His hands had been broken too many times.
He never had time to train properly.
He never had a manager who could influence the right promoters.
He never had gauze for his hands; he had to use cotton wraps and wash them every day when he trained.
What else?
He had never owned a hooded running suit.
The big one. He had never had people handling him who cared. The cutman should have told him not to clear his nose after taking the shot in the eye from Palomino. Blowing his nose put pressure on the blood vessels, the eye became swollen and closed and the fucking referee stopped the fight, the one in Vegas Jack Foley saw, or said he did. You couldn’t be sure, since Foley was a liar who pretended to be a friend. It was all the bad luck and then blowing his nose that time. If he didn’t blow his nose he would have beaten Carlos Palomino and then would have had shots at Cuevas and Benitez, Duran, Curry, anyone, and wouldn’t have had to take the dive with the white kid he could have beaten lefthanded, thirty-nine years old.
In the trees across from the Cuba Libre he drank one of the beers, waited, and began to drink another. The gun he had taken from the woman’s house was a Ruger .22 with a long barrel, he believed a target pistol, not a high-caliber gun, but it should be enough. At exactly seven-thirty he heard the police helicopters and saw the searchlight beams shining down on what would be the squatters’ camp over there, about a mile away. He wasn’t sure if he heard gunfire, maybe. He continued to wait, drinking the beer slowly to make it last. Three hours passed before he saw Santiago’s pickup, the truck so old Chino didn’t know what kind it was, coming from the direction of Miami. He walked across the street, the pistol in his belt beneath the woman’s husband’s shirt. The truck was in front of the café now, among a few cars parked there, Santiago getting out, locking the door. Chino called to him and Santiago turned. In the streetlight and in the red neon that said Cuba Libre, Chino saw the man’s look of surprise change immediately to innocence, wide-eyed now, ready, even smiling a little.
“They pay you?”
“It was as you said.”
“Where is it?”
“Oh, you think I have it? No, I left it in their safe for tonight. They said tomorrow I can have it.”
Chino turned his head to look in the pickup truck. “What do you have in that bag?” It was on the floor of the passenger side.
“Only some things I bought.”
Chino said, “Do you want a beer?”
He had never seen a man appear so grateful, Santiago saying, “Yes, indeed,” smiling again, turning to go in the café.
Chino took the man’s frail arm in his hand. “Not in there. I have some I already paid for. Why waste it.” He brought Santiago across the street, the man saying no, let’s go to the bar, it would be his treat. Saying, listen, he was going to give Chino half the reward; he was going to surprise him with it, tomorrow. When they were in the trees Chino said, “I’m going to use your truck” Santiago said, of course, anytime. Chino said, “Where are the keys?” Santiago said here, in his jacket. It was a black nylon with a hood that hung down in back.
Chino said, “Take it off.” Santiago said it was his, whatever he wanted. He turned to look across the street at the café in red neon, at the cars and the pickup truck in front, people inside but no one coming out, as he took off the jacket. Chino, behind him, drew the pistol from his belt. He shot Santiago in the back of the head and shot him twice again lying on the ground.
Chino walked to the truck with the jacket covering the gun in his hand, got in and drove toward Miami to find a telephone book.
TEN
* * *
“SHE GOES BY ADELE DELISI NOW,” KAREN SAID, “HER maiden name. Married Foley in Las Vegas in ’86 and filed for divorce the next year in Los Angeles County. Adele’s forty-two. She lives in the Normandie on Collins Avenue, in the South Beach area.”
They were at the kitchen table: Karen having a cigarette and a cup of coffee. Her dad, in one of his golf outfits, was having breakfast, a cheese and jelly sandwich on French bread and coffee, before leaving for the club.
“Anybody check her phone records?”
“Six times in the past month Adele accepted collect calls from GCI, the last one the day of the escape. But she never visited him the five months he was there.”
“Didn’t want her name on the list.”
