Road Dogs

THREE

THEY WERE TAKING THEIR WALK THE DAY AFTER FOLEY'S robbery conviction was reversed on appeal, Cundo saying, "I don't believe it. She got you off on the escape then got you down from thirty years to a few months? Come on-"

They were passing the chapel-"Where the muck rats found me meditating," Foley said, both of them looking at the chapel, a dismal shade of red, no life to the look of buildings that made a prison. They came to the gun tower on their left. "Where most of the firing came from," Foley said-Foley almost a head taller than Cundo, Mutt and Jeff coming along in their tailored prison blues to the exercise yard.

" 'Cause you save this chick's life, Karen Sisco, they cut you a deal because you put her in the fucking trunk?"

"Thirty years reduced to thirty months," Foley said. "That's two and a half years less time served. And no parole. That could've been the deal breaker and Megan got it for me."

"Man, me and you be out almost the same time, but you ahead of me. You always lucky like this?"

"When I have a rich little Cuban paying my way."

Foley was grateful but didn't feel good about it.

"I'm gonna pay you back, but it might take a while."

"Or you do five grand a bank six times in a row and not get busted. Forget about it, we friends."

"I'd rather pay you back," Foley said, "than have you come around later and tell me I owe you one. Okay?"

"We friends or what? You the only white guy in this joint I ever tole about my life. You smart for a fucking bank robber. You and Miss Megan, you both sound like you know what you talking about."

"She never used a tone of voice in court," Foley said, "to irritate the prosecutor. She'd make a remark passing his table and the guy would grin. It was like they're both on the same side. Then she'd look up and toss her hair, but I never once saw her touch it."

"Knows it looks good," Cundo said. "I'm trying to remember how she fix it."

"Like Paula Zahn's on the news. She and Megan have the same style hair when they don't change it for a while." "She say anything about me?"

"Who, Paula?"

"Miss Megan."

"She thinks you'd be fun."

"Yeah…?"

"If she ever went for a little greaser."

Foley played basketball every day, nine black guys on the court-they'd flip to see who got Foley-pressing each other, hands in the face, talking trash, Foley showing his moves, his jukes, faking guys out of their jocks, passing behind his back, throwing in swishers, all net, with either hand. Cundo watched.

Foley limped over to smoke a cigarette and Cundo said, "Man, how can you keep running like that? Lose some pounds I get you a job as a lifeguard. There six hundred lifeguards, man, watching thirty miles of beach, Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice, I was buddies with the crew on Baywatch, how I know about lifeguards. Man, I believe I can fix you up."

Foley said, "If I lose some pounds, would I have to know how to swim?"

"Tha's the thing," Cundo said, "all you know is how to rob banks. You tell them in court you swear you not doing it no more?"

"Nobody asked me."

"I know you can't rob jus' one. I bet is the same you can't rob a hundred and quit, find something pays as good."

"That was Lou Adams's point, the FBI guy. After his testimony was thrown out and we were done, he came over to me in the courtroom. He said, 'From the day you get your release the Bureau's gonna be on your ass, and I mean every day of your life. You understand? Nod your fucking head.' " Foley was smiling as he said it.

"You think is funny?" Cundo said. "This guy watching you all the time?"

"I think it's funny he believes he can do it. Assign a squad around the clock to watch one guy? They'd never do that," Foley said. "Would they?"

He started telling Cundo a little about Karen Sisco, knowing he'd never see her again, and her part in the hearing: how she told the court she never considered herself a hostage, she was armed the whole time. "She believes I saved her life by putting her in the trunk."

"The fucking hacks shooting at you," Cundo said. "I believe it too."

That's all Foley was going to say. But then he told Cundo he wasn't supposed to speak to Karen in court.

"Megan asked me when I first saw Karen. I said she was coming around from the trunk of her car with a twelve-gauge." Foley paused thinking about it. "But we didn't get to speak to each other in court."

"Why not?"

"Megan didn't want us to show there was anything personal between us."

Foley stopped there and Cundo said, "Yeah…?"

"I hadn't seen her since Detroit, months ago," Foley said. "When she was on the stand she glanced at me a couple of times, but that was it. I said to myself, Okay, it's over, not meant to be."

"Wait a minute-you telling me you and this marshal had something going?"

Foley told it because it was an event in his life, one of the best things that ever happened to him.

"See, what we did, Karen and I took a time-out from who we are and spent the night together in Detroit. At a hotel."

Cundo said, "Jesus Christ, you took the chick marshal to bed?"

"We made love," Foley said. "There was nothing else we could

do."

"Man, you fucked a U.S. marshal?"

"A deputy marshal. It was real, not like a score. We both felt it, but knew there was no future in it."

