Out of Sight / Вне поля зрения

© Шитова Л. Ф., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2019

© ООО «Издательство «Антология», 2019

Chapter One

Foley had never seen a prison where you could walk right up to the fence without getting shot. He mentioned it to the guard they called Pup, making conversation: convict and guard standing between the chapel and a gun tower, both men looking toward the athletic field[1]. Several hundred inmates along the fence out there were watching the game of football.

“You know what they’re doing,” Foley said, “don’t you? I mean besides working off their aggressions.”

Pup said, “The hell you talking about[2]?”

This was about the dumbest hack[3] Foley had ever met in his three falls[4], two state time, one federal[5], plus a half-dozen stays in county lockups.

“They’re playing in the Super Bowl[6],” Foley said, “pretending they’re out at Sun Devil Stadium next Sunday. Both sides thinking they’re the Dallas Cowboys[7].”

Pup said, “They ain’t worth shit, none of ’em.”

Foley turned enough to look at the guard’s profile, the peak of his cap curved around his sunglasses. Tan shirt[8] with dark-brown epaulets that matched his pants, radio and flashlight hooked to his belt; no weapon.

Foley looked at his size, head-to-head with the Pup at six-one[9], but the Pup had about forty pounds more on him, most of it around the guard’s middle, his tan shirt fitting him like skin on a sausage.

Foley turned back to the game.

He watched shifty colored guys going for the ball. The few white guys, who had the nerve and the size, played in the line and used their fists on each other. No Latins[10] in the game. They stood along the fence watching, except for two guys doing laps side by side around the field. The same two ran ten miles a day every day of the week. Coming to this end of the field now, getting closer, walking: Jose Chirino and Luis Linares, Chino and Lulu, husband and wife, both little guys, both doing a mandatory five for murder. Walking.

They hadn’t done anywhere near their usual ten miles and had Foley’s full attention.

A minute or so passed before he said, “Some people are going out of here. What if I told you where and when?”

The Pup was staring at him now, judging if a con was telling the truth or giving him a bunch of shit.

“Who we talking about?”

Foley said, “Nothing’s free, Pup,” still not looking at him.

“I get your liquor for you.”

“And you make a good buck.[11] No, what I need,” Foley said, turning to look at him now, “is some peace of mind. This is the most fucked-up joint[12] I’ve ever been in, take my word. Medium security and most of the cons here are violent offenders.”

The Pup kept squinting at him.

“So you turn fink?”[13]

“I give you”, Foley said, “the chance to stop a prison break, you make points, advance your career as a hack. I get peace of mind. I’d expect you to look out for me as long as you’re here. Let me run my business, keep me off work details…”

The Pup was still squinting.

“How many going out?”

“I hear six.”

“When?”

“Looks like tonight.”

“You know who they are?”

“I do, but I won’t tell you just yet. Meet me in the chapel going on five-thirty, right before evening count.”[14]

Foley waited, staring back at those slitty eyes[15] trying to read him.

“Come on, Pup, you want to be a hero or not?”

Noon dinner, Foley took his pork butts and yams[16] looking for Chino among all the white T-shirts and dark hair.

There he was, at a table of his countrymen eating macaroni and cheese. Jesus, eating a pile of it. The guy across from Chino giving him more, scraping macaroni from his tray on to Chino’s.

The man’s gaze raised to Foley, dark eyes beneath lumps of scar tissue[17], all he had to show, for his career as a welterweight[18] and killing a man put him out of business. Chino was close to fifty but in shape; Foley had watched him do thirty pull-ups on a bar.

Chino gave him a nod but didn’t make room[19], tell any of his people at the table to get up. Lulu sat next to him with a neat tray of macaroni and Jell-O[20] and a cup of milk they gave inmates under twenty one years of age to build strong, healthy bodies.

Foley ate his noon dinner at a table of outlaw bikers[21], cons who bought half-pint bottles of rum Foley sold for three times what he paid Pup to sneak the stuff in. He sat there listening to the outlaws having fun, comparing his rum to piss, enjoying their use of the word, speculating on what kind it was, dog piss, cat piss, how about alligator piss? They liked that one. Foley saw it had to be an uncommon kind of piss, said, “How about chicken piss?” and the table showed him bad teeth and the food they were chewing with grins and grunts of appreciation. Foley worked through his dinner and went outside to smoke a cigarette and wait for Chino.

