Frag Box (4 page)

“I represent,” he went on, “a, um
group
of businessmen who are investing heavily in the bail bond business. You have a very nice little operation here, Mr. Jackson, but the word is, you have a cash flow problem.”

“Oh really? And whose word would that be?”

“With a bigger block of capital, see, and some better connections, some better layoff options, you could be—”

“Squeezed out,” said Agnes.

“I thought she wasn’t going to interrupt me.”

“I didn’t hear her say that. I thought you weren’t going to talk about her as if she weren’t here.”

“Could I please just finish what I came here to tell you?” The color was starting to rise in his face now, the veneer of civility beginning to wear thin.
Silk over slime
, I thought.
Soon it will begin to seep through
. But he went on in almost the same tone, with just a bit more open hostility now.

“You’re a successful businessman, Jackson. You know what that means in this day and age?”

“You bet. It means I can be fussy about who I talk to.”

“It means,” and he paused slightly and drew himself up to his full height, “that you are a prime candidate for being bought out. In case you don’t know it, that’s a very big deal.”

“Oh, I can see that, all right.”

“You think I’m joking? That’s the American dream now. Nobody tries to make it on their own anymore. The real jackpot is when you get successful enough that the big boys want your operation. And they do.”

“And why do I care what they want?”

“Oh, you care, believe me. You’re about to find out how much you care. Anyway, you never think about retiring young? No more sweating the recovery rate of your bounty hunters? No more wondering if anybody knows you only run an eighty percent layoff rate? Think of all the trips you’d like to take, maybe with—”

“Don’t even think about using that phrase again,” said Agnes.

“What she said,” I said. “Just who are these so-called big boys, by the way?”

Bardot reached into an inside pocket and produced a business card, which he handed to me with what I’m sure he thought was a significant look. It was an expensive-looking, low-key bit of embossed printing, and under his name, it said “Amalgamated Bonding Enterprises.” Without an “Inc.,” I noted.

“This tells me diddly squat,” I said. “I’d like to know just exactly who all these wonderful, amalgamated, unincorporated folks are.” I stuck the card in my shirt pocket without being properly awed by it.

“Oh, big people. Very big, very important. Venture capitalists, entrepreneurs. Totally above reproach.”

“Who?”

“Well, they like to keep a low profile. You know how it is.”

“No. How is it?”

“Mind your own damn business, is how it is.” Finally, the smile was completely gone, the gloves off. “This is a real opportunity here, Jackson.”

“You’re absolutely right.”

“Excuse me?”

“About minding my own business. That’s what it is. My business. And that’s what it stays. It’s not for sale and it’s not open to extortion.”

“Everything is for sale, Jackson. And everybody has their pressure points.”

“In your world, maybe. So what happens now? Do you send Guido and Dutch over here to tip over my vegetable stand and break my windows, just to show me you’re serious?”

“Do you really take me for a thug, Jackson?”

“‘I would you were so honest a man.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means get the hell out of here.”

He sighed and turned around. “It always starts this way,” he said. And without waiting for my brilliant retort, he left, once again crossing the street against the light and without looking either way.

“Nice fellow,” I said, “but very confused.”

“How did he know about your layoff rate, do you suppose?”

“You picked up on that, too, did you, Aggie?”

“He made it hard to miss.”

“It could be a guess on his part,” I said, not really believing it, “but if so, it hit awfully close to the truth. I’m sure that’s one of the things he wants us to contemplate while he’s gone.”

“I take it you’re expecting him back.”

“Oh, I think we can count on that. And the next time, he’ll have something to up the ante with.”

“What do you think his ‘big, important people’ really want, Herman? Is this whole act really just simple extortion?”

“It’s some kind of extortion for sure, but I don’t think it’s so simple. I’m guessing they really do want to buy my business, but not before they’ve screwed it up somehow, so it’s not worth much of anything.”

“I don’t like this, Herman.”

“You’re right, Aggie, you don’t like this at all.”

The phone rang, and since Agnes was still looking a little stressed out, I picked it up.

“Jackson Bail Bonds.”

“Herman?”

“Speaking.”

“Yeah, say, Frankie Russo here, Herman. I just wanted to let you know it was nothing personal.”

“Of course it wasn’t. What are you talking about?”

“Jumping bail.”

