Элмор Леонард – Out of Sight / Вне поля зрения (страница 1)

Elmore Leonard

Out of Sight / Вне поля зрения

© Шитова Л. Ф., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2019

© ООО «Издательство «Антология», 2019

Chapter One

Foley had never seen a prison where you could walk right up to the fence without getting shot. He mentioned it to the guard they called Pup, making conversation: convict and guard standing between the chapel and a gun tower, both men looking toward the athletic field[1]. Several hundred inmates along the fence out there were watching the game of football.

“You know what they’re doing,” Foley said, “don’t you? I mean besides working off their aggressions.”

Pup said, “The hell you talking about[2]?”

This was about the dumbest hack[3] Foley had ever met in his three falls[4], two state time, one federal[5], plus a half-dozen stays in county lockups.

“They’re playing in the Super Bowl[6],” Foley said, “pretending they’re out at Sun Devil Stadium next Sunday. Both sides thinking they’re the Dallas Cowboys[7].”

Pup said, “They ain’t worth shit, none of ’em.”

Foley turned enough to look at the guard’s profile, the peak of his cap curved around his sunglasses. Tan shirt[8] with dark-brown epaulets that matched his pants, radio and flashlight hooked to his belt; no weapon.

Foley looked at his size, head-to-head with the Pup at six-one[9], but the Pup had about forty pounds more on him, most of it around the guard’s middle, his tan shirt fitting him like skin on a sausage.

Foley turned back to the game.

He watched shifty colored guys going for the ball. The few white guys, who had the nerve and the size, played in the line and used their fists on each other. No Latins[10] in the game. They stood along the fence watching, except for two guys doing laps side by side around the field. The same two ran ten miles a day every day of the week. Coming to this end of the field now, getting closer, walking: Jose Chirino and Luis Linares, Chino and Lulu, husband and wife, both little guys, both doing a mandatory five for murder. Walking.

They hadn’t done anywhere near their usual ten miles and had Foley’s full attention.

A minute or so passed before he said, “Some people are going out of here. What if I told you where and when?”

The Pup was staring at him now, judging if a con was telling the truth or giving him a bunch of shit.

“Who we talking about?”

Foley said, “Nothing’s free, Pup,” still not looking at him.

“I get your liquor for you.”

“And you make a good buck.[11] No, what I need,” Foley said, turning to look at him now, “is some peace of mind. This is the most fucked-up joint[12] I’ve ever been in, take my word. Medium security and most of the cons here are violent offenders.”

The Pup kept squinting at him.

“So you turn fink?”[13]

“I give you”, Foley said, “the chance to stop a prison break, you make points, advance your career as a hack. I get peace of mind. I’d expect you to look out for me as long as you’re here. Let me run my business, keep me off work details…”

The Pup was still squinting.

“How many going out?”

“I hear six.”

“When?”

“Looks like tonight.”

“You know who they are?”

“I do, but I won’t tell you just yet. Meet me in the chapel going on five-thirty, right before evening count.”[14]

Foley waited, staring back at those slitty eyes[15] trying to read him.

“Come on, Pup, you want to be a hero or not?”

Noon dinner, Foley took his pork butts and yams[16] looking for Chino among all the white T-shirts and dark hair.

There he was, at a table of his countrymen eating macaroni and cheese. Jesus, eating a pile of it. The guy across from Chino giving him more, scraping macaroni from his tray on to Chino’s.

The man’s gaze raised to Foley, dark eyes beneath lumps of scar tissue[17], all he had to show, for his career as a welterweight[18] and killing a man put him out of business. Chino was close to fifty but in shape; Foley had watched him do thirty pull-ups on a bar.

Chino gave him a nod but didn’t make room[19], tell any of his people at the table to get up. Lulu sat next to him with a neat tray of macaroni and Jell-O[20] and a cup of milk they gave inmates under twenty one years of age to build strong, healthy bodies.

