"A real bank?" Foley said. "Like a Swiss bank?"
"Is it real? It must be," Cundo said, "they's money in it the Monk invests in bonds and real estate. Have it work for me, not bury it someplace, hope nobody finds it. Do you pay income tax on the money you take from banks?"
"Not as a rule," Foley said.
"I do," Cundo said, "I pay my fucking taxes. Maybe you like to rob this bank. How you do it? There's no teller you call sweetheart and ask her for money. The Monk say a time will come we won't use cash no more for most things you want. The Monk knows all this electronic shit with the digits. But I have to remind him also to keep an eye on Dawn for me. See nothing happens to her."
Foley said, "You're full of surprises, aren't you? Who's Dawn?"
"Dawn Navarro, man, the best thing ever happen to me."
For two years he'd been telling Foley his life history and never once mentioned he was married. Cundo said he didn't want people to know she was living alone in Venice, California, the Monk keeping an eye on her.
Foley said, "You trust the Monk?"
"Why you think I call him that? He's like a monk who took a vow never to fuck a woman. He don't even check them out. Listen," Cundo said, "after I was given the sentence I phone Dawn. I say, 'Can you live the life of a saint for seven years or longer? Not fuck any guys, not even an old boyfriend you run into and do it in the car with him for old time sake? Dawn say she would wait for me her whole life. Not leave the house except she's with the Monk."
Foley said, "He can keep guys away from her?"
"He packs, has a guy looks like a fox with a big Dirty Harry gun drives him, he goes anyplace. I was married to Dawn four months before I was return here to Florida. The first time I ever saw her was at a party in the Hollywood Hills. Dawn is laying down tarot cards, telling people their fortune. It becomes my turn and she starts doing my cards. But she don't say nothing to me. I ask her to tell me what she sees. Her eyes raise-"
Foley said, "She tell you you're going on a long journey?"
"How do you know that?"
"Isn't that what fortune-tellers tell you?"
"She say I'm going back to Florida within one year. I say oh, for what reason? She say she don't know, but I can tell she does and I wonder, why she wants to hide it from me."
Foley kept his mouth shut.
"We left the party. I took Dawn to Venice, to my white home-I won't stay in the pink one-the walls full of pictures of me with various movie and TV stars. We stay three days, man, never leaving, telling each other of our lives, not so much you know details, but basic shit. How I stole cars at one time and danced go-go as the Cat Prince. She thought that was hot. I ask her what she can see in her future. She say you can't be psychic about yourself, no real psychic can. She say most of the ones who call themselves psychic are frauds, they turn cards and tell you you gonna meet a tall, dark stranger. We drinking wine, smoking some good ganj, I say to her, 'So I'm going back to Florida, uh?' She don't want to tell me why I'm going, but I keep at her and she tells me she sees me in a courtroom on trial for killing a guy. You understand this is four months before I was arrested and then sent to Florida. I say to Dawn, 'Oh, I happen to kill somebody?' In her vision she sees me and another guy one night out in the Atlantic Ocean fishing."
"The mozo," Foley said, "who fell over the side and drowned."
"His girlfriend say he went out with me and never came back. I say I drop him off down the beach. No, the point I make, Dawn saw me in the courtroom four months before I was there."
"When'd you get married?"
"The next day after she tole me, we drove to Vegas."
"She's all for it, uh? Once she's seen the homestead?"
"You say something like that-you don't even know her. She say she been waiting all her life for the right guy, wha's a few more years? She looks me in the eye telling me things."
"She ever come to visit?"
"I tole you, I don't want nobody knowing things about her. She sends me pictures instead of coming here. Some of them, she don't have no clothes on."
"Is that right?"
"Keep me interested. She could go in a bank with you, tell you which teller will freak, which will stay calm."
"You little devil," Foley said, "you're gonna use her fortune-telling to tell you where the fortunes are, aren't you, work as a team."
"Is like Dawn tells this woman she's under some kind of spell, like maybe a ghost is fucking with her, hiding her jewelry she can't find."
"You're the ghost?"
"I can do that, sure. Or I go in the house at night and throw the woman's clothes in the swimming pool." "You've done that?"
"Not yet-we talking about it. See, Dawn gets rid of the fucking ghost she calls an evil spirit and saves the poor woman from going crazy. Charges her ten to twenty-k for it, and the woman is happy again. Is like I deliver a key for seventeen to twenty-k to a famous actor and he gets his confidence back again."
"You and the wife," Foley said, "devoting your lives to caring for people."
"Is the reason we fall in love with each other. We alike in how we know how to make people happy."
"But running a psychic con," Foley said, "doesn't mean she's actually psychic."
"She saw me in the fucking courtroom, didn't she?"
"She as cool as Megan Norris?"
"They both cool, but in different ways. Miss Megan is cool because she smart, man, always knows what to say. Dawn is cool because she knows what you going to say."
"They must be a lot different," Foley said, "in how they see things."
"Tha's what I just tole you, they different."
"Megan asked me how could I stand to throw away some of my best years in a dump like this. She wanted to know why I didn't get in a prison rehab program. Learn how to grow sugarcane."
"Burn the field you ready to go in and cut the cane, these poison snakes in there eating rats, man, they come out at you. Hey, fuck that. You tell her God made you a bank robber?"
"I think she knew it."
"The way I see you, Jack, you smart, you can be a serious guy, but you don't like to show anything is important to you. You here, you don't complain-not anymore-you could be an old hippie living here. You get your release…Ah, now you get to think what you going to do."
"I've been reading about Costa Rica," Foley said. "Go down there and start over."
"Yes, someday, uh? You want me to tell you," Cundo said, "you leave here, the first thing you going to do?"
"Rob a bank."
"See? Is already on your mind." "It's on your mind, not mine." "How you gonna get to Costa Rica?"
"If I make up my mind that's where I'm going," Foley said, "don't worry, I'll get there."
"I see you walking out the gate," Cundo said, "you thinking about the things you miss. Getting drunk on good whiskey for a change. Getting laid as soon as you can… How you gonna work it you don't have any money?"
"It's already arranged," Foley said.
Cundo stared at him to see if he was kidding, reading his face, his eyes.
"Is already arranged? How you do that?"
FOUR
AT FIRST, TRYING TO TALK ON THE PHONE IN THIS PRISON was work, all the morons in the line behind Cundo telling him what to say to Dawn, knowing he was talking to a woman. That's who every one of them talked to, a woman. These guys talking trash to him, telling him what to say, dirty things the morons thought were funny. He told Dawn, "They say to tell you, I get out what kind of things I'm going to do to you." Dawn said, "Like what?" "They ask me if I ever stick hamburger in your-I think they saying 'twat' and have a pussyburger." Dawn said, "What else?"