Out of Sight

"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.

SEVEN

Karen told Foley, climbing the bank in the dark, it would be a lot easier if he'd quit hanging onto her. He let go of her arm and dropped back a couple of steps saying he was only trying to help, so she wouldn't slip in the weeds and fall. Karen said, "You mean and ruin my good suit?" The back and the sleeves stained with his muck, the skirt snagging now in the brush. He said he didn't want her to hurt herself.

Karen hoped she'd be able to tell about it later. The conversation in a trunk full of handcuffs and tactical gear with a bank robber escaped convict who wondered if it would be different if they'd met in a bar.

Like a first date, getting to know one another. Her dad would love it.

"And then what happened?" That was a good question.

Foley stayed behind her now looking at her slim figure, her legs at eye level in the short skirt that hiked up on her, tight against her rear end as she climbed the grade. Buddy was up ahead. Foley said, "Have your clothes cleaned and send me the bill," wanting to say something to her, keep it light, but he felt awkward with her now, tense.

She said, "I'll send it to you at Glades."

Still not acting scared.

They reached the top of the grade to move through the scrub and now he could see the car, amber lights blinking. He didn't see Glenn until he heard him.

"Jesus, what'd you crawl through, a sewer?"

Standing at the edge of the trees with Buddy saying to him then,

"That's a white car?"

"What's the difference? It's the only one here."

Glenn had on sunglasses and a limp, ratty-looking raincoat that hung long on him, open, over a T-shirt and jeans cut off at the knees.

Foley said, "Take your sunglasses off," his tone mild, Karen Sisco standing only a few feet away.

"I see better with them on," Glenn said.

"I'd take 'em off," Foley said, "before they get stepped on."