Out of Sight

  He raised empty hands. “I don’t have the keys.”

  “I see that.”

  “I mean I’m not stealing the fucking car.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I already stole it. Last week or whenever it was, in West Palm. I can’t be stealing it again, can I? I can’t even get my tools out of the fucking trunk.”

  “Let me see if I understand,” Karen said. “You want to take off, get away from those guys. Is that it?”

  “You see me in there?”

  “And one of them has the keys.”

  He said, “Yeah,” nodding, and said, “Listen, I have to take a leak pretty bad.”

  “The two guys you were with—that one, that isn’t Maurice Miller, is it? I’ve seen Snoopy’s mug shot and it didn’t look like him.”

  “How could you know about him?”

  The poor guy, bewildered; desperate, too, looking toward the theater. Karen glanced that way. All they could see from here, over the tops of cars, was the marquee and the name state in lights. Karen said, “Another one of those days, huh, nothing seems to go right? Glenn, I know your life history, who your friends are, where you’ve been and now, it looks like, where you’re going.”

  “You’re gonna bust me for picking up a car?”

  “For the car, for aiding and abetting a prison escape, and conspiring to do whatever you came here for. Tell me, Glenn, are you getting into home invasions now?”

  He said, “Jesus,” shaking his head.

  “Like the one last night,” Karen said. “You were there, weren’t you?”

  “I’m not saying another fucking word, and I mean it. Jesus Christ, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Put your hands on the top of the steering wheel.”

  “What for?”

  “So I can cuff you.”

  “You serious? Listen, these guys, they’re gonna be out here any minute looking for me. They’re fucking animals, they’re vicious. I’m not kidding. I was taking off and that’s all I want to do, get as far away from those guys as I can.”

  “They scare you?”

  “They scare the shit out of me, and I’m not afraid to admit it.”

  “Was Foley with you?”

  “When?”

  “Last night. About what time was it you hit the dope house?”

  “I said I’m not talking to you. I’m not involved in whatever they’re doing, the same as I didn’t help Foley escape. You said so yourself.”

  “Yeah, well, I was wrong about that. Where do you suppose Foley is right now?”

  “How do I know.”

  “You’re telling me you haven’t seen him?”

  “What I’m telling you is I have to piss. I mean it, bad.”

  “What time was it you hit the dope house?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Glenn, tell me what those guys are up to and I’ll make you a deal.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ll let you take a leak.”

  “That’s some deal.”

  “Anywhere you want.”

  He hesitated. “You mean it?”

  “Anywhere,” Karen said. “Glenn, what time did those guys hit the dope house?”

  He hesitated again. “It was early in the evening. I don’t know, about seven.”

  Karen got a cigarette from her bag and lit it with hotel matches. She took a deep drag and blew the smoke out in a slow stream. At seven, and for at least the next couple of hours, Foley was with her at the hotel.

  “Can I go piss? Please?”

  The way Karen worked it, she let him urinate against the side of the car, the window down, while he told about Richard Ripley, the Wall Street crook, where they were going to pick him up and take him out to his home in Bloomfield Hills, late tomorrow afternoon. Karen nodded as she listened. She had heard of Ripley and knew he’d served time at Lompoc. She wanted to know exactly where he lived and then asked:

  “What about Foley?”

  “He’s supposed to go with them,” Glenn said, his shoulders hunched in the window. “But I don’t know, he didn’t show up tonight.”

  “You know where he’s staying?”

  “No idea.”

  “Where do you meet tomorrow?”

  “Listen, I’m fucking freezing out here.”

  “Where’re you meeting?”

  “They haven’t decided.” He straightened to look toward the theater, then hunched over to look in the window again. “You might have something in your car to pop the trunk with. You know, with the jack?”

  “You think Foley backed out?”

  “I don’t know—he doesn’t exactly confide in me.” Glenn straightened again, hugging himself. “I’m freezing my ass off.”

  “You want to get out of here,” Karen said, “run, it’ll warm you up. But listen, Glenn?”

