Elmore Leonard Out of Sight

for michoel and kelly

ONE

Foley had never seen a prison where you could walk right up to the fence without getting shot. He mentioned it to the guard they called Pup, making conversation: convict and guard standing in a strip of shade between the chapel and a gun tower, redbrick structures in a red-brick prison, both men looking toward the athletic field. Several hundred inmates along the fence out there were watching the game of football played without pads, both sides wearing the same correctional blue, on every play trying to pound each other into the ground.

"You know what they're doing," Foley said, "don't you? I mean besides working off their aggressions."

Pup said, "The hell you talking about?"

This was about the dumbest hack Foley had ever met in his three falls, two state time, one federal, plus a half-dozen stays in county lockups.

"They're playing in the Super Bowl," Foley said, "pretending they're out at Sun Devil Stadium next Sunday. Both sides thinking they're the Dallas Cowboys."

Pup said, "They ain't worth shit, none of 'em."

Foley turned enough to look at the guard's profile, the peak of his cap curved around his sunglasses. Tan shirt with dark-brown epaulets that matched his pants, radio and flashlight hooked to his belt; no weapon.

Foley looked at his size, head-to-head with the Pup at six-one, but from there, where Foley went pretty much straight up and down in his prison blues, the Pup had about forty pounds on him, most of it around the guard's middle, his tan shirt fitting him like skin on a sausage.

Foley turned back to the game.

He watched a shifty colored guy come out for a pass and get clotheslined going for the ball, cut down by another shifty colored guy on defense. The few white guys, bikers who had the nerve and the size, played in the line and used their fists on each other, every down. No Latins in the game. They stood along the fence watching, except for two guys doing laps side by side around the field: counterclockwise, the way inmates always circled a yard here and in every prison Foley had ever heard of.

The same two ran ten miles a day every day of the week.

Coming to this end of the field now, getting closer, breaking stride now, walking:

Jose Chirino and Luis Linares, Chino and Lulu, husband and wife, both little guys, both doing a mandatory twenty-five for murder. Walking.

They hadn't done anywhere near their ten miles. While they circled this end of the field and started up the side, past the cons watching the football game, they had Foley's full attention.

A minute or so passed before he said, "Some people are going out of here. What if I told you where and when?"

The Pup would be staring at him now, eyes half closed to slits behind his shades, the way he judged if a con was telling the truth or giving him a bunch of shit.

"Who we talking about?"

Foley said, "Nothing's free, Pup," still not looking at him.

"I get your liquor for you."

"And you make a good buck. No, what I need," Foley said, turning to look at him now, "is some peace of mind. This is the most fucked-up joint I've ever been in, take my word. Medium security and most of the cons here are violent offenders."

Pup said, "You being one of 'em."

"If I was I've slowed up. Look at those boys out there, that's a vicious breed of convict. Myself, it's not so much I'm violent as habitual, liable to pick up on the outside where I left off, so they'll keep me here till I'm an old man."

The Pup kept giving him his squint.

"So you turn fink?"

"It's okay," Foley said, "if you do it to insure your future. I give you the chance to stop a prison break, you make points, advance your career as a hack. I get peace of mind. I'd expect you to look out for me as long as you're here. Let me run my business, keep me off work details…"

The Pup was still squinting.

"How many going out?"

"I hear six."

"When?"

"Looks like tonight."

"You know who they are?"

"I do, but I won't tell you just yet. Meet me in the chapel going on five-thirty, right before evening count."

Foley waited, staring back at those slitty eyes trying to read him.

"Come on, Pup, you want to be a hero or not?"

Noon dinner, Foley took his pork butts and yams down the center aisle looking for Chino among all the white T-shirts and dark hair. There he was, at a table of his little-guy countrymen eating macaroni and cheese, a dish Foley has passed on in the chow line. Jesus, eating a pile of it. The guy across from Chino giving him more, scraping macaroni from his tray on to Chino's.

The man's gaze raised to Foley, dark eyes beneath lumps of scar tissue, all he had to show for his career as a welterweight before age and killing a man put him out of business. Chino was close to fifty but in shape; Foley had watched him do thirty pull-ups on a bar without kicking his legs, trying to climb through the air.

