"They'll be lucky if anybody remembers Foley. What's the population out there, a couple thousand?"

"About sixteen hundred, the last time I went out."

"They expect some administrative hack or a trusty to go through the computer hoping to find a Buddy? Even if they knew his first name-when did he come in? How many years would the search have to cover? You don't know that unless you know his sentence. You imagine calling out to that penitentiary and asking, "Say, any of you people remember a con named Buddy?"

" He sipped his coffee, getting it all, and said, "Listen, I have to run."

Karen watched him get up from the table to stand looking out the kitchen window at the fairway, hiking up his yellow slacks that drooped in the can.

She said, "I asked Foley if Buddy was his given name and he said yeah, he gave it to him. But what if it's his real name?"

Her dad turned to look at her and seemed for a moment surprised.

"Where's he from, originally?"

"Arkansas."

"I don't know-but now that I think about it, Buddy might be the key, the one to work on. He risks everything, including his life, to help some guy he jailed with. What does he get out of it?

He does it as a friend or because there's a payoff? You see what I mean?"

"Either way," Karen said, "Foley owes him."

"So whatever Buddy wants to do next," her dad said, "the chances are Foley will go along. Find Buddy and you've got him."

"If we knew Buddy's name."

"You gave me an idea. But listen, I got to get out of here, I'm late already."

Karen followed him to the door that opened into the garage.

"Dad, come on. How do we find him?"

He held the door open and turned to look at her.

"It might work, it might not. I'll tell you as soon as I get back."

"You'll tell me about your golf game for an hour."

The door closed.

Every drive that stayed on the fairway, every chip to the green, his specialty, any long putts that dropped in-his Jack Daniel's on the rocks next to him. He exaggerated, he even cheated… But he knew how to find people; it was his business. Karen turned to the sink.

Should she do the dishes?

Or go talk to Adele Delisi?

Buddy had called her three different times this morning, she was never home. When he came back the last time Foley said it didn't matter, he was going to see her. Buddy told him he was crazy and Foley said he'd made up his mind.

"You know they'll have people watching the hotel "To see if she leaves. You think they're gonna check everybody that goes in?"

"Why take the chance?"

"I owe her."

"You haven't given her a dime in eight years. Now all of a sudden …"

"I'm not talking about owing her money, this is different. I kept thinking about it last night trying to get to sleep on this sofa, this board. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Adele."

"That's right, you wouldn't have done the bank and got sent up."

"She helped get me out. The least I can do is try to see her. If I can't, I can't, but I have to try."

"I won't drive you."

"I'll get there."

"They'll spot you on the street."

"You said yourself I don't look like my mug shot. That's all they have to go on."

"That you know of. Your picture's been around, man. I used to see it in banks before I ever knew you."

"I'll go as a tourist. Wear shorts, a straw beach hat, hang a camera around my neck. Wear socks with sandals… Can you fix me up?"

Adele spent the morning on the art deco hotel strip going from one to the next, ten blocks of sidewalk tables and tourists, stopping at each cafe and bar to ask the hostess if she would do her a huge huge favor.

Even the ones she knew slightly would take the three-by-five card like it had kaka on it and glance at it, never changing their expressions, as Adele explained it was a version of an ad she'd placed in the Herald.

But it was so tiny in the paper she thought if she could get some of these, you know, displayed around the beach… The hostesses said sorry, and handed the card back, or yeah, okay, and dropped it on their reservation stand. The card read:

LIKE MAGIC!

Call 673-7925 and out pops Adele!

Experienced magician's assistant!

Expert with doves and all forms of legerdemain!

Walking along 10th toward Collins Avenue she paused to look back and saw the guy tailing her come to a stop at the alley. He stood looking around as though he might be lost. The tail across the street had stopped and was tying his shoelaces.

She wondered why they bothered. Adele waved to the one across the street and continued on to Collins. The next two, another pair of serious, clean-cut types, were in a car, one of them reading the paper.

Every day there was some mention of Jack on the news and in the paper,

"still at large" along with one of the Cubans, but not a word about Buddy or Glenn Michaels, so the two-car escape plan must've worked. The time Glenn came alone to visit, a few days before the break, he'd sat with his vodka and tonic posing, playing with his hair, waiting for her to make the move while he talked about himself, letting her know what a cool guy he was and how he planned to use Jack and Buddy later, for a job he had lined up. Five minutes with Glenn, she understood why Jack didn't want him, why he said on the phone that last time he'd take the guy's sunglasses off and step on them. She said to him, "You know who you remind me of? That freeloader who lived in O.J."s guesthouse, the instant celebrity with the hair." Glenn said, "Yeah?

Really?" taking it as a compliment. The best thing to do with Glenn Michaels, she decided, would be to put him in Emil the Amazing's vanishing box and lose his ass.

She came to the Normandie in a row of pastel-colored apartment hotels and nodded to the old ladies on the porch, waiting out their lives.

Crossing the lobby she said hi to Sheldon behind the desk and he showed her his bad teeth. At least he smiled.

None of the tight-assed hostesses on the strip smiled or gave her one fucking word of encouragement.

Adele went up the stairs to the second floor and into her apartment done in blond furniture from fifty years ago, Miami Beach Moderne, with sailboats and palm trees on the limp curtains. She turned on the window air conditioner. Every time she looked out now she hoped to God she wouldn't see Jack across the street, like in a movie: leaning against a post he lights a cigarette and looks up at the window. Jack posed too, but was good at it.

She dropped the LIKE MAGIC! three-by-five cards she had left over on the glass top dining table and stood looking down at them.

Expert ivith doves and all forms of legerdemain. Expert at cleaning up dove shit in the dressing rooms. A natural at standing with one four-inch heel precisely in front of the other, smiling, glowing, her arm rising in a graceful gesture to the birds flying out of Emil's filthy coat.

What she should do, hell, advertise herself as a magician and play birthdays, schools, company parties, that kind of thing; prisons, why not? She could do rope tricks: cut and restore, threading the needle, the coat-escape using volunteers. She could do handkerchief tricks: Fatima the dancer, the serpentine silk, the dissolving knot. She could do card tricks: the Hindu shuffle, overhand shuffle, the doubt lift, the glide…

The phone rang, on the desk by the window.

She could do sealed envelopes: the Gypsy mind reader, impossible penetrations…

Ill

"Hi, this is Adele speaking."

A male voice said, "Oh, is this Adele?" with an accent, Cuban, or one of those.

"Yes, it is. Are you calling in answer to my ad in the paper?"