  “What?”

  “If you’re lying to me . . .”

  “I know, you’ll find me. Jesus, I believe it. I keep thinking, if you hadn’t driven me to federal court last summer . . .”

  “We wouldn’t keep running into each other?”

  “You wouldn’t even know who I am.”

  Karen said, “If I didn’t know you, Glenn, by tomorrow you’d be in jail or dead. Look at it that way.”

  • • •

  PEOPLE WERE LEAVING AS FOLEY AND BUDDY ARRIVED. THEY found the table, White Boy and a black guy sitting there. Maurice came down from the stage. He said, “Where you been?” an edge to his tone. “You miss the big boys, come in time for the walkout fights. Well, shit, you may as well pull up a chair.” He said to the black guy, “Kenneth, this is Mr. Jack Foley and this is Mr. Buddy, famous bank robbers and jailbirds, say they want to help us out.”

  Foley put his hand on a raincoat draped over the back of a chair at the table. “Who’s sitting here?”

  “Your homie, Glenn,” Maurice said. “Only thing, he went to the men’s about an hour ago and never came back.”

  Foley gave Buddy a look.

  White Boy, grinning at them, said, “I think he must’ve fell in.”

  “I sent these two looking for him,” Maurice said. “They come back shaking their heads.”

  “Glenn have a car?”

  “One he brought from Florida. We all come here in it this evening.”

  “Well, if he left his coat,” Foley said, “and he’s been gone an hour . . .”

  “Hey, I know what you’re saying. Glenn didn’t want nobody to know he was leaving. Man, I know that. I sent White Boy back out again, see was the car still there, check it out. White Boy had the keys, but knowing Glenn’s habits I thought it good to check. You understand? The car’s still there and Glenn ain’t nowhere to be found.”

  Foley said, “Everybody’s somewhere, Snoop. Where’s Glenn staying?”

  “My house.” Maurice turned his head toward the ring, watched a few moments and yelled, “Reggie, push off and hit, man. Push him off.” He turned back to Foley. “Why don’t you and Buddy sit down and have a drink with me. What you want?”

  “We’re leaving,” Foley said.

  “The fuck you talking about?”

  “Snoop, if you don’t know where Glenn is . . .”

  “The man changed his mind, that’s all, so he left. Decided he can’t take the heat.”

  “Glenn’s pussy,” White Boy said. “He never done shit last night but watch.”

  Buddy said, “Where was this?”

  A waitress came as he said it and asked if they’d like something. Foley shook his head; Buddy did too. The waitress dumped the little tin ashtray in a napkin and left and White Boy said, “You read the paper you’d have seen it.”

  Maurice said, “White Boy, that’s another business. You understand? Has got nothing to do with us here.”

  “He keeps looking at me,” White Boy said, nodding at Buddy.

  “I can’t help it,” Buddy said. “I hear the Snoop call you White Boy, I’m tryi
ng to figure out why you let him.”

  “It’s what they call me at Kronk, from when I trained there.”

  “You used to fight, huh?”

  “Right here and out at the Palace.”

  “You any good?”

  “You want to find out?”

  Buddy said, “You ever done time?”

  “He’s asking do you gouge eyes,” Maurice said. “Do you bite off ears. White Boy’s got his own moves. But that’s enough of that shit. Look,” Maurice said, taking Foley by the arm and moving off a few steps to stand with their backs to the table. “What you worried about Glenn for? What’s he know?”

  “I thought everything,” Foley said, watching the fighters jabbing and juking each other, one of them patient the way he moved in, the other taking wild swings and missing.

  “Glenn knows everything we suppose to do tomorrow,” Maurice said. “Snatch the man he comes out of his club, drive home with him. Glenn could tell somebody that, yeah, but it don’t mean shit. You understand? I changed the plan. Glenn don’t know it, ’cause while we waiting for you he left. For whatever reason it don’t matter. It ain’t happening tomorrow.”