Chino gave him a nod but didn't make room, tell any of his people at the table to get up. Lulu sat next to him with a neat tray of macaroni and Jell-O and a cup of milk they gave inmates under twenty-one years of age to build strong, healthy bodies.

Foley ate his noon dinner at a table of outlaw bikers, consV who bought half-pint bottles of rum Foley sold for three times what he paid Pup to sneak the stuff in. He sat there listening to the outlaws having fun, comparing his rum to piss and running with it, enjoying their use of the word, speculating on what land it was, dog piss, cat piss, how about alligator piss? They liked that one. Foley saw it had to be an uncommon kind of piss, said, "How about chicken piss?" and the table showed him bad teeth and the food they were chewing with grins and grunts of appreciation. Foley worked through his dinner and went outside to smoke a cigarette and wait for Chino.

Lulu tagging along when he came, Lulu cute as a bug with his girlish eyelashes and pouty way of looking at you. Chino had had to punch out many a suitor to keep Lulu for his own. He had told Foley Lulu wasn't a homosexual before entering this life, but had become one and was good at it. Confiding things like that after Foley told Chino he was the most aggressive welterweight he had ever seen fight. Saw him lose to Mau-ricio Bravo in L.A. when Foley was doing banks out there. Saw him lose to the Mexican kid, Palomino, at the Grand in Las Vegastough break, the TKO in the sixth when Chino's right eye closed and they stopped the fight. Foley said, "I never saw a fighter take as many shots as you did and keep coming back-outside of Rocky Balboa." Chino's record was 22 and 17, not good if you were the fighter, not bad if you admired him for staying with it as long as he did. Foley was the only Anglo the Cuban allowed to get close.

He had his arm around Lulu's shoulder as they approached, then let it slip down to hook his thumb in Lulu's belt, the next thing to having him on a leash.

Foley said, "Today's the day, huh? You excited?"

The man was cool, no expression.

"I told you, man, Super Bowl Sunday."

"Yeah, but I see you moved it up."

Now a glint showed in his eyes.

"Why you think is today?"

"You were out running this morning, sticking to your routine, anybody happened to notice. But you only did a couple of miles, saving yourself for the main event. Then I see you eating about ten pounds of macaroni. Carbohydrates for endurance."

"You want," Chino said, "I tole you you can come."

"I would, but I can't stand to get dirty."

"Is finish. All we do now is go out."

"You sure you're past the fence?"

"Fifteen and a half meters, one to spare."

From the covered crawl space beneath the prison chapel to the grass just beyond the razor wire perimeter fence. They had been digging since before Christmas with their hands and a broken shovel, using scrap lumber from the construction site of a new wing being added to the chapel to shore up the walls of the tunnel. It was Christmas Day Foley happened to see Chino and Lulu come out of the ficus bushes in front of the chapel, their faces streaked with black dirt, muck, but wearing clean blues.

What were they doing, making out in the bushes? That wasn't Chino's style, so Foley the fight fan said, "Don't tell me about it 'less you want to." And Chino said that time to his Anglo friend, "You want to go with us?"

Foley said he didn't want any part of it-only three feet of crawl space underneath the chapel, pitch-dark in there, maybe run into fucking mole rats face-to-face. No thanks. He'd said to Chino, "Don't you know you're digging through Everglades muck? I've talked to people. They say it's wet and'll cave in on you." Chino said, yeah, that's what people thought, but the tunnel only caved in once. If they were careful, took their time, the muck stuck together and became dry and was okay. He told Foley they had dug down four feet and then out toward the fence, the tunnel a meter wide and a meter high. One man at a time dug and the muck was passed back and spread around the crawl space under there, so nobody was going to see it. They worked two at a time in dirty clothes they kept there and put on clean ones before coming out.

Foley said to Chino that Christmas Day, "If I caught on, how come none of the hacks have?"

Chino said, "I think they believe like you no one can dig a tunnel in muck. Or they don't want to crawl in there and find out. They see us dirty they think we work construction."

It was that day Chino said they were going out Super Bowl Sunday, when everyone would be watching the game, six o'clock.

But now they were going out five days early.