“Burdon asked why he kept calling her. She said because he was depressed. She said she hadn’t seen him in eight years.”
“She’s in on it,” Karen’s dad said.
“I think so too. Foley told me the reason he came to Florida was to visit someone, and then dropped it. He said, ‘I better keep quiet.’”
“He called her. Who did she call?”
“Her sister-in-law, Ann; she’s a disc jockey, I think in Canada. And a magician she worked for, Emil something.”
“The Amazing, a third-rate act,” her dad said, eating his sandwich, sipping his black coffee. “The amazing thing about Emil is he’s still around. Works with pigeons.”
“Talking to Burdon she referred to Emil as that kraut son of a bitch. He let her go right before Christmas and hired a younger girl. Adele’s been surveilled since the day after the escape, but hasn’t gone anywhere to speak of. She put an ad in the Herald, in the personals, to get another job with a magician. Good luck, huh? Burdon says they’ve trapped her line and hung a wire.”
“I bet she knows it, too. Why don’t you go talk to her?”
“I was thinking about it. I mentioned it to Burdon, he said he has all the help he needs.”
“Why don’t you talk to her anyway. Do it right, she’ll tell you things she wouldn’t tell Burdon. Pay attention to how she talks about Foley, her tone. Tell her you think he’s a nice guy. No, first tell her about being in the trunk with him, in the dark for half an hour, and see how she takes it. If she’s in on it, what does she get for all the aggravation, cops breathing on her? I bet nothing. So she still likes him enough to stick her neck out. You think that’s possible? What kind of a guy is he?”
“He’s pretty laid-back, confident.”
“Cocky?”
“No, but he was surprised I hadn’t heard of him. Maybe I should have.”
“He remind you of that guy Tillman?”
“Not at all.”
“Remember calling me? You’d been out with him I think three times. You tell me the guy’s a bank robber suspect and you don’t know what to do. I told you to get another boyfriend.”
“You said, if I want to know if it’s true, ask him.”
“Yeah, bring up the subject, see how he reacts. If he breaks out in a sweat, call for backup. But this guy Foley, you know he’s dirty and you still want to see him again.”
“I want to bust his ass, put him in shackles.”
“Yeah, okay. Don’t overdo it. Your pride’s hurt, you were armed and he took you. That bothers you, I can understand how you feel. But you’re also curious about the man. Last night, twice you asked your married boyfriend Nicolet about him. You were concerned, but didn’t want to show it.”
“My married boyfriend—setting him up with that news story so you could talk about infidelity. I couldn’t believe it. Yes, I could. That’s why I never brought my boyfriends home, you interrogated them. Mom used to yell at you for that all the time.”
“Your mother never raised her voice, God rest her soul. She’d give me the look No, what I was doing, I’d screen your boyfriends and tell you which ones were jerks, help you weed out the guys who were unfit. Take this guy Nicolet, he’s okay, I guess, but he’s a cowboy. The mag stuck in his jeans . . . You like the wild ones, don’t you? You know I’ve always said there’s a thin line between the cowboy cops and the armed robbers, all those guys that love to pack. Maybe that accounts for your interest in Foley, the old pro bank robber.”
“He kidnapped me.”
“Yeah, but you talked all the way from GCI to the turnpike. It sounds
more like a first date than a kidnapping. You ever hear of the Stockholm syndrome?”
“Now wait a minute,” Karen said.
“The bank robbery in Stockholm,” her dad said, “two guys, one of them’s name—I can’t think of it.”
“Olufsson,” Karen said.
Her dad winked at her. “You know what I’m talking about. They’re trapped in the bank, in there a few days holding the women hostage. They come out, three of the women say they’re in love with this Olufsson.”
“I wasn’t a hostage,” Karen said. “We were in the trunk together maybe a half hour.”
“I don’t know, this Foley sounds a lot like Olufsson. Talk to his ex-wife, see what she says about him.”