  Foley, watching the fighter, said, “This fight isn’t going four rounds.”

  Maurice glanced over. “Ain’t even going two.”

  “You’re not saying it’s fixed.”

  “Don’t have to fix nothing to know who’s gonna win. It’s in the matchmaking, how you match ’em up, who you bring in to fight the home boy. You understand?”

  Foley kept his gaze on the ring.

  “If it isn’t happening tomorrow, when is it?”

  “Tonight,” Maurice said. “Soon as we leave here. Stop home to pick up what we need and go do it.”

  Foley said, “Give me a minute,” and motioned to Buddy as he turned to the table. Behind him, he heard Maurice say:

  “You got two minutes, that’s all. Make up your mind.”

  Foley turned back to him to stand in close.

  “I wasn’t asking permission. Buddy and I’re going up to the bar. We’re gonna take however long it takes. We may keep walking. We do come back, it’s understood this deal cuts fifty-fifty, half for us. How you cut your half is up to you.”

  “We can talk about it,” Maurice said.

  “No, that’s the way it’s gonna be, Snoop.”

  Foley walked away and Buddy followed him to the bar, this dark area away from the ring lights.

  “He wants to do it tonight.”

  “What’s the difference, tonight or tomorrow?”

  “Glenn. He could be setting us up.”

  “Glenn’s always a risk,” Buddy said. “We’ve come this far.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  * * *

  KAREN TOLD HER DAD SHE COULDN’T SLEEP. HE SAID, “IS that right? I was doing pretty good myself, till the phone rang. There was nothing on the news about my little girl, so I guess I dozed off. Now I see I’ve missed Letterman. What’s going on?”

  She told about tracking down Glenn Michaels and getting him to tell what he was up to, her dad saying, “That’s some deal you offered him. You let him go?”

  “I bring Glenn to the First Precinct for stealing a car in Florida,” Karen said, “have to explain to a lieutenant or a sergeant what I’m doing here? He could look at me and think—I don’t know what, but probably think he should take over. You know what I mean? Not only he’s never seen me before, I’m a girl waving a marshal’s star at him, a fed trying to tell a street cop about a planned home invasion. He’d have to check me out. There’d be nothing to charge the other guys with; all I’ve got is a stolen car. So I let him go and called Raymond Cruz.”

  “The one you saw the other day.”

  “Yeah, and told him the whole story. I was concerned with jurisdiction. If these guys are breaking into a home in Bloomfield Hills, Oakland County, should I get in touch with the police out there, the sheriff’s department or what? I didn’t see anything federal about it, so why would I call the FBI. Right?”

  “Sounds logical.”

  “I told you Raymond’s an inspector, he’s over crimes persons, crimes property and sex crimes.”

  “I recall that.”

  “He also heads the Violent Crimes Task Force and they’re hooked into all the local police around, the county sheriffs and the Bureau. The Bureau’s involved, also ATF, because in almost all of the home invasions they’re busting into dope houses after cash and guns. That’s all, in and out.”

  “But this one’s different,” her dad said.

  “As far as we know or can assume, yeah. This guy Ripley’s home in Bloomfield Hills isn’t likely to be a dope house, even if he has done time. You remember Ripley?”

  “Dick the Ripper, the inside trader. Yeah, I think he’s the kind would have cash in his house.”

  “Anyway, Raymond said it wouldn’t matter where the home was, the crime would come under the jurisdiction of the task force, and the feds would be involved because of the kidnapping in the plan.”

  “What kidnapping?”

  “They pick up Ripley tomorrow coming out of the Detroit Athletic Club—it’s downtown, right around here. One of them gets in the car with him and the rest of the guys follow. That’s kidnapping.”

  “Would the cops alert Ripley? Tell him it’s gonna happen?”

  “Raymond said no, it could blow their surveillance. He said something like this, you had to make a judgment call. The ideal way, let the guys pick up Ripley and go through with the robbery, and then take them coming out of the house. But if you have reason to believe Ripley’s life might be in danger, you’d have to move before that. I told Raymond it looked like these were the same guys who hit a house last night and killed three people. He said then they’d have to take them before they got to Ripley’s home and he’s brought inside.”

