Out of Sight

FIVE

Karen thought they'd put her inside and leave and she felt around to find her handgun, quick, the Sig Sauer, before they closed the trunk lid and she'd have to kick at it and yell until someone let her out.

There, she felt the holster, slipped the pistol out and closed her hand around the grip ready to go for it, six hollow points in the magazine and one in the throat, ready to come around shooting if she had to. But now the one in the filthy guard uniform gave her a shove and was getting in with her she couldn't believe it-crawling in to wedge her between the wall of the trunk and his body pressed against her back, like they were cuddled up in bed, the guy bringing his arm around now to hold her to him, and she didn't have room to turn and stick the gun in his face.

The trunk lid came down and they were in darkness, total, not a crack or pinpoint of light showing, dead silent until the engine came to life, the car moving now, turning out of the lot to the road that went out to the highway. Karen pictured it, remembering the orange grove and a maintenance building, then farther along the road frame houses and yards where some of the prison personnel lived.

His voice in the dark, breathing on her, said, "You comfy?"

The con acting cool, nothing to lose. Karen was holding the Sig Sauer between her thighs, protecting it, her skirt hiked up around her hips.

She said, "If I could have a little more room"

"There isn't any."

She wondered if she could get her feet against the front wall, push off hard and twist at the same time and shove the gun into him.

Maybe. But then what?

She said, "I'm not much of a hostage if no one knows I'm here."

She felt his hand move over her shoulder and down her arm.

"You aren't a hostage, you're my zoo-zoo, my treat after five months of servitude. Somebody pleasant and smells good for a change. I'm sorry if I smell like a sewer, it's the muck I had to crawl through, all that decayed matter."

She felt him moving, squirming around to get comfortable.

"You sure have a lot of shit in here. What's all this stuff?

Handcuffs, chains… What's this can?"

"For your breath," Karen said.

"You could use it. Squirt some in your mouth."

"You devil, it's Mace, huh? What've you got here, a billy?

Use it on poor unfortunate offenders… Where's your gun, your pistol?"

"In my bag, in the car." She felt his hand slip from her arm to her hip and rest there and she said, "You know you don't have a chance of making it. Guards are out here already, they'll stop the car."

"They're off in the cane by now chasing Cubans."

His tone quiet, unhurried, and it surprised her.

"I timed it to slip between the cracks, you might say. I was even gonna blow the whistle myself if I had to, send out the amber alert, get them running around in confusion for when I came out of the hole.

Boy, it stunk in there."

"I believe it," Karen said.

"You've ruined a thirty-five hundred-dollar suit my dad gave me."

She felt his hand move down her thigh, fingertips brushing her pantyhose, the way her skirt was pushed up.

"I bet you look great in it, too. Tell me why in the world you ever became a federal marshal, Jesus. My experience with marshals, they're all beefy guys, like your big-city dicks."

"The idea of going after guys like you," Karen said, "appealed to me."

"To prove something? What're you, one of those women's rights activists, out to bust some balls? I haven't been close to a woman like you in months, good-looking, smart… I think, man, here's my reward for doing without, leading a clean, celibate life in there, and you turn out to be a ball buster Tell me it ain't so."

"How would you know if I'm smart or not?"

"See? Putting me in my place, that's the same as ball busting I should've known you're a militant female, girl who packs, hauls all this crime-stopping equipment around… But, listen, just 'cause I've done without doesn't mean I'm gonna force myself on you. I've never done that in my life."

It amazed her, the guy trying to make a good impression.

"You wouldn't have time anyway," Karen said.

"We come to a roadblock they'll run the car, find out in about five seconds who it belongs to."

His voice breathing on her said, "If they get set up in time, which I doubt. Even if they do they'll be looking for Cubans, little fellas with black hair, not a big redneck driving a Chevy.

I'm leaving this trip in the hands of my Lord and Savior and my old pal Buddy. He's pure redneck. You know how you tell? He never takes his shirt off."