"You finish ahead of schedule?"

Chino looked toward the fence along the front of the yard, between the administration building and the gun tower close to the chapel.

"You see what they doing, those posts out there?

Putting up another fence, five meters on the other side of the one that's there. We wait until Super Bowl Sunday they could have the second fence built and we have to dig another nine ten days. So we going soon as it's dark."

"During the count."

"Sure, and when they get the wrong count," Chino said, "they have to start over. It give us some more time to get out of here. You want-I mean it-you can still come."

"I didn't help dig."

"If I say you can come, you can come."

"I appreciate the offer," Foley said, looking toward the fence and the visitors' parking area just the other side, a few cars in the front row facing this way, not twenty yards from the fence.

"And it's tempting. But, man, it's a long run to civilization, a hundred miles to Miami? I'm too old to start acting crazy, try a stunt like that."

"You no older than I am."

"Yeah, but you're in shape, you and little Lulu." Foley winked at the queer and got a dirty look for no reason.

"I ever make it out it won't be in state clothes or no idea where I'm going. Shit, I'm fairly new here, still feeling my way through the system."

Chino said, "You do okay, man. I'm not going to worry about you."

Foley put his hand on the little guy's shoulder.

"I wish you luck, partner. You make it out, send me a postcard."

Some of the newer white boys doing time for drugs called home just about every day after noon chow. There they were lined up by the phone outside the captain's office. Foley went in to put his name on the list, came out and went to the head of the line saying, "Fellas, I got an emergency call I have to make.

Y'all don't have a problem with that, do you?"

He got hard looks but no argument. These boys were fish and Foley was a celebrity hard-timer who'd robbed more banks than they'd been in to cash a check. He gave talks at AA meetings on self-respect, how to stay alive in here without taking too much shit. If you saw it coming, hit first with something heavy. Foley's choice, a foot or so of lead pipe, never a shank, a shank was crude, sneaky, it put you in the same class as the thugs and hogs.

No, what you wanted to do was lay the pipe across the guy's jaw, and if you had time break his hands with it. If you didn't see the guy coming you were fucked, so keep your eyes open. It was about all you could tell these fish.

A woman's voice accepted the charge, Foley's ex-wife now living in Miami Beach. He said, "Hey, Adele, how you doing?"

She said, "Now what?" Not with any kind of attitude, asking a simple question.

Adele had divorced him while he was doing seven years at Lompoc in California and moved to Florida. Foley never once held it against her.

They'd met in Vegas where she was working as a cocktail waitress in a skimpy sequined outfit, cut low on top and high up her legs from the crotch, got married one night when they were both feeling good, and it was less than a year later he went up to Lompoc. They hadn't even kept house, so to speak. A few months after he got out, Foley came to Florida and they seemed to pick up where they'd left off, drinking, going to bed… Adele telling him she still loved him, but please don't talk about marriage again, okay? It made Foley feel guilty that he hadn't been able to support her while in prison, and it was this feeling that got him sent up again. He robbed a Barnett bank in Lake Worth, intending to give Adele the entire proceeds-show her his heart was in the right place-but was caught and ended up at Glades doing thirty to life. It meant, the way sentencing worked now, he'd be here at least twenty-four years before he was eligible for parole. All on account of wanting to be a good guy.

He said to Adele, "You know that Super Bowl party? They changed the date. It's on tonight, six o'clock."

There was a silence on the line before Adele said, "Didn't you tell me one time calls aren't monitored?"

"I said not as a rule."

"So why don't you come right out and tell me what you're talking about?"

"Listen to Miss Smarty Mouth," Foley said, "out there in the free world."

"What's free about it? I'm looking for work."

"What happened to Mandrake the Magician?"

"Emil the Amazing. The kraut son of a bitch fired me and hired another girl, a blonde."

"He must be crazy, want to trade you in."

"Emil says I'm too old."

"To do what, watch pigeons fly out of a hat? You have that cute, amazed look down cold, in your little assistant magician outfit. You'll hook up with another one before you know it. Run an ad. Anyway, not to change the subject," Foley said, "but the reason I called…"

"I'm listening."

