“With Robert Redford,” Karen said, “when he was young. I loved it, the lines were so good. Faye Dunaway says—it’s the next morning after they’ve slept together, even though she barely knows him, he asks if she’ll do him a favor? And she says, ‘Have I ever denied you anything?’”
Foley said, “Yeah . . .” and she waited for him to go on, but now the car was slowing down, coasting, then bumping along the shoulder of the road to a stop.
Karen got ready.
Foley said, “I don’t know anymore’n you where we are.”
Still out in the country, Karen was sure of that. Maybe halfway to West Palm, or a little more.
She heard the other one, Buddy, outside, say, “You still alive in there?”
The trunk lid raised.
Karen felt Foley’s hands on her, then didn’t feel them and heard him say, out of the trunk now, “Where in the hell are we?”
And heard Buddy say, “That’s the turnpike up there. Glenn’s waiting with a car.”
Glenn.
Karen said the name to herself and stored it away.
As Foley was saying, “How do we get to it?”
“Over there, through the bushes.” Buddy’s voice. “You have to climb up the bank.”
And now Foley, sounding closer this time, saying, “Come on out of there.”
Karen pushed off, rolled from her right side to her left bringing up the Sig Sauer in both hands to put it on them, both standing in the opening, in the dark but right there, close. She said, “Get your hands up and turn around. Now.”
They were moving as she heard Foley say, “Shit,” and saw the trunk lid coming down on her as she fired the .38 point-blank, fired again and fired again through the trunk lid slamming shut, locking her in with the deafening sound, again in the close dark.
They had moved so fast in opposite directions she didn’t think she’d hit either one. She listened, but didn’t hear a sound now, pretty sure they were getting her shotgun from the car and would be right back.
SIX
* * *
BUDDY SAID HE FORGOT SHE HAD A PIECE IN—ALL that was going on—even saw her throw it back in the trunk when she brought out the shotgun. He said to Foley they may as well leave her, they were leaving the car and had to leave her someplace anyway, what was the difference where?
It was already set in Foley’s mind she was going with them. He wasn’t finished talking to her. He wanted to sit down with her in a nice place and talk like regular people. Start over, let her get a look at him cleaned up. Even if he had time he wouldn’t be able to explain why he wanted to talk to her some more, that wasn’t clear in his mind, so all he said was, “She’s going with us.”
Buddy gave him a funny look, a frown. He said, “Jesus Christ, what were you doing in there? I can understand you need to get laid, but you have Adele, don’t you?”
“Get the shotgun,” Foley said, “and her purse. I’d like to know who she is.”
“I already looked,” Buddy said. “Her name’s Karen Sisco, like the Cisco Kid only spelled different, S-i-s-c-o.”
Foley said, “Karen Sisco,” nodding a couple of times. “I wonder if she’s ever called that, the Sisco Kid.”
Headlights would come at them from the direction of West Palm and they’d keep to the narrow space between the car and the concrete abutment of the overpass. A sheriff’s office green-and-white went screaming past, gumballs flashing, then another one and another, a string of green-and-whites in the space of a minute, going out to chase after escaped convicts. No time for a car sitting dark tinder an overpass.
When the road quieted down Foley stepped up to the Chevy’s trunk, keeping to the side of it, and banged on the sheet metal once with his fist.
“Karen? Be a good girl now, you hear? I’m gonna let you out.”
Foley jumped at the sound of a pistol shot, muffled from inside the trunk but real, the bullet ripping through metal.
He yelled at her, “You’re putting holes in your car!” and looked up to see Buddy, with the shotgun and a black leather handbag, staring at him.
Foley took a moment to settle down before saying, “We’re not leaving you. I’m gonna open the trunk enough for you to throw the gun out. Okay? You shoot—Buddy’s got your shotgun, he says he’ll shoot back if you do and I can’t stop him. So it’s up to you.” Foley put his hand out and Buddy, still looking at him funny, gave him the keys.
They heard a voice yell “Hey!” Not from the trunk, a clear sound coming from somewhere above them.
“It’s me, Glenn.”