Feeling free and talkative. Karen kept quiet.

"I mean in the sun, like when we're in the yard. Joint out in sunny California only a few miles from the ocean, never once took his shirt off. Has one of those farmer tans. You see Buddy in the shower, his face and arms have color but his body's pure white. Good guy, though, wrote to his sister ever week without fail. He'd tell her what the weather was like. She'd write back and tell about her weather, which wasn't that different. His sister used to be one of those nuns who never spoke. Buddy says she still doesn't talk much, but now she drinks."

Riding in the trunk of a car with an escaped convict, chatting, passing the time, the car bumping over back roads, the floor beneath them hard, un giving Finally when they picked up speed and were moving in a straight line, Karen believed they were on 441 now, heading for West Palm and probably the interstate. Not the turnpike, you couldn't get on it from 441.

She felt his hand patting her thigh, inches from her hand gripping the Sig Sauer.

She said, "Buddy. That's his given name?"

"One I gave him, yeah."

"Well, what's yours? It'll be in the paper tomorrow anyway."

He said, "Jack Foley. You've probably heard of me."

"Why, are you famous?"

"The time I was convicted in California? They said, "How about telling us some of the other banks you've done?" This was the FBI. They gave me immunity from prosecution, just wanting to close the case files on whatever I could give them. I started listing the ones I could remember. After I was done they checked and said I'd robbed more banks than anyone in the computer."

"How many was it?"

"Tell you the truth, I don't know."

"About how many?"

"Well, going back thirty years, subtract nine years state and federal time served, starting with Angola. You know where it is? Lou'siana. I started out driving for my uncle Cully when I was eighteen, right out of high school. Cully and a guy use to work with him, they went in a bank in Slidell, over by the Mississippi line? The guy with Cully jumps the counter to get to the tellers and breaks his leg. All three of us went up. I did twenty-two months and learned how to fight for my life. Cully did twenty-seven years before he came out and died not too long after in Charity Hospital, I think trying to make up for all the good times he'd missed. My other fall, I did seven years, that was at Lompoc. I don't mean the place where some of Nixon's people went, Haldeman, some of those guys. That was Lompoc FPC, federal prison camp, the one they used to call Club Fed. No fence, no guys with shanks or razor blades stuck in toothbrush handles. The worst that could happen to you, some guy hits you over the head with a tennis racquet."

"I know the difference," Karen said.

"You were in Lompoc USP, the federal penitentiary. I've delivered people there."

"Handcuffed to some moron?"

"We have our own plane. It still isn't any fun."

"The fog'd come in off the ocean," Foley said, "roll in and just sit there in the yard, sometimes past noon. So that's nine years, Angola and Lompoc. Add county time awaiting hearings, and that hole we just left, that's more'n a decade of correctional living. I'm forty-seven years old and I'm not doing any more time."

Karen said, "You're sure about that?"

"If I go back I do a full thirty years, no time off. Could you imagine looking at that?"

"I don't have to," Karen said, "I don't rob banks."

"If it turns out I get shot down like a dog it'll be in the street, not off a goddamn fence."

"You must see yourself as some kind of desperado."

He said, "I don't know," and was quiet for several moments.

I never actually thought of myself that way." He paused again.

"Unless I did without knowing it. Like some of those boys of yesteryear. Clyde Barrow-you ever see pictures of him, the way he wore his hat? You could tell he had that don't-give-as hit air about him."

"I don't recall his hat," Karen said, "but I've seen pictures of him lying dead, shot by Texas Rangers. Did you know he didn't have his shoes on?"

"Is that right?"

"They put a hundred and eighty-seven bullet holes in Clyde, Bonnie Parker and the car they were driving. Bonnie was eating a sandwich."

"You're full of interesting facts, aren't you?"

"It was in May 1934, near Gibsland, Louisiana."

