"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."