Foley came out with his fifty dollars gate money and took a bus to L.A. where Buddy was waiting for him in a car he'd boosted for the occasion.

That same afternoon they hit a bank in Pomona-the first time either one had worked with a partner cleared a total of fifty-six hundred from two different tellers at the same time, and drove to Las Vegas where they got laid and lost what was left of their fifty-six hundred. So they went back to L.A. and worked southern California a few months as a team: two tellers at the same time, seeing who could score more than the other without setting off alarms. Buddy sure missed his partner.

When Foley first called him about this business, Buddy was still out in California staying with his sister. He said, "For Jesus sake, what're you doing back in the can?"

"Looking for a way out," Foley said.

"A judge with bugs up his ass gave me thirty years and I don't deserve to be here. It's full of morons and misfits but only medium security, if you get my drift." The reason he was in Florida, he said, he'd come to see Adele.

"Remember how she wrote the whole time we're at Lompoc?"

"After she divorced you."

"Well, I was never much of a husband. Never helped her out with expenses or paid alimony."

"How could you, making twenty cents an hour?"

"I know, but I felt I owed her something."

"So you did a bank in Florida," Buddy said.

"It reminded me of the time in Pasadena, I come out and the goddamn car wouldn't start."

"You talked about it for seven years," Buddy said, "wondering why you didn't leave the engine running. Don't tell me the same thing happened in Florida."