Not crouched.
The guy was coming out of the ground.
On this side of the fence.
Reaching down now as head and shoulders appeared and another one came out of the ground.
Right in front of her. Not twenty yards from the car. Two guys breaking out and no siren or whistle going off, prisoners still crossing the compound, not even aware . . .
Karen leaned on the horn, held it down and saw the two guys by the fence, both Latins, looking into her headlights, poised there for a moment before taking off in the dark, down the fence that ran along the athletic field. By the time the third one appeared, came out of the hole followed by another convict on his heels, Karen was out of the car.
• • •
BUDDY DIDN’T SEE THEM RIGHT AWAY. THE WOMAN COMMENCED blowing her horn and that got him sitting up. He still didn’t realize the break was on until the woman was out of the car and he saw her looking off to the left, along the fence. By the time he saw the two cons they were running away from the fence, cutting across the road that came in from the highway, the two all of a sudden in a spotlight beam that angled out from the tower at the far end of the athletic field, the spotlight following them, its beam holding, and now the sound of rifle reports were coming from out there, the guard in the far tower trying to gun them down as they ran for an orange grove and disappeared from sight. When Buddy looked for the woman again she was right in front of him—her blond hair in his headlights, long slim legs, hell, a girl—at the trunk of her car raising the lid.
Buddy’s first thought, She’s gonna put a con in there, help him escape.
He watched her duck her head in the trunk and come out with a holstered pistol, what looked like some kind of automatic.
Jesus, even ready to shoot their way out.
But then she threw the pistol in the trunk, ducked in there again and came out this time racking a pump-action shotgun. Buddy watched her hurry to the front of her car and raise the shotgun, looking off, but the two cons were gone. Now a whistle was blowing inside the compound.
Buddy saw convicts in there gathering, looking this way, hundreds of them bunched in groups, but no hacks in sight. He told himself he’d better get out of the car, be ready. Whether he wanted to or not.
Once he was out he saw the girl, still by the front of her car, had the shotgun on two more cons, both filthy dirty, standing by the hole they must’ve come out of, the girl telling them to get their hands in the air. She sure as hell wasn’t here to help anybody escape. So who was she? Buddy could see the two cons making up their minds, couple of Latinos, already edging away—shit, they’d come this far. They looked out at that spotlight sweeping around in the dark, then looked the other way, along the fence toward the main gate, to see armed hacks coming out on the run, and that decided it for the two cons. They took off toward the road. Buddy saw the woman, this good-looking girl in a short skirt, put her pump gun on them and knew she couldn’t miss, but she didn’t fire. No, the hacks coming from the main gate, five of them with rifles and shotguns, they beat her to it, opened up all at once and kept firing and Buddy saw the two convicts cut down as they ran. The hacks were looking this way now; they couldn’t miss seeing the girl standing there in her headlights, but they didn’t bother with her—Buddy realizing they knew who she was. They were more interested in the hole the convicts had come out of. Now they were standing by it peering in, edging closer with their weapons ready, then all stepped back at once, bumping into each other.
A head appeared wearing a guard’s baseball cap, head and shoulders now coming out of the hole, the guy saying something to them, his face beneath the cap smeared with muck, shaking his head now, excited. One of the hacks was speaking into his radio. Another extended his rifle for the one in the hole to grab the barrel and get pulled out. But the one in the hole kept yelling and pointing out at the dark, toward the orange grove. Finally when the hacks moved off they checked the two convicts they’d shot, kicked at them to see if they were still alive and then kept going, and the one in the hole climbed out.
Buddy knew it was Foley, taking his time now to put on a show, standing with his hands on his hips like an honest-to-God hack, that serious cap down on his eyes. Buddy moved up to his headlights, raising his arm and waving at Foley to come on, and saw the girl turn enough to put the shotgun on him. Buddy raised the palm of his hand to her saying, “It’s okay, honey, we’re good guys.” Buddy wanting to appear calm, wanting to believe he’d have no problem with this cute-looking blonde—maybe a probation officer, though he didn’t think probation officers were ever armed.
