Elmore Leonard: Out of Sight

"A company buys out another company and the bought company's stock goes up. So if you have the inside scoop, you know it's gonna happen, you buy in just before it goes up and then sell when the stock peaks."

This fucking guy Foley, never even went to college.

"That's basically what he did," Glenn said, "made a fortune."

"Everybody thought the guy was a genius," Foley said, "till they found out he made it the old-fashioned way, he stole it."

"Anyway," Glenn said, "here's a multimillionaire making eleven cents an hour mopping floors, sweeping the tennis courts. Guy that used to be on the phone he said eighteen hours a day, had over a hundred extensions in his office, now has to stand in line to make a call. But the thing I'm getting at, the guy loved to talk."

"Yeah, to the U.S. attorney," Foley said.

"He rolled over on all the snitches he was doing business with and got 'em brought up. I can't think of the guy's name."

Glenn waited.

And Foley said, "Ripley. Richard Ripley. Called Dick the Ripper on account of how he ripped off the stock market. Big good-looking guy, but I think he wore a rug."

"Not at FPC," Glenn said.

"He was vain, though. What he talked about most of the time, outside of the market, was himself, and I listened. Anybody that can write a check for fifty mil, he says anything, I'm all fucking ears. See, my bunk was right above his. I was polite, I played kiss-ass to a degree, I'd stand in the phone line for him; we're out gardening I'd do the stoop work and let him rake… All this time he's talking about what a high roller he is and I'm taking it all in. I learn he's got money in foreign banks, plus, around five mil in hard cash, plus, loose diamonds and gold coins, a shitload of coins worth around four bills each. The man actually told me, five mil in cash. He said, quote,

"Where I can put my hands on it anytime I want."

Nothing to it."

Foley said, "He keeps it at home?"

Buddy said, "Yeah, where's the guy live?"

Glenn hesitated and Foley said, "He must've been getting out soon."

"He's out now. It was in the paper."

"I mean when you and Snoopy jogged away from FPC. You mentioned you were anxious. It sounds like you wanted to get to Ripley's house before he got his release. Is that it, you couldn't wait?"

"You might say I was highly motivated," Glenn said.

"Five mil sitting there waiting? All I have to do is walk out? No fence, no gun towers. The only thing to stop anybody from leaving is a sign that says Off Limits. Man, once I was pumped up-listen, they would've had to fucking chain me to a wall to keep me there."

"But you didn't make it," Foley said, "you and Snoopy. You know he was Maurice "Mad Dog' Miller back when he was a pro? Now you pet him he goes down."

"I didn't bring him along as a bodyguard," Glenn said.

"Maurice happens to live in Detroit, the same place Ripley has his home. No, the Snoop isn't any protection, but he knows the Motor City."

"So does Buddy," Foley said, "if a guide's all you need."

Neither one of them showing much interest, that time in the yard at Lompoc USP, five years ago.

Glenn got his release and moved to Florida, second only to California in the number of cars stolen, but better: car thieves were hustled through the system and hardly ever had to do time.

So if he ever wanted to get back in the business…

He tried to keep in touch with the bank robbers, still at Lompoc, wrote to them a few times but never heard back, not a word. So when Buddy called a few weeks ago it came as a total surprise.

Buddy saying it was a good thing he'd hung on to the letters and wasn't it a small world: he'd just arrived in Florida and Foley was here, out at GCI the past five months. The way Buddy put it, "He don't like it there and sees a way to bust out. If you aren't doing anything, you want to drive one of the cars?

Take a few hours of your time is all."

If he wasn't doing anything.

Glenn said, well, he'd been up to Detroit on a deal, but at the moment was free. He said, "Yeah, I think I can make it."

You had to be as cool as these guys.

"Detroit Buddy said, "I spent three years on the line up there at Chrysler Jefferson till I went crazy and had to quit. Let me ask you-you don't see a problem might come out of delivering your special orders?"

"I'm not in that business anymore," Glenn said.

"No, I went there to look up a friend. You remember Dick the Ripper we used to talk about, the Wall Street crook?"

"Wrote a check for fifty million," Buddy said, "you bet I remember him."

"My first visit I look up Snoopy. Maurice Miller at Lompoc, the lightweight?"

"He isn't brain-dead yet?"

"He's a manager now, for some club fighters. I gave him a hundred to check out Ripley for me, where he lives and all.

See, I never did tell the Snoop, even back at Lompoc, exactly what it was about, so he wouldn't know enough to try on his own. The next time I go up the Snoop's gonna show me where Ripley lives and maybe where he's got an office."

Buddy said, "How's a punchy little colored guy find all that out?"

"He's a crook," Glenn said, surprised Buddy would ask.

"He's into credit cards, bank fraud with bogus checks, the Snoop knows his way around."

"That's interesting," Buddy said, "but what I need to know is if you're clean. You been into anything else?"

Glenn hesitated.

"I wasn't what you'd call into anything, no."

"But what?"

He hesitated again.

And Buddy said, "Take your time."

"Okay. DEA happened to pull a raid on a house in Lake Worth. Nobody's home. They look around, find ten keys of base in the garage, actually in a Mercedes that happens to have my prints on the steering wheel and partials on the door handle.

I'm picked up, I tell them there's no fucking way my prints could be on that car, and I say I want a lawyer. But then after a while I realize they could be my prints, and you know how they got there? Parking cars. Two nights a week I worked valet at a place, Charlie's Crab, and I must've parked the Mercedes sometime during the previous weekend. I tell the DEA guys, they give me their fucking bored look. Ten days I'm locked up, have to appear twice in federal court. The first time's a bond hearing, a joke, like I can post a hundred grand. The next one's like a show-cause hearing. Okay, but by this time the public defender has actually checked and found out the car was at Charlie's Crab the night before; they still have the ticket with the license number on it. The magistrate, a lovely, intelligent woman, dismissed the charge and ate the ass out of the assistant U.S. attorney for being overzealous."

Buddy said, "Nothing else pending?"

"Nothing. How about if I go see Foley?"

"You don't want your name on the visitors list out there. Sit tight till you hear from me."

"You talk to him," Glenn said, "see if he remembers Dick the Ripper.

I'd still like you guys to go in with me. You think you might be interested?"

Buddy didn't comment right out and say if they would or not.

Glenn had seen him three times since that phone call. At a bar in West Palm near Glenn's apartment. A hotel in Miami Beach, a dump, where Foley's ex-wife lived. Adele. About forty but not bad looking. Glenn stopped by to see her another time that had nothing to do with the great escape: see if he could get her to put out without begging or buying her dinner. And the third time when Buddy drove him out to Glades Correctional, showed the route he'd take once he had Foley in the car, and where Glenn would be waiting with the second car.

Right here.

Twenty minutes with the Audi parked off to the side of the turnpike's southbound lanes, trouble lights blinking, a note stuck in the side window that said GONE TO GET GAS, Glenn waiting now among scrub pines and palmettos a good fifty feet from the car. If any approaching headlights turned out to be a trooper, Glenn would be out of there, through the trees and down the grade-about where they should be coming up now, with the girl Foley must've used as a hostage. But what good was she doing him now? He should've left her in the trunk of the car.