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“Don't fucking move!” an angry-sounding, high-pitched voice ordered.

We whipped our necks around and saw some tall, pockmarked-faced guy wearing a brown, Harley-Davidson tank-top pointing a revolver at us with a barrel that looked as big as a trash can laid on its side!

“Now!” the guy with the gun snapped at Bonnie. “Move!”

She quickly left the room.

Still naked, she returned a minute later carrying a rusty green wastebasket.

“Money and jewelry,” the guy ordered.

I'll bet his name was Clyde. It had to be. He rested the gun under his steady, open left palm and cocked the hammer with his right thumb.

Fuck! We were getting robbed by Bonnie and Clyde!

“Wallets, too,” Clyde ordered. “Keep anything and you die.”

Bonnie probably thought she was an exhibit at a gynecology convention the way she pranced around the room holding the wastebasket while her pussy gyrated. She stopped in front of each guy and like a consolation price for being robbed, she
spread her legs during the donation.

When she got everybody's valuables, Clyde snapped, “Search them!”

Bonnie walked around the room again, checking everybody's pockets while Clyde followed her, resting the end of the fucking gun directly on the forehead of each guy who was being searched. Fortunately, nobody held out anything.

“They ain't got nothing,” Bonnie said.

I hoped that she'd use some of the stolen money for grammar lessons.

Bonnie dumped the wastebasket upside down on the rickety coffee table, letting the valuable contents spill out. There was plenty of money, enough credit cards to deal fifty hands of blackjack, and everybody's watch but mine, thanks to Chesterfield.

Clyde checked the loot, almost salivating before he looked over at us.

“Out you dumb fucks,” he ordered, smiling with two missing upper side teeth. “We got everybody's ID. Call the cops, I'll come to your house and kill you!”

We tore-ass out of there and the second we scrambled back into the truck, Parker floored the gas and we shot away like a drag racer, laying at least a hundred feet of rubber down that chewed-up, asphalt street.

_____

Less than five minutes later Parker jammed on the brakes, bouncing the tires against the curb causing us in the back to fly around like falling bowling pins.

Adams opened the back doors and we stumbled out. The continual roar of airplanes was overhead. Parker slammed the back doors shut so hard that I thought they'd come off the hinges. He stood on the sidewalk seething, breathing as heavily as after a marathon run. He seemed to go into a robot-like state, with his eyes glazed and his jaw tightly clenched.

“Those motherfucking, goddamn, cocksuckers!” he thundered. “I WANT MY FUCKING WATCH BACK!”

“Was it valuable?” Batman asked.

This question infuriated Parker even more.

“My grandfather was wearing it when he was killed at Guadalcanal!” Parker screamed like a psycho. “The Marines shipped it to my father with the folded American flag and my grandfather's body!” Parker's breathing leveled off a little but he was still gasping for air. “And I took it off my father's wrist while he was laid out in his casket!” He looked at Batman. “You're asking me if it's valuable?” he yelled. “What the fuck do you think?”

“Goddamn right.”

There was lunacy in Parker's gleaming eyes as he looked around at all of us. “I'm going back to get my watch! Anybody coming with me?”

“They might kill you,” Adams pointed out sensibly. “The guy had a gun.”

“I don't give a shit!” Parker screamed. “Then I'm going back alone and get those fuckers even if nobody else is coming!”

“I'll go with you,” I blurted out, desperately needing as much future loyalty as possible.

He looked shocked. “You, Stafford?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. Never thought I could count on you. Nobody in the house does either.”

“Well you can,” I boasted, with a heavy, lumpy feeling banging around in my stomach again.

“Um, all the pledges will go too,” Grossberg mumbled unenthusiastically.

“What're we going to do?” I asked Parker.

“Let me think.”

He was looking around. Then he started sniffing like a bloodhound. The smell of gasoline was in the air. Parked in front of the Ryder truck was a dented pick-up with gray primer spots giving it the look of a pinto horse. Parker walked over to it, bent down under the back bumper and looked closely at something. He walked back to us with a smug look.