  “But get them for the kidnapping,” her dad said, “as soon as Ripley’s abducted.”

  “Right, and they can take them state or federal, either way. But this involves another judgment call. If these guys are too dangerous to let one of them get in the car with Ripley, then you don’t have a kidnapping case. All you’ve got are some guys in probably a stolen car and probably with guns. But to get them even two years on a gun charge it has to be during the commission of a felony. So, do you let them go through with the kidnapping or not?”

  Her dad said, “What if Ripley, for some reason, doesn’t go to the club tomorrow? Or these guys decide to go directly to the house?”

  “Tomorrow morning they’ll scout the house, the neighborhood, and set up a surveillance, be ready for a change in the plan.”

  “And what will you be doing?”

  “Raymond said I can ride with him tomorrow if I want. Be on the scene.”

  “But stay in the background?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “When they’re putting the cuffs on Olufsson, you want him to see you?”

  “You’re a riot.”

  “I mean Foley. I get him mixed up with that guy in Stockholm.”

  “Foley might not be involved.”

  “You hope.”

  “No, Glenn said Foley didn’t show up for the meeting tonight, at the fights.”

  “How were they?”

  “I didn’t stay. I went back in to get a look at Snoopy Miller, so I could ID him, and left.”

  “Foley could still be there tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know,” Karen said, “he might.”

  “But you don’t have to be there.”

  Karen said, “No,” and paused. “What would you do?”

  “It wouldn’t bother me any to see him busted. I look at his picture in the paper, I can’t say I’m impressed.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t look like that. It’s an old mug shot.”

  “Well, does seeing him cleaned up wearing a suit,” her dad said, “change the fact he’s a loser? A guy who’s wasted his entire life? Yeah, I’d be there. I’d personally cuff his hands beh
ind his back. And I’d make sure he hit his head getting in the police car.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “You asked.”

  • • •

  MOSELLE WATCHED FROM AN UPSTAIRS WINDOW. SHE SAW the Lincoln Town Car turn into the drive and pull up far enough for another car—an Olds, it looked like—to pull in behind it. The street had been plowed and cars left at the curb were buried in snow. She saw Maurice and White Boy come out of the Lincoln, and two white guys who looked like cops come out of the Olds. Where was Kenneth? Where was this Glenn?

  Maurice came upstairs and turned the light on in the bedroom, acting like she wasn’t there till he got down and pulled the suitcase out from under the double bed, where he kept his guns. Without looking at her he said, “The one in the dark overcoat’s the jailbird with the ten gees on his head. I don’t know it’s gonna work or not, but I been thinking about a way to collect.”

  “Where’s my brother?”

  “Getting us a ride.”

  “Where’s Glenn at?”

  “Decide he don’t want to go.”

  “You hide the body good?”

  “Shame on you.” Maurice brought pistols out of the suitcase, Moselle watching him, and laid them on the bed, the pistols and a box of 9-millimeter hollow points. “Glenn decide he don’t want any parts of this business, so he left.”

  “And you let him?”

  Maurice shoved the suitcase under the bed and stood up saying, “You keep talking you gonna risk getting hit in the mouth. Keep asking me questions. The one in the dark overcoat, has all that reward on his head and still talks like a con in the yard. You know what I’m saying? Like he’s a man you don’t mess with. Yeah, well, what I say to Jack Foley is buuull shit. What I’m thinking is you gonna call the police. Say you heard him talking to his friend at the fights, sound like they going out to rob a man’s house.”

  “How would I hear that?”

  “You did, don’t matter how. You say you believe it’s the jailbird escaped from the place in Florida you read about and you want the reward.”

  “Where they gonna find him?”

  “At the man’s house he robbed.”

  “Dead,” Moselle said, “from gunshot.”

  “It would look like it, yeah.”