Jackie Brown (2 page)

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 size shoulders on him. That dark, tough-looking type of guy like Louis, dark hair, only Max Cherry was losing his on top. Up in his fifties somewhere. He could be Eyetalian, except Ordell had never met a bail bondsman wasn't Jewish. Max was telling the guy now the judge was ready to habitualize him. "That what you want, Reg? Look at ten years instead of six months and probation? I said, 'Your Honor, Reggie has always been an outstanding client. I know I can find him right now . . .''

Ordell, lighting the cigarette, paused as Max paused.

"'.'.. out standing on the corner by his house.''

Listen to him. Doing standup.

"I can have the capias set aside, Reg. . . . The fugitive warrant, they're gonna be looking for you, man. But it means I'll have to pick you up."

Ordell blew out smoke and looked around for an ashtray. He saw the NO SMOKING sign above the door to what looked like a meeting room, a long table in there, what looked like a refrigerator, a coffee maker.

"Stay at your mom's till I come for you. You'll have to go back in. ... Overnight, that's all. Tomorrow you'll be out, I promise." Ordell watched Max hang up the phone saying, "He's home when I get there or I have a five-thousand-dollar problem. What's yours?"

"I don't see an ashtray," Ordell said, holding up his cigarette. "The other thing, I need a bond for ten thousand."

"What've you got for collateral?"

"Gonna have to put up cash."

"You have it with you?"

"In my bag."

"Use that coffee mug on the desk."

Ordell moved around the desk, clean, nothing on it but his athletic bag, a telephone, and the coffee mug with still some in it. He flicked his ash and sat down in the swivel chair to face Max Cherry again, over behind his desk.

"You have cash," Max said, "what do you need me for?"

"Come on," Ordell said, "you know how they do. Want to know where you got it, then keep out a big chunk, say it's for court costs. Pull all kind of shit on you."

"It'll cost you a thousand for the bond."

"I know that."

"Who's it for, a relative?"

"Fella name Beaumont. They have him up at the Gun Club jail."

Max Cherry kept staring from his desk, hunched over some. He had a computer there and a typewriter and a stack of file folders, one of them open.

"Was sheriff deputies picked him up Saturday night," Ordell said. "It started out drunk driving, but they wrote it 'possession of a concealed weapon.' Had a pistol on him."

"Ten thousand sounds high."

"They ran his name and got a hit, saw he's been in before. Or they don't like it he's Jamaican. You know what I'm saying? They afraid he might take off."

"If he does and I have to go to Jamaica after him, you cover the expenses."

This was interesting. Ordell said, "You think you could pick him up down there? Put him on a plane, bring him back?"

"I've done it. What's his full name?"

"Beaumont. That's the only name I know."

Max Cherry, getting papers out of his drawer, looked over this way again, the man no doubt thinking, You putting that kind of money up and you don't even know his name? Ordell got a kick out of people wondering about him, this man-look at him-holding back from asking the question. Ordell said, "I have people do favors for me don't even have names outside of like Zulu, Cujo, one they call Wa-wa. Street names. You know what they call me sometime? Whitebread, account of my shade. Or they say just 'Bread' for short. It's okay, they not disrespecting me." See what the man thought of that.

He didn't say. He picked up his phone.

Ordell smoked his cigarette, watching as the man punched numbers, and heard him ask for the Records Office, then ask somebody if they'd look up the Booking Card and Rough Arrest on a defendant named Beaumont, saying he believed it was the surname but wasn't sure, check the ones came in Saturday night. He had to wait before getting what he wanted, asking questions and filling out a form on his desk. When he was done and had hung up the phone he said, "Beaumont Livingston."

"Livingston, huh?"

"On his prior," Max Cherry said, "he did nine months and is working out four years probation. For possession of unregistered machine guns."

"You don't tell me."

"So he's violated his probation. He's looking at ten years plus the concealed weapon."

"Man, he won't like that," Ordell said. He drew on his cigarette and dropped it in the coffee mug. "Beaumont don't have the disposition for doing time."

Now Max Cherry was staring again before he said, "You ever been to prison?"

"Long time ago in my youth I did a bit in Ohio. Wasn't anything, stealing cars."

"I need your name too, and your address."

Ordell told him it was Ordell Robbie, spelled it for him when the man asked, and said where he lived.

"That a Jamaican name?"

"Hey, do I sound like one of them? You hear them talking that island potwah to each other, it's like a different language. No, man, I'm African-American. I used to be Neegro, I was cullud, I was black, but now I'm African-American. What're you, Jewish, huh?"

"You're African-American, I guess I'm French-American," Max Cherry said. "With maybe some New Orleans Creole in there, going way back." Now he was shuffling through papers on his desk to find the ones he wanted. "You'll have to fill out an Application for Appearance Bond, an Indemnity Agreement, a Contingent Promissory Note . . . It's the one, if Beaumont skips and I go after him, you pay the expenses."

"Beaumont ain't going nowhere," Ordell said. "You gonna have to figure out some other way to skim, make more than your ten percent. I'm surprised you don't try to double the fee account of he's Jamaican. . . ."

"It's against the law."

