Echo, Watson, and me were tight in those days, we lived in a tent in the state park and we worked construction and at night we ran a '72 Impala, looked like a complete piece of shit, olive green, the front end looked like it would eat you

But Echo was a wizard with engines, he put the nitrous in. Watson was just crazy, his father sent him the money. I just drove

We used to sit in the concrete canyons waiting for the prettyboys in their shiny Vettes and their 442s. They would come down in their triple-waxed cars from the neighborhoods where the houses sit up high off the streets, all glass and silk, where someone was always coming or going, too drunk to tell their driver, all lights and swimming pools and music, and you knew there was always somebody standing in the shadows somewhere, watching

I'd pull up next to them and look a little scared and gun it just a bit, just enough to roll the hood a little, make them think they had some pink meat on the line. Echo put a triple muffler on the pipes, it didn't sound like we had anything underneath

The light would change and we'd stand on it and I'd pace the Vette for about half a mile and just when they thought they were ready to drop the hammer and lose us, you could always tell, the guy in the passenger seat would look over with a big stupid grin on his face; that's when Echo would flip on the nitrous and we'd suck their lungs out as we disappeared down the road into the darkness, into the hills, laughing our asses off

But then we started to find bottles hidden around the shop and Echo would smell like liqour at breakfast. Then his started not showing up till noon and one day he stopped showing up completely. We tried to find him, for a while, but then Watson got a call from his old man and I had to move to the desert for a while. Continental drift sets in.

He walked into the room and sat down. Son of a Bitch. He was a little more weatherbeaten, but that's the SOB. He could probably wear the same clothes

Carlos comes in and sits down and he says to him, "Name?"

He says, "Echo."

Carlos says, "What?"

He says, "Echo."

"Echo? How come Echo?"

"Everyone asks me to repeat it."

Carlos doesn't like bullshit and he says to him, "Why should we hire a wiseass like you?"

Echo waves his hand and he says, "A wiseass like me? They told me you needed somebody good. I guess maybe they were wrong."

Carlos says, "Maybe they were wrong and maybe you were."

Now Carlos is a big guy, and he's bald as a cue ball, and he is sitting there, unhappy to be wasting his time, and I can tell he is ready to conclude the interview. Right then a fly or a moth or something lands right on his head, right in the middle of his bald head. He swats at it, I'm watching on the monitor -- I still have the tape, and he swats at it and it just goes up in the air and then settles back down again on his head. It is driving him nuts, and I am looking at Echo, and the SOB is smiling his old sly smile. The thing keeps flying up and landing on Carlos' head

Carlos says, "What the fuck?" and he grabs at it real fast, but he misses and the thing goes up in the air and settles down on the table. Carlos grabs a big fat file folder and he is about to squash the bug flat when all of the sudden Echo is holding his arm real firm, leaning forward and he says quiet, "What the fuck? Why don't you wait a minute, figure out what you're doing before you do it, man." And he smiles at him, wide

I am watching on the monitor. And their heads turn together slow, like they practiced it, and they look at the thing on the table and Carlos says, "Holy shit."

"Holy shit." Echo leans back in his chair nodding, "Ho-lee shit." he says again, quieter

The thing wasn't a bug, it was a robot, a little tiny flying robot the size of a button on your shirt, a fucking miniature robot that Echo had built

Echo says to Carlos, "They told me you needed somebody good."

Carlos pushed the button to buzz me