Lulu tagging along when he came, Lulu with his girlish eyelashes and pouty way of looking at you. Chino had had to punch out many a suitor to keep Lulu for his own. He had told Foley Lulu wasn’t a homosexual before entering this life, but had become one and was good at it. Confiding things like that after Foley told Chino he was the most aggressive welterweight he had ever seen fight. Saw him lose to Mauricio Bravo in L. A[22]. when Foley was doing banks out there[23]. Saw him lose to the Mexican kid, Palomino, in the sixth when Chino’s right eye closed and they stopped the fight. Foley said, “I never saw a fighter take as many shots[24] as you did and keep coming back.” Chino’s record was 22 and 17, not good if you were the fighter,not bad if you admired him for staying with it as long as he did. Foley was the only Anglo the Cuban allowed to get close.

He had his arm around Lulu’s shoulder as they approached, then let it slip down to hook his thumb in Lulu’s belt, the next thing to having him on a leash.

Foley said, “Today’s the day, huh? You excited?”

The man was cool, no expression.

“I told you, man, Super Bowl Sunday.”

“Yeah, but I see you moved it up.”[25]

Now a glint showed in his eyes.

“Why you think is today?”

“You were out running this morning, sticking to your routine, anybody happened to notice. But you only did a couple of miles, saving yourself for the main event. Then I see you eating about ten pounds of macaroni. Carbohydrates for endurance.”[26]

“You want,” Chino said, “I tole you you can come.”

“I would, but I can’t stand to get dirty.”

“Is finish. All we do now is go out.”

“You sure you’re past the fence?”

“Fifteen and a half meters.”

From the covered space beneath the prison chapel to the grass just beyond the razor wire[27] perimeter fence. They had been digging since before Christmas with their hands and a broken shovel, using scrap lumber from the construction site of a new wing being added to the chapel to support the walls of the tunnel. It was Christmas Day Foley happened to see Chino and Lulu come out of the bushes in front of the chapel, their faces streaked with black dirt, muck, but wearing clean blues.

What were they doing, making out in the bushes? And Chino said that time to his Anglo friend, “You want to go with us?”

Foley said he didn’t want any part of it – only three feet of crawl space underneath the chapel, pitch-dark in there, maybe run into fucking mole rats face-to-face. No thanks. He’d said to Chino, “Don’t you know you’re digging through Everglades[28] muck? I’ve talked to people. They say it’s wet and’ll cave in on you.” Chino said, yeah, that’s what people thought, but the tunnel only caved in once. If they were careful, took their time[29], the muck stuck together and became dry and was okay. He told Foley they had dug down four feet and then out toward the fence, the tunnel a meter wide and a meter high. They worked two at a time in dirty clothes they kept there and put on clean ones before coming out.

Foley said to Chino that Christmas Day, “If I caught on, how come none of the hacks have?”[30]

Chino said, “I think they believe like you no one can dig a tunnel in muck. Or they don’t want to crawl in there and find out. They see us dirty they think we work construction.”

It was that day Chino said they were going out Super Bowl Sunday, when everyone would be watching the game, six o’clock.

But now they were going out five days early.

“You finish ahead of schedule?”

Chino looked toward the fence along the front of the yard, between the administration building and the gun tower close to the chapel.

“You see what they doing, those posts out there?

Putting up another fence, five meters on the other side of the one that’s there. We wait[31] until Super Bowl Sunday they could have the second fence built and we have to dig another nine ten days. So we going soon as it’s dark.”

“During the count.”

“Sure, and when they get the wrong count,” Chino said, “they have to start over. It give us some more time to get out of here. You want – I mean it – you can still come.”

“I didn’t help dig.”

“If I say you can come, you can come.”

“I appreciate the offer,” Foley said, looking toward the fence and the visitors’ parking area just the other side, a few cars in the front row facing this way, not yards from the fence.

“And it’s tempting. But, man, it’s a long run to civilization, a hundred miles to Miami? I’m too old to start acting crazy.”

“You no older than I am.”

“Yeah, but you’re in shape, you and little Lulu.” Foley winked at the queer[32] and got a dirty look for no reason.

