Elmore Leonard: Out of Sight

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

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. After busting his tail to get out here he wouldn't mind relaxing for a few minutes. He still couldn't believe his luck, getting hold of Glenn with just a few hours to spare, tell 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."

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.

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, 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. Foley would look up at a tower and say, "Imagine hoping to see a man on the fence so you can shoot him off it. Praying for the chance.

What kind of a man is that?" Buddy would say your common, garden variety hack, mean and stupid.

This was when they first met, found they'd both been doing the same kind of work and became friends for life at USP Lompoc: five miles from the Pacific Ocean and full of big-time California dopers, con men, swindlers… Foley would say, "Buddy, what're a couple of pros like us doing in this dog pound, associating with misfits, snitches and dysfunctional assholes?"

They got their release three months apart.

Buddy, out first, stayed in L.A. with his older sister, Regina Mary, an ex-nun who lived on welfare, drank sherry wine and went to Mass every day to pray for Buddy and the poor souls in Purgatory. 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 gate money 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?"

"Looking for a way out," Foley said.

"A judge with bugs up his ass gave me thirty years and I don't deserve to be here. It's full of morons and misfits but only medium security, if you get my drift." 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 twenty 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."

From then on it was Adele who called, always from a pay phone, to speak about this business with the Cubans.

By the time a date was set, Buddy had motored out from California and rented a one-bedroom unit in the Shalamar Apartments in Hallandale. It was on the ocean, just north of Miami.

Then Adele had called to say it was tonight and, man, he'd have to move. Got Glenn off his ass, then went out to look for a car and found the ideal getaway vehicle in a Dania strip mall: white Cadillac Sedan De Ville Concours. Buddy was about to jimmy the door when he saw a woman coming from WinnDixie, middle-aged, wearing pearls and high heels in the afternoon, but pushing the cart full of groceries herself, so she wouldn't have to tip a carryout boy, some poor Haitian who'd come here in a rowboat. Buddy stuck the jimmy in his pants, against the small of his back. He waited until the woman was opening her trunk before coming forward with, "Here, lemme help you with those, ma'am." She didn't seem too sure about it, but let him load the groceries in the trunk and take the key out of the lock. The woman said, "I didn't ask for your help, so don't expect a tip."

Buddy waved it off.

"That's okay, ma'am." He said, "I'll just take your car." Got in and drove off. The woman might've yelled at him, but with the windows shut and the air on high he didn't hear a thing. It was the first time he'd ever picked up a car this way, sort of like what they called car-jacking.

A quarter to six. If it was going to happen the way Foley said, it should be any second now. Almost all the cons were in from the athletic field, a few stragglers coming along in no hurry, moving through the spotlights.

Now Buddy was watching the woman in the Chevy again. He saw her hand come out the window to drop a cigarette and it made him think she did know about the break and was getting ready. He saw her other hand raise, inside the car, to the mirror and saw his headlights flash on the mirror again, the same way it happened before, when he first arrived. Moments later the Chevy's lights were turned off. Buddy was pretty sure she'd be getting out of the car now.

He waited, anxious to see what she looked like.

Foley watched the Pup creep up the aisle toward the front of the chapel, eyes on the floor, no doubt listening for sounds from below. Sure enough, he said, "I don't hear nothing."

"They're not digging now, Pup, they're done. Six of 'em in the tunnel as we speak, ready to go." Foley thought of something he might need to know and said, "What do you say when you're reporting a break?"

"That's an amber alert," Pup said.

"You sure they're down there?"

"I saw 'em duck into the crawl space."

"Where's the tunnel come out?"

"Second fence post from the tower out there. Go on, take a look."

Pup turned his back, walked up the aisle and across the front of the pews to a window. Lights in the compound reflected on the glass and turned the shades a dirty yellow. Pup said, "I don't see nothing there."