Out of Sight

"No, but he was surprised I hadn't heard of him. Maybe I should have."

"He remind you of that guy Tillman?"

"Not at all."

"Remember calling me? You'd been out with him I think three times. You tell me the guy's a bank robber suspect and you don't know what to do.

I told you to get another boyfriend."

"You said, if I want to know if it's true, ask him."

"Yeah, bring up the subject, see how he reacts. If he breaks out in a sweat, call for backup. But this guy Foley, you know he's dirty and you still want to see him again."

"I want to bust his ass, put him in shackles."

"Yeah, okay. Don't overdo it. Your pride's hurt, you were armed and he took you. That bothers you, I can understand how you feel. But you're also curious about the man. Last night, twice you asked your married boyfriend Nicolet about him. You were concerned, but didn't want to show it."

"My married boyfriend-setting him up with that news story so you could talk about infidelity. I couldn't believe it. Yes, I could. That's why I never brought my boyfriends home, you interrogated them. Mom used to yell at you for that all the time."

"Your mother never raised her voice, God rest her soul.

She'd give me the look. No, what I was doing, I'd screen your boyfriends and tell you which ones were jerks, help you weed out the guys who were unfit. Take this guy Nicolet, he's okay, I guess, but he's a cowboy. The mag stuck in his jeans… You like the wild ones, don't you? You know I've always said there's a thin line between the cowboy cops and the armed robbers, all those guys that love to pack.

Maybe that accounts for your interest in Foley, the old pro bank robber."

"He kidnapped me."

"Yeah, but you talked all the way from GCI to the turnpike. It sounds more like a first date than a kidnapping. You ever hear of the Stockholm syndrome?"

"Now wait a minute," Karen said.

"The bank robbery in Stockholm," her dad said, "two guys, one of them's name-I can't think of it."

"Olufsson," Karen said.

Her dad winked at her.

"You know what I'm talking about.

They're trapped in the bank, in there a few days holding the women hostage. They come out, three of the women say they're in love with this Olufsson."

"I wasn't a hostage," Karen said.

"We were in the trunk together maybe a half hour."

"I don't know, this Foley sounds a lot like Olufsson. Talk to his ex-wife, see what she says about him."

"I know what he is, an habitual offender, a con."

"Before, you said he was laid-back, confident, like you admired him."

Karen watched her dad bite through the crust of the French bread, eating his cheese and jelly sandwich, making her want one. She watched him sip his coffee, head lowered over the table. He looked somewhat like a short Walter Matthau. Once when he had a subject under surveillance and was waiting in his car, two women rushed up to him saying, "My God, it's Walter Matthau!" The subject came out of a bar and drove off before her dad could get away from the two women.

He said, "I know what I wanted to ask you. How come there's no mention of Glenn Michaels in any of the news stories?"

"Burdon says Glenn isn't anyone's business but theirs, the Bureau. I told him what Glenn said in the car about working on a score up north, a big one. Burdon wanted to know where up north. I said, well, Glenn mentioned freezing his ass off in Detroit last November. You could try there. This morning he called to say no one named Glenn Michaels flew from here to anywhere in November. I said maybe he drove. Burdon said don't worry about it."

"He didn't say, "Don't worry your pretty head'?"

"Yeah, he did."

"And that makes you want to kick him in the crotch."

"No, it makes me want to bring in Glenn. I already want Foley. Buddy, if he's around."

"Pour me a half a cup, would you, please. And tell me what we know about Buddy."

"Not much," Karen said, getting up. She came back to the table with the coffee, served her dad and sat down again.

"He's about Foley's age, has a sister who used to be a nun, but we don't know where she lives. He and Foley were both at Lompoc and probably met there. And that's where Glenn got to know them. Burdon's gonna call the prison, see if they can come up with a name, someone who was a friend of Foley's."

"They'll be lucky if anybody remembers Foley. What's the population out there, a couple thousand?"

"About sixteen hundred, the last time I went out."

"They expect some administrative hack or a trusty to go through the computer hoping to find a Buddy? Even if they knew his first name-when did he come in? How many years would the search have to cover? You don't know that unless you know his sentence. You imagine calling out to that penitentiary and asking, "Say, any of you people remember a con named Buddy?"

" He sipped his coffee, getting it all, and said, "Listen, I have to run."

Karen watched him get up from the table to stand looking out the kitchen window at the fairway, hiking up his yellow slacks that drooped in the can.