"No-but you gonna remember her as long as you live." "The next day," Foley said, "she shot me."

"Listen, before we get out of here," Cundo said, "I tell you about a woman who came to me and changed my life forever."

By the time Foley was looking at a few months before release, Cundo was telling him he should move to the Coast, have a look at Venice.

"Experience the show it puts on, tattoo artists, fortune-tellers, drummers in a circle beating the shit out of their drums, their snares, congas, tin cans, all these people watching. You know Jim Morrison, the Doors? His ghost live in the hotel where he like to stay. This woman I tell you about sometime, Dawn, saw him one time in the hall." Cundo serious, then grinning, showing his teeth. "You on that walk by the beach, look out. Here comes this chick in a bikini and the longest fucking legs you ever saw, she's Rollerblad-ing through the crowd. Guys step aside and turn to check her out."

Cundo said, "All right, now the real Venice.

"Walk away from the beach. Now is homes, all size homes, old ones, new ones, some new ones so new they don't look like homes. Remember the hippies, how they were? Easy does it, never lost their cool. Tha's how I see the people who live in the homes, hippies who grew up and are good at whatever it is, painting-there lot of artists here-people in the movies, people design homes, own restaurants. You have to be a star at what you do to live here. But they don't care if anybody knows it. They don't make announcements, build high-risers on the beach. They leave the beach to the beach. They like to talk to each other and drink wine."

Cundo said, "You see young gangsters giving each other serious eyes. You know how to talk to those guys. You can buy ganj, blow, whatever pleases you. I can get you numbers to call."

"When you went down," Foley said, "how come they didn't take your property?"

"I don't own any. Listen, when I was making money out there, buying homes, cheap compare to what they worth now? I sign them over to a guy is my bookkeeper, the Monk. We both come out of Combinado del Este in Cuba, the Monk in there 'cause he embessle money from a company, to buy things for himself. You look at the Monk," Cundo said, "you don't see a criminal, not even a white-collar one. He's a good-looking guy, man, but timid, ascared to death in Combinado of these guys want to dress him like a puta, put red lipstick on his mouth and fuck him. I work it with the guardias to put him in my cell and the Monk cried, man, he was so fucking grateful."

Foley said, "He was your wife?"

"Once in a while I let him smoke my cigar, sure, but I never care for it much with a guy. The guardias are bringing me ganj and half pints of rum I sell and we split. I tell the cons who want to fuck the Monk, behave yourselves or you don't get stoned no more. Okay, Fidel let us out, I bring the Monk to Miami and get him a job with Harry Arno. Harry use to run a sport book till he retire and marry a stripper, the only one I ever saw wore glasses when she danced, so she don't fall off the fucking stage. Then, after I almost die from being shot that time, we get out of town, move to L.A."

"You bring the Monk along," Foley said, "everywhere you go?"

"He's become a business partner," Cundo said, "for different ways he knows of using money to make money."

Foley said, "Like running a sports book?"

"Tha's one of the business where I'm a silent partner. It goes down, the Monk goes down. You understand he's always been an accountant, an expert with numbers, man. He works a calculator, he don't even look at what his fingers are doing. We in another business called Rios and Rey Investment Company. Is like a bank with numbered accounts, no names of investors."

"A real bank?" Foley said. "Like a Swiss bank?"

"Is it real? It must be," Cundo said, "they's money in it the Monk invests in bonds and real estate. Have it work for me, not bury it someplace, hope nobody finds it. Do you pay income tax on the money you take from banks?"

"Not as a rule," Foley said.

"I do," Cundo said, "I pay my fucking taxes. Maybe you like to rob this bank. How you do it? There's no teller you call sweetheart and ask her for money. The Monk say a time will come we won't use cash no more for most things you want. The Monk knows all this electronic shit with the digits. But I have to remind him also to keep an eye on Dawn for me. See nothing happens to her."

Foley said, "You're full of surprises, aren't you? Who's Dawn?"

"Dawn Navarro, man, the best thing ever happen to me."

For two years he'd been telling Foley his life history and never once mentioned he was married. Cundo said he didn't want people to know she was living alone in Venice, California, the Monk keeping an eye on her.

Foley said, "You trust the Monk?"

"Why you think I call him that? He's like a monk who took a vow never to fuck a woman. He don't even check them out. Listen," Cundo said, "after I was given the sentence I phone Dawn. I say, 'Can you live the life of a saint for seven years or longer? Not fuck any guys, not even an old boyfriend you run into and do it in the car with him for old time sake? Dawn say she would wait for me her whole life. Not leave the house except she's with the Monk."

Foley said, "He can keep guys away from her?"