“What're we going to do?” I asked.

He pointed to the truck and smiled. “It's leaking gas.”

His refocused-eyes scanned the gutter where there was a forty-ounce St. Ides bottle lying there next to a dirty diaper. He picked up the bottle and raised it towards the gray, cloudy sky.

“We're celebrating the Russian Revolution!” he yelled dramatically. “I'm making a Molotov cocktail and blowing up their fucking house!”

Right then, Stovepipe shocked us with his ability to ask an intelligent question.

“How's that going to get your dad's watch back?”

Parker didn't answer. Instead he looked over at some chocolate-brown kids playing baseball on a lawn a few doors down. Slowly, he walked over to them but as he got closer, the kids must've thought he was from Immigration and ran away. Parker picked up their baseball bat and carried it back to us.

He handed the bat to Rawlings. “Here's the plan: I'll smoke them towards the back of the house and when they come running out through the back door, you bash their brains out.”

“And I'll run in the side door and get the stolen shit back,” I blurted out, even surprising myself with this idiotic way to die for thirty three dollars and some credit cards that I could report stolen before they could even be used.

Parker looked at me with renewed respect. “Goddamn,” he said smiling, shaking his head a little. “I always thought you were a punk. Sorry. I guess I was wrong.”

“Working for a common goal,” I answered. “Isn't that what fraternities are about?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “I guess so.”

“Hey,” Grossberg called out. “What the hell's the matter with us? Everybody, right now, call the credit card companies and report the cards stolen.”

“They probably already used them on the Home Shopping Network,” Dung said, “to buy Joan Rivers' jewelry.”

That was so stupid that nobody even answered.

Everybody was clustered together on the sidewalk and the curb using their cell phones.

“I got a lousy signal,” I said, walking away from everybody.

Calling American Express first wouldn't get my D in Econ turned into an A or B. But maybe calling NEWSTIP would. I fished out their card from my front shirt pocket. Quickly I dialed their direct number. Some grandmother-sounding lady with a New York accent answered, snapping her gum like a machine gun.

“A house is going to be firebombed in the next five minutes,” I whispered hurriedly.

“Where?”

“Wait a minute. I'm calling for my mother. What's her anonymous code number?” I pulled out a pen from my pants pocket ready to write the number on the back of their card.

The woman paused for a few seconds before her voice came on the line. “H like Harry, R like Rabbit, zero, four, nine, seven, one.”

I scribbled it down.

“Got it?”

“Yeah.” I read it back.

“When and where's the bombing?” she asked anxiously.

“In five minutes. Near LAX. Wait a minute. I'll get the address.”

I went back to Parker. “What's the robber's address?”

He looked at me suspiciously. “Why?”

“American Express wants to know where it was stolen from?”

From his back pocket, he handed me the folded envelope that he wrote their address on. I walked about twenty feet away from them again and read the address into the phone.

“How fast can you get here?” I asked.

The phone connection was lousy and the gum snapping even made it harder to hear her. “We've got trucks all over town. There's one not too far away now. At a shooting in Inglewood.”

“Hurry! You got to be here before somebody calls the fire department and the cops!”

Parker was under the truck trying to unscrew the bolt at the bottom of the gas tank. “Anybody got pliers?” he yelled angrily.

“On my survival knife,” Rainey answered, walking over to the truck holding one of those gadgets that had a dozen tools in
a leather knife case.

Parker had the St. Ides bottle filled with gas in seconds.

We got in the truck again and Parker made a screeching U-turn, slapping us against the side of the truck before it righted itself and sped onward.

A few minutes later the truck skidded before it bumped to a halt against the curb. Groggily, we tumbled out across the street from our destination.

_____

“Let's go!” Parker said, leading me and Rawlings across the street to the house.

The rest of the guys had more sense and stood around the truck, watching what could be a double-murder about to happen.

Rawlings had a mean look on his face while taking practice swings with the baseball bat like he was looking forward to playing T-ball with somebody's head.

