“Who puts up the collateral?”
“There isn’t any. No money changes hands. That’s why I say you’d be helping us out.”
Max smiled. He looked over at Winston, off the phone now. “You have to hear this. He wants us to write a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bond with no premium, no collateral, on a guy who’s been arrested seventeen times and shot a cop.”
Now Winston was smiling.
Nicolet glanced over his shoulder at him.
“As a favor. What’s wrong with that?”
“You’re talking about a guy,” Max said, “who’s the highest kind of risk that he’ll take off, who’s a threat to the community . . . He shoots somebody, another cop, he runs and we’re holding his paper.”
Nicolet was shaking his head. “Wait, okay? I guarantee the guy won’t be out of my sight. But even if he does run, you won’t be out the twenty-five, I promise. I got the magistrate’s word on it. She knows exactly what we’re doing, that it’s not the ordinary kind of bond situation.”
“What if she dies, retires, gets transferred, hit by lightning—come on,” Max said, “you think I’m crazy? I’m gonna sign my name to a promissory note for twenty-five grand on your word that it’ll never be called for payment?” He looked over at Winston. “You ever hear of anything like this?”
“Yeah, I have. I know a bondsman in Miami done it,” Winston said. “Was ten grand. The case got shifted to another court after the guy ran? The new judge says he’d never approve this kind of bulishit in the first place, made the bondsman pay up.”
“I’ll get it in writing,” Nicolet said.
Winston shook his head.
Max said, “Have the magistrate sign a statement saying it’s a phony bond? It’s hard enough getting them to sign warrants.” Max paused. “Against my better judgment I’ll go along with you partway. We won’t charge the ten percent fee if you can get someone to put up the collateral. How about yourself? You have a house?”
“My ex-wife’s got it,” Nicolet said.
“It’s just as well,” Max said. “Another reason it won’t work, everybody on the street will know Hulon cut a deal. He might as well wear a sign, ‘I fink for ATF.’ Most likely if he doesn’t run, he’s dead.”
Nicolet had that squinty look again. “I thought you’d go for this.”
“Why?”
“You were a cop, you know what it’s like. You’d see it as worth a try.”
“You have my sympathy,” Max said. “How’s that?”
“I guess you have your problems too,” Nicolet said. “Like you write a bond on a guy and he disappears? . . .”
“We go get him,” Max said.
“But you can’t find this one ’cause he’s hidden away in the Federal Witness Security program? You have any high-bond defendants might disappear on you like that?”
Max looked at Winston. “Now he’s threatening us.
“Ask him,” Winston said, “he’s ever had his head punched off his shoulders?”
Nicolet looked around to give Winston a grin. “Hey, I was putting you on. We’re on the same side, man.”
Winston said, “Long as you don’t step over the line.”
Nicolet looked at Max and raised his eyebrows, innocent. “I was kidding, okay?”
Max nodded. Maybe he was, maybe he was-n’t. The guy was young, aggressive, dying to make a collar, put Ordell Robbie away. Max was all for that. He said, “Check out a guy named Louis Gara, released from Starke, I don’t know, a couple of months ago. Check with Glades Mutual in Miami. Get next to him, I think he can take you to Ordell.”
They talked about Louis Gara for a few minutes and Nicolet left.
Winston said, “One of the calls was for you. Gave me a name . . .” Winston looked at his notepad. “Simone Harrison, lives on 30th Street?”
Max shook his head. “Never heard of her.”
“Drives a ‘85 Mercury?”
Simone did Martha and the Vandellas doing “Heat Wave” and then “Quicksand” for Louis, Louis nodding his head almost in time, drinking rum this evening, her drink. He started clapping his hands and Simone had to tell him, “No, baby, like this,” show him where the beat was. The rum helped loosen him. She did Mary Wells doing “My Guy.” Did Mary Wells and Marvin Gaye doing “What’s the Matter with You, Baby,” and held her hands out for Louis to join her, do the Marvin Gaye part. Louis said he didn’t know the words. Actually he didn’t know shit but was a big fella with muscle on him, big hard bones, a lot of black hair on his white body. She said, “Listen to the words, sugar. It’s how you learn them.” Told him, “Here, do this,” showing him how to hold his hands limp and move his hips sloooow, see? Simone giving him a dreamy look to quiet him down and quit watching his feet, saying, “It’s up here, baby, in the center of you,” hand on her tummy, “not down there on the floor.”
He took hold of her, still moving.
“Let’s go in the bedroom.”
“We can’t dance in there, baby.”
When he started moving his hands over her and got one up underneath her skirt Simone said, “What you looking for in there?”
“I found it.”
“Yeah, I think you have.”
“Let’s go in the bedroom.”
“Baby, don’t tear my underwear. They brand new today.”
“I could, easy.”
The new undies reminded her of the mall, meeting the girl she was supposed to meet, and she said, “We have to put the money away. Can’t leave it sitting out.”
“I will.”
“Have to hide it.”
“I’m gonna hide the weenie.”
They said cute things like that, white boys did. Even big middle-age jailbirds.
“You are, huh? You feeling good, baby? Yeaaaah . . . But don’t tear my underwear, okay, sugar? You like to tear underwear, lemme put on an old pair for you.”
Max rang the bell and waited, hearing the faint sound of music he gradually identified as vintage Mo-town, the sound familiar, but could-n’t name the vocal group or the number they were doing. He rang the bell and waited again, close to a minute, before a woman’s voice said, “What you want?”
“Ordell,” Max said, staring at the peephole. Too dark for the woman to see him unless she turned the porch light on.
“He ain’t here.”
“I’m supposed to meet him.”
“Where?”
“Here. He said nine o’clock.” It was about ten to.
“Wait a minute.”
He could hear children playing across the street, little black kids, Max thinking it was past their bedtime, they should be inside.
A man’s voice said, “What do you want?”
“I already told the lady, I’m meeting Ordell.”
There was a silence.
“Are you a cop?”
“I’m a bail bondsman. Turn the porch light on, I’ll show you my ID.”
The man’s voice said, “I thought it was you.”
Sounding confident now.
The door opened. Max saw Louis Gara standing there in a pair of pants, no shirt, fingering the thick mat of hair on his chest. Max took a moment to make the connection: both friends of Ordell’s, it could explain Louis being here but not what he was doing with the woman.