Foley ate his noon dinner at a table of outlaw bikers[21], cons who bought half-pint bottles of rum Foley sold for three times what he paid Pup to sneak the stuff in. He sat there listening to the outlaws having fun, comparing his rum to piss, enjoying their use of the word, speculating on what kind it was, dog piss, cat piss, how about alligator piss? They liked that one. Foley saw it had to be an uncommon kind of piss, said, “How about chicken piss?” and the table showed him bad teeth and the food they were chewing with grins and grunts of appreciation. Foley worked through his dinner and went outside to smoke a cigarette and wait for Chino.

Lulu tagging along when he came, Lulu with his girlish eyelashes and pouty way of looking at you. Chino had had to punch out many a suitor to keep Lulu for his own. He had told Foley Lulu wasn’t a homosexual before entering this life, but had become one and was good at it. Confiding things like that after Foley told Chino he was the most aggressive welterweight he had ever seen fight. Saw him lose to Mauricio Bravo in L. A[22]. when Foley was doing banks out there[23]. Saw him lose to the Mexican kid, Palomino, in the sixth when Chino’s right eye closed and they stopped the fight. Foley said, “I never saw a fighter take as many shots[24] as you did and keep coming back.” Chino’s record was 22 and 17, not good if you were the fighter,not bad if you admired him for staying with it as long as he did. Foley was the only Anglo the Cuban allowed to get close.

He had his arm around Lulu’s shoulder as they approached, then let it slip down to hook his thumb in Lulu’s belt, the next thing to having him on a leash.

Foley said, “Today’s the day, huh? You excited?”

The man was cool, no expression.

“I told you, man, Super Bowl Sunday.”

“Yeah, but I see you moved it up.”[25]

Now a glint showed in his eyes.

“Why you think is today?”

“You were out running this morning, sticking to your routine, anybody happened to notice. But you only did a couple of miles, saving yourself for the main event. Then I see you eating about ten pounds of macaroni. Carbohydrates for endurance.”[26]

“You want,” Chino said, “I tole you you can come.”

“I would, but I can’t stand to get dirty.”

“Is finish. All we do now is go out.”

“You sure you’re past the fence?”

“Fifteen and a half meters.”

From the covered space beneath the prison chapel to the grass just beyond the razor wire[27] perimeter fence. They had been digging since before Christmas with their hands and a broken shovel, using scrap lumber from the construction site of a new wing being added to the chapel to support the walls of the tunnel. It was Christmas Day Foley happened to see Chino and Lulu come out of the bushes in front of the chapel, their faces streaked with black dirt, muck, but wearing clean blues.

What were they doing, making out in the bushes? And Chino said that time to his Anglo friend, “You want to go with us?”

Foley said he didn’t want any part of it – only three feet of crawl space underneath the chapel, pitch-dark in there, maybe run into fucking mole rats face-to-face. No thanks. He’d said to Chino, “Don’t you know you’re digging through Everglades[28] muck? I’ve talked to people. They say it’s wet and’ll cave in on you.” Chino said, yeah, that’s what people thought, but the tunnel only caved in once. If they were careful, took their time[29], the muck stuck together and became dry and was okay. He told Foley they had dug down four feet and then out toward the fence, the tunnel a meter wide and a meter high. They worked two at a time in dirty clothes they kept there and put on clean ones before coming out.

Foley said to Chino that Christmas Day, “If I caught on, how come none of the hacks have?”[30]

Chino said, “I think they believe like you no one can dig a tunnel in muck. Or they don’t want to crawl in there and find out. They see us dirty they think we work construction.”

It was that day Chino said they were going out Super Bowl Sunday, when everyone would be watching the game, six o’clock.

But now they were going out five days early.

“You finish ahead of schedule?”

Chino looked toward the fence along the front of the yard, between the administration building and the gun tower close to the chapel.

“You see what they doing, those posts out there?

Putting up another fence, five meters on the other side of the one that’s there. We wait[31] until Super Bowl Sunday they could have the second fence built and we have to dig another nine ten days. So we going soon as it’s dark.”

“During the count.”

“Sure, and when they get the wrong count,” Chino said, “they have to start over. It give us some more time to get out of here. You want – I mean it – you can still come.”