"Yeah, but it's done, huh? You people have your ways. Like not refunding the collateral." Ordell got up, went over to the man's desk with the athletic bag he bought at the airport souvenir shop, and took a bundle of currency out of it, old bills held together with a rubber band. "Hundred times a hundred," Ordell said, "and ten more for your cut. You do all right, huh? What I like to know is where you keeping my money till I get it back. In your drawer?"

"Across the street at First Union," Max Cherry said, taking the bills and working the rubber bands off. "It goes in a trust account."

"So you gonna make some money extra on the interest, huh? I knew it."

The man didn't say yes or no, busy counting hundred-dollar bills now. When he was done and Ordell was signing the different papers, the man asked if he was going out to the jail with him. Ordell straightened up and thought about it before shaking his head.

"Not if I don't need to. Tell Beaumont I'll be in touch." Ordell buttoned his double-breasted sport jacket, his canary one he wore over the black T-shirt

and black silk trousers this afternoon. He wondered how tall this Max Cherry was, so he said, "Nice doing business with you," and stuck out his hand without reaching toward him. Max Cherry rose up to stand six feet and some, a speck taller than Ordell, with a big mitt on him Ordell shook and let go. The man nodded, that was it, and stood waiting for him to leave.

Ordell said, "You know why I come here, not someplace else? Friend of mine I understand does some work for you."

"You mean Winston?"

"Another fella, Louis Gara. He's my white friend," Ordell said, and smiled.

Max Cherry didn't. He said, "I haven't seen him today."

"Yeah, well, I'll catch him sometime." Ordell picked up his bag and started for the door. He stopped and looked back. "I got one other question. What if, I was just thinking, what if before the court date gets here Beaumont gets hit by a car or something and dies? I get the money back, don't I?"

What he was saying was, he knew he'd get it back. The kind of guy who worked at being cool, but was dying to tell you things about himself. He knew the system, knew the main county lockup was called the Gun Club jail, after the road it was on. He'd served time, knew Louis Gara, and drove off in a Mercedes convertible. What else you want to know? Ordell Robbie. Max was surprised he'd never heard of him.

He turned away from the front window, went back to his office to type up bail forms.

The first one, the Power of Attorney. Max rolled it into his typewriter and paused, looking at his problem. It would hit him in the eye every time he filled out a form that had GLADES MUTUAL CASUALTY COMPANY printed across the top.

The Power of Attorney verified Max Cherry as the insurance company's licensed surety-bond representative, here, in the matter of Beaumont Livingston. The way it worked, the insurance company would get one third of the ten percent premium and put a third of it into a buildup fund to cover forfeitures.

If Max wrote fifty thousand dollars' worth of bail bonds a week, he'd clear five grand less expenses and the one third that went to Glades Mutual in Miami. It was a grind, but good money if you put in the hours.

The problem was that after representing Glades for the past nineteen years, no complaints either way, the company was now under new management, taken over by guys with organized crime connections. Max was sure of it. They'd even placed an ex-con in his office, Ordell Robbie's friend Louis Gara. "To help out," this thug from Glades Mutual said, a guy who didn't know shit about the business. "Go after some of those big drug-trafficking bonds."

"What those people do," Max told the guy, "is skip as soon as they're bonded."

The guy said, "So what? We got the premium."

"I don't write people who I know are gonna forfeit."

The guy said, "If they don't want to show up in court, that's their business."

"And it's my business who I write," Max told him.

The guy from Glades said, "You got an attitude problem," and gave him Louis to hang around the office, a convicted bank robber just out of prison.

Winston came in while Max was preparing the forms. Winston Willie Powell, a licensed bondsman following a 39 and 10 record as a middleweight. He was light heavy in retirement, short and thick, with a bearded black face so dark it was hard to make out his features. Max watched him, at the other desk now, unlock the right-hand drawer and take out a snub-nosed .38 before he looked over.

"Have to pick up that little Puerto Rican housebreaker thinks he's Zorro. Has the swords on his wall? Man lies to his probation officer, she violates him, we bond him, and then he don't show up for his hearing. I called Delray PD, said I might need some backup, depending how it goes. They say to me, 'He's your problem, man.' They don't want to mess with those women live there. Touch Zorro, they try to scratch your eyes out."

"You want help? Get Louis."

Winston said, "I rather do it myself," shoving the .38 into his waistband and smoothing his ribbed knit T-shirt over it. "Who you writing?"

"Concealed weapon. Ten thousand."

"That's high."

"Not for Beaumont Livingston. They caught him one time with machine guns."

"Beaumont-he's Jamaican he's gone."

"This African-American gent who put up cash says no."

"We know him?"

"Ordell Robbie," Max said and waited.

Winston shook his head. "Where's he live?"

"On Thirty-first right off Greenwood. You know

that neighborhood? It's kept up. People have bars on their windows."

"You want, I'll check him out."

"He knows Louis. They're old buddies."

"Then you know the man's dirty," Winston said.

"Where's Beaumont live?" "Riviera Beach. He's hired help but worth ten grand to Mr. Robbie."

"Wants his man sprung 'fore he gets squeezed and cops to a deal. I can bring him out when I take Zorro."

"I'm going up anyway. I have to deliver Reggie." "Missed his hearing again? They beauties, aren't they?"

"He says it was his mother's birthday, he forgot." "And you believe that shit. I swear, there times you act like these people are no different than anybody else."

"I'm glad we're having this talk," Max said. "Yeah, well, I'm enough irritated the way you act,"