"He packs, has a guy looks like a fox with a big Dirty Harry gun drives him, he goes anyplace. I was married to Dawn four months before I was return here to Florida. The first time I ever saw her was at a party in the Hollywood Hills. Dawn is laying down tarot cards, telling people their fortune. It becomes my turn and she starts doing my cards. But she don't say nothing to me. I ask her to tell me what she sees. Her eyes raise-"

Foley said, "She tell you you're going on a long journey?"

"How do you know that?"

"Isn't that what fortune-tellers tell you?"

"She say I'm going back to Florida within one year. I say oh, for what reason? She say she don't know, but I can tell she does and I wonder, why she wants to hide it from me."

Foley kept his mouth shut.

"We left the party. I took Dawn to Venice, to my white home-I won't stay in the pink one-the walls full of pictures of me with various movie and TV stars. We stay three days, man, never leaving, telling each other of our lives, not so much you know details, but basic shit. How I stole cars at one time and danced go-go as the Cat Prince. She thought that was hot. I ask her what she can see in her future. She say you can't be psychic about yourself, no real psychic can. She say most of the ones who call themselves psychic are frauds, they turn cards and tell you you gonna meet a tall, dark stranger. We drinking wine, smoking some good ganj, I say to her, 'So I'm going back to Florida, uh?' She don't want to tell me why I'm going, but I keep at her and she tells me she sees me in a courtroom on trial for killing a guy. You understand this is four months before I was arrested and then sent to Florida. I say to Dawn, 'Oh, I happen to kill somebody?' In her vision she sees me and another guy one night out in the Atlantic Ocean fishing."

"The mozo," Foley said, "who fell over the side and drowned."

"His girlfriend say he went out with me and never came back. I say I drop him off down the beach. No, the point I make, Dawn saw me in the courtroom four months before I was there."

"When'd you get married?"

"The next day after she tole me, we drove to Vegas."

"She's all for it, uh? Once she's seen the homestead?"

"You say something like that-you don't even know her. She say she been waiting all her life for the right guy, wha's a few more years? She looks me in the eye telling me things."

"She ever come to visit?"

"I tole you, I don't want nobody knowing things about her. She sends me pictures instead of coming here. Some of them, she don't have no clothes on."

"Is that right?"

"Keep me interested. She could go in a bank with you, tell you which teller will freak, which will stay calm."

"You little devil," Foley said, "you're gonna use her fortune-telling to tell you where the fortunes are, aren't you, work as a team."

"Is like Dawn tells this woman she's under some kind of spell, like maybe a ghost is fucking with her, hiding her jewelry she can't find."

"You're the ghost?"

"I can do that, sure. Or I go in the house at night and throw the woman's clothes in the swimming pool." "You've done that?"

"Not yet-we talking about it. See, Dawn gets rid of the fucking ghost she calls an evil spirit and saves the poor woman from going crazy. Charges her ten to twenty-k for it, and the woman is happy again. Is like I deliver a key for seventeen to twenty-k to a famous actor and he gets his confidence back again."

"You and the wife," Foley said, "devoting your lives to caring for people."

"Is the reason we fall in love with each other. We alike in how we know how to make people happy."

"But running a psychic con," Foley said, "doesn't mean she's actually psychic."

"She saw me in the fucking courtroom, didn't she?"

"She as cool as Megan Norris?"

"They both cool, but in different ways. Miss Megan is cool because she smart, man, always knows what to say. Dawn is cool because she knows what you going to say."

"They must be a lot different," Foley said, "in how they see things."

"Tha's what I just tole you, they different."

"Megan asked me how could I stand to throw away some of my best years in a dump like this. She wanted to know why I didn't get in a prison rehab program. Learn how to grow sugarcane."

"Burn the field you ready to go in and cut the cane, these poison snakes in there eating rats, man, they come out at you. Hey, fuck that. You tell her God made you a bank robber?"

"I think she knew it."

"The way I see you, Jack, you smart, you can be a serious guy, but you don't like to show anything is important to you. You here, you don't complain-not anymore-you could be an old hippie living here. You get your release…Ah, now you get to think what you going to do."

"I've been reading about Costa Rica," Foley said. "Go down there and start over."

"Yes, someday, uh? You want me to tell you," Cundo said, "you leave here, the first thing you going to do?"

"Rob a bank."

"See? Is already on your mind." "It's on your mind, not mine." "How you gonna get to Costa Rica?"

"If I make up my mind that's where I'm going," Foley said, "don't worry, I'll get there."

"I see you walking out the gate," Cundo said, "you thinking about the things you miss. Getting drunk on good whiskey for a change. Getting laid as soon as you can… How you gonna work it you don't have any money?"

"It's already arranged," Foley said.

Cundo stared at him to see if he was kidding, reading his face, his eyes.

"Is already arranged? How you do that?"