“Your trial isn’t for four days yet.”

“Yeah, well I can’t be there, is the thing.”

“Are you crazy? Failure to appear is a worse offense than the one you’re charged with, which is completely bogus anyway. If you hadn’t mouthed off to the judge, you’d be ROR. You said it yourself: the cops just want to harass you because they can’t legally close down your strip joint like the Mayor so dearly wants them to. If you skip, you’ll be doing just what they want.”

“Yeah, well, I gotta skip.”

“Why on earth?”

“‘Cause this guy named Eddie stuck a gun in my face and told me to, is why. He threatened my family, too.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, that would be him, all right. Look, I gotta go, okay? You take care.”

“Hey, wait—” The line went dead.

Frank Russo’s bond was for twenty-five thousand. And because he was no flight risk at all, I had carried it on my own.

“Call Wilkie and tell him we’ve got a jumper for him.”

Chapter 5

Layoffs and Other Labor Problems

It’s a funny business, writing bail bonds. People like to say it’s like the insurance business, but it’s not. Except when it is. In any absolute sense, I’m usually not a bondsman, but a bonding agent, in exactly the same way that the guy you buy your car insurance from is an insurance agent. He doesn’t personally insure your car; he just represents a big company that does. And that is what the pinstripe goon, Bardot, was talking about when he referred to laying off the bonds.

The thing is, he wouldn’t have used that term for it unless he had some kind of background in a different business altogether. Like bookmaking. “Laying off” a bet is what a bookie calls it when he has somebody make a legitimate bet at a legitimate track, to insure himself against a nasty loss on some suddenly popular long shot or other. And the fact that Bardot used that term meant that he also knew I would be familiar with it. And he wanted me to know that he knew.

He also knew how much of it I did. Laying off, that is. Nobody lays off everything, because there are some clients that are just no risk at all, and you may as well carry them on your own and pocket the full bond fee. Like Frank Russo. There are others that just don’t fit any legitimate, regular profile, though they are still perfectly good customers. Those you also carry on your own, if only because you can’t sell them to your backup company.

And then there are the bail junkies.

You can’t daisy-chain insurance policies. That is, you can’t buy a policy against having your roof blow off, say, and when the roof
does
blow off, buy another one against getting water damage, and when that happens too, because now you have no roof, get still another one against getting sick off the mildew and mold, and so on. What sane person would write such a string of policies?

A bail bondsman, that’s who. He can make a lot of money at that game, because strange as it sounds, there are people who are bail junkies, and they really, really want that daisy chain. It’s almost as if they don’t know they’re free unless they have to keep paying for it.

So Bud Everett, for example, a good customer of mine, gets busted for getting falling-down drunk and painting some rather uncomplimentary things on the Mayor’s car, after he accidentally breaks the rear window and mistakes the back seat for a urinal. That’s not what the citation says, of course, but that’s the important part. And because it’s the Mayor’s car and not yours or mine, everybody knows good old Bud is going to do some time.

To that end, the arraigning judge sets bail at five thousand dollars, which he knows damn well Bud can’t raise. In any sort of just world, that would be a direct violation of the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, but we passed some quibbling laws a long time ago to make the issue of unreasonable bail go away. Nowadays bail is supposed to be unreasonable. That’s what it’s for.

But even though Bud couldn’t raise five thou to buy his soul back from the Devil, he somehow manages to come up with five hundred, which he uses to buy a five-K bond from me. Which obliges me to insure his appearance in court, right?

Wrong.

Also wrong is the idea that I’m going to get some kind of security deposit from him so as not to be out anything when the guy craps out on both me and the court. It’s a nice thought, but not only would he not know five thousand if it rang his doorbell looking like Ed McMann, he also very much does not own a thing in the world that’s worth that much. His beat-up car probably has more than that against it in outstanding parking fines.

But I write the bond anyway, because Bud Everett is one of my regular nonviolent, nontoxic, recidivist bail junkies.

When his trial date comes up, he fails to appear, as I had no doubt he would. Or rather, wouldn’t. That should mean that I or my layoff bonding company, if I had used one, has to cough up the full five thousand dollars.