I felt like I was an Army parachutist being dropped behind enemy lines using a parachute packed by a kid with Down syndrome.

I made a desperate, last-minute attempt to stop this nightmare. “How do you know they own the house?” I asked Parker.

He looked at me like I was nuts. “Who the fuck cares?”

“Some Jew will probably get the insurance money and secretly thank you for blowing up the place.”

It was obvious that my logic didn't register. “You with us or not?” he asked sternly.

“With you, of course.”

“Then let's get on with it.”

Parker went to the side of the house nearest the front. I was at the corner of the place where I could see both the front and the side door. Rawlings stood next to me.

“When I brain them, I'll yell,” Rawlings said to me. “Then you run in, get the shit and get the fuck out.”

I was so goddamn nervous, I couldn't answer so I nodded.

Rawlings walked away, toward the back. Cautiously, Parker
crept around to the front of the house, stopping right under the large living room window. Anybody walking or driving down the street or looking out their windows in our direction could see us easily.

Parker took off his CAS windbreaker, then his black T-shirt. He put the jacket back on. Then he tore off a hunk of the T-shirt and threw the rest of it on the brown weeds that strangled the grass on the trampled lawn. A second later he jammed the ripped-off part of the T-shirt in the neck of the bottle for a wick.

Then he lit it. There was no turning back now. When the wick was burning brightly, he violently hurled the lethal bomb completely through the window, making an explosive crash of splattering glass. Seconds later, a dynamite-like, fiery explosion roared out of the front of the house followed by a screaming, hissing, high-pitched screech!

Parker just stood there, looking at the fire like a hypnotized pyro. About thirty seconds of terror passed. I still couldn't believe I was stupid enough to be doing this.

“Now!” I heard Rawlings scream. “Get in there now, Stafford!”

I ran to the side door and looked through the glass, hoping the room would be on fire so I wouldn't have to go in. But the goddamn fire hadn't spread here yet. The brightness from the fire made it possible to see pretty clearly inside. I spotted the green wastebasket sitting on top of a table next to the bed.

Just like in the stupid movies, I kicked the door as hard as I could. Not only did it not open but my right arch hurt like hell. Then I twisted the doorknob and the fucking door opened.

Rawlings, carrying the baseball bat, rushed toward me, gasping. “I got them both,” he yelled excitedly. “Now get in there!”

I raced inside. The flames were fanning down the hallway towards me, with the loud crackling, hissing sound mixing with the noxious smoke and fumes.

I grabbed the wastebasket and for some reason, stood there for a few seconds, looking around the room. I spotted the gun partly sticking out from under the pillow and stuck it in my right front patch pocket and closed the Velcro-secured flap.

“Hurry!” came Rawlings' anxious voice from the open doorway. “Place is going to explode any second!”

I sprinted outside holding the wastebasket and followed Rawlings around to the front of the house where Parker was on the lawn, still admiring his work.

We rushed past him and scrambled back in the truck where Adams quickly slammed the door shut. Then he rushed around to the driver's side and got in. The truck's horn suddenly sounded its high-pitched whine in short, unequal spurts like Morse Code.

It seemed like a couple of more minutes passed before Parker finally opened the passenger door and climbed inside before the truck screeched off.

“Jesus Christ!” Bones exclaimed, pointing out the front window. “There's the NEWSTIP van heading towards us! They missed filming us by seconds!”

_____

After driving through pretty heavy traffic for nearly an hour, Parker stopped the truck at a familiar, little strip mall at the corner of Lincoln and Pico in Santa Monica. The second Stovepipe opened the back doors, the overpowering chili smell from Tommy's enveloped us.

“Chow time,” Stovepipe announced.

In the light from the parking lot I handed everybody their property back. A fast look at Parker's scratched, silver watch with its twisted, silver stretch-band made me shiver, thinking that maybe two people got killed over this watch that could be replaced for a little more than the price of a one of Tommy's chiliburgers.

Then I felt the gun in my pocket and pulled it out.