"I'm over five hundred pages into it."
Deneweth said, "I told him he ought to number his pages. You know, in case the wind blows 'em all over the floor."
Lou said, "I'll have a girl do that when I'm done, and type me a clean copy. I got a lot of notes written along the margins."
Deneweth said, "And get her to double-space it."
"You say this book," Foley said, "is about me?"
"You've robbed more banks than anybody else, haven't you? By the time I finish you'll be the most famous bank robber in history. I compare you to John Dillinger and Willie Sutton-"
"Willie Sutton-you're kidding."
"Today he's more famous'n you, but when I'm done-don't worry about it. I ask my agent and he said yeah, put Willie in it." "You have an agent?"
"Jack, you don't have an agent you're fucked. How do you think all these writers who don't know shit about dirty guys doing crimes get their stuff sold? My agent once had movie studios bidding on a book not one of 'em had read. The publishing business isn't about writing, Jack, it's about selling books."
"But the book's about me, my career?"
"Most of it's about your life of crime, with a big finish I'm looking forward to."
"But you don't know anything about my life."
"What're you talking about, I got your sheets."
"They don't tell you anything personal, how I wanted to have a charter fishing boat someday, but went to work for my uncle instead, driving for him. You know Cully did twenty-seven years and died in Charity Hospital? I can tell you what it's like to get caught finally. Here I was leading a life of, well, crime and thought I could get away with it," Foley said, shaking his head. "Lou, when you're young, you never think of making a mistake."
"You learned your lesson."
"Going down for thirty years opened my eyes."
"But a little late, huh? I'd like to put that statement in the book, I think near the end. Have it come right after I tell how I busted your ass back to federal prison, I imagine for life."
Foley said, "Lou, the day you die of being a failure, I'll do one last bank in your memory. I'll say to the teller, 'Sweetheart, this one's for that dumb but dedicated Special Agent Lou Adams.'»
Lou said, "Jack, if it isn't a bank…" He said, "Let me think a minute. You're the houseguest of the Cuban jailbird who's back of any number of homicides, the kind of heavy-duty ex-con he is." He looked at Ron Deneweth and said, "Tell Jack what you did last night."
"I followed you and the fortune-teller up to Beverly Hills," Ron Deneweth said, "to the home of a Mrs. Karmanos. Her husband died this past winter leaving her a pile of money. Lives up there off Benedict Canyon in a house used to be owned by… Lou, what's the movie star's name?"
"Ingrid Bergman," Lou Adams said. "Ron thinks you're trying bunco now, out to swindle the poor woman in some kind of deal. She puts up the money and you disappear on her. I said well, maybe. But if I know Jack Foley he's gonna hit a bank. He can't help it."
The phone rang in the water closet part of the bathroom, the toilet, with the quickest flush in Foley's experience, and a bidet, the two fixtures in there side by side. Foley, out of the shower drying himself, reached in and picked the phone off the wall.
She didn't say hi, this is Danialle Karmanos, she said, "You're home. I tried you a little earlier-"
Foley said he was out taking a brisk walk for an hour, covered about five miles. Danialle said that's what she did, but liked to run. Foley said, "Jog?" No, she'd run it, sometimes six, seven miles. "I could tell you're in good shape," Foley said, "and you watch your
diet."
"Oh? You can tell by looking at me?"
Now she sounded like she was coming on to him.
Foley said, "Miss Navarro told me."
"She told me," Danialle said, "I could drop in and see you. She said anytime, but I don't want to interrupt your writing."
His writing. He and Lou Adams both at it-and wondered for the first time if Lou was actually writing a book, and had an agent. He said to Danialle, "I've been practicing more than I've been writing lately, as you know. How're you doing?"
"That's what I'd like to talk to you about. Can I stop by, if you're free?"
"Anytime you want."
"I'm in the car. I'll see you in a few minutes."
They were on the sofa now among the throw pillows, a bottle of red on the glass-top table, Danialle sipping hers, saying, "Mmmmm," Foley feeling good, hair combed still damp, Foley smelling of Caswell-Massey No. 6, but not too much, Foley knowing when he felt good he looked good, but was not in a hurry. He'd let Danialle, widowed eight months, show the way.
She started in: "I asked an artist I know, Richard Guindon, if he thought I should wait a year before I start seeing anyone. Richard said, 'What are you, Sicilian?' I said no, but I'd be that kind of Old World widow if I didn't get Peter, God love him, off my back." She raised her glass. "And you made him disappear. It was amazing, and I didn't even see how you did it."
He said, "I thought you were paying attention," and stopped. Foley threw out what he was going to say about his approach to the paranormal, communicating with spirits, and said, "You put his ghost out of your mind and that did it."
She said, "I did it?" sounding doubtful maybe but not worried or especially concerned.
Foley took a chance, still looking right at her, and said, "I think you're tired of pretending there's a hex on you, put there by a ghost."
It took her only a moment. She smiled saying, "You caught me," and said, "No, I liked the idea of the hex. It was Madam Rosa I got tired of almost immediately, setting me up to give to her church. For ten thousand she'd get the gypsies praying for me and the hex would be lifted. I sent Rosa on her way and hung on to the hex and Peter's ghost. I'd think of his grandmother and become a scared little girl when I had to play that part." She said, "Are you mad at me, Jack?"
See how easy it was? Foley smiled, he liked her.
"Dawn said you wanted to give my house a spiritual cleansing. I told her the house is clean, Peter's given up pestering me. She said she'd speak to you about it." Danialle raised her glass and said, "Would you like to clean my house, Jack?" looking at him over the rim.
"Any time you say," Foley said, "but I don't do windows," and saw her taken by surprise.
"You're not as serious about it as Dawn, are you?" "She's real, she's psychic."
"And sort of spooky," Danialle said, "talking about the reality of the unseen world. It exists on a higher vibrational frequency than ours. The temperature's a constant seventy-eight degrees, and there aren't any insects, but there are animals, pets. Everything in this world, you and I, are all made up of vibrations. Did you know that?"
"I wasn't sure," Foley said. "You believe in heaven?"
"As my reward," Foley said, "for changing my life in time."
"You'll have to handle this with Dawn, tell her I'm a fake, but I'll pay for her time." She said, "Unless you want to keep it going. It's okay with me. But I will pay you, now, for dealing with Peter, you were great." She said, "You're not into the paranormal at all?"
Foley said no and watched her turn a hip to bring a checkbook out of her slacks. He said, "That was on the house. I hope Peter wasn't watching." Now she was leaning over the table writing a check. "I mean it," Foley said. "My first time running ghosts there's no charge." She didn't smile or maybe wasn't listening. He watched her sign the check and turn it facedown on the glass top.
She said, "If you aren't into the occult, what are you into?"
He watched her face.
"I'm a bank robber."
Her lips parted.
"You aren't."
Sitting up straight now in the pillows. "I don't believe you." "Yes, you do."