“I ever make it out and have no idea where I’m going. Shit, I’m fairly new here, still feeling my way through the system[33].”

Chino said, “You do okay, man. I’m not going to worry about you.”

Foley put his hand on the little guy’s shoulder.

“I wish you luck, partner. You make it out, send me a postcard.”

Some of the newer white boys doing time for drugs called home just about every day after noon chow[34]. There they were lined up by the phone outside the captain’s office. Foley went in to put his name on the list, came out and went to the head of the line saying, “Fellas, I got an emergency call I have to make. Y’all don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

He got hard looks but no argument. These boys were fish[35] and Foley was a celebrity hard-timer who’d robbed more banks than they’d been in to cash a check. He gave talks at AA[36] meetings on self-respect, how to stay alive in here without taking too much shit.

If you saw it coming, hit first with something heavy. Foley’s choice, a foot or so of lead pipe, never a shank[37], a shank was crude, sneaky, it put you in the same class as the thugs and hogs[38].

A woman’s voice accepted the charge, Foley’s ex-wife now living in Miami Beach. He said, “Hey, Adele, how you doing?”

She said, “Now what?” Not with any kind of attitude, asking a simple question.

Adele had divorced him while he was doing seven years at Lompoc[39] in California and moved to Florida. Foley never once held it against her[40].

They’d met in Vegas where she was working as a cocktail waitress in a skimpy sequined outfit, cut low on top and high up her legs, got married one night when they were both feeling good, and it was less than a year later he went up to Lompoc. They hadn’t even kept house, so to speak. A few months after he got out, Foley came to Florida and they seemed to pick up where they’d left off[41], drinking, going to bed… Adele telling him she still loved him, but please don’t talk about marriage again, okay? It made Foley feel guilty that he hadn’t been able to support her while in prison, and it was this feeling that got him sent up again. He robbed another bank intending to give Adele the entire proceeds – show her his heart was in the right place[42] – but was caught and ended up at Glades[43] doing thirty to life. But now he knew he’d be here at least four years before he was eligible for parole[44].

He said to Adele, “You know that Super Bowl party? They changed the date. It’s on tonight, six o’clock.”

There was a silence on the line before Adele said, “Didn’t you tell me one time calls aren’t monitored?”

“I said not as a rule.”

“So why don’t you come right out and tell me what you’re talking about?”

“Listen to Miss Smarty Mouth,”[45] Foley said, “out there in the free world.”

“What’s free about it? I’m looking for work. The son of a bitch, Emil the Amazing, fired me and hired another girl, a blonde.”

“He must be crazy.”

“Emil says I’m too old.”

“Anyway,” Foley said, “the reason I called…”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s today instead of Sunday. About six, like only a few hours from now. So you’ll have to get hold of Buddy, whatever he might be doing…”

Adele said, “And the one driving the other car.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Buddy wants to use two cars.”

“You said he might.”

“Well, he’s going to, so he got this guy you know from Lompoc. Glenn Michaels?”

Foley didn’t say anything, picturing a young guy who wore sunglasses all the time, even watching movies.

He remembered the guy in the yard always working on his tan. Glenn Michaels. The guy stole expensive cars on special order and delivered them all over, even Mexico. Told stories about women coming on to him, even movie stars, but none Foley or Buddy had ever heard of. They called him Studs[46].

“You met him?”

“Buddy thought I should, just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“I don’t know, ask him. Glenn said he thought you were real cool.”

“He did, huh. Tell Buddy I see this guy wearing sunglasses I’ll step on ’em. I might not even take ’em off him first.”

“You’re still weird,” Adele said.

“A quarter to six the latest. But don’t call him on your phone.”

“You tell me that every time,” Adele said.

“Will you be careful, please? And don’t get shot?”

Five, in the chapel, Foley turned the lights off and went along the row of windows pulling the shades down halfway, keeping it just light enough in here to see the shapes of the pews. He walked around to the other side of the chapel now and stepped through an opening to the wing they were adding on.

He looked around at the mess of scrap lumber. A piece of two-by-four[47] tapered to a thin end, like a baseball bat, caught his eye and he picked it up.

It was going dark now, the sky showing a few last streaks of red, and there it was, the whistle: everybody back to the dorms for evening count. It would take a half hour, then another fifteen minutes to do a recount before they’d know for sure six inmates were missing. By the time they got out the dogs, Chino and his boys would be running through sugar cane[48].

