“I’m not going in there with
“Well, that’s cool,” Ordell said. “We don’t have to.”
They found a place where they could see enough of the young Nazi. He was shouting, “What do we want?” And his buddies and the Nazigirls and the rest of the cuckoos up there would shout back, “White power!” They kept it up until the young Nazi finished and shouted, “One day the world will know Adolf Hitler was right!” That got voices from the crowd shouting back at him, calling him stupid and a retard. He yelled at the crowd, “We’re going to reclaim this land for our people!” his young Nazi voice cracking. And they yelled back, what people was he talking about, assholes like him? A black woman in the crowd said, “Come on up to Riv’era Beach and say those things, you be dead.” The young skinhead Nazi began screaming “Sieg heil!” as loud as he could, over and over, and the cuckoos joined in with him, giving the Nazi salute. Now young guys in the crowd were calling them racist motherfuckers, telling them to go home, go on, get out of here, and it looked like the show was over.
Ordell said, “Let’s go.”
They walked over to Ocean Boulevard where they’d left his car, a black Mercedes convertible, with the top down. The time on the meter had run out and a parking ticket was stuck beneath the windshield wiper on the driver’s side. Ordell pulled the ticket out and dropped it in the street. Louis was watching but didn’t comment. Didn’t say much of anything until they were on the middle bridge heading back to West Palm. Then he started.
“Why’d you want to show me that guy? He call you a nigger and you want his legs broken?”
“That payback shit,” Ordell said, “ you must get that from hanging out with the Eyetalians. Ain’t nothing they like better than paying back. Swear an oath to it.”
“You want to see where I hang out?” Louis said. “You come to Olive, take a right. Go up to Banyan, used to be First Street, and hang a left.” The next thing Louis was telling him, on Olive now, “That’s the court building up on the right.”
“I know where the courts are at,” Ordell said. He turned onto Banyan and was heading toward Dixie Highway now. Halfway up the block Louis told him to stop.
“Right there, the white building,” Louis said, “that’s where I hang out.”
Ordell turned his head to look across the street at a one-story building, a storefront with max cherry bail bonds printed on the window.
“You work for a
“Glades Mutual in Miami,” Louis said. “Max Cherry writes their bonds. I sit in the office— some guy misses his court date, I go get him.”
“Yeah?” That sounded a little better, like Louis was a bounty hunter, went after bad guys on the run.
“What they want me for mainly, see if I can bring in some of those big drug-trafficking bonds, hundred and fifty grand and up.”
Ordell said, “Yeah, I ’magine you made some good contacts in the joint. That why the company hired you?”
“It was my celimate, guy was in for killing his wife. He told me to look up these friends of his when I got out. I go to see them, they ask me if I know any Colombians. I said yeah, a few.
Some guys I met through a con named J.J. I told you about him, the one that got picked up again? I’m staying in his house.” Louis lifted a cigarette from the pocket of his work shirt. “So what I do is look up these Colombians, down in South Beach, and hand out Max Cherry business cards. ‘If you ever go to jail, I’m your bail.’
He’s got another one that says ‘Gentlemen prefer bonds’ with his name under it, phone number, all that.” Louis went into the pocket again for a kitchen match.
Ordell waited. “Yeah?”
“That’s it. Most of the time I sit there.”
“You get along with the Colombians?”
“Why not? They know where I came from.” Louis struck the match with his thumbnail. “They play that cha- cha music so loud you can’t hardly talk anyway.”
Ordell got his own brand out and Louis gave him a light in his cupped hands.
“You don’t sound happy, Louis.”
He said, “Whatever you’re into, I don’t want any part of it, okay? Once was enough.”
Ordell sat back with his cigarette.
“Like you Steady Eddie, huh? I’m the one fucked up that kidnap deal?”
“You’re the one brought Richard in.”
“What’s that have to do with it?”
“You knew he’d try to rape her.”
“Yeah, and you helped her out of that mess. But that ain’t what blew the deal, Louis. You know what it was. We tell the man, pay up or you never see your wife again—’cause that’s how you do it, right? Then find out he don’t
“It would’ve come apart anyway,” Louis said. “We didn’t know what we were doing.”
“I see you the expert now. Tell me who’s been in prison three times and who’s been in once? Listen, I got people working for me now. I got brothers do the heavy work. I got a man over in Freeport—you remember Mr. Walker? I got a Jamaican can do figures in his head. Can add up numbers, can multiply what things cost times how many”—Ordell snapped his fingers—”like that.”
“You got an accountant,” Louis said. “I’m happy for you.”
“Have I asked you to come work for me?”
“Not yet you haven’t.”
“You know what a M-60 machine gun is?”
“A big one, a military weapon.”
“I sold three of them for twenty grand each and bought this automobile,” Ordell said. “What do I need you for?”
2
Monday afternoon, Renee called Max at his office to say she needed eight hundred twenty dollars right away and wanted him to bring her a check. Renee was at her gallery in The Gardens Mall on PGA Boulevard. It would take Max a half hour at least to drive up there.
He said, “Renee, even if I wanted to, I can’t. I’m waiting to hear from a guy. I just spoke to the judge about him.” He had to listen then while she told how she had been trying to get hold of him. “That’s where I was, at court. I got your message on the beeper. . . . I just got back, I haven’t had time. . . .Renee, I’m working, for Christ sake.” Max paused, holding the phone to his ear, not able to say anything. He looked up to see a black guy in a yellow sport coat standing in his office. A black guy with shiny hair holding a Miami Dolphins athletic bag. Max said, “Renee, listen a minute, okay? I got a kid’s gonna do ten fucking years if I don’t get hold of him and take him in and you want me to . . . Renee?”
Max replaced the phone.
The black guy said, “Hung up on you, huh? I bet that was your wife.”
The guy smiling at him.
Max came close to saying, yeah, and you know what she said to me? He wanted to. Except that it wouldn’t make sense to tell this guy he didn’t know, had never seen before . . .
The black guy saying, “There was nobody in the front office, so I walked in. I got some business.”
The phone rang. Max picked it up, pointing to a chair with his other hand, and said, “Bail Bonds.”
Ordell heard him say, “It doesn’t matter where you were, Reggie, you missed your hearing. Now I have to . . . Reg, listen to me, okay?” This Max Cherry speaking in a quieter voice than he used on his wife. Talking to her had sounded painful. Ordell placed his athletic bag on an empty desk that faced the one Max Cherry was at and got out a cigarette.
This looked more like the man’s den than a bail bond office: a whole wall of shelves behind where Max Cherry sat with books on it, all kinds of books, some wood-carved birds, some beer mugs. It was too neat and homey for this kind of scummy business. The man himself appeared neat, clean-shaved, had his blue shirt open, no tie, good
