Out of Sight

See what they thought.

"You know Maurice Miller in the boxing program they call Snoopy? Fights lightweight? He was at FPC doing a gig for fraud, I think credit cards. Anyway, we went out one night jogging, like Snoopy's doing road work and I'm his trainer. We made it almost all the way to Vandenberg and got picked up by air base MPs. They thought we were a-wol."

Buddy asked him was he nuts? Do an easy two or even less of his two-to-five at the country club, cable TV, salad bar in the chow hall, and he'd be out. Now he'd have to do the whole five.

"In an altogether different kind of mind-fucking incarceration," Gle

"I knew if we didn't make it Snoopy and I'd get sent here or some other max joint. There're some scary fucking slams you can get sent to, Marion, Lewisburg…

Maybe I was pumped, a little overanxious, but at the time I didn't worry about getting caught. See, what happened, I got next to a guy over at FPC doing three years on a felony conspiracy thing, strictly white collar. He got the three years and was fined-listen to this-fifty million dollars and wrote 'em a fucking check. Like that, fifty mil, signed his name."

Foley said, "One of the Wall Street scammers," and he was right. He said, "I remember reading about the guy. Went up for insider trading.

Paid off snitch brokers to give him information on stock deals before they went down. Like takeovers." Telling this to Buddy, who didn't know shit.

"A company buys out another company and the bought company's stock goes up. So if you have the inside scoop, you know it's go

This fucking guy Foley, never even went to college.

"That's basically what he did," Gle

"Everybody thought the guy was a genius," Foley said, "till they found out he made it the old-fashioned way, he stole it."

"Anyway," Gle

"Yeah, to the U.S. attorney," Foley said.

"He rolled over on all the snitches he was doing business with and got 'em brought up. I can't think of the guy's name."

Gle

And Foley said, "Ripley. Richard Ripley. Called Dick the Ripper on account of how he ripped off the stock market. Big good-looking guy, but I think he wore a rug."

"Not at FPC," Gle

"He was vain, though. What he talked about most of the time, outside of the market, was himself, and I listened. Anybody that can write a check for fifty mil, he says anything, I'm all fucking ears. See, my bunk was right above his. I was polite, I played kiss-ass to a degree, I'd stand in the phone line for him; we're out gardening I'd do the stoop work and let him rake… All this time he's talking about what a high roller he is and I'm taking it all in. I learn he's got money in foreign banks, plus, around five mil in hard cash, plus, loose diamonds and gold coins, a shitload of coins worth around four bills each. The man actually told me, five mil in cash. He said, quote,

"Where I can put my hands on it anytime I want."

Nothing to it."

Foley said, "He keeps it at home?"

Buddy said, "Yeah, where's the guy live?"

Gle

"He's out now. It was in the paper."

"I mean when you and Snoopy jogged away from FPC. You mentioned you were anxious. It sounds like you wanted to get to Ripley's house before he got his release. Is that it, you couldn't wait?"

"You might say I was highly motivated," Gle

"Five mil sitting there waiting? All I have to do is walk out? No fence, no gun towers. The only thing to stop anybody from leaving is a sign that says Off Limits. Man, once I was pumped up-listen, they would've had to fucking chain me to a wall to keep me there."

"But you didn't make it," Foley said, "you and Snoopy. You know he was Maurice "Mad Dog' Miller back when he was a pro? Now you pet him he goes down."

"I didn't bring him along as a bodyguard," Gle

"Maurice happens to live in Detroit, the same place Ripley has his home. No, the Snoop isn't any protection, but he knows the Motor City."

"So does Buddy," Foley said, "if a guide's all you need."

Neither one of them showing much interest, that time in the yard at Lompoc USP, five years ago.

Gle

So if he ever wanted to get back in the business…

He tried to keep in touch with the bank robbers, still at Lompoc, wrote to them a few times but never heard back, not a word. So when Buddy called a few weeks ago it came as a total surprise.

Buddy saying it was a good thing he'd hung on to the letters and wasn't it a small world: he'd just arrived in Florida and Foley was here, out at GCI the past five months. The way Buddy put it, "He don't like it there and sees a way to bust out. If you aren't doing anything, you want to drive one of the cars?

Take a few hours of your time is all."

If he wasn't doing anything.

Gle

You had to be as cool as these guys.

"Detroit Buddy said, "I spent three years on the line up there at Chrysler Jefferson till I went crazy and had to quit. Let me ask you-you don't see a problem might come out of delivering your special orders?"

"I'm not in that business anymore," Gle

"No, I went there to look up a friend. You remember Dick the Ripper we used to talk about, the Wall Street crook?"

"Wrote a check for fifty million," Buddy said, "you bet I remember him."

"My first visit I look up Snoopy. Maurice Miller at Lompoc, the lightweight?"

"He isn't brain-dead yet?"

"He's a manager now, for some club fighters. I gave him a hundred to check out Ripley for me, where he lives and all.

See, I never did tell the Snoop, even back at Lompoc, exactly what it was about, so he wouldn't know enough to try on his own. The next time I go up the Snoop's go

Buddy said, "How's a punchy little colored guy find all that out?"

"He's a crook," Gle

"He's into credit cards, bank fraud with bogus checks, the Snoop knows his way around."

"That's interesting," Buddy said, "but what I need to know is if you're clean. You been into anything else?"

Gle

"I wasn't what you'd call into anything, no."

"But what?"

He hesitated again.

And Buddy said, "Take your time."

"Okay. DEA happened to pull a raid on a house in Lake Worth. Nobody's home. They look around, find ten keys of base in the garage, actually in a Mercedes that happens to have my prints on the steering wheel and partials on the door handle.

I'm picked up, I tell them there's no fucking way my prints could be on that car, and I say I want a lawyer. But then after a while I realize they could be my prints, and you know how they got there? Parking cars. Two nights a week I worked valet at a place, Charlie's Crab, and I must've parked the Mercedes sometime during the previous weekend. I tell the DEA guys, they give me their fucking bored look. Ten days I'm locked up, have to appear twice in federal court. The first time's a bond hearing, a joke, like I can post a hundred grand. The next one's like a show-cause hearing. Okay, but by this time the public defender has actually checked and found out the car was at Charlie's Crab the night before; they still have the ticket with the license number on it. The magistrate, a lovely, intelligent woman, dismissed the charge and ate the ass out of the assistant U.S. attorney for being overzealous."