She said, “What’re you doing here?” Not so much asking, putting it to him the way cops did when they were already pretty sure of what you were doing. She glanced around to include Foley. She knew, all right, but with the two of them to watch was too late making her move. She saw Foley coming at her filthy dirty, like a creature out of the swamp, giving Buddy time to take her around the neck. She fought him, jabbing him in the gut with the butt end of the shotgun, before Foley got in there to wrench it from her grip. They dragged her to the rear end of the Chevy, the trunk lid still up, and crouched there as some hacks came running along the fence past the dark gun tower and crossed the road toward the orange grove. Pretty soon they heard bursts of gunfire, then silence.
Foley said, “I bet that’s all the hacks they send out. Otherwise nobody’s left to mind the store.”
Buddy said, “Why don’t we talk about it later.”
He turned his head to see Foley and the young woman staring at each other in the Cadillac headlights, neither one seeming mad or scared, Foley saying to her, “Why you’re just a girl. What do you do for a living you pack a shotgun?”
She said to him, “I’m a federal marshal and you’re under arrest, both of you guys.”
Foley kept staring like he was giving the situation serious thought, deciding now what to do with her, Jesus, a U.S. marshal. But what he said was, “I bet I smell, don’t I?” And then he said, “Listen, you hop in the trunk and we’ll get out of here.”
FIVE
* * *
KAREN THOUGHT THEY’D PUT HER INSIDE AND LEAVE AND she felt around to find her handgun, quick, the Sig Sauer, before they closed the trunk lid and she’d have to kick at it and yell until someone let her out. There, she felt the holster, slipped the pistol out and closed her hand around the grip ready to go for it, six hollow points in the magazine and one in the throat, ready to come around shooting if she had to. But now the one in the filthy guard uniform gave her a shove and was getting in with her—she couldn’t believe it—crawling in to wedge her between the wall of the trunk and his body pressed against her back, like they were cuddled up in bed, the guy bringing his arm around now to hold her to him, and she didn’t have room to turn and stick the gun in his face.
The trunk lid came down and they were in darkness, total, not a crack or pinpoint of light showing, dead silent until the engine came to life, the car moving now, turning out of the lot to the road that went out to the highway. Karen pictured it, remembering the orange grove and a maintenance building, then farther along the road frame houses and yards where some of the prison personnel lived.
His voice in the dark, breathing on her, said, “You comfy?”
The con acting cool, nothing to lose. Karen was holding the Sig Sauer between her thighs, protecting it, her skirt hiked up around her hips. She said, “If I could have a little more room . . .”
“There isn’t any.”
She wondered if she could get her feet against the front wall, push off hard and twist at the same time and shove the gun into him.
Maybe. But then what?
She said, “I’m not much of a hostage if no one knows I’m here.”
She felt his hand move over her shoulder and down her arm.
“You aren’t a hostage, you’re my zoo-zoo, my treat after five months of servitude. Somebody pleasant and smells good for a change. I’m sorry if I smell like a sewer
, it’s the muck I had to crawl through, all that decayed matter.”
She felt him moving, squirming around to get comfortable.
“You sure have a lot of shit in here. What’s all this stuff? Handcuffs, chains . . . What’s this can?”
“For your breath,” Karen said. “You could use it. Squirt some in your mouth.”
“You devil, it’s Mace, huh? What’ve you got here, a billy? Use it on poor unfortunate offenders . . . Where’s your gun, your pistol?”
“In my bag, in the car.” She felt his hand slip from her arm to her hip and rest there and she said, “You know you don’t have a chance of making it. Guards are out here already, they’ll stop the car.”
“They’re off in the cane by now chasing Cubans.”
His tone quiet, unhurried, and it surprised her.
“I timed it to slip between the cracks, you might say. I was even gonna blow the whistle myself if I had to, send out the amber alert, get them running around in confusion for when I came out of the hole. Boy, it stunk in there.”
