"Hurry the fuck up, Grassboy!" Robert was getting nervous. I could tell because he kept switching his gun from his left to right hand. Grassboy turned and scowled at him from behind his mask.

"No names," I told Robert. Idiot. He was only here because he was Grassboy's friend. We didn't need him, but Grassboy insisted that we bring him along.

Grassboy and Robert evidently grew up in the same shithole neighborhood on the east side and, for some reason that meant something to them. They knew the same people, ran with the same street gang, and fucked the same whores.

It didn't matter to me. Grassboy was smart, good with a gun, and knew how to keep his mouth shut. I needed Grassboy for the job, so I got Robert.

The teller had finished emptying the register. "Let's go," I said.

"Jerry better be the there with the fucking car," Robert said. I slapped him in the back of the head, hard. He glared at me from behind the mask.

"No names."

Just then, Jerry peeled around the corner with the car and came to a screeching halt. It was a damned hearse. A long black limousine of a hearse. I could feel myself collapse a little inside. Grassboy slapped himself in the forehead.

Jerry was a redneck from some hillbilly town, where he grew up running moonshine and racing cars. I swung open the front door and climbed into the passenger seat of the limo. Grassboy slid into the back seat. The car backfired. Robert turned and shot a guy in the face.

"Damn it, get in the fucking car," Grassboy screamed.

The security guard ran out. The sound of Robert's gun and the dead civilian had made him grow some balls. He had his gun out and he was shooting at us. Robert slid into the seat and Jerry floored the throttle on the limo.

"Yee-haw! How much we got there, Negative?"

Grassboy spoke before I could. "Robert's been hit. It's bad, Negative."

I turned to look at Robert, who was lying across the seat, his head in Grassboy's lap. He was bleeding from below his ribcage.

"Get us to the garage." And Jerry did. We were there in record time.

"Ho-lee shit! We done got us some big time money, boys!" Jerry jumped out of the car closed the doors of the abandoned garage.

Grassboy was less enthusiastic. "What do we do, Negative?"

I ignored him and went after Jerry. "What the hell are you thinking? A damned hearse? Are you trying to get us caught?"

"Hoss, this bitch gotta big-block like you wouldn't believe under the hood. And she got us here, didn't she?"

I shook my head, fighting an urge to punch him.

Grassboy spoke up again. "Negative. He's hurt. What do we do?"

"Your friend, Grassboy. I told you that he was your problem."

"What do you think his chances are?"

I bent into the car to look at the wound. Robert was only partially conscious at this point.

"He took one to the stomach. It's not good. Stomach acid is leaking inside him, but the bleeding isn't that bad. He's got about a fifty-fifty shot at a hospital."

"The hell you say," Jerry spoke up. "Fifty-fuckin'-fifty? He ain't goin' to no fuckin' hospital. You take him there, the cops'll be on us faster than green grass through a goose."

"We can't just let him die," Grassboy said.

Jerry's voice was softer now, like a mother comforting an infant. Unfortunately, his vocabulary hadn't improved.

"Lemme tell you a story. When I was a kid, I had me a prize hound dog. Finest bitch in the county. That bitch could track a fish in a river, I tell ya what. But one night, we was huntin' and a cougar done tore her from tit to asshole. When I found her, I held my hand down to see if she was even still alive. You know what she did? She licked my hand. I loved that bitch, but I had to put her down, right there. I cried like a baby."

"You want me to shoot him?" Grassboy stared in disbelief.

"I ain't gonna make you shoot your pal. I'll take care of it, you just walk away. He won't feel a thing."
Jerry had already pulled out his revolver and he was singing "Amazing Grace."

"No! Stop it, damn it!" Grassboy wasn't quite ready to put down his buddy.

"We have an hour before you're on the train, Grassboy, and before I'm on the bus." We had a plan to split up for a few weeks after the robbery, so we didn't draw any suspicion. Jerry would dispose of the car. The cops would be looking for four men, but we would be in different cities for a while.

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me..."
The garage echoed with the sound of the gun blast. Jerry had pulled Robert out of the car onto the ground, where he put a bullet in his head.

"You can tell his kin the guard got 'em. Maybe give 'em some of his share." Jerry was dragging the body to a corner of the old garage. I saw Grassboy pick up Robert's gun, and I knew what was coming, but I didn't move to stop him.

Jerry turned around, grinning his redneck grin, and Grassboy shot him between the eyes.

I wanted to pound my head against a wall. Marietta was going to kick my ass for this huge cluster-fuck of a robbery.

"To hell with it," I said. "Load the bodies in the back of the hearse and then let's get the hell out of here."
We left the car there and Grassboy and I took the cash back to Marietta, where she was far less pissed off than I expected. Of course, I did let her keep the dead men's shares.

I left Marietta's office and Grassboy was there, waiting.  "So, when's the next one?  I could use some cash.  And I know some guys who could help us out..."

Sangre was Sitting in a chair behind him, his brother Cecilio next to him, "and these are the men who can do it!" Finish Grassboy, "Sangre here is a Master At Explosives, Cecilio, he's a Bat out of hell when he has a Chicago Typewriter"