"That's north Lou'siana," Foley said, "a long way from New Orleans, where I was born and raised. Once you leave the Big Easy you may as well be in Arkansas, where Buddy's from originally. He went up to Detroit to work in an auto plant once, but didn't care for it, moved to California. I remember seeing the movie-it was after I got out of Angola and started doing banks on my own. That part where they got shot? Warren Beatty and… I can't think of her name."

"Faye Dunaway. I loved her in Network."

"Yeah, she was good. I liked the guy saying he wasn't gonna take any more shit from anybody."

"Peter Finch," Karen said.

"Yeah, right. Anyway, that scene where Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway get shot? I remember thinking at the time, it wouldn't be a bad way to go, if you have to."

"Bleeding on a county road," Karen said.

"It wasn't pretty after," Foley said, "no, but if you were in that car-eating a sandwich-you wouldn't have known what hit you."

"How'd you get the guard uniform?"

"Took it off a hack."

"You killed him?"

"No, hit him over the head-the most ignorant man I ever met in my life." He paused and said, "I should talk, after the stunt I pulled to get sent up this time. I'd just done a Barnett bank in Lake Worth. I'm on a side street waiting to turn left on Dixie Highway… It's a long story. The only reason I was even in Florida I was visiting somebody."

He paused and said, "I better keep quiet."

"You robbed the bank," Karen said, "in your own car?"

"I wasn't that dumb. No, but then I got in a situation with the car..

The dumbest thing I've ever done."

She felt Foley's fingertips moving idly on her thigh, his voice, quiet and close to her, saying, "You're sure easy to talk to. I wonder-say we met under different circumstances and got to talking-I wonder what would happen."

"Nothing," Karen said.

"I mean if you didn't know who I was."

"You'd tell me, wouldn't you?"

"See, that's what I mean you're easy to talk to. There isn't any bullshit, you speak your mind. Here you are locked up in the dark with a guy who's filthy, smells like a sewer, just busted out of prison and you don't even seem like you're scared. Are you?"

"Of course I am."

"You don't act like it."

"What do you want me to do, scream? I don't think it would help much."

Foley let his breath out and she felt it on her neck, almost like a sigh. He said, "I still think if we met under different circumstances, like in a bar…"

Karen said, "You have to be kidding."

After that, for a few miles, neither of them spoke until Foley said,

"Another one Faye Dunaway was in I liked, Three Days of the Condor."

"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, saving, "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 pointblank, 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 UDDY SAID HE forgot she had a piece in there-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, gum balls 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 under 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 saving, "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 lack to extract steering column locks and usually liquid nitrogen to freeze the alarm system.

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 fucking eye when you spoke to them or they had something to say.

Glenn stayed close to them and was never seriously apT pro ached 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 fucking 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.

"Detroit 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 remember 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."

Buddy said, "Nothing else pending?"

"Nothing. How about if I go see Foley?"

"You don't want your name on the visitors list out there. Sit tight till you hear from me."

"You talk to him," Glenn said, "see if he remembers Dick the Ripper.

I'd still like you guys to go in with me. You think you might be interested?"

Buddy didn't comment right out and say if they would or not.

Glenn had seen him three times since that phone call. At a bar in West Palm near Glenn's apartment. A hotel in Miami Beach, a dump, where Foley's ex-wife lived. Adele. About forty but not bad looking. Glenn stopped by to see her another time that had nothing to do with the great escape: see if he could get her to put out without begging or buying her dinner. And the third time when Buddy drove him out to Glades Correctional, showed the route he'd take once he had Foley in the car, and where Glenn would be waiting with the second car.

Right here.

Twenty minutes with the Audi parked off to the side of the turnpike's southbound lanes, trouble lights blinking, a note stuck in the side window that said GONE TO GET GAS, Glenn waiting now among scrub pines and palmettos a good fifty feet from the car. If any approaching headlights turned out to be a trooper, Glenn would be out of there, through the trees and down the grade-about where they should be coming up now, with the girl Foley must've used as a hostage. But what good was she doing him now? He should've left her in the trunk of the car.

A few more minutes passed before he heard them coming.