Foley stepped out in the open, Buddy close behind. They looked up to see a figure, head and shoulders against the evening sky, leaning on the concrete overpass rail.
“Hey, Jack, good to see you, man. The fuck’re you guys shooting at?”
Buddy raised his voice saying, “We’ll be there in a minute.”
“I don’t mean to complain,” Glenn said, “but you know how long I’ve been here? Florida Highway Patrol comes by I’m fucked.”
Foley looked at Buddy. “Do we need him?”
“Three green-and-whites saw us,” Buddy said. “One of ’em starts thinking, What’s that car doing there? Ties it to the break and turns around . . . We got to get out of here.”
Foley, looking up at the overpass again, said, “Hey, Studs?” sounding surprised. “We thought you were somebody else.”
Glenn straightened, tossing his hair out of his face. “Man, I haven’t heard that since Lompoc.”
Foley waited.
Glenn said, “You guys . . .” shaking his head now. “I’m risking my ass for you and I don’t even know why.”
“Sure you do,” Foley said, making the effort to sound pleasant. “We’re your heroes.”
He walked back to the Chevy and banged on the trunk.
“You coming out?”
Foley stuck the key in the lock, standing right in front of the trunk, and turned to Buddy. Buddy walked up to the trunk and racked the pump on the shotgun. Foley said, close to the sheet metal, “You hear that?”
He turned the key and raised the trunk lid.
Karen, hunched in there, extended her arm, her hand holding the Sig Sauer auto by the barrel. She said, “You win, Jack.”
Buddy gave him another funny look.
• • •
IF HE LEANED OUT OVER THE RAIL GLENN COULD SEE PART OF the open trunk, Foley reaching a hand in to help someone get out. Jesus, a girl. Standing by the car now smoothing her skirt, touching her hair. Guy busts out of stir and picks up a girl? Now they were crossing the ditch into weeds and some bushes; he wouldn’t see them again until they came up the grade. Or, she worked at the prison and Foley grabbed her, used her as a shield going out.
Glenn thought about it returning to the car he’d left on the grassy side of the road, trouble lights blinking just in case: a black Audi sedan he’d taken up to 137 miles an hour when he first hit the turnpike at Palm Beach Gardens.
Or, Buddy brought her for Foley and he was so horny he couldn’t wait, gave her a jump in the trunk of the car. Not in the backseat with Buddy watching. It was a possibility. Except these two guys never lost their cool or acted crazy.
Glenn had gotten to know them at Lompoc USP, a twenty-four-year-old fish looking around for any reasonably intelligent guys who read books or at least weren’t fucking morons. Buddy asked him what he was doing and Glenn said networking, trying to find out who he should know and who he should stay away from. Buddy said he meant how much time was he doing. Oh, two to five, Glenn said, for grand theft auto, but it looked now like he was doing the whole five. He didn’t explain that until later. What he told them was he stole Porsche and Mercedes top-of-the-line models he picked up on special order and delivered anywhere in the U.S. with clean titles. He told them he’d spot the car a customer wanted and use a slim jim or lemon pop to get in, a slap hammer to yank the ignition, a side kick to extract steering column locks and usually liquid nitrogen to freeze the alarm syste
m.
See if that impressed them.
Foley said between him and Buddy they’d boosted three to four hundred cars in their time, but never sold any or kept them for more than a couple of hours.
These were cool guys for hicks, both fairly tall and stringy, Buddy with dark curly hair that was always slicked back—he kept a comb in his pocket—and looked wet. Foley’s light-brown hair was short and thick enough he could do okay combing it with his fingers. Foley smoked cigarettes, Buddy dipped Skoal, stuck it behind his lower lip. They didn’t seem in great shape—they’d rather watch than work out—but both had that hard-boned look, like they’d worked construction or in oil fields all their lives instead of robbing banks. Easygoing but looked you right in the flicking eye when you spoke to them or they had something to say.
Glenn stayed close to them and was never seriously approached by any perverts or butt fuckers. Foley said, “Don’t take it up ‘less you think you might like it.” Buddy said, “What you do, just say no, then kill the guy.” They watched each other’s backs and never had any trouble they weren’t able to stare down, giving ill-tempered assholes a calm look that said, Fuck with us, man, at your own risk.