“I know what he is, an habitual offender, a con.”
“Before, you said he was laid-back, confident, like you admired him.”
Karen watched her dad bite through the crust of the French bread, eating his cheese and jelly sandwich, making her want one. She watched him sip his coffee, head lowered over the table. He looked somewhat like a short Walter Matthau. Once when he had a subject under surveillance and was waiting in his car, two women rushed up to him saying, “My God, it’s Walter Matthau!” The subject came out of a bar and drove off before her dad could get away from the two women.
He said, “I know what I wanted to ask you. How come there’s no mention of Glenn Michaels in any of the news stories?”
“Burdon says Glenn isn’t anyone’s business but theirs, the Bureau. I told him what Glenn said in the car about working on a score up north, a big one. Burdon wanted to know where up north. I said, well, Glenn mentioned freezing his ass off in Detroit last November. You could try there. This morning he called to say no one named Glenn Michaels flew from here to anywhere in November. I said maybe he drove. Burdon said don’t worry about it.”
“He didn’t say, ‘Don’t worry your pretty head’?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“And that makes you want to kick him in the crotch.”
“No, it makes me want to bring in Glenn. I already want Foley. Buddy, if he’s around.”
“Pour me a half a cup, would you, please. And tell me what we know about Buddy.”
“Not much,” Karen said, getting up. She came back to the table with the coffee, served her dad and sat down again. “He’s about Foley’s age, has a sister who used to be a nun, but we don’t know where she lives. He and Foley were both at Lompoc and probably met there. And that’s where Glenn got to know them. Burdon’s gonna call the prison, see if they can come up with a name, someone who was a friend of Foley’s.”
“They’ll be lucky if anybody remembers Foley. What’s the population out there, a couple thousand?”
“About sixteen hundred, the last time I went out.”
“They expect some administrative hack or a trusty to go through the computer hoping to find a Buddy? Even if they knew his first name—when did he come in? How many years would the search have to cover? You don’t know that unless you know his sentence. You imagine calling out to that penitentiary and asking, ‘Say, any of you people remember a con named Buddy?’” He sipped his coffee, getting it all, and said, “Listen, I have to run.”
Karen watched him get up from the table to stand looking out the kitchen window at the fairway, hiking up his yellow slacks that drooped in the can.
She said, “I asked Foley if Buddy was his given name and he said yeah, he gave it to him. But what if it’s his real name?”
Her dad turned to look at her and seemed for a moment surprised. “Where’s he from, originally?”
“Arkansas.”
“I don’t know—but now that I think about it, Buddy might be the key, the one to work on. He risks everything, including his life, to help some guy he jailed with. What does he get out of it? He does it as a friend or because there’s a payoff? You see what I mean?”
“Either way,” Karen said, “Foley owes him.”
“So whatever Buddy wants to do next,” her dad said, “the chances are Foley will go along. Find Buddy and you’ve got him.”
“If we knew Buddy’s name.”
“You gave me an idea. But listen, I got to get out of here, I’m late already.”
Karen followed him to the door that opened into the garage. “Dad, come on. How do we find him?”
He held the door open and turned to look at her. “It might work, it might not. I’ll tell you as soon as I get back.”
“You’ll tell me about your golf game for an hour.”
The door closed.
Every drive that stayed on the fairway, every chip to the green, his specialty, any long putts that dropped in—his Jack Daniel’s on the rocks next to him. He exaggerated, he even cheated . . . But he knew how to find people; it was his business. Karen turned to the sink. Should she do the dishes?
Or go talk to Adele Delisi?
• • •
BUDDY HAD CALLED HER THREE DIFFERENT TIMES THIS MORNING, she was never home. When he came back the last time Foley said it didn’t matter, he was going to see her. Buddy told him he was crazy and Foley said he’d made up his mind.
“You know they’ll have people watching the hotel.”
“To see if she leaves. You think they’re gonna check everybody that goes in?”
