The Royal Family (48 page)

Fifteen minutes later, she was back at the bar, dully pretending that nothing had happened.) Let’s suppose that our prisons tower uncorrupted by jailers’ violence, because that’s a pleasanter supposition, and, besides, the rottenness or purity of prisons may affect but cannot alter the fundamental stinking crookedness of bail, which is the crookedness of life. Let’s even suppose that Strawberry some red-shining evening (oh, ecstasy!) found herself legally eligible for bail. What then? Ask Mr. Roger Adair at Ace Bail Bonds in Sacramento. He is a clever, pleasant, practical man. He answers all questions. He says: If you’ve got a Six Forty-Seven case we don’t even deal with you. Six Forty-Seven is prostitution. If there’s even loitering involved, we won’t do it. We get such a small amount of money, and the hassle’s just not worth it. The meat and potatoes of what we do are domestic violence and methamphetamines.

Unlike birth, bail may occur at practically any phase of gestation within the lion’s barred womb—or, as Strawberry knows, it may never happen at all. (When a full-term defendant does get delivered, the prosecution may well consider it a
miscarriage of justice.
But never mind.) Arrest is conception; that’s when one’s implanted in the pit. But because most arrests are warrantless, the pregnancy’s not yet “in the system” until the second step when the defendant gets
“processed”
—that is, fingerprinted and otherwise inspected, recorded and made recognizable to the lion’s gaze. I have heard prostitutes protesting and even wisecracking with their arresting officers as they roll off to jail, but “processing,” like the sign which commands
SILENCE: COURT IN SESSION
, strips them of public entreaties, accusations, outcries. They’re in the cage now. —You can be bailed as soon as you’ve been processed, a public defender explained to me. Generally they want to get you out if they can. —And, of course, if the
defendant
can. Does he have the cash? There he is, upstairs in a cell with strangers who might be violent. (My friend B. told me how afraid he was of his new brothers on that long afternoon after arrest. He wasn’t sure whether to be friendly or inconspicuous.) But who knows? Maybe freedom’s jackpot will bust him out here and now. Should the accusation against him be sufficiently trivial, he’ll be cited to appear at a later date. This is what happened to B. Somebody came, some
official
somebody who owned the authority to decide that B. was too young and innocuous to lie in jail that night, and so B. staggered back into freedom’s twilight without paying a penny, released on his own recognizance, or O.R.’d as they call it. He has never been back in jail since.

Whether our defendant gets out or not, gestation now continues to the third step—namely,
arraignment
in court. Bail grows even more volatile here, like a feather dancing in the breath of a judge. One detainee’s five-thousand-dollar mistake is another’s twenty-thousand-dollar crime. A D.A. up in Sacramento spoke to me of
a push to limit the number of people who review these things so we get more uniformity.
(I myself would simply prefer a more uniform code of bail.) Arraignment must take place within forty-eight hours of arrest, and the defendant must be present. Bailed people thus do not entirely resemble cancer patients in blissful remission. How can they pretend it’s over? They must return to the lion’s jaws again and again. For a simple misdemeanor matter, the accused makes at least three appearances. For a felony, the minimum is five. —Felony cases may meander through many,
many
pretrial conferences. (With time, everybody relaxes,
said a San Francisco public defender named Matt Gonzalez. It’s like, can we work a deal? But I have cases where a guy has appeared fifteen or twenty times.
Ageing the case,
they call it.)

Up to thirty days after arraignment comes the
pretrial hearing,
at which the judge either dismisses the charges or else sends them on for trial. Has the defendant made bail yet? If not, and if they won’t O.R. him, then, innocent or guilty, he’ll keep sitting in a cell. (Gonzalez again: In a felony case you can spend three months in jail and three more months waiting for a speedy trial, although that’s the worst scenario.
*
) He’s likely lost his job by now, if he had one. He’s not paying rent.
Innocent until proven guilty,
we said, but think about that rent. Think about those sinister nights of decay. And do you remember those three minimum appearances for a misdemeanor? How about making just one? Plead guilty, and it’s over. Remember those five felony appearances? If you can’t bring yourself to plead guilty, at least agree to drug counseling—that’s almost as good as admitting you’re wrong! The prosecutor will like you better, too. By thus validating your own arrest, you’ve proved him wise and righteous.

Well, the system is a little vindictive, Gonzalez agreed. It’s hard to dismiss a flawed case. Once you get wrapped up in the system, nobody wants to admit an error. And sometimes the system is just plain schizophrenic. For instance, take Department Eighteen. That’s misdemeanor domestic violence. If you plead not guilty, you can’t be released because you are deemed to be a threat to public safety. Bail’s generally set.
If you plead guilty, you will probably be released immediately
with a promise to attend counseling, even if you haven’t attended counseling before and you haven’t even seen a probation officer. By allowing that second option, aren’t we really saying, hey, we could really O.R.
all
these people?
You’re innocent until proven guilty.
The public safety thing is illusory.

A woman in an orange jumpsuit rubs her big, bewildered eyes. Her lawyer, a lady in tweed, lays a hand upon her arm. The woman in orange is led before the judge, expecting destiny, only to be told by
the people:
The deputy D.A. is on vacation and I don’t think he’s coming back until next month. —The woman does not understand.
The people’s
representative frowns at her and shakes her head. The accused felon clears her throat, craving to learn what will happen next, but she’s gently led toward the exit at stage left. The bailiff rattles his keys. He unlocks the door, which she enters, becoming a prisoner again, for how long nobody yet knows. But why on earth does she have a right to know? She’s but a detainee, poor and shadowy, like one of those Egyptians in the Book of Isaiah who find themselves forsaken by their idols.
And I will give over the Egyptians into the hand of a hard master; and a fierce king will rule over them.
†
She cannot be proven guilty until next month at the earliest. Might she live her life until then? Might
she descend those whitestone steps of the Hall of Justice, cross Byrant Street, and then wander home with the sun warming her pallid skin? It depends on the vagaries of bail.