Glenn believed they let him hang around because he was from L.A., West Hollywood, he knew what was happening, had even spent a couple of years at Berkeley but never copped a superior attitude. He’d tell them stories about when he was in the car-detailing business and got laid a lot: how he’d work on cars at these multimillion-dollar homes in Beverly Hills and wait for the lady of the house to make the move. Get asked in for a cold drink, a dip in the pool? It happened, man, more often than you’d think, couple of times even with movie stars. This was when they started calling him Studs.
One day in the yard Glenn said, “I’m gonna tell you guys something only one other person here knows about. I was originally at FPC, the camp over there? And was transferred here with another guy for trying to escape.”
See what they thought.
“You know Maurice Miller in the boxing program they call Snoopy? Fights lightweight? He was at FPC doing a gig for fraud, I think credit cards. Anyway, we went out one night jogging, like Snoopy’s doing road work and I’m his trainer. We made it almost all the way to Vandenberg and got picked up by air base MPs. They thought we were a-wol.”
Buddy asked him was he nuts? Do an easy two or even less of his two-to-five at the country club, cable TV, salad bar in the chow hall, and he’d be out. Now he’d have to do the whole five.
“In an altogether different kind of mind-fucking incarceration,” Glenn said. “I knew if we didn’t make it Snoopy and I’d get sent here or some other max joint. There’re some scary fucking slams you can get sent to, Marion, Lewisburg . . . Maybe I was pumped, a little overanxious, but at the time I didn’t worry about getting caught. See, what happened, I got next to a guy over at FPC doing three years on a felony-conspiracy thing, strictly white collar. He got the three years and was fined—listen to this—fifty million dollars and wrote ’em a fucking check. Like that, fifty mil, signed his name.”
Foley said, “One of the Wall Street scammers,” and he was right. He said, “I remember reading about the guy. Went up for insider trading. Paid off snitch brokers to give him information on stock deals before they went down. Like takeovers.” Telling this to Buddy, who didn’t know shit. “A company buys out another company and the bought company’s stock goes up. So if you have the inside scoop, you know it’s gonna happen, you buy in just before it goes up and then sell when the stock peaks.”
This fucking guy Foley, never even went to college.
“That’s basically what he did,” Glenn said, “made a fortune.”
“Everybody thought the guy was a genius,” Foley said, “till they found out he made it the old-fashioned way, he stole it.”
“Anyway,” Glenn said, “here’s a multimillionaire making eleven cents an hour mopping floors, sweeping the tennis courts . . . Guy that used to be on the phone he said eighteen hours a day, had over a hundred extensions in his office, now has to stand in line to make a call. But the thing I’m getting at, the guy loved to talk.”
“Yeah, to the U.S. attorney,” Foley said. “He rolled over on all the snitches he was doing business with and got ’em brought up. I can’t think of the guy’s name.”
Glenn waited.
And Foley said, “Ripley. Richard Ripley. Called Dick the Ripper on account of how he ripped off the stock market. Big good-looking guy, but I think he wore a rug.”
“Not at FPC,” Glenn said. “He was vain, though. What he talked about most of the time, outside of the market, was himself, and I listened. Anybody that can write a check for fifty mil, he says anything, I’m all flicking ears. See, my bunk was right above his. I was polite, I played kiss-ass to a degree, I’d stand in the phone line for him; we’re out gardening I’d do the stoop work and let him rake . . . All this time he’s talking about what a high roller he is and I’m taking it all in. I learn he’s got money in foreign banks, plus, around five mil in hard cash, plus, loose diamonds and gold coins, a shitload of coins worth around four bills each. The man actually told me, five mil in cash. He said, quote, ‘Where I can put my hands on it anytime I want.’ Nothing to it.”
Foley said, “He keeps it at home?”
Buddy said, “Yeah, where’s the guy live?”
Glenn hesitated and Foley said, “He must’ve been getting out soon.”
“He’s out now. It was in the paper.”
“I mean when you and Snoopy jogged away from FPC. You mentioned you were anxious. It sounds like you wanted to get to Ripley’s house before he got his release. Is that it, you couldn’t wait?”