“I believe it,” Karen said. “You’ve ruined a thirty-five-hundred-dollar suit my dad gave me.”
She felt his hand move down her thigh, fingertips brushing her pantyhose, the way her skirt was pushed up.
“I bet you look great in it, too. Tell me why in the world you ever became a federal marshal, Jesus. My experience with marshals, they’re all beefy guys, like your big-city dicks.”
“The idea of going after guys like you,” Karen said, “appealed to me.”
“To prove something? What’re you, one of those women’s rights activists, out to bust some balls? I haven’t been close to a woman like you in months, good-looking, smart . . . I think, man, here’s my reward for doing without, leading a clean, celibate life in there, and you turn out to be a ballbuster. Tell me it ain’t so.”
“How would you know if I’m smart or not?”
“See? Putting me in my place, that’s the same as bailbusting. I should’ve known you’re a militant female, girl who packs, hauls all this crime-stopping equipment around . . . But, listen, just ’cause I’ve done without doesn’t mean I’m gonna force myself on you. I’ve never done that in my life.”
It amazed her, the guy trying to make a good impression. “You wouldn’t have time anyway,” Karen said. “We come to a roadblock they’ll run the car, find out in about five seconds who it belongs to.”
His voice breathing on her said, “If they get set up in time, which I doubt. Even if they do they’ll be looking for Cubans, little fellas with black hair, not a big redneck driving a Chevy. I’m leaving this trip in the hands of my Lord and Savior and my old pal Buddy. He’s pure redneck. You know how you tell? He never takes his shirt off.”
Feeling free and talkative. Karen kept quiet.
“I mean in the sun, like when we’re in the yard. Joint out in sunny California only a few miles from the ocean, never once took his shirt off. Has one of those farmer tans. You see Buddy in the shower, his face and arms have color but his body’s pure white. Good guy, though, wrote to his sister ever week without fail. He’d tell her what the weather was like. She’d write back and tell about her weather, which wasn’t that different. His sister used to be one of those nuns who never spoke. Buddy says she still doesn’t talk much, but now she drinks.”
Riding in the trunk of a car with an escaped convict, chatting, passing the time, the car bumping over back roads, the floor beneath them hard, ungiving. Finally when they picked up speed and were moving in a straight line, Karen believed they were on 441 now, heading for West Palm and probably the interstate. Not the turnpike, you couldn’t get on it from 441. She felt his hand patting her thigh, inches from her hand gripping the Sig Sauer.
She said, “Buddy. That’s his given name?”
“One I gave him, yeah.”
“Well, what’s yours? It’ll be in the paper tomorrow anyway.”
He said, “Jack Foley. You’ve probably heard of me.”
“Why, are you famous?”
“The time I was convicted in California? They said, ‘How about telling us some of the other banks you’ve done?’ This was the FBI. They gave me immunity from prosecution, just wanting to close the case files on whatever I could give them. I started listing the ones I could remember. After I was done they checked and said I’d robbed more banks than anyone in the computer.”
“How many was it?”
“Tell you the truth, I don’t know.”
“About how many?”
“Well, going back thirty years, subtract nine years state and federal time served, starting with Angola. You know where it is? Lou’siana. I started out driving for my uncle Cully when I was eighteen, right out of high school. Cully and a guy use to work with him, they went in a bank in Slidell, over by the Mississippi line? The guy with Cully jumps the counter to get to the tellers and breaks his leg. All three of us went up. I did twenty-two months and learned how to fight for my life. Cully did twenty-seven years before he came out and died not too long after in Charity Hospital, I think trying to make up for all the good times he’d missed. My other fall, I did seven years, that was at Lompoc. I don’t mean the place where some of Nixon’s people went, Haldeman, some of those guys. That was Lompoc FPC, federal prison camp, the one they used to call Club Fed. No fence, no guys with shanks or razor blades stuck in toothbrush handles. The worst that could happen to you, some guy hits you over the head with a tennis racquet.”
