Road Dogs

TWENTY-ONE

IT WAS THE FIRST TIME FOLEY COULD RECALL GOING IN A bank to open an account. It was a lot different from the times he'd made withdrawals with a note. He was introduced to the manager, another first, a pleasant young man who seemed surprised and then delighted to see Mrs. Karmanos, happy to shake her hand and Fo-ley's, and brought them to a conference room set off behind a glass wall. Across the lobby were the teller windows, security cameras on the wall behind them, four of the windows doing business, customers waiting in line, but no glass separating them from the money. Three other windows showed framed signs that said they were closed. They sat at the conference table waiting for the manager to return with the paperwork and Foley's five thousand in hundreds, fifty of them. He'd told the manager new bills were fine.

"It's nice to be rich," Foley said, "not have to stand in line."

Danny said she was surprised the manager knew who she was. Foley looked at her with no expression and she said, "Really, I've only been here a few times."

"Doing some banking," Foley said, "so you're late for lunch."

"Jack, when your name will open a picture and producers are sending you scripts, you can be on time for lunch. I'm not sure why," Danny said, "but you've made me want to get back to work. I think it's your energy. I can feel it."

"My energy," Foley said.

"I'm ready to pick up where Peter and I left off on Born Again and Again"

"Dawn said they're looking for another actress to play the faith healer."

"Jack, who do you think told Dawn? I said I doubted I'd be working again for at least a year. But then I thought, Why? You've got a hit, keep the momentum going. Offer your friend Jack Foley a part. I see you come up to the front of the auditorium, your head down. I say, 'Look up at me, Jack Foley'-you're kneeling at my feet. I take your head in my hands and look up at the lights, like God is telling me what to do as I rub your head, feeling it, getting in touch with you, and before you know it, you're healed. You grab me around the knees and have to be restrained."

"What's wrong with me," Foley said, "I have leprosy eating away at my nose?"

She shook her head waving him off and her gaze drifted across the lobby to the teller windows. She said, "No," turning to Foley again with lights in her eyes, "you have an overwhelming desire to rob a bank, and I squeeze the idea right out of your head. I studied footage of Oral Roberts from the fifties, the way he laid on hands was inspiring. He was so fervent you're afraid one Sunday morning he's going to fracture some believer's skull. But," Danny paused and said, "I just had an idea. Instead of healing you and you grab me around the knees, you get me to go along on your next bank job." She said, "I'm serious, I'm going to talk to Peter's writer about it, a young guy who gets a million and a half a picture and a cut of the back end if it makes money. He wrote When the Women Come Out to Dance, a fantastic script that was never produced. I'm told studio execs didn't understand it and eventually chewed the script to death. What I'll do, Jack, I'll tell the writer my idea and he'll say you're kidding. At this point in the story I'm beginning to lose my faith, but there's something about the bank robber that fascinates me and I go off with him. What happens during this interlude is the and Again of the title. I was born again in the first picture and I'm born again again in the sequel."

"You get your faith restored by a bank robber," Foley said. "How does that work?"

"The writer will come up with something."

"I don't want to be in the movies," Foley said. "I like acting like myself."

"That's what you'll be doing, playing yourself. I think you'll even get some movie offers."

"To play another bank robber?"

"The first time you're on the screen you're sitting in a car across the street from the bank. You hold still as a police car creeps past."

"I hold still."

"Jack, you're in a bank right now with no intention of robbing it, you're being yourself. I think you could be good."

"You have the clout," Foley said, "to tell the expensive writer and the new director what you want?"

"There's a good chance," Danny said. "Born Again was made on a thirty-million-dollar budget and grossed over two hundred million worldwide. I wear a blouse with a Peter Pan collar and a long black skirt slit up to my knees so I can move around the stage. I'm the star and this is the same part. But it needs fresh ideas, unexpected plot turns. I've been thinking, what if a woman comes up to me before the congregation with a baby in her arms. Jack, the baby's dead and the mother begs me to bring the infant back to life. At this point in the film I'm on the verge of giving up my ministry. If I lay on my hands and nothing happens, I'm out of business. But if I refuse even to try…The scene doesn't go anywhere."