But the thing is, the court doesn’t really want the money, they want
him
. So they give me ten days to produce the little nimrod, figuring I know where to find him, which I do because he’s an old regular. He’s out in his ex-brother-in-law’s old junker of a camping trailer, in the woods up by Forest Lake. He’s drinking boilermakers and watching soap operas and bitching to anybody who will listen, which mostly means his dog, Thumper, about how he doesn’t want to go to court because he knows he will get a raw deal and he didn’t really mess up the Mayor’s car all
that
bad, and the asshole had it coming anyway.

So I send Wide Track Wilkie out to talk to him. He works as a bounty hunter when he’s not shooting pool, and he persuades Bud that he really ought to do the standup thing, if he wants to retain the ability to stand up, period. And they both go off to the courthouse together.

But not to trial.

He’s already missed his slot in the court schedule. That’s how this whole scenario got started in the first place. And since there are always more candidates than slots, it has been given to some other worthy. His original trial will now have to be rescheduled and he will be informed of the new date by postcard, no less. That’s if he’s still walking around free. But what he’s in court for
this time
is to get arraigned for jumping bail, or FTA, failure to appear.

That’s not as bad an offense as the first one, since it didn’t involve the mayor’s car and also since he didn’t try to run away when Wilkie went to pick him up. So this time bail is set at a mere one thousand, for which Bud can buy a bond from me for another hundred. I have no idea where he gets the extra c-note and probably don’t want to know, but he does, and the game begins.

That’s right, it merely begins.

The next time his court date comes up, Bud will again be in a drunken pout, since that’s the only way he has of dealing with authority, and he will again fail to appear. And once again, Wilkie will go have a little heart-to-heart chat with the lad and bring him downtown for yet another arraignment. And with the backlog in the courts showing no sign of ever getting caught up, this scene can now replay itself roughly every one or two months, for just about forever. That means that for as long as good old Bud does not decide to face up to all his past charges or, even less likely, get a sudden flash of ambition and flee the jurisdiction, he will pay me an average of about fifty dollars a month to be permanently bonded.

And the absolutely hilarious thing is that he will find this a perfectly acceptable arrangement.

I have anywhere from one to a dozen clients like Bud at any given time, and while you can’t get rich off them, they can definitely help pay the rent between the big customers. And at the moment, I dearly wished I had a bunch more.

But somebody named Amalgamated Greedy Guys, or whatever the hell it was, wanted them all, enough to scare off one of my clients. Or maybe they just wanted a big slug of money to make them go away and lose interest in me.

“When hell freezes over.”

“Excuse me?” said Agnes.

“Talking to myself again,” I said. “Sorry. Probably means I forgot to take my meds.”

“There are worse problems to have, Herman.” She gave me a sort of indulgent big-sister kind of smile.

“Yes there are. And we probably have them, too. Here come some more suits. More gangsters, you suppose?”

She looked out the window, to where I was gesturing with my coffee cup.

“They look more like government,” she said. “Feds, I’d guess.”

“I believe that’s what I said.” I opened the door for our new guests, a tallish, athletic-looking man and woman, maybe late thirties, in matching black business suits. The guy wore a dark red tie, the woman a black velvet choker with a tiny cameo pin. Other than that, they looked pretty much the same, except that her legs were better, and I was glad she let them show. Both of them—the people, not the legs—wore tight-lipped expressions that showed they took themselves very seriously.

“Mr. Jackson?” Her voice was deep and throaty, as if she routinely took just a bit too much Dewar’s in the evenings, and she had a heart-shaped face with puffy lips that seemed made for whispering. But her manner was all business. Oh, well. Another perfectly good fantasy, shot right to hell. I wondered if this could be the pair of feds my trash-barrel informant had been talking about.

“I’m Herman Jackson. How can I help you?” I held out my hand, but instead of shaking it, the Persons in Black held up some kind of plastic ID cards. Feds, definitely.

Not FBI, though, but Secret Service. I was surprised. Did the President need a bail bond?

“I’m Agent Krause,” she said, “and this is my partner, Agent Sladky. We are informed that you, Mr. Jackson, are the bonding agent for one Charles Victor.”

“Was,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“I was his bonding agent. He was murdered last night.”

Agnes dropped her hands in her lap and gave me a look of wide-eyed astonishment. The two agents were unreadable.

“Then you owe him no further service.” She said it without pause or hesitation, as if she had rehearsed the speech. I had no idea what she was driving at.