“I know the difference,” Karen said. “You were in Lompoc USP, the federal penitentiary. I’ve delivered people there.”
“Handcuffed to some moron?”
“We have our own plane. It still isn’t any fun.”
“The fog’d come in off the ocean,” Foley said, “roll in and just sit there in the yard, sometimes past noon. So that’s nine years, Angola and Lompoc. Add county time awaiting hearings, and that hole we just left, that’s more’n a decade of correctional living. I’m forty-seven years old and I’m not doing any more time.”
Karen said, “You’re sure about that?”
“If I go back I do a full thirty years, no time off. Could you imagine looking at that?”
“I don’t have to,” Karen said, “I don’t rob banks.”
“If it turns out I get shot down like a dog it’ll be in the street, not off a goddamn fence.”
“You must see yourself as some kind of desperado.”
He said, “I don’t know,” and was quiet for several moments. “I never actually thought of myself that way.” He paused again. “Unless I did without knowing it. Like some of those boys of yesteryear. Clyde Barrow—you ever see pictures of him, the way he wore his hat? You could tell he had that don’t-give-a-shit air about him.”
“I don’t recall his hat,” Karen said, “but I’ve seen pictures of him lying dead, shot by Texas Rangers. Did you know he didn’t have his shoes on?”
“Is that right?”
“They put a hundred and eighty-seven bullet holes in Clyde, Bonnie Parker and the car they were driving. Bonnie was eating a sandwich.”
“You’re full of interesting facts, aren’t you?”
“It was in May 1934, near Gibsland, Louisiana.”
“That’s north Lou’siana,” Foley said, “a long way from New Orleans, where I was born and raised. Once you leave the Big Easy you may as well be in Arkansas, where Buddy’s from Originally. He went up to Detroit to work in an auto plant once, but didn’t care for it, moved to California. I remember seeing the movie—it was after I got out of Angola and started doing banks on my own. That part where they got shot? Warren Beatty and . . . I can’t think of her name.”
“Faye Dunaway. I loved her in Network.”
“Yeah, she was good. I liked the guy saying he wasn’t gonna take any more shit from anybody.”
“Peter Finch,” Karen said.
“Yeah, right. Anyway, that scene where Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway get shot? I remember thinking at the time, it wouldn’t
be a bad way to go, if you have to.”
“Bleeding on a county road,” Karen said.
“It wasn’t pretty after,” Foley said, “no, but if you were in that car—eating a sandwich—you wouldn’t have known what hit you.”
“How’d you get the guard uniform?”
“Took it off a hack.”
“You killed him?”
“No, hit him over the head—the most ignorant man I ever met in my life.” He paused and said, “I should talk, after the stunt I pulled to get sent up this time. I’d just done a Barnett bank in Lake Worth. I’m on a side street waiting to turn left on Dixie Highway . . . It’s a long story. The only reason I was even in Florida I was visiting somebody.” He paused and said, “I better keep quiet.”
“You robbed the bank,” Karen said, “in your own car?”
“I wasn’t that dumb. No, but then I got in a situation with the car . . . The dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”
She felt Foley’s fingertips moving idly on her thigh, his voice, quiet and close to her, saying, “You’re sure easy to talk to. I wonder—say we met under different circumstances and got to talking—I wonder what would happen.”
“Nothing,” Karen said.
“I mean if you didn’t know who I was.”
“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“See, that’s what I mean you’re easy to talk to. There isn’t any bullshit, you speak your mind. Here you are locked up in the dark with a guy who’s filthy, smells like a sewer, just busted out of prison and you don’t even seem like you’re scared. Are you?”
“Of course I am.”
“You don’t act like it.”
“What do you want me to do, scream? I don’t think it would help much.”
Foley let his breath out and she felt it on her neck, almost like a sigh. He said, “I still think if we met under different circumstances, like in a bar . . . “
Karen said, “You have to be kidding.”
After that, for a few miles, neither of them spoke until Foley said, “Another one Faye Dunaway was in I liked, Three Days of the Condor.”