Road Dogs (2009)( )

Road Dogs

Elmore Leonard

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Chapter
ONE

THEY PUT FOLEY AND THE CUBAN TOGETHER IN THE BACK-seat of the van and took them from the Palm Beach County jail on Gun Club to Glades Correctional, the old redbrick prison at the south end of Lake Okeechobee. Neither one said a word during the ride that took most of an hour, both of them handcuffed and shackled.

They were returning Jack Foley to do his thirty years after busting out for a week, Foley's mind on a woman who made intense love to him one night in Detroit, pulled a Sig Sauer .38 the next night, shot him and sent him back to Florida.

The Cuban, a little guy about fifty with dyed hair pulled back in a ponytail, was being transferred to Glades from the state prison at Starke, five years down, two and a half to go of a second-degree murder conviction. The Cuban was thinking about a woman he believed he loved, this woman who could read minds.

They were brought to the chow hall, their trays hit with macaroni and cheese and hot dogs from the steam table, three slices of white bread, rice pudding and piss-poor coffee and sat down next to each other at the same table, opposite three inmates who stopped eating.

Foley knew them, Aryan Brotherhood neo-Nazi skinheads, and they knew Foley, a Glades celebrity who'd robbed more banks than anybody they'd ever heard of walk in and walk out, nothing to it until Foley pulled a dumb stunt and got caught. He ran out of luck when he drew His Honor Maximum Bob in Criminal Court, Palm Beach County. The white-power convicts accepted Foley because he was as white as they were, but they never showed they were impressed by his all-time-high number of banks. Foley sat down and they started in.

Jesus, look at him eat. Jack, you come back 'cause you miss the chow?

Boy, you get any pussy out there?

He didn't, what'd he bust out for?

I heard you took a .38 in the shank, Jack. Is that right, you let this puss shoot you?

Federal U. S. fuckin' marshal, shows her star and puts one in his leg.

Foley ate his macaroni and cheese staring at the mess of it on his tray while the skinhead hard-ons made their lazy remarks Foley would hear again and again for thirty years, from the Brotherhood, from the Mexican Mafia, from Nuestra Familia, from the black guys all ganged up; thirty years in a convict population careful not to dis anybody, but thinking he could stand up with the tray, have the tables looking at him and backhand it across bare skulls, show 'em he was as dumb as they were and get put in the box for sixty days.

Now they were after the Cuban.

Boy, we don't allow niggers at our table.

They brought Foley into it asking him, How we suppose to eat, Jack, this dinge sitting here?

Right now was the moment to pick up the tray and go crazy, not saying a word but getting everybody's attention, the tables wondering, Jesus, what happened to Foley?

And thought, For what?

He said to the three white-supremacy freaks with their mass of tattoos, This fella's down from Starke. You understand? I'm showing him around the hotel. He wants to visit with his Savior I point him to the chapel. He wants a near-death-experience hangover, I tell him to see one of you fellas for some pruno. But you got this stranger wrong. He ain't colored, he's a hundred percent greaseball from down La Cucaracha way, Foley looking at the three hard-ons and saying, Cha cha, cha.

Later on when they were outside the Cuban stopped Foley. You call me a greaseball to my face?

This little bit of a guy acting tough.

Where you been, Foley said, you get stuck with the white- power ding-dongs, the best thing is to sound as dumb as they are and they'll think you're funny. You heard them laugh, didn't you? And they don't laugh much. It's against their code of behavior.

This was how Foley and Cundo hooked up at Glades.

Cundo said Foley was the only white guy in the joint he could talk to, Foley a name among all the grunge here and knew how to jail. Stay out of other people's business. Cundo's favorite part of the day was walking the yard with Foley, a couple of road dogs in tailored prison blues, and tell stories about himself.

How he went to prison in Cuba for shooting a Russian guy. Took his suitcase and sold his clothes, his shoes, all of it way too big for him. Came here during the time of the boatlift from Mariel, twenty-seven years ago, man, when Fidel opened the prisons and sent all the bad dudes to La Yuma what he called the United States for their vacation.

