---

Скачать книгу

---

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[91].”

      She felt his hand move over her shoulder and down her arm.

      “You aren’t a hostage, you’re my zoo-zoo[92], 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.”

      She felt him moving to get comfortable.

      “You sure have a lot of shit[93] 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[94]? 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.

      “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.”

      “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? 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.”

      “How would you know if I’m smart or not?”

      “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[95] they’ll find out in about five seconds who it belongs to.”

      His voice breathing on her said, “Even if they get set in time, they’ll be looking for Cubans, little fellas with black hair, not a big redneck[96] driving a Chevy. I’m leaving this trip in the hands of my Lord and Savior[97] 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. Has one of those farmer tans[98]. 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 every 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. 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[99].

      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. 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. I started out driving for my uncle Cully when I was eighteen, right out of high school. Cully and a guy used to work with him. When they went in a bank, the guy jumps the counter to get to the tellers and breaks his leg. All three of us went up. I did two months and learned how to fight for my life. Cully did seven years before he came out and died not too long after. My other fall, I did seven years, that was at Lompoc, 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.”

      “You were in Lompoc USP, the federal penitentiary,” Karen said. “I’ve delivered people there.”

      “Handcuffed to some moron?”

      “We have our own plane. It still isn’t any fun.”

      “So that’s nine years. 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[100].”

      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.”

      “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 better keep quiet[101].”

      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

---

Скачать книгу