I do think that it’s necessary for the system to make every effort possible to see that people are not unnecessarily inconvenienced, said Albert Locher, that supervisory deputy district attorney in Sacramento. —At the same time, he went on, the presumption of innocence is a presumption that attaches to a
specific part
of the proceedings, which is the trial process. But there are other parts of the process. Bail reflects not only the strength of the case but also the degree of danger. If you have a guy videotaped in an armed robbery with his fingerprints on the counter and the gun in his possession, you’re not going to find me or many other people wanting to let that guy out.

And so the presumed robber does not get out, and I’m with
the people
on that one; I’m not sorry. But the big-eyed woman in orange does not get out, either. Right or wrong, who’s to say? I don’t know her. But what does
innocent until proven guilty
mean to you?

The interminable pregnancy of justice continues. If a trial seems warranted, then the accused must stand for his second arraignment. There follows the
trial
itself, then the
verdict,
and then the
sentencing.
Another portion of somebody’s lifetime, converted into excrement, gets flushed down the toilet of a cell.

And now for the straight stuff, the vulgar poop:
What impels the bondsman’s kindness?
We said ten percent before, but did you truly lull yourself into equating simplicity with truth? —We’re supposed to charge a flat ten percent. —Thus Geri Campana, former flight attendant and school teacher, current owner-agent of Al Graf Bail Bonds. This friendly and cheerful Japanese-American woman had entered the business because her husband, a retired police officer now deceased, had suffered from back problems. A desk job being practical under such circumstances, they bought the business from Al.

In churches one sees altars, in low-class jungle whorehouses one finds girlie posters taped to the bamboo walls, and in bail-bonds establishments one discovers emblems of conformity with legal authority. Al Graf’s, for instance, sported the insigniae of the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, the National Rifle Association, and even the American Gunsmiths’ Association, a worthy organization whose skills remain of use to shooters of all ethical persuasions. At Al Graf’s there stretched a glasstopped wooden counter with a couple of stools behind it where the bondsmen sat. This barrier reminded me of the discreet little walls and reefs in topless clubs, cliffs to keep excited clients away. Every bondsman I’ve ever talked to says that the customers are friendly beyond the point of regularity; but aren’t we allowed to imagine odd times when some ghost without collateral blows in, and, his demands unsatisfied, decides to haunt the place? They say that Leon Padilla, the Sacramento “bail bonds king,” has survived four murder attempts—but some or all of those might have come from rival bondsmen. Didn’t anybody at Al Graf’s keep a box of silver bullets behind that counter, just in case? —Mrs. Campana was so kind to me that I thought her capable of exorcising all monsters with her sweetness. (Actually, they’re all very nice, she said. Each defendant is very grateful. We get along very well on the street.) And Roger Adair said: We have a good idea what they’re about. If we have a bad feeling, we’ll just say we’re sorry, we’re unable to write this bond for you. There are plenty of other bondsmen in the phone book. They might give you a little huff and grief about not wanting to help ’em but that’s just a part of the business.
It is very natural in life to want to make a profit, be it financial or otherwise—don’t honeybees profit when they build up a store of metabolized nectar? When one profits from other people’s desperation (which I as a journalist occasionally do), one may well be lubricating evil’s tracks. —But
must
that be? Why should Mrs. Campana put herself at financial risk for the sake of every accused stranger’s freedom? Doesn’t she deserve to flourish? Aren’t her customers pleased to escape or postpone their living death?

Do you ever feel that bail costs too much? I asked her.

Some families, she replied, well, they go overboard, which I think is wrong. They offer up what they can’t afford. We don’t wanna go after them for the money. If the guy skips, they would be hurt just as hard as we would be. We’re here to protect their interest as the indemnitor. So anybody who skips, we try to coax them back into the system. We take the
friendly
approach. I’ll call them and they’ll be like, oh, my God, I’ve blown it. What do I do now?

(And Roger Adair said: Maybe five or ten percent are knuckleheads at most. People call and say, whoops, my car broke down. Yeah,
right.
And most of the skips, we get ’em cleared up before anything bad happens. Only two to three percent actually run, and we have our own bounty hunter.)

When we take ‘em out of jail, said Al Graf, ninety-eight percent show up for trial. (Al, as his business card said, was the original
“BONDSMAN WITH A HEART”
and on that lemon-yellow card his telephone number had been inscribed in a ruby red heart.)

Mrs. Campana explicated: If they do not show up, they come back and request to get back on the calendar. We’ve collateralized their bail, so . . .

I asked Matt Gonzalez: Would you say that bail bondsmen perform a service or would you call them vultures?

I would think more on the service side.
*
However, what’s their risk?

Well, Al Graf told me that ninety-eight percent of his clients don’t skip.

He would know. In that case, maybe ten percent is a little steep.

Reader, I repeat: How can one not wish upon every bail bondsman, as upon every other soul, riches? (I keep seeing more and more new bail bonds businesses across from the courthouse, said the bail commissioner. I have never seen one fail.) But I would prefer it if their services were more democratically bestowed. As I write this, I can see before me Strawberry’s sad and drunken face.

The public defender Daro Inouye told me that
ninety-four percent
of his clients were incarcerated simply because they could not make bail. When I first heard this, I couldn’t
believe it.
*
I would have believed ten percent, or even thirty, but not almost all of them. Inouye went on to say that in the old days far more people were bailed. I asked what had happened. —This is one of the great mysteries, he laughed, spreading his arms.

But it’s far more expensive to incarcerate them all! I said.