How he got into different hustles. Didn't care for armed robbery. Liked boosting cars at night off a dealer's lot. He danced go-go in gay bars as the Cat Prince, wore a leopard-print jockstrap, cat whiskers painted on his face, but scored way bigger tips Ladies Night at clubs, the ladies stuffing his jock with bills. Here is this middle-age mama with big tetas, she say to me, 'Come to my home Saturday, my husband is all day at his golf club.' She say to me, 'I give you ten one-hundred-dollar bills and eat you alive.'

Man, and how he was shot three times from his chest to his belly and came so close to dying he saw the dazzle of gold light you hear about when you approaching heaven, right there. But the emergency guys see he's still breathing, blood coming out his mouth, his heart still working, man, and they deliver him alive to Jackson Memorial where he was in a coma thirty-four days, woke up and faked it a few more days listening to Latina voices, the nurse helpers talking about him. He learned he was missing five inches of his colon but healed, sewed up, good as new. When he opened his eyes he noticed the mozo mopping the floor wore a tattoo on his hand, an eye drawn at the base of his thumb and index finger, a kind of eye he remembered from Combinado del Este, the prison by Havana. He said to the mozo, We both Marielitos, uh? Get me out of here, my brother, and I make you rich.

Foley said, You thought you'd be cuffed to the bed?

Maybe I was at first, I don't know. I was into some shit at the time didn't work out.

A cop shot you?

No, was a guy, a picture-taker in South Beach, before it became the famous South Beach. Before that he was a Secret Service guy but quit to take pictures. One he did, a guy being thrown off I-95 from the overpass, man, down to the street, the guy in the air, Joe LaBrava sold to a magazine and became famous.

Why'd he shoot you?

Man, I was gonna shoot him. I know him, he's a good guy, but I was not going to prison for a deal this woman talk me into doing, with this dumbbell hillbilly rent-a-cop. I didn't tell you about it? I pull a gun and this guy who use to be in the Secret Service beats me to the draw, puts three bullets in me, right here, man, like buttons. I should be dead Cundo grinning now but here I am, uh? I'm in good shape, I weigh the same now as the day I left Cuba. Try to guess how much.

He was about five-four, not yet fifty but close to it, his dyed hair always slicked back in a ponytail. A hundred and thirty, Foley said.

One twenty-eight. You know how I keep my weight? I don't eat that fucking macaroni and cheese they give us. I always watch what I eat. Even when I was in Hollywood going out every night? Is where I went when the mozo got me out of the hospital, to L. A., man, see a friend of mine. You understand this was the time of cocaine out there. All I had to do was hook up with a guy I know from Miami. Soon I'm taking care of cool dudes in the picture business, actors, directors I was like them, I partied with them, I was famous out there.

Foley said, Till you got busted.

There was a snitch. Always, even in Hollywood.

One of your movie buddies.

I believe a major star, but they don't tell me who the snitch is. The magistrate set a two-million-dollar bond and I put up a home worth two and a half I bought for six hundred when I was first out there, all the rooms with high ceilings. I pay nine bills for another worth an easy four and a half million today. Both homes on the same canal, almost across from each other.

Foley said, In Hollywood?

In Venice, California, like no place on earth, man, full of cool people and shit.

Why do you need two homes?

At one time I had four homes I like very much. I wait, the prices go up to the sky and I sell two of them. Okay, but the West Coast feds see Florida has a detainer on me for a homicide, a guy they say I did when I was in Miami Beach.

Foley said, The mozo?

Cundo said, Is funny you think of him.

Why didn't you trust him?

Why should I? I don't know him. They say one time we out in the ocean fishing I push him overboard.

Foley said, You shot him first?

Cundo shook his head grinning just a little. Man, you something, how you think you know things.

What I don't understand, Cundo said, walking the yard with Foley, I see you as a hip guy, you smart for a fucking bank robber, but two falls, man, one on top the other, you come out you right back in the slam. Tell me how you think about it, a smart guy like you have to look at thirty years.

