Dawn said, "I didn't hear anything."
It wasn't going to work, shooting at him in the dark, too foggy. No more than sixty feet away and she missed. She said, "Go home, I'm coming over."
She'd have time to unscrew the silencer and go back to the original plan. Get him in the mood looking at her navel, and shoot him.
Foley thought about the sound of the flight coming in to land, loud overhead, and the sound of glass breaking and wondered if one caused the other. He told himself to wake up, it was a gunshot. It was Dawn firing Tico's piece with a silencer, or everybody on the canal would have heard it. She missed and hit a window in the house where he was standing.
He had a gun, the Glock he took off Tiny Banger. Try to explain that: an armed convicted felon shoots a girl he said was trying to kill him.
He heard her call his name and came out from the kitchen with a fifth ofJack Daniel's and a couple of short glasses, a dish towel over his shoulder. He said to the well-mannered girl waiting in the doorway, "Black's your color, you make it work." "I look good enough to eat?"
"If you weren't here on business. Let me have your coat."
"It's all right, I won't be here long." She was unbuttoning the raincoat, both of her hands out of the pockets. Foley took the moment to pour a couple of doubles. Dawn came over, took one and drank half of it and put her glass on the table again.
Foley said, "The FBI was here."
She seemed to pause. "Really?"
"Lou Adams called off his dogs. I'm helping him think of a new ending for his book."
The coat hung open now, Dawn's hands in the pockets again holding it against her hips. Foley took a look at her slim-cut underpants and a shorty T-shirt that hung almost to her navel. He said, "Tell me what it is about a girl's navel? It catches the eye and won't let go."
"I suppose," Dawn said, "because it's right in the middle of the playground. You didn't call. I took it to mean we won't be getting back together. But if I'm on my own, Jack, I get both houses."
"How do you take over the deeds?"
"Little Jimmy loves me. He'll do what I ask."
"I'll bet he won't."
"Jack, believe me, okay?"
"Jimmy's changed," Foley said. He picked up her glass, offered it and she took it in her left hand.
"I don't see any way you'll get the properties."
"You don't know him. Little Jimmy gives me the houses and I let him keep the building."
"You know what Cundo would say about that?"
Dawn finished the drink and handed Foley the glass. She put her hands on her hips inside the raincoat, giving Foley pretty much the whole show. "I'm his heir, Jack. I put in eight years waiting for him. He comes out and beats me up."
"You have to be Jimmy's heir, he owns everything."
Foley moved closer and put his hands on the curves of her shoulders and felt her stiffen and gradually relax. "You tried to shoot me a while ago, missed and broke somebody's window."
"You think I should pay for it?"
"I think you ought to learn how to shoot, you want to kill me." He felt the barrel press against his stomach. "The thing is, you don't have any reason to shoot me. Jimmy's showing his manhood now. He said he watched you do Cundo and then you made him clear the table. He's breaking his word, but doesn't care. Zorro told him you're a witch, so he doesn't have to keep any promise he made. You can shoot me-you understand I'm only making a point-but it won't get you any closer to Jimmy. You can put his little face between your jugs and purr, Jimmy won't give up the houses. He says he'll die first. And you say, what? He may have to?"
"No, what I say, I'll swear I saw you throw Tico off the roof."
"You can't even put me there," Foley said. "I hate to say it, but it looks like you're out of business."
"Jack," her voice soft, "you don't mean that."
"I'll give you the name of a lawyer, if she can practice out here. Your problem, you've been thinking about doing Cundo for eight years. Still, I bet Megan'll see you get no more than twenty-five to life." Foley telling her in his natural way. "Jimmy said you put on a show at dinner. He had no idea what you were up to."
"Jack, don't do this to me."
She let him lift the raincoat from her shoulders to slip down her back and fall with a thud as the gun hit the floor. He brought Tiny Banger's Glock out of his back pocket, stooped to lay it on the cocktail table and picked up the pack of Slims. Dawn took one and Foley struck a match and held it for her.
"You know I could never shoot you," Dawn said. "I wanted to scare you, that's all."
"You did."
"Get you to help me. I aimed over your head."
"Help you do what, get away?"
Giving her the idea, and she picked up on it.
"Yes, vanish."
"But what did you learn?"
"I was too impatient." She looked up at him getting a plea in her eyes. "Jack, we think alike. We could disappear together, change the way we look-"
"Grow beards?"
"We're the Psychic Doctors. You'll have to make up another name, something more exotic than Foley. I've got all the lying-around money we'd need, close to a hundred thousand. We go to Costa Rica and decide what we want to do. A bank," Dawn said, smiling at the idea. "I've never robbed a bank. But we'd go for the vault, not one of the tellers. We'll go big-time for a change."
He watched her in her little white panties sink into the sofa and pour herself a drink and place Old No. 7 on the table again, close to Tiny Banger's gun.
Foley noticed, Foley telling her, "Buddy, my old partner, and I thought of going big-time, just the two of us get into the vault. Buddy said, 'You want to go in, scream at everybody to hit the floor and then wait, looking at our watches for the vault to open? That's what you want to do, with all the things can go wrong?' I told him he was right and we never went for the vault."
"Jack, that kind of a heist, you have to plan every step, know what to look for. I'll bet I could visit a bank a couple of times and know how to make it work."
Foley said, "Is it a robbery or a heist?"
"Don't make fun of me, okay?"
Foley said, "You want to go for six and a half million in houses, you give me up for a punk, a guy plays roof ball. For what? Keep the expenses down? Stick to bunko, getting it off of rich women." Foley said, "I was ready to take a chance on you. Sometimes I have weak moments. But you sneaked up on Cundo and shot him for a couple of houses. That's your style, not mine."
"Because you know him?" Dawn said. "You had nothing in common with him. I told you, think of Cundo the way you see a bank you're gonna rob. It's nothing personal."
"We jailed together almost three years," Foley said. "He thought I was still watching his back and I was playing ghost doctor."
"But he wasn't like you at all. He was vicious, he killed, he beat hell out of me."
"You had it coming," Foley said. "I did too. He could've shot us and felt okay about it, but he didn't. In his macho way he laid it on you."
"The guy-thing," Dawn said. "I can't believe you two were friends. It's beyond me."
"I didn't judge him," Foley said. "We walked the yard and kept our eyes open."
She didn't understand that or ever would.
So he brought it back to what was important.
"You think you can vamp Jimmy out of the house? You won't even get close to him."
"What does that mean," Dawn said, "you're blowing the whistle on me?" She placed her glass on the table, picked up the Glock and put it on Foley.
He said, "You don't hear 'blow the whistle' so much anymore. One I like, you ask if I'm gonna put the stuff on you. I say no, I've never ratted out anybody in my life. It's how the law gets you in their sights."