'Yeah, but it'd be a lot safer after dark,' Zeb said.

'Ah, there goes Mr Yeah-but again.' Robin kept his eyes on the house on Spring Brook Drive. 'Put a sock in it, will you? We settled this.'

'But it's broad daylight, anybody can see —'

'What anybody? It's four o'clock, everybody on this block's at work.'

'That woman on the corner with the babies —'

'She's back in the kitchen fixing supper. We spent two weeks casing this fucker, now you can't remember anything we learned?' They argued in stifled bursts, keeping their voices low, barely audible above the A/C. Zeb was worried about keeping that running, too – conspicuous on the quiet street, he thought – but in Tucson in late May, with no shade, they'd die without air. And they had to sit here in the sun to wait – it was the best spot: close enough to watch the house, far enough not to be noticed.

'Yeah, but all along you said we'd pick the safest time —'

'Which will be fifteen seconds after these clowns are all the way into their garage, with the door rolling down. Just back from deliveries, before they get the money put away.' Robin whipped around on the seat and froze his partner in a pale, bright stare. 'You saying you want to back out now, Zeb-you-lon?'

'No, I don't want to back out, come on.' Robin always drawled his name out like that, taunting, when he wanted to put him down. It worked, too, because Zeb knew people always got major yucks out of his name. 'Zebulon Montgomery Butts, for Chrissake,' he had asked his mother on his last birthday, 'what were you thinking?' Twenty-one at last, time to get a few things straightened out.

His mother said she named him after a great man to inspire him to do great deeds, and she still had high hopes for that. But then last month, as she piled his belongings outside her casita, she'd said, 'If you're ever going to do any of those great deeds it's sure as hell time you got started.' She put a list on top of the pile – things he had to do before she let him back in.

Number One on her Tough Love list was 'Get a job.'

Doing what? Yard care gave him back pain. Construction was in the toilet. He always got fired from resort work – high-paying customers were just too demanding to tolerate. He'd been thinking about applying for a UPS job till three months ago when that stupid DUI charge got his license suspended. Nobody seemed to understand that he was going through a rough patch.

His last girlfriend said she was 'with somebody now.' The second to last let him spend one night on her couch but said her mother was coming the next day, sorry. So Zeb begged his sister till she let him put down his sleeping bag in her utility room, as long as he used his own towel in the shower and didn't take anything out of the refrigerator.

Finally he'd looked up Robin and asked him was he up to any mischief these days; did he need a boost with anything? They used to talk like that when he teamed with Robin before – back when everything was a caper, a little out on the edge maybe but nothing serious. Robin had done a short stretch in juvie and hooked up with a weird kid named Hermie who could boost almost any car super fast, and was willing to teach Robin all he knew.

Zeb thought of it now as their crazy-teens period, when he was doing capers with Robin and Hermie. He didn't learn any new skills except how to blow a quick blast on Hermie's weird whistle. Luckily he never had to blow it while he was their lookout, but they paid him a little for standing by with it, anyway. Later, after they trusted him a little, he ferried a few of Hermie's boosted cars to chop shops. No big scores but it sure beat bagging groceries at Fry's.

Luckily, Zeb was working for his mother the night Robin and Hermie finally got caught trying to burgle a house in the Sam Hughes Neighborhood. A patrolman spotted the open window they had jimmied, looked in and shined his light on them. He kept them standing there with their hands full of high-end electronics and an antique set of dueling pistols waiting for his backup to arrive. 'Don't move,' he told them several times, but Hermie, who hated taking orders, dropped the guns at the last minute and ran out the front door into heavy traffic on Country Club Road. He got a long sentence after he got out of the hospital. Robin stayed where he was and did twenty-two months at the State Prison on Wilmot Road.

He was different when he came out – his eyes were like polished steel, and constantly scanned any room he was in. He mostly hung with guys who did martial arts and had weird facial hair – they broke into empty stores and abandoned houses and stayed till somebody chased them out, using the empty spaces to plan heists and divvy up what they stole.

Robin wasn't any fun at all to be around for quite a while after Wilmot. He never let you finish a sentence that had more than eight words in it, and some days he just seemed to be trying to start a fight for any reason. Finally Zeb decided he didn't need the grief and made a point of being where Robin wasn't.

But last month, when his mother got all crazy about jobs and put him out, Zeb thought back to the good old days and decided to look up his old pal. He tried for a light note, asking was he doing any capers these days? Robin gave him one of his new ice-blue looks and said capers were yesterday's news. Said he had some jobs from time to time but he needed somebody who was ready to get serious.

'Robin, come on, it's me. How long we known each other?'

'Years and years. And in all that time, you have never shown me one brilliant move.' Robin kicked his metal-clad toe against a curb while Zeb waited. 'I could try you out,' he said finally. 'Kind of on probation.'

Zeb understood probation now – the Department of Motor Vehicles had seen to that. After he'd flunked his sobriety test last winter he got lucky with a judge, who cited and released him with the stern proviso that if she saw him in her courtroom again on a similar charge he was going to spend a long time in County mending his ways. At first he'd congratulated himself on getting a judge who was such a muffin. It took him a couple of months to realize that having no driver's license didn't just keep him from driving a car, it ensured he wouldn't be considered for any job he might conceivably want.

So he put on his humble face and did every job Robin asked him to do. For peanuts. On time and without complaint. Nothing big; he made a few dope deliveries, lifted a set of hex wrenches from a target store.

Stealing tools off a rack didn't feel like starting to do great deeds, but he did it because he could see it was some kind of gate he had to pass through to please Robin. Hard to see what Robin wanted them for – they were still in the bubble wrap on the floor of the empty warehouse where they'd met this month. But Robin seemed pleased when he came back with them and made a weird joke about hexes. He kind of warmed up to Zeb after that, and asked if Zeb was ready for something a little bigger. When Zeb said sure, Robin said he needed help planning a home invasion.

Home invasion was kind of a scary leap into the unknown, but hell, if he wasn't going to flip burgers he had to get started at something else. They were in Robin's car – this week's car, he seemed to go through them like popcorn – headed for...