"It's today instead of Sunday. About six, like only a few hours from now. So you'll have to get hold of Buddy, whatever he might be doing …"

Adele said, "And the one driving the other car."

"What're you talking about?"

"Buddy wants to use two cars."

"You said he might."

"Well, he's going to, so he got this guy you know from Lompoc. Glenn Michaels?"

Foley didn't say anything, picturing a young guy who wore sunglasses all the time, even watching movies.

"Cute but seedy," Adele said, "has real long hair."

But none on his body. Foley remembered the guy in the yard always working on his tan. Glenn Michaels. The guy stole expensive cars on special order and delivered them all over, even Mexico. Acted hip and told stories about women coming on to him, even movie stars, but none Foley or Buddy had ever heard of. They called him Studs.

"You met him?"

"Buddy thought I should, just in case."

"In case of what?"

"I don't know, ask him. Glenn said he thought you were real cool."

"He did, huh. Tell Buddy I see this guy wearing sunglasses I'll step on 'em. I might not even take 'em off him first."

"You're still weird," Adele said.

"A quarter to six the latest. But don't call him on your phone."

"You tell me that every time," Adele said.

"Will you be careful, please? And don't get shot?"

Five-twenty, Foley found a child molester they called the Elf alone in the chapel with the lights off: a skinny white kid sitting round-shouldered by the windows, a stack of pamphlets in the pew with him. Foley turned the lights on and the kid hunched around to look at him, no doubt afraid he was about to get beat up again, the fate of guys with short eyes among a population that felt superior.

"You're gonna ruin your eyes," Foley said, "trying to read that inspirational shit in the dark. Leave, okay? I need to speak to my Redeemer in private."

Once the Elf was out the door Foley turned the lights off and went along the row of windows pulling old brown-stained shades down halfway, keeping it just light enough in here to see the shapes of the pews. He walked around to the other side of the chapel now and stepped through an opening to the wing they were adding on, the structure framed in and smelling of new wood, big open spaces where windows would be hung.

He looked around at the mess of scrap lumber the prison carpenters, not giving a shit, had wasted. A piece of two-by four caught his eye.

Foley had thought of using pipe for what he'd have to do-there was enough of it around-but he liked the way this piece of scrap wood was split and tapered to a thin end, like a baseball bat.

He picked it up, took a swing and imagined a screaming line drive sailing out to the athletic field where half the population-he could see them through the window openings five six hundred cons slouched around with nothing to do, not enough jobs here to keep them busy. It was going dark now, the sky showing a few last streaks of red, and there it was, the whistle: everybody back to the dorms for evening count. It would take a half hour, then another fifteen minutes to do a recount before they'd know for sure six inmates were missing. By the time they got out the dogs, Chino and his boys would be running through sugar cane.

Strung-out lines of inmates were coming from the athletic field now, passing through a gate to the prison compound.

Foley watched them thinking, You're on the clock now, boy.

In the chapel again he placed his baseball bat in one of the pews, on the seat, and took off his denim jacket to lay over it.

Chino would be down there in the muck telling his boys to be patient, making sure it was dark before they came out.

Foley turned, hearing the chapel door open. He watched the Pup come in and glance around before closing the door. No weapon on him, just his radio and flashlight, the peak of his cap down on his eyes, the man anxious. His hand went to the light switch on the wall by the door and Foley said, "Leave it off."

The Pup looked at him and Foley put his finger to his lips. It was happening now and he took his time.

"They're right underneath you, Pup. They dug a tunnel."

Now the guard was unhooking the radio from his belt.

Foley said, "Wait. Not just yet."

Two AREN LEFT WEST Palm at five, drove into the sunset past miles and miles of cane and had her headlights on by the time she turned into the parking area and sat facing the prison. Her high beams showed a strip of grass, a sidewalk, another strip of grass, the fence strung with sound detectors and razor wire, dark figures in white T-shirts inside the fence, brick dorms that looked like barracks, picnic tables and a few gazebos used on visiting days.

Lights were coming on, spots mounted high that showed the compound with its walks and lawns; at night it didn't look all that bad. She lit a cigarette and dialed a number on her car phone.

