Here, give me the twenties, I'll put 'em in my pocket. Okay, I haven't had to give my partner a sign; that's good. Now, he's gonna wait thirty seconds till after I'm out the door, make sure you haven't slipped me a dye pack or set off the alarm. If you have, he's gonna shoot Mr. Guindon between the eyes. Okay? I think that'll do it.
Thank you, Loretta, and have a nice day."
Foley walked out the front entrance with his head lowered and his knees bent. Some banks put a mark on the doorway at six feet, so the teller, watching the guy go out, can estimate his height.
Buddy was waiting for him across Collins Avenue in a black Honda. Foley got in and as they drove off Buddy said, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. Bust out one day and back to work the next."
"Lompoc," Foley said, "you picked me up and we did the bank in Pomona the same day." He was quiet then, looking out the window at pink hotels, white ones, yellow ones, all past their prime but still doing business. He said, "I always feel a letdown after."
"Once you start breathing again," Buddy said. Foley handed him the brochure he'd taken and Buddy smiled.»
"Looking for money? You've come to the right place." They got that right. It's like they're asking for it. I can't figure out how nine out of ten bank robbers get caught."
"They talk about it," Foley said, "or do something dumb, call attention to themselves. The time I did the bank in Lake Worth for Adele and ended up in Glades? I drove away from the bank and cut through side streets till I came to Dixie Highway. I'm waiting for traffic to clear so I can make a left, I hear this car behind me revving its engine, guy in a red Firebird Trans Am, can't wait. He backs up about ten feet, guns it, cuts around me, tires screaming-it's like he thinks I'm one of those retirees, takes forever to make a turn. I'd just robbed a fucking bank and this guy in the Firebird's showing me what a hotdog he is."
"So you went after him," Buddy said.
"I made the left and tore after him. Caught him about a mile down the road and came up on the driver's side, close, seeing how close I could come while I stared at him, gave him the look.
He pulled ahead, I came up again and this time I gave him a nudge, sideswiped him. I was in a Honda, I think just like this one."
"I read it's the number one choice of car thieves," Buddy said, "your Honda."
"Yeah, I read that, too. Anyway, what happened, when I sideswiped the guy I blew a tire and fucked up the steering, the car kept going to the right, so I had to pull over. The guy in the Firebird-I don't think he had any idea what this was about-he's gone. I wasn't there two minutes a sheriff's radio car pulls up.
"What seems to be the trouble, sir?" No trouble, I just robbed a bank and my fucking car broke down. Outside of that… He's checking my license when he gets a report about the bank-somebody spotted the car-so the next time I see him he's pointing a big chromed-up Smith and Wesson in my face.
The only time I can ever remember losing my temper like that and I draw thirty to life."
"Time goes by," Buddy said, "you'll think it's a funny story."
"If I'm still around."
"I'll tell my sister, see if she laughs," Buddy said.
"I have to think of things to say to her before making the weekly call, otherwise we have these long pauses."
"Between your weather reports," Foley said.
Going over the causeway at Haulover Cut, Foley threw his brand-new Marlins baseball cap out the window. A few minutes later they dropped the Honda off at a strip mall and picked up Buddy's car-an '89 Olds Cutlass Supreme in faded maroon he'd paid cash for in L.A." costing him, Buddy said, a bank job and change.
Foley sat in the middle of an imitation Danish sofa in a room with bare white walls, a TV set and house plants Buddy had bought. The currency from the bank, counted now, was on the coffee table in a single neat stack he could press into a wad that would be not much more than two inches thick. Foley raised his voice to tell Buddy, out on the concrete balcony reading the paper, "Thirty-seven eighty. That Loretta's all right." He got up and walked out into the sunshine.
"She could lose some weight, though, do something with her hair."
Buddy said, "You see your picture? They pass this one around you can go anywhere you want, nobody'll know you."
"The straight-ahead mug shot, I wasn't feeling my best that day, I look like some kind of terrorist. The one of Chino, he must've been thirty pounds heavier then." Foley was looking down at the newspaper Buddy held open, at the seven head shots in a row across the front page, beneath a color photo of the red-brick prison.
"Chirino, that's Chino. He must've put the weight on right after he quit fighting, then got back in shape to make his run. Linares, the cute one, that's Lulu, Chino's girlfriend."
"They're the only two made it," Buddy said.»
"Four were shot down outside the fence in a hail of gunfire." All doing twenty five to life for murder. Your pal Chino, it says he hacked a guy to death with a machete."
"He was in a bind," Foley said, "owed a lot of money and got forced into throwing a fight. Only he didn't go down in the fourth, when he's suppose to-couldn't bring himself to do it, fighting this white kid-and waited till the sixth. Not only the guy wouldn't pay him, the promoter, Chino says the dive fucked up his chance of ever going for the title. A few years later he's done. So he got a machete, went to the Fifth Street Gym, Miami Beach, and used it on the promoter."
Buddy said, "Linares…"
"That's Lulu."
"Yeah. It says he had an argument with his roommate over a bag of marijuana and shot him nine times in the head with a MAC-10. Jesus."
"While the guy was sleeping," Foley said.
"I think there was more to it than the grass. Like jealousy. Chino says Lulu was straight before he met him, but I don't believe it. He was too good at being a girl."
"It says they're concentrating the search for him and Chirino in Miami's Little Havana."
"Where're they looking for me?"
"I haven't come to you."
Foley put on his sunglasses. He moved to the concrete railing to look out at the ocean and the beach and, directly below, the building's patio and pool area, seven floors down, everything pink and white.
"They mention Pupko? That's the guard gave me his shirt."
Buddy looked up from the paper.
"I thought you read this."
"I skimmed it. The diagram of where they tunneled out from the chapel's pretty accurate."
"Here it is, Pupko. Says he was overpowered by the escapees.
"Suspicious when he saw them going in the chapel, Pupko confronted the inmates…" Wanted to know why they weren't in their dorm for the evening count.
"While he was held immobile Pupko was struck repeatedly by inmate John Michael Foley'-there you are-'using a two-by-four from the construction site. Foley later made his escape in Pupko's uniform." It says you were doing thirty for armed robbery."
"I wasn't armed that time. I didn't hit the guard repeatedly, either. One swing, he went down. Chino reads that, he's gonna get the wrong idea."
"FBI, sheriff's office, Florida Department of Law Enforcement are all out looking for you, but it doesn't say where.
They think you may 'flee the country."
" "I've had to run like hell a few times," Foley said, "but I don't think I've done any fleeing. You ever flee?"
"Yeah, I read one time I fled the scene of a robbery. I don't see anything about Glenn."
Foley waited, watching him now.
"They found the girl's Chevy, at the Holiday Inn on Southern, right where we left it. Nothing about the car we picked up there.
It says the Chevrolet was taken from the GCI parking lot…"