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.”

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

      Then she had called to say it was tonight and, man, he’d have to move. Got Glenn off his ass[80], then went out to look for a car and found the ideal one in a Dania mall: white Cadillac Sedan. Buddy was about to jimmy the door when he saw a woman coming from the store, middle-aged, wearing pearls and high heels in the afternoon, but pushing the cart full of groceries herself. Buddy stuck the jimmy in his pants. 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 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.

      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. 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.

      Chapter Four

      Foley watched the Pup creep up the aisle toward the front of the chapel, eyes on the floor, 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[81],” 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.

      “I don’t see nothing there.”

      Foley, picking up his jacket with the two-by-four baseball bat, moving through the pews to the window aisle, said, “You will directly. Keep watching.”

      Pup said, “They’s nobody in tower six this time of day – if they do come out.”

      Foley said, “You think they don’t know that?” moving up behind Pup, seeing the guard shirt stretched tight across the man’s back. Foley let his jacket slip to the floor; he held the two-by-four in his left hand now, down against his leg.

      Pup said, “There some car headlights out there …” Now he was pulling his radio from his belt saying “Jesus Christ…”

      Saying into the radio, “Man outside the