"To play another bank robber?"
"The first time you're on the screen you're sitting in a car across the street from the bank. You hold still as a police car creeps past."
"I hold still."
"Jack, you're in a bank right now with no intention of robbing it, you're being yourself. I think you could be good."
"You have the clout," Foley said, "to tell the expensive writer and the new director what you want?"
"There's a good chance," Danny said. "Born Again was made on a thirty-million-dollar budget and grossed over two hundred million worldwide. I wear a blouse with a Peter Pan collar and a long black skirt slit up to my knees so I can move around the stage. I'm the star and this is the same part. But it needs fresh ideas, unexpected plot turns. I've been thinking, what if a woman comes up to me before the congregation with a baby in her arms. Jack, the baby's dead and the mother begs me to bring the infant back to life. At this point in the film I'm on the verge of giving up my ministry. If I lay on my hands and nothing happens, I'm out of business. But if I refuse even to try…The scene doesn't go anywhere."
"But if you take the baby in your hands," Foley said, "and it begins to cry-"
Danny, shaking her head: "That's way beyond the ability of any faith healer. I'd lose the audience."
"Not if the little nipper's alive, still breathing," Foley said. "The baby cries as you raise it heavenward in your hands. The congregation goes wild and you're back in the game."
He watched her thinking about it.
"Why does the mother believe the baby's dead?"
"I have no idea," Foley said. "Ask your million-dollar screenwriter. Tell him you want to end the movie with it, your biggest miracle yet."
"But I could go to jail."
"For appearing to restore life?"
"For fraud. Taking money under false pretenses."
"All right, you tell the crowd, once they quiet down, the baby was alive. You didn't bring it to life. You didn't even squeeze the child's head. They admire your honesty-even more, your humility-and you get your faith back." Foley was nodding. "The dead baby who isn't dead's a good touch." He said, "We took care of that problem, now tell me where the security guard is. The old guy I thought looked like an ex-deputy?"
She said, "What about him?" her gaze moving to the bank's glass door.
"He isn't there anymore."
Danny said, "He went to the bathroom."
Foley said, "You want to bet?"
Lou Adams got out of his Chevy, left it double-parked in front of Piccolo Paradiso and came across the street to the parking lot where Foley and Mrs. Karmanos were being held, not technically but with a half-dozen Beverly Hills cops standing by with their holsters unsnapped. Ron Deneweth came out to the sidewalk as Lou Adams approached the scene.
Lou said, "Ron, does that woman look like a bank robber to you? She's a movie star, for Christ sake."
"She's with Foley," Ron said. "I didn't know she's a movie star. I didn't know it was Mrs. Karmanos till we ran her car."
"I told you he never packs," Lou said. "You got the Beverly Hills police department ready to draw on him."
"I told him to stand by, that I'd called you."
"He get smart with you?"
"He said he was opening an account."
"Who's the old guy Foley and Danialle Tynan are talking
to?"
"He's bank security. Tynan," Ron said, "that's her acting name?"
"One she was born with," Lou said. "Who you suppose they're laughing at, you or me?"
They watched Foley say something to Mrs. Karmanos, leaving her with the security guard, Mrs. Karmanos putting her hand on the old guy's shoulder. The Beverly Hills police officers beginning to fidget, not knowing what was going on, Foley walking past them toward the street.
Lou Adams said to Ron, "Tell the cops we don't need 'em, you read the situation wrong."
"It's my fault, huh?" Ron said. "Get it enough times, now you know why I quit the cops," and moved off as Foley walked up.
"You gonna put this in your book?"
Lou Adams seemed almost ready to smile.
"Chapter fifty," Foley said, " 'How I thought I knew everything but fucked up.'»
"Things aren't always as they appear," Lou said. "There's a shot ofJohn Dillinger laid out at the Cook County morgue with a sheet covering him, the sheet standing up a foot or so from his groin area, like he's got a tent pole for a dick. The man's so legendary people believed he could still have a woody when he's dead."
Foley said, "Somebody was pulling a joke?"
"No, it was his hands resting one on top the other under the sheet. Your case," Lou said, "known convicted felon is seen entering a bank, law enforcement's gonna check it out."
"Seen because you're breathing down my neck," Foley said, "the only reason. If I had a terrible urge to stick up a bank, you wouldn't know about it till you read it in the paper."
"All right," Lou said, "let's bet on it. I read about a bank job has your MO all over it, how this sweetheart of a guy made off with five gees, I swear I won't tell the cops or the Bureau or come after you myself. What I'll do is give you the chrome-plated.45 I was awarded by my colleagues for shooting down three Haitian guys that kidnapped a five-year-old kid. They want three hundred large or they chop the kid up and send him home in a bag. I shot to kill, the only guys I felt good about doing it. I'll give you the piece and say, 'You win, partner,' and never bother you again. How's that sound?"
"You're daring me," Foley said, "isn't gonna do it, or giving me your chromed-up rod. Why can't you get it in your head I'm out of the bank business?"
"See, if I accept that," Lou Adams said, "I'd have to believe we're getting closer to something else going down. Jack, you live with felons you're gonna get dirty."
TWENTY-TWO
LITTLE JIMMY WAITED ON HIS KNEES IN THE CONFESSIONAL for the window to slide open. He could hear the faint sound of a woman's voice on the other side of the priest but not her words. The priest's name was on the middle door, msgr. william easton. Jimmy had entered the door on the right to kneel here in the dark waiting: Msgr. William Easton, higher up than a priest and maybe was old, having been a priest long enough to be made a monsignor. The next higher title was a bishop. Jimmy had never heard of a bishop hearing confessions. Now he heard the woman's window slide closed. A few moments later his window came open on its tracks and he could make out the priest through the screen leaning toward him, his hand supporting his head, close to Jimmy but not looking at him.
Monsignor Easton said, "Yes?"
Little Jimmy said, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," making
the sign of the cross as he offered this admission. "It has been twenty-seven years since my last confession." He paused as Monsi-gnor Easton raised his head from his hand. "Twenty-seven years."
"Yes, Father. Since then I have missed Mass almost fourteen hundred times, though I go to midnight Mass sometimes at Christmas if a friend desires to go, and also on Easter Sunday when I was still living in Cuba, my home."
The monsignor asked Little Jimmy if he was married.
"No, I have never the desire."
"You keep company with women?"
"Not to speak of. Though in the past year I have been more with women than before. I thought to myself, well, as a new experience it wasn't so bad."
"Up to this time you've been chaste?"
"You mean, Father, by dudes? If I like the guy he don't have to chase me."
"You're saying you have relations with men."
"Almost all my life."
"Did you ever tell it in confession?"
"No, I didn't think I was committing a sin. The dude was always willing. You know, a single guy. We fool around, we not hurting anybody."