“You might say I was highly motivated,” Glenn said. “Five mil sitting there waiting? All I have to do is walk out? No fence, no gun towers. The only thing to stop anybody from leaving is a sign that says Off Limits. Man, once I was pumped up—listen, they would’ve had to fucking chain me to a wall to keep me there.”
“But you didn’t make it,” Foley said, “you and Snoopy. You know he was Maurice ‘Mad Dog’ Miller back when he was a pro? Now you pet him he goes down.”
“I didn’t bring him along as a bodyguard,” Glenn said. “Maurice happens to live in Detroit, the same place Ripley has his home. No, the Snoop isn’t any protection, but he knows the Motor City.”
“So does Buddy,” Foley said, “if a guide’s all you need.”
Neither one of them showing much interest, that time in the yard at Lompoc USP, five years ago.
• • •
GLENN GOT HIS RELEASE AND MOVED TO FLORIDA, SECOND only to California in the number of cars stolen, but better: car thieves were hustled through the system and hardly ever had to do time. So if he ever wanted to get back in the business . . .
He tried to keep in touch with the bank robbers, still at Lompoc, wrote to them a few times but never heard back, not a word. So when Buddy called a few weeks ago it came as a total surprise.
Buddy saying it was a good thing he’d hung on to the letters and wasn’t it a small world: he’d just arrived in Florida and Foley was here, out at GCI the past five months. The way Buddy put it, “He don’t like it there and sees a way to bust out. If you aren’t doing anything, you want to drive one of the cars? Take a few hours of your time is all.”
If he wasn’t doing anything.
Glenn said, well, he’d been up to Detroit on a deal, but at the moment was free. He said, “Yeah, I think I can make it.” You had to be as cool as these guys.
“De-troit,” Buddy said, “I spent three years on the line up there at Chrysler Jefferson till I went crazy and had to quit. Let me ask you—you don’t see a problem might come out of delivering your special orders?”
“I’m not in that business anymore,” Glenn said. “No, I went there to look up a friend. You remember Dick the Ripper we used to talk about, the Wall Street crook?”
“Wrote a check for fifty million,” Buddy said, “you bet I reme
mber him.”
“My first visit I look up Snoopy. Maurice Miller at Lompoc, the lightweight?”
“He isn’t brain-dead yet?”
“He’s a manager now, for some club fighters. I gave him a hundred to check out Ripley for me, where he lives and all. See, I never did tell the Snoop, even back at Lompoc, exactly what it was about, so he wouldn’t know enough to try on his own. The next time I go up the Snoop’s gonna show me where Ripley lives and maybe where he’s got an office.”
Buddy said, “How’s a punchy little colored guy find all that out?”
“He’s a crook,” Glenn said, surprised Buddy would ask. “He’s into credit cards, bank fraud with bogus checks, the Snoop knows his way around.”
“That’s interesting,” Buddy said, “but what I need to know is if you’re clean. You been into anything else?”
Glenn hesitated. “I wasn’t what you’d call into anything, no.”
“But what?”
He hesitated again.
And Buddy said, “Take your time.”
“Okay. DEA happened to pull a raid on a house in Lake Worth. Nobody’s home. They look around, find ten keys of base in the garage, actually in a Mercedes that happens to have my prints on the steering wheel and partials on the door handle. I’m picked up, I tell them there’s no fucking way my prints could be on that car, and I say I want a lawyer. But then after a while I realize they could be my prints, and you know how they got there? Parking cars. Two nights a week I worked valet at a place, Charlie’s Crab, and I must’ve parked the Mercedes sometime during the previous weekend. I tell the DEA guys, they give me their fucking bored look. Ten days I’m locked up, have to appear twice in federal court. The first time’s a bond hearing, a joke, like I can post a hundred grand. The next one’s like a show-cause hearing. Okay, but by this time the public defender has actually checked and found out the car was at Charlie’s Crab the night before; they still have the ticket with the license number on it. The magistrate, a lovely, intelligent woman, dismissed the charge and ate the ass out of the assistant U.S. attorney for being overzealous.”