doing a deft brody that set off a chain of honks from cut-off motorists. Bobby cracked the passenger window for air, then said softly, “I just want you to know how things are. How they’re always gonna be. I owe you for getting us out of burglary. Too many women out there; too many chances to pull weird shit. But you owe me your guts, ’cause without me you ain’t got any. We gotta remember that stuff.”
    Knowing Bobby was trying to get at something, Joe pressed the edge that his tears always gave him. “You sent that woman five K, right? The money orders were cashed, so you know she got them. You sent her a note, so even though the signatures on the checks were false, she knew it was you. You haven’t done it again, so why are you rehashing all this old stuff? We’ve got a good deal with Hendy, but you keep talking it down like it’s nothing.”
    Bobby popped short left-right combos until his arms ached and his tunic was soaked with sweat. “I’m just getting itchy, little brother,” he said at last. “Like something has gotta happen real soon. Take surface streets, I gotta cool out before the close.”
    They cruised east on Valley Boulevard, Joe driving slowly in the middle lane, so he could scope out the scene on both sides of the street. The rain died to a drizzle, and Bobby took a hand squeeze from the glove