She said, "Good, you got me out of that nutty role I was playing. I was afraid to tell Dawn. I kept thinking if I don't tell the right person, word will get around I've lost it. I knew I could tell you and you'd understand. You didn't seem that interested in what you were doing, though you and I got along fine. But Dawn? I didn't have a good feeling about her."
"I told Dawn the ghost was your own idea and she said, 'Making up a story about a ghost doesn't mean there isn't one in the house.'»
"She believes there is?"
"She'd like to."
"Well, my maids believe it. And you know I believed you were actually a ghost catcher." Danny leaned on the table, close enough to Foley to look in his eyes. She said, "You know, there might be one after all."
"The rocking chair?"
"And other things that don't seem quite normal." "More paranormal?"
She said, "Listen to the ghost catcher. Have you ever thought of acting?"
He felt her moving in, coming at him now.
"To tell you the truth," Foley said, "I have played a part now and then, when I had to."
She said, "Oh, in prison, yes, of course," still close to him. "The kind of situation-a smelly, hulking convict, tattoos all over him, wants you to be his sweetheart? What do you do, kick him in the nuts?"
"He'd have to be a new arrival. I'd tell him I'm famous, known to the hacks and the population as the most artful bank robber in the known world, and if he tries to bend me to his will he'll do ninety days in the box."
"You just gave me the chills. If I told that to Wolfgang," Danny said, "you could get a table anytime you walked in."
"I'm known inside prison," Foley said, "and to some degree with FBI agents, but not the general public." He almost told her about the book Lou Adams was writing, over five hundred pages into it.
But Danny wanted to know if he'd ever robbed a First Bank, like the one across the street.
"I might've," Foley said, "but I'm not sure. I know I've never done that one." Trying to see the bank through the ornamental plants in front of Piccolo's.
"Would you sit here and case it?"
"I'd look it over from a car, not sitting here. Norberto tells the cops, 'Yes, of course I remember him, Mrs. Karmanos says is the most famous bank robber in America.' I'd pass on that bank anyway, the security guy sitting in front."
"I saw him as we got out of the car," Danialle said, "he's just some old guy they hired."
"Yeah, but he's a good kind of old guy. I saw him too," Foley said. "He's over seventy, weighs a hundred and forty pounds, wears white socks with his uniform and has a big.38 revolver on his belt he knows how to shoot. He took this job after he retired from the sheriff's office."
"You're guessing," Danialle said.
"I'll tell you another reason," Foley said. "In the past hour a cop car has driven past four times. One drove into the parking lot to turn around, instead of making a Uey, what he'd do if he was after somebody going the other way."
Danialle said, "There're cop cars all over Beverly Hills, and policemen on beats, and policewomen."
"I've noticed there's a lot," Foley said. "But you're right, I haven't been around here long enough to get local police customs straight."
The check came. Foley picked it up and she let him. He paid with his credit card balance running low. While he was signing Danny said, "If you want we can go over to First Bank, I'll tell them I have an account, so you won't have any trouble depositing the check."
"What I think I'll do," Foley said, "is deposit half of it and take the rest in cash. I don't walk out of a bank with at lease five grand, I feel like a failure."
TWENTY-ONE
IT WAS THE FIRST TIME FOLEY COULD RECALL GOING IN A bank to open an account. It was a lot different from the times he'd made withdrawals with a note. He was introduced to the manager, another first, a pleasant young man who seemed surprised and then delighted to see Mrs. Karmanos, happy to shake her hand and Fo-ley's, and brought them to a conference room set off behind a glass wall. Across the lobby were the teller windows, security cameras on the wall behind them, four of the windows doing business, customers waiting in line, but no glass separating them from the money. Three other windows showed framed signs that said they were closed. They sat at the conference table waiting for the manager to return with the paperwork and Foley's five thousand in hundreds, fifty of them. He'd told the manager new bills were fine.
"It's nice to be rich," Foley said, "not have to stand in line."
Danny said she was surprised the manager knew who she was. Foley looked at her with no expression and she said, "Really, I've only been here a few times."
"Doing some banking," Foley said, "so you're late for lunch."
"Jack, when your name will open a picture and producers are sending you scripts, you can be on time for lunch. I'm not sure why," Danny said, "but you've made me want to get back to work. I think it's your energy. I can feel it."
"My energy," Foley said.
"I'm ready to pick up where Peter and I left off on Born Again and Again"
"Dawn said they're looking for another actress to play the faith healer."
"Jack, who do you think told Dawn? I said I doubted I'd be working again for at least a year. But then I thought, Why? You've got a hit, keep the momentum going. Offer your friend Jack Foley a part. I see you come up to the front of the auditorium, your head down. I say, 'Look up at me, Jack Foley'-you're kneeling at my feet. I take your head in my hands and look up at the lights, like God is telling me what to do as I rub your head, feeling it, getting in touch with you, and before you know it, you're healed. You grab me around the knees and have to be restrained."
"What's wrong with me," Foley said, "I have leprosy eating away at my nose?"
She shook her head waving him off and her gaze drifted across the lobby to the teller windows. She said, "No," turning to Foley again with lights in her eyes, "you have an overwhelming desire to rob a bank, and I squeeze the idea right out of your head. I studied footage of Oral Roberts from the fifties, the way he laid on hands was inspiring. He was so fervent you're afraid one Sunday morning he's going to fracture some believer's skull. But," Danny paused and said, "I just had an idea. Instead of healing you and you grab me around the knees, you get me to go along on your next bank job." She said, "I'm serious, I'm going to talk to Peter's writer about it, a young guy who gets a million and a half a picture and a cut of the back end if it makes money. He wrote When the Women Come Out to Dance, a fantastic script that was never produced. I'm told studio execs didn't understand it and eventually chewed the script to death. What I'll do, Jack, I'll tell the writer my idea and he'll say you're kidding. At this point in the story I'm beginning to lose my faith, but there's something about the bank robber that fascinates me and I go off with him. What happens during this interlude is the and Again of the title. I was born again in the first picture and I'm born again again in the sequel."
"You get your faith restored by a bank robber," Foley said. "How does that work?"
"The writer will come up with something."
"I don't want to be in the movies," Foley said. "I like acting like myself."
"That's what you'll be doing, playing yourself. I think you'll even get some movie offers."