Foley said, You know how a dye pack works? The teller slips you one, it looks like a pack of twenties in a bank strap. It explodes as you leave the bank. Something in the doorframe sets it off. I walk out of a bank in Redondo Beach, the dye pack goes off and I'm sprayed with red paint, people on the street looking at me. Twenty years of going in banks and coming out clean, my eyes open. I catch a dye pack and spend the next seven in federal detention, Lompoc, California. I came out, Foley said, and did a bank in Pomona the same day. You fall off a bike you get back on. I think, Good, I've still got it. I made over six grand in Pomona. I come back to Florida my wife Adele divorced me while I'm at Lompoc and she's having a tough time paying her bills. She's working for a magician, Emile the Amazing, jumping out of boxes till he fired her and hired a girl Adele said has bigger tits and was younger. I do a bank in Lake Worth with the intention, give Adele the proceeds to keep her going for a few months. I leave the bank in the Honda I'm using, America's most popular stolen car at the time. Now I'm waiting to make a left turn on to Dixie Highway and I hear the car behind me going va-room va-room, revving up, the guy can't wait. He backs up and cuts around me, his tires screaming, like I'm a retiree waiting to make the turn when it's safe to pull out.

You just rob the fucking bank, Cundo said.

And this guy's showing me what a hotdog he is.

So you go after him, Cundo said.

I tore after him, came up on the driver's side and stared at him. Gave him the killer look, Cundo said. That's right, and he gives me the finger. I cranked the wheel and sideswiped him, stripped his chrome and ran him off the road.

I would've shot the fucker, Cundo said.

What happened, I tore up both tires on the side I swiped him. By the time I got the car pulled over, a deputy's coming up behind me with lights flashing.

Tha's called road rage, Cundo said. I'm surprise, a cool guy like you losing it. How you think it happen?

I wasn't paying attention. I let myself catch a dye pack in Redondo Beach, something I swore would never happen. The next one, seven years later, you're right, I lost it. You know why? Because a guy with a big engine wearing shades, the top down, no idea I'd just robbed a bank, made me feel like a wimp. And that, Foley said, is some serious shit to consider.

Man, you got the balls to bust out of prison, you don't have to prove nothing.

Out for a week and back inside.

What could you do? The girl shot you, the chick marshal. You don't tell me about her.

Karen Sisco. Foley kept her to himself. She gave him moments to think about and look at over and over for a time, a few months now, but there weren't enough moments to last thirty years.

Foley's conviction didn't make sense to Cundo. You get thirty years for one bank, and I'm maxing out seven and a half for killing a guy? How come you don't appeal?

Foley said he did, but the attorney appointed by the court told him he didn't have a case. If I can appeal now, Foley said, I will. If I have to wait too long, one of these nights I'll get shot off the wire and that'll be that.

Cundo said, Let me tell you how a smart chick lawyer can change your life for you.

I was told by the Florida state attorney, the federal court in L. A. gave me up 'cause I can get the death penalty here or life with no parole. But this cool chick lawyer I got and I thank Jesus and Saint Barbara I can afford to pay her she say the reason L. A. gave me up, they have a snitch they don't want to burn.

One of the movie stars, Foley said, you turned into a drug addict?

Miss Megan say maybe because they like his TV show. Plays a prosecutor, busts his balls to put bad guys away. You have to meet her, Miss Megan Norris, the smartest chick lawyer I ever met. She say the Florida state attorney isn't sure he can put me away on the kind of hearsay evidence he's got. She believe he's thinking of sending me back to the Coast. They find me guilty out there I do two-hundred and ninety-five months, man, federal. You know how long that is? The rest of my fucking life. But Miss Megan say they don't want me either if they have to give up their snitch, the famous actor. So she say to the state attorney here, 'You don't want Mr. Rey?' She say, 'Even if he was to plead to second degree and does a good seven for you straight up, no credit?' Man, the state attorney is tempted, but he like me to do twenty-five to life. Miss Megan tells him she can get that out on the Coast where they have new prisons, not old joints full of roaches, toilets that back up. No, she sticks to the seven and adds, okay, six months, take it or leave it. She ask me can I do it. Look at me, I already done five years at Starke. It got crowded up there, the state prison, man, so they send me to this joint, suppose to be medium security, 'cause I don't fuck with the hacks or have snitches set on fire. Ones they can prove. Can I do three more less five months, all I have left of my time?