“I didn’t owe him any prior service, either,” I said. “He hasn’t been bonded by me since the last time he got sent to the Ramsey County Workhouse, last winter. How is it you know about me being his agent, by the way?”

She ignored the question completely. “Whether he had a bond or not, you were holding something for him, I believe?”

“You mean some kind of standing security object?” I shook my head. “When he needed a bond, Charlie always gave me cash for security. And when he got out of the Workhouse, he took it back.”

“If he had that kind of money, why would he come to you for a bond at all? Why would he come to anybody for one? That’s not even a good lie.” Agent Sladky should have continued to let his partner do the talking. He had a slightly nasal, high-pitched voice that made him seem too young for the job. His comment about the lie didn’t help any in that department, either. Was there any experienced G-man or cop who didn’t expect to be routinely lied to by everybody?

“He didn’t trust the court to give him his money back again. He didn’t trust any government of any kind, period.” I shrugged, to show them that it was Charlie’s choice entirely and also a matter of great indifference to me if they believed it or not.

And in any case, I really didn’t have any of his money at the moment.

The woman took over again, and I had to admit that I liked hearing her speak. “Well, then, Mr. Jackson, if you will just turn over your files on the man to us, we won’t bother you any further. The originals. All of them. You may keep your own copies, of course, but we require the originals. Oh, and any other little item you may have been holding for him, your denial notwithstanding.”

“No.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said ‘no.’ That means no.”

“People do not find it wise to say no to the Secret Service, Mr. Jackson.” She eyed me in exactly the way a hawk looks at a very small mouse.

“Well, I’m seldom accused of being wise.”

“We have subpoena and warrant power, you know. For any records we might decide we want to see for any reason, not just his. Think about that for a moment. We can turn your past inside out, if we want to.”

“Then I suggest you do so, Agent Krause. Do your warrants usually include permission to burn homeless people out of their camps, by the way?”

“I don’t believe I know what you’re talking about.” But her eyes said otherwise. Both agents’ façades of cool, self-assured control had wilted. I thought the guy, Sladky, even looked a bit afraid. The woman mainly looked pissed, but quite possibly that was her regular, default posture.

“How could he possibly know—?”

“He doesn’t. Shut up, Agent.”

“I told you we shouldn’t have gone down there. We could have just as well—”

“Sladky, will you please shut up? We’re in front of a subject, you know.” To me, she said, “We’re done here.”

She turned on her heel and headed for the door, and her partner followed. Her shoes had some of those compromise high heels that looked as if they had started out as spikes but had melted and squished. They still clicked importantly when she got to the tiled threshold, though. This was a woman who definitely knew all about creating presence. Mostly a threatening one. I found it interesting, though, that she seemed even more hostile toward her partner than she was toward me.

“You’ll be seeing us again,” she said without turning around.

“Imagine my anticipation.”

They both left without another word, leaving the door open, which I took as a classy substitute for slamming it. I shut it in my most restrained manner, and Agnes and I watched them go.

“Well, you certainly handled that well,” she said.

“Thank you.” I always like it when she lies for me.

“Can you really stand to have them turn your past inside out, by the way?”

“Not really, but one person trying to strong-arm me was enough in one day, Ag. My willing victim quota was all used up. Mostly, though, I can or can’t stand it, depending on how far back they go.”

“Uh huh. These are federal agents, Herman. They will go back to when God first created dirt and J. Edgar Hoover used it to blackmail somebody.”

“That would definitely be too bad. I was sort of hoping they would get tired of the game before then.” After about fifteen years of history, to be exact. I had a squeaky clean record back to 1987, when I first came to St. Paul. One could even say it’s so virtuous, it’s boring. I worked long and hard to make it that way. But try to look farther back, and you will run into a lot of gaps.

Officially, nominally, Herman Jackson, St. Paul bail bondsman, never convicted, arrested, or even suspected of a major crime, was born in 1953 in Manley, Iowa, a tiny farm town that has now almost entirely vanished into the fields of corn and soybeans around it. Its empty Main Street has only a few boarded up buildings left, and even fewer residents, none of whom remembers me. There were church and school records once, but nobody knows what happened to them. Even the tombstone from which I got my birth date is gone, its little plot of ground now busy pushing up barley or oat stalks. It’s a wonderful place to be from, since nobody can ever say for sure that you’re not.