"Hi. Karen Sisco again. Did Ray ever get back?… I tried, yeah. He calls in, tell him I won't be able to meet him until about seven.

Okay?"

She watched prisoners massing at the gate from the athletic field, straggling through and then spreading out, moving toward their dorms in the spotlight beams. She picked up the phone and dialed a number.

"Dad? Karen. Will you do me a big favor?"

"Do I have to get up? I just made myself a drink."

"I'm out at Glades. I'm supposed to meet Ray Nicolet at six and I can't get hold of him."

"Which one is that, the fed, the aTF. guy?"

"He was. Ray's with the state now, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, he switched over."

"He's still married though, huh?"

"Technically. They're separated."

"Oh, he's moved out?"

"He's about to."

"Then they're not separated, are they?"

"Will you try calling him, please? He's on the street. Tell him I'm gonna be late?" She gave her dad Ray's beeper number.

"What're you doing at Glades?"

"Serving process, a Summons and Complaint. Drive all the way out here …" Headlights hit Karen's rearview mirror, a car pulling into the row behind her. The lights went off, then came on again and Karen adjusted the mirror to deflect the glare.

"I have to drive all the way out here because some con doing mandatory life doesn't like macaroni and cheese. He files suit, says he has no choice in what they serve and it violates his civil rights."

Her dad said, "What'd I tell you? Most of the time you'd be serving papers or working security, hanging around courtrooms, driving prisoners to hearings…"

"You want me to say you were right?"

"It wouldn't hurt you."

"I'm giving the West Palm office a year. They don't put me back on warrants, I quit."

"My daughter the tough babe. You know you can always step in here, work with me full time. I just got a case you'd love, the rights of the victim at stake."

"Dad…"

"Guy pulls a home invasion, beats up an old lady and takes her life savings she has hidden away, eighty-seven thousand, cash. They get the guy and his lawyer cuts a deal with the state attorney, two to five and the guy will come out and make full restitution. He does fifteen months, gets his release and disappears. The old lady's son hires me to find him."

Karen said, "You do, then what? The guy pulls armed robberies to pay her back?"

"See? You like it, you're thinking. Actually, the old lady's son would settle for beating the shit out of the guy."

"I have to go," Karen said.

"When am I gonna see you?"

"I'll come Sunday and watch the game with you, if you'll call Ray."

"You get dressed up for this guy?"

"I'm wearing the Chanel suit-not the new one, the one you gave me for Christmas a year ago. I happen to be wearing it."

"With the short skirt. You want him to leave home tomorrow, huh?"

"I'll see you," Karen said and hung up.

Her dad, seventy, semi-retired after forty years in the business, ran Marshall Sisco Investigations, Inc. in Coral Gables. Karen Sisco, twenty-nine, was a deputy United States marshal, recently transferred from Miami to the West Palm Beach office. She had worked surveillance jobs for her dad while in college, the University of Miami, decided she might like federal law enforcement and transferred to Florida Atlantic in Boca Raton to take their criminal justice program. Different federal agents would come to the school to give talks and recruit, FBI, DEAKaren was smoking grass at the time, so she didn't consider Drug Enforcement an option. She thought about Secret Service, but the agents she met were so fucking secretive-ask a question and they'd go,

"You'll have to check with Washington on that."

She got to know a couple of marshals, nice guys, they didn't take themselves as seriously as the Bureau guys she met. So Karen went with the Marshals Service and her dad told her she was crazy, have to put up with all that bureaucratic bullshit.

Karen was five-nine in the medium heels she wore with her black Chanel suit. Her marshal's star and ID were in her handbag, on the seat with the court papers. Her pistol, a Sig Sauer.38, was in the trunk with her ballistic vest, her marshal's jacket, several pairs of handcuffs, leg irons with chains, an expandable baton, Mace, and a Remington pump-action shotgun. She had locked the pistol in the trunk so she wouldn't have to check it inside the prison. The Sig Sauer was her favorite, her evening-wear piece; she didn't want to have to worry about some guard fooling with it.

Okay, she was ready. Karen took a final draw on the cigarette and dropped it out the window. She straightened the rearview mirror to look at herself and right away turned her face from the glare: the headlights of the car behind her still on high beam.

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