At one point during his visit Foley said, "How can you deal in a lot of money, millions, and you don't have even a scratch pad on your desk?"
Jimmy said, "I have a kid in the next office with three screens. He gets real-time numbers from the stock exchanges, New York, Tokyo, the ones that interest me. He's got bar graphs, charts, spreadsheets…He's twenty years old. What do you want to know? Ask Gregory."
"Do you want to or not?" Dawn said and looked at her watch. "It's half past two. Come on, if we're going to do it"-Dawn clearing the bed of her clothes-"let's get going."
"We make it a quickie?"
"Whatever your desire permits, Jack."
Cundo arrived in a Dodge pickup at ten minutes of four, a day earlier than Foley was expecting him. The idea, walk in the house after eight years and find Dawn busy with her laundry or watering plants, maybe sitting down with a cup of tea, reading. Or, he could catch her fucking Jack Foley.
The guy driving the pickup, Mike Nesi-a big guy six-four, two-forty-believed in white supremacy but would act as Cundo's bodyguard for five bills a day. At the airport Cundo brought out five hundred-dollar bills, handed Nesi three of them and put two back in his pocket. "The rest you get I see you do your job."
Mike Nesi stared at the little Cuban. He said, "Long as you got it." The sleeves of Mike Nesi's black T-shirt were cut off to show his tattoos, a crucifix on one shoulder, Jesus bleeding down his bicep, a swastika covering the other. On the short trip from the airport to Venice, the truck's dual pipes rumbling when they slowed down, Nesi said, "That's my three-forty-five Hemi clearing its throat."
Cundo said, "I had a Trans Am sound like that. Black with black windows. You couldn't read signs for shit, but I love that ride. Had a mean growl in idle. Gas it she howled and pressed you back in the fucking seat."
"When was this?" Nesi said. "In olden times?"
Cundo looked at Nesi, his shaved head, his beard shadow like dirt, the blue and red crucifix from his shoulder to his elbow.
"When I came from Cooba," Cundo said, "and began to make my fortune so I can hire guys like you to take me where I want to go…»
Nesi glanced at him. "I thought I was to watch some dink. Rough him up if you want me to."
"Keep him in one place so he don't move." "This is the bank robber?"
"The one I jail with almost three years. Foley, he's a good guy. He don't like to mix it up, get his hands dirty, so you won't have no trouble with him."
"I've heard of Foley."
"Robbed as many as two hundred banks. He's a professional, he shaves every day, but not his head. He keeps himself clean, he would never in his life have a fucking sacrilegious tattoo on his body."
Mike Nesi looked over at him. "You don't want your eyes swole shut, watch how you talk to me."
"You want my respect," Cundo said to this ignorant piece of shit, "or five bills a day? I don't have to give you both."
"Man, first day out the door you come on frisky, don't you? By the time it wears off, you better've settled down."
"Do what I tell you we get along."
"While I'm watching Foley, the fuck are you doing?"
"You find out," Cundo said.
Foley was in the kitchen having a beer, barefoot in his Levi's, no shirt on.
Dawn was upstairs in the shower.
He tilted the bottle up, took a swig of Dos Equis, and there was Cundo crossing the bricked yard from the garage, Cundo looking at upstairs windows; the guy behind him, a redneck Nazi with big arms hanging free, was looking past Cundo at the open doorway. Foley stepped into it.
"What're you doing home? You're not supposed to be here till tomorrow… " Went through all that, Cundo reaching up to hug him, Foley looking at the Aryan Nazi Brotherhood guy staring at him.
"Where is my dream girl?"
Foley said, "Who, Dawn?" kidding with Cundo the way he used to. Foley said, "She must be upstairs." He said, "We didn't swap houses till today. She's probably putting her things away, straightening up…»
And thought of the painting.
Cundo was moving around him now, into the kitchen. Foley said, "Wait," and Cundo stopped and looked back at him.
"Is it all right you stay here while I go see my wife I haven't seen in eight fucking years and we talk later?" Cundo walked through the kitchen and down the hall to the stairway.
It was in Foley's mind not to make anything out of the painting. Admit he saw it, yeah, since he'd already told Cundo that on the phone. He told himself to forget about it and turned to the redneck.
"I'm Jack Foley."
Mike Nesi said, "I know who you are. I had a buddy was up at Lompoc the same time as you. He kept saying how he liked talking to you. I said, 'What about?' He said, 'Robbing banks, the hell you think?' He said you were pretty good shooting hoops. I said I bet he wouldn't swish any I was guarding him. I took up basketball the time I was at Huntsville, down in Texas."
"The guy at Lompoc," Foley said, "was that Johnny Evans?"
"The same," Mike Nesi said. "Uptown Johnny-or was he Downtown Johnny? Yeah, he grew his hair out and got work in the music world. His first job, playing tenor sax behind poetry readings at a bookstore. You ever see that?"
"I don't recall," Foley said, "but I doubt it. You know he wanted to start a rock band at Lompoc, but your Brotherhood hard-ons wouldn't let him. They'd only allow him to play if it was Nazi death metal."
"Yeah, he got out, grew his hair, he's playing with the Howling Diablos now in De-troit. I saw Kid Rock with the band one time, was before he gained international fame with 'Devil Without a Cause.' Now he's got another hit, 'Rock N Roll Jesus.' You heard it?"
"I doubt it."
"The Diablos are still playing those grunge joints in the Motor City. You listen to 'em kick out their fuckin' jams you want to be on reefer or E. Or that other one, Salvia. Chew it or smoke it, it rounds off your edges. 'Less you start laughing and can't stop. That's the only trouble with it I know of."
"What're you doing with the little Cuban?" "Watching you." "In case I what?"
"I don't know you have to do anything." "He surprised us, a day early."
"He's known he's getting out today. He wanted to sneak up and surprise you. He did too, didn't he?" He looked past Foley. "Here he comes, bringing his wife along."
By the arm.
Dawn in her white-and-rose kimono, holding it together. Foley had turned in the doorway. He started toward them and Cundo, across the kitchen, held up his free hand to hold Foley there with his beer bottle, Cundo's other hand in a fold of sleeve gripping Dawn's arm, Cundo standing almost shoulder to shoulder with her, nothing in Dawn's eyes staring at Foley.
"You saw the painting," Foley said.
"/ saw it, you saw it," Cundo said, "every time you went to bed. You tole me she's wearing a bathing suit." "I didn't know what you'd think-"
"If you tole the truth? I would think you looking at my naked wife whenever you come in the room. I say to Dawn, 'You never tole me of this painting.' She say she want to surprise me. I say, 'Oh, but you leave it here to tempt my friend Jack Foley? Show him your pussy so he gets the idea?' She say, 'Oh, no, I just hung the painting in there today to surprise you.' Yes, but Jack Foley knows the painting very well, he's been sleeping by it."
Foley said, "I'm not gonna tell you I haven't admired it, as a painting."
"You think is good, uh? Very real-looking. What do you like
best, Jack, the breasts or the pussy? No, tell me instead who painted her naked like this?"
"Little Jimmy," Dawn said, "so you don't have to worry."