The lines of inmates were coming from the athletic field now, passing through a gate to the prison compound.

Foley watched them thinking, You’re on the clock now, boy[49].

In the chapel again he placed his baseball bat in one of the pews, on the seat, and took off his denim jacket to lay over it.

Chino would be down there in the muck telling his boys to be patient, making sure it was dark before they came out.

Foley turned, hearing the chapel door open. He watched the Pup come in and glance around before closing the door. No weapon on him, just his radio and flashlight, the peak of his cap down on his eyes, the man anxious. His hand went to the light switch on the wall by the door and Foley said, “Leave it off.”

The Pup looked at him and Foley put his finger to his lips. It was happening now and he took his time.

“They’re right underneath you, Pup. They dug a tunnel.” Now the guard was unhooking the radio from his belt.

Foley said, “Wait. Not just yet.”

Chapter Two

Karen left west Palm[50] at five, drove past miles and miles of cane and had her headlights on by the time she turned into the parking area of the prison. From the car, she could see a strip of grass, a sidewalk, the fence with sound detectors and razor wire, dark figures in white T-shirts inside the fence, brick dorms that looked like barracks, and picnic tables used on visiting days.

Lights were coming on, showing the compound[51] with its walks and lawns; at night it didn’t look all that bad. She lit a cigarette and dialed a number on her car phone.

“Hi. Karen Sisco again. Did Ray ever get back? … I tried, yeah. He calls in, tell him I won’t be able to meet him until about seven. Okay?”

She watched prisoners moving toward their dorms in the spotlight beams. She picked up the phone and dialed a number.

“Dad? Karen. Will you do me a big favor?”

“Do I have to get up? I just made myself a drink.”

“I’m out at Glades. I’m supposed to meet Ray Nicolet at six and I can’t get hold of him.”

“Which one is that, the fed guy[52]?”

“He was. Ray’s with the state now, Florida Department of Law Enforcement[53], he switched over.”

“He’s still married though, huh?”

“Technically. They’re separated.”

“Oh, he’s moved out?”

“He’s about to.”

“Then they’re not separated, are they?”

“Will you try calling him, please? He’s on the street. Tell him I’m gonna be late?” She gave her dad Ray’s number.

“What’re you doing at Glades?”

“Serving process, a Summons and Complaint[54]. Drive all the way out here …” Headlights hit Karen’s rear view mirror[55], a car pulling into the row behind her. The lights went off, then came on again.

“I have to drive all the way out here because some con[56] doing mandatory life[57] doesn’t like macaroni and cheese. He files suit,[58] says he has no choice in what they serve and it violates his civil rights.”

Her dad said, “What’d I tell you? Most of the time you’d be serving papers or working security, hanging around courtrooms, driving prisoners to hearings…”

“I’m giving the West Palm office a year. They don’t put me back on warrants, I quit.”[59]

“My daughter the tough babe.[60] You know you can always step in here, work with me full time. I just got a case you’d love, the rights of the victim at stake[61].”

“Dad, I have to go,” Karen said.

“When am I gonna see you?”

“I’ll come Sunday and watch the game with you, if you’ll call Ray.”

“You get dressed up for this guy?”

“I’m wearing the Chanel suit – not the new one, the one you gave me for Christmas a year ago.”

“With the short skirt. You want him to leave home tomorrow, huh?”

“I’ll see you,” Karen said and hung up.

Her dad, seventy, semi-retired after forty years in the business, ran Marshal[62] Sisco Investigations in Coral Gables. Karen Sisco, twenty-nine, was a deputy marshal[63], recently transferred from Miami to the West Palm Beach office. She had worked surveillance jobs for her dad while in college, the University of Miami, then decided she might like federal law enforcement. She thought about Secret Service, but the agents she met were so fucking secretive – ask a question and they’d go, “You’ll have to check with Washington on that.”

She got to know a couple of marshals, nice guys, they didn’t take themselves as seriously as the Bureau[64] guys she met. So Karen went with the Marshals Service and her dad told her she was crazy, have to put up with all that bureaucratic bullshit.

Karen was five-nine[65] in the medium heels she wore with her black Chanel suit. Her marshal’s star and ID[66] were in her handbag, on the seat with the court papers.