“Why take the chance?”
“I owe her.”
“You haven’t given her a dime in eight years. Now all of a sudden . . .”
“I’m not talking about owing her money, this is different. I kept thinking about it last night trying to get to sleep on this sofa, this board. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Adele.”
“That’s right, you wouldn’t have done the bank and got sent up.”
“She helped get me out. The least I can do is try to see her. If I can’t, I can’t, but I have to try.”
“I won’t drive you.”
“I’ll get there.”
“They’ll spot you on the street.”
“You said yourself I don’t look like my mug shot. That’s all they have to go on.”
“That you know of. Your picture’s been around, man. I used to see it in banks before I ever knew you.”
“I’ll go as a tourist. Wear shorts, a straw beach hat, hang a camera around my neck. Wear socks with sandals . . . Can you fix me up?”
ELEVEN
* * *
ADELE SPENT THE MORNING ON THE ART DECO HOTEL STRIP going from one to the next, ten blocks of sidewalk tables and tourists, stopping at each café and bar to ask the hostess if she would do her a huge huge favor. Even the ones she knew slightly would take the three-by-five card like it had ka-ka on it and glance at it, never changing their expressions, as Adele explained it was a version of an ad she’d placed in the Herald. But it was so tiny in the paper she thought if she could get some of these, you know, displayed around the beach . . . The hostesses said sorry, and handed the card back, or yeah, okay, and dropped it on their reservation stand. The card read:
LIKE MAGIC!
Call 673-7925 and out pops Adele!
Experienced magician’s assistant!
Expert with doves and all forms
of legerdemain!
Walking along 10th toward Collins Avenue she paused to look back and saw the guy tailing her come to a stop at the alley. He stood looking around as though he might be lost. The tail across the street had stopped and was tying his shoelaces. She wondered why they bothered. Adele waved to the one across the street and continued on to Collins. The next two, another pair of serious, clean-cut types, were in a car, one of them reading the paper. Every day there was some mention of Jack on the news and in the paper, “still at large” along with one of the Cubans, but not a word about Buddy or Glenn Michaels, so the two-car escape plan must’ve worked. The time Glenn came alone to visit, a few days before the break, he’d sat with his vodka and tonic posing, playing with his hair, waiting for her to make the move while he talked about himself, letting her know what a cool guy h
e was and how he planned to use Jack and Buddy later, for a job he had lined up. Five minutes with Glenn, she understood why Jack didn’t want him, why he said on the phone that last time he’d take the guy’s sunglasses off and step on them. She said to him, “You know who you remind me of? That freeloader who lived in O.J.’s guesthouse, the instant celebrity with the hair.” Glenn said, “Yeah? Really?” taking it as a compliment. The best thing to do with Glenn Michaels, she decided, would be to put him in Emil the Amazing’s vanishing box and lose his ass.
She came to the Normandie in a row of pastel-colored apartment hotels and nodded to the old ladies on the porch, waiting out their lives. Crossing the lobby she said hi to Sheldon behind the desk and he showed her his bad teeth. At least he smiled. None of the tight-assed hostesses on the strip smiled or gave her one fucking word of encouragement.
Adele went up the stairs to the second floor and into her apartment done in blond furniture from fifty years ago, Miami Beach Moderne, with sailboats and palm trees on the limp curtains. She turned on the window air conditioner. Every time she looked out now she hoped to God she wouldn’t see Jack across the street, like in a movie: leaning against a post he lights a cigarette and looks up at the window. Jack posed too, but was good at it.
She dropped the like magic! three-by-five cards she had left over on the glasstop dining table and stood looking down at them. Expert with doves and all forms of legerdemain. Expert at cleaning up dove shit in the dressing rooms. A natural at standing with one four-inch heel precisely in front of the other, smiling, glowing, her arm rising in a graceful gesture to the birds flying out of Emil’s filthy coat.