"But if you take the baby in your hands," Foley said, "and it begins to cry-"

Danny, shaking her head: "That's way beyond the ability of any faith healer. I'd lose the audience."

"Not if the little nipper's alive, still breathing," Foley said. "The baby cries as you raise it heavenward in your hands. The congregation goes wild and you're back in the game."

He watched her thinking about it.

"Why does the mother believe the baby's dead?"

"I have no idea," Foley said. "Ask your million-dollar screenwriter. Tell him you want to end the movie with it, your biggest miracle yet."

"But I could go to jail."

"For appearing to restore life?"

"For fraud. Taking money under false pretenses."

"All right, you tell the crowd, once they quiet down, the baby was alive. You didn't bring it to life. You didn't even squeeze the child's head. They admire your honesty-even more, your humility-and you get your faith back." Foley was nodding. "The dead baby who isn't dead's a good touch." He said, "We took care of that problem, now tell me where the security guard is. The old guy I thought looked like an ex-deputy?"

She said, "What about him?" her gaze moving to the bank's glass door.

"He isn't there anymore."

Danny said, "He went to the bathroom."

Foley said, "You want to bet?"

Lou Adams got out of his Chevy, left it double-parked in front of Piccolo Paradiso and came across the street to the parking lot where Foley and Mrs. Karmanos were being held, not technically but with a half-dozen Beverly Hills cops standing by with their holsters unsnapped. Ron Deneweth came out to the sidewalk as Lou Adams approached the scene.

Lou said, "Ron, does that woman look like a bank robber to you? She's a movie star, for Christ sake."

"She's with Foley," Ron said. "I didn't know she's a movie star. I didn't know it was Mrs. Karmanos till we ran her car."

"I told you he never packs," Lou said. "You got the Beverly Hills police department ready to draw on him."

"I told him to stand by, that I'd called you."

"He get smart with you?"

"He said he was opening an account."

"Who's the old guy Foley and Danialle Tynan are talking

to?"

"He's bank security. Tynan," Ron said, "that's her acting name?"

"One she was born with," Lou said. "Who you suppose they're laughing at, you or me?"

They watched Foley say something to Mrs. Karmanos, leaving her with the security guard, Mrs. Karmanos putting her hand on the old guy's shoulder. The Beverly Hills police officers beginning to fidget, not knowing what was going on, Foley walking past them toward the street.

Lou Adams said to Ron, "Tell the cops we don't need 'em, you read the situation wrong."

"It's my fault, huh?" Ron said. "Get it enough times, now you know why I quit the cops," and moved off as Foley walked up.

"You gonna put this in your book?"

Lou Adams seemed almost ready to smile.

"Chapter fifty," Foley said, " 'How I thought I knew everything but fucked up.'»

"Things aren't always as they appear," Lou said. "There's a shot ofJohn Dillinger laid out at the Cook County morgue with a sheet covering him, the sheet standing up a foot or so from his groin area, like he's got a tent pole for a dick. The man's so legendary people believed he could still have a woody when he's dead."

Foley said, "Somebody was pulling a joke?"

"No, it was his hands resting one on top the other under the sheet. Your case," Lou said, "known convicted felon is seen entering a bank, law enforcement's gonna check it out."

"Seen because you're breathing down my neck," Foley said, "the only reason. If I had a terrible urge to stick up a bank, you wouldn't know about it till you read it in the paper."

"All right," Lou said, "let's bet on it. I read about a bank job has your MO all over it, how this sweetheart of a guy made off with five gees, I swear I won't tell the cops or the Bureau or come after you myself. What I'll do is give you the chrome-plated.45 I was awarded by my colleagues for shooting down three Haitian guys that kidnapped a five-year-old kid. They want three hundred large or they chop the kid up and send him home in a bag. I shot to kill, the only guys I felt good about doing it. I'll give you the piece and say, 'You win, partner,' and never bother you again. How's that sound?"

"You're daring me," Foley said, "isn't gonna do it, or giving me your chromed-up rod. Why can't you get it in your head I'm out of the bank business?"

"See, if I accept that," Lou Adams said, "I'd have to believe we're getting closer to something else going down. Jack, you live with felons you're gonna get dirty."