Chapter Two

Karen left west Palm^[50] at five, drove past miles and miles of cane and had her headlights on by the time she turned into the parking area of the prison. From the car, she could see a strip of grass, a sidewalk, the fence with sound detectors and razor wire, dark figures in white T-shirts inside the fence, brick dorms that looked like barracks, and picnic tables used on visiting days.

Lights were coming on, showing the compound^[51] with its walks and lawns; at night it didn’t look all that bad. She lit a cigarette and dialed a number on her car phone.

“Hi. Karen Sisco again. Did Ray ever get back? … I tried, yeah. He calls in, tell him I won’t be able to meet him until about seven. Okay?”

She watched prisoners moving toward their dorms in the spotlight beams. She picked up the phone and dialed a number.

“Dad? Karen. Will you do me a big favor?”

“Do I have to get up? I just made myself a drink.”

“I’m out at Glades. I’m supposed to meet Ray Nicolet at six and I can’t get hold of him.”

“Which one is that, the fed guy^[52]?”

“He was. Ray’s with the state now, Florida Department of Law Enforcement^[53], he switched over.”

“He’s still married though, huh?”

“Technically. They’re separated.”

“Oh, he’s moved out?”

“He’s about to.”

“Then they’re not separated, are they?”

“Will you try calling him, please? He’s on the street. Tell him I’m gonna be late?” She gave her dad Ray’s number.

“What’re you doing at Glades?”

“Serving process, a Summons and Complaint^[54]. Drive all the way out here …” Headlights hit Karen’s rear view mirror^[55], a car pulling into the row behind her. The lights went off, then came on again.

“I have to drive all the way out here because some con^[56] doing mandatory life^[57] doesn’t like macaroni and cheese. He files suit,^[58] says he has no choice in what they serve and it violates his civil rights.”

Her dad said, “What’d I tell you? Most of the time you’d be serving papers or working security, hanging around courtrooms, driving prisoners to hearings…”

“I’m giving the West Palm office a year. They don’t put me back on warrants, I quit.”^[59]

“My daughter the tough babe.^[60] You know you can always step in here, work with me full time. I just got a case you’d love, the rights of the victim at stake^[61].”

“Dad, I have to go,” Karen said.

“When am I gonna see you?”

“I’ll come Sunday and watch the game with you, if you’ll call Ray.”

“You get dressed up for this guy?”

“I’m wearing the Chanel suit – not the new one, the one you gave me for Christmas a year ago.”

“With the short skirt. You want him to leave home tomorrow, huh?”

“I’ll see you,” Karen said and hung up.

Her dad, seventy, semi-retired after forty years in the business, ran Marshal^[62] Sisco Investigations in Coral Gables. Karen Sisco, twenty-nine, was a deputy marshal^[63], recently transferred from Miami to the West Palm Beach office. She had worked surveillance jobs for her dad while in college, the University of Miami, then decided she might like federal law enforcement. She thought about Secret Service, but the agents she met were so fucking secretive – ask a question and they’d go, “You’ll have to check with Washington on that.”

She got to know a couple of marshals, nice guys, they didn’t take themselves as seriously as the Bureau^[64] guys she met. So Karen went with the Marshals Service and her dad told her she was crazy, have to put up with all that bureaucratic bullshit.

Karen was five-nine^[65] in the medium heels she wore with her black Chanel suit. Her marshal’s star and ID^[66] were in her handbag, on the seat with the court papers.

Her pistol, a Sig Sauer.38, was in the trunk with her ballistic vest^[67], her marshal’s jacket, several pairs of handcuffs, leg irons^[68] with chains, an expandable baton, and a Remington pump-action shotgun^[69]. She had locked the pistol in the trunk so she wouldn’t have to check it inside the prison. The Sig Sauer was her favorite; she didn’t want to have to worry about some guard fooling with it.

Okay, she was ready. Karen took a final draw on the cigarette and dropped it out the window. She straightened the rear view mirror to look at herself and right away turned her face from the glare: the headlights of the car behind her still on high beam^[70].

Chapter Three

Buddy saw the mirror flash and blond hair in his headlights, a woman in the blue Chevy Caprice^[71] parked right in front of him, Florida plate^[72].

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. He still couldn’t believe his luck, getting hold of Glenn and telling 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^[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 fence! By tower six!”

Foley edged in closer to see the car headlights in the parking lot shining on the fence, a dark-blue car and a white one behind it that had to be Buddy. Foley on his toes^[82] now looking at freedom, feeling it as the Pup was identifying himself, saying this was Officer Pupko and where he was, sending out the word too soon, before Foley was ready. He saw a figure by the fence now, as Pup was yelling into his radio, “I’m looking at him, for Christ sake!”

Foley took a moment to remind himself not to hold back. Hold back, you make a mess. He got the angle he wanted, stepped in and laid the two-by-four smack against the side of Pup’s head.

Dropped him clean^[83] with the one swing, without a sound coming from him.

Foley took another look outside, saw two figures now by the fence, before he stooped down to get Pup undressed. Undo his shirt buttons and then roll him face down, the Pup alive but dead weight^[84]. Man, it was work getting the shirt off, Pup not helping any. Foley quick put it on over his T-shirt. He heard a car horn blowing now, maybe Buddy trying to tell him something. Like come on, move. He saw he wouldn’t have time for the pants; he hoped his prison blue wouldn’t be noticed in the dark. Foley pulled Pup’s cap, too small for him, tight over his eyes, picked up the flashlight and slipped out the front door into the bushes.

Karen had the court papers in her hand, ready to get out of the car.

She saw prisoners still coming in from the athletic field, passing left to right in her view, all of them some distance from the fence. She opened the car door…

Wait a minute.

One of the guys, a figure she hadn’t noticed before this moment, was right by the fence. Close enough to touch it. The guy crouched… or on his hands and knees. Karen popped on her headlights again and saw him clearly.

Not crouched.

The guy was coming out of the ground.

On this side of the fence.

Another one came out of the ground.

Right in front of her. Not yards from the car. Two guys breaking out and no siren or whistle going off, prisoners still crossing the compound, not even aware…

Karen pushed the horn, held it down and saw the two guys by the fence, both Latins, looking into her headlights, stopped there for a moment before taking off in the dark. By the time the third one appeared, came out of the hole followed by another convict on his heels, Karen was out of the car.

Buddy didn’t see them right away. The woman began blowing her horn and that got him sitting up. He still didn’t realize the break was on until the woman was out of the car. By the time he saw the two cons they were running away from the fence, cutting across the road, the guard in the far tower trying to gun them down as they ran for an orange grove and disappeared from sight.

When Buddy looked for the woman again she was right in front of him – her blond hair in his headlights, long slim legs, hell, a girl – at the trunk of her car raising the lid.

Buddy’s first thought, She’s gonna put a con in there, help him escape.