Her pistol, a Sig Sauer.38, was in the trunk with her ballistic vest[67], her marshal’s jacket, several pairs of handcuffs, leg irons[68] with chains, an expandable baton, and a Remington pump-action shotgun[69]. She had locked the pistol in the trunk so she wouldn’t have to check it inside the prison. The Sig Sauer was her favorite; she didn’t want to have to worry about some guard fooling with it.

Okay, she was ready. Karen took a final draw on the cigarette and dropped it out the window. She straightened the rear view mirror to look at herself and right away turned her face from the glare: the headlights of the car behind her still on high beam[70].

Chapter Three

Buddy saw the mirror flash and blond hair in his headlights, a woman in the blue Chevy Caprice[71] parked right in front of him, Florida plate[72].

He didn’t see anyone in the other cars in the first row. Good.

Cons were coming in from the athletic field, but he didn’t see any hacks running around like crazy or hear any whistles blowing.

That was even better. He was on time. He still couldn’t believe his luck, getting hold of Glenn and telling him it was on. Not Sunday, today, now.

Glenn wanting to know how come. Buddy said, “We don’t have time to chat, okay? Pick up a car and be waiting where I showed you. Sometime after six. Glenn? A white car.”

Glenn didn’t see what difference it made.

“So we’re fairly sure it’s you,” Buddy said, “not some cop sitting in an unmarked car with a radar gun. And don’t wear your sunglasses.”

Glenn argued about that, too, and Buddy told him, “Boy, do as I say and you’ll get by[73].”

Buddy had to hurry to pick up a car himself, a white one Foley would spot without looking all over the parking lot, then drive most of three hours to get here from the Miami area.

As minutes passed he wondered if the woman in the Chevy was sitting there waiting for Cubans to come crawling out of a hole. He knew Latins liked Chevys and this woman could be Latina herself with dyed hair. Buddy turned his head this way and that looking around, wondering if there were other cars here waiting to pick up convicts.

Like a commuter station, wives come to pick up their hubbies.[74]

The blonde was in the right spot. Foley had told Adele the second fence post from the gun tower by the chapel, that was where they’d come out.

Buddy hated gun towers[75], even from outside the fence, the idea of a man up there with a high-powered rifle watching every minute you’re in the yard.

This was when they first met, found they’d both been doing the same kind of work and became friends for life at Lompoc.

They got their release three months apart.

Buddy, out first[76], stayed in L. A. with his older sister, Regina Mary, an ex-nun who lived on welfare[77], drank sherry wine and went to Mass every day to pray for Buddy. When Buddy was on the road doing banks he’d call her every week and send money.

In the joint all he could do was write, since Regina wouldn’t accept charges if he phoned.

Foley came out with his fifty dollars and took a bus to L. A. where Buddy was waiting for him in a car he’d boosted for the occasion.

That same afternoon they hit a bank in Pomona – the first time either one had worked with a partner – cleared a total of fifty-six hundred from two different tellers at the same time, and drove to Las Vegas where they got laid and lost what was left of their fifty-six hundred. So they went back to L. A. and worked southern California a few months as a team: two tellers at the same time, seeing who could score more than the other without setting off alarms. Buddy sure missed his partner.

When Foley first called him about this business, Buddy was still out in California staying with his sister. He said, “For Jesus sake, what’re you doing back in the can[78]?”

“Looking for a way out,” Foley said. “A judge gave me thirty years and I don’t deserve to be here. It’s full of morons but only medium security, if you get my drift[79].” The reason he was in Florida, he said, he’d come to see Adele.

“Remember how she wrote the whole time we’re at Lompoc?”

“After she divorced you.”

“Well, I was never much of a husband. Never helped her out with expenses or paid alimony.”

“How could you, making cents an hour?”

“I know, but I felt I owed her something.”

“So you did a bank in Florida,” Buddy said.

“It reminded me of the time in Pasadena, I come out and the goddamn car wouldn’t start.”

“You talked about it for seven years,” Buddy said, “wondering why you didn’t leave the engine running. Don’t tell me the same thing happened in Florida.”

“No, but it was like that. Like my two biggest falls were on account of cars, for Christ sake.”

“You got in an accident?”

Foley said, “I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”