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 pu
t 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,"
Winston said, "you better not get smart with me. Like nothing bothers you. Like not even Mr. Louis Gara, the way you let him waste your time. Let him smoke his cigarettes in here."
"No, Louis bothers me," Max said.
"Then throw his ass out and lock the door. Then call that crooked insurance company and tell them you're through. You don't, they gonna eat you up or get you in trouble with the state commission, and you know it."
"Right," Max said. He turned to his typewriter.
"Listen to me. All you got to do is stop writing their bonds."
"You mean quit the business."
"For a while. What's wrong with that?"
"If you haven't looked at the books lately," Max said, "we've got close to a million bucks out there."
"It don't mean you have to work. Ride it out. See, then when it's all off the books you start over."
"I got bills to pay, like everybody else."
"Yeah, but you could do it if you wanted; there ways. What I think is, you tired of the business."
"You're right again," Max said, tired of talking about it.
"But you don't see a way to get out, so you act like nothing bothers you."
Max didn't argue. Nine years together, Winston knew him. It was quiet and then Winston said, "How's Renee doing?" Coming at him from another direction. "She making it yet?"
"You want to know if I'm still paying her bills?"
"Don't tell me what you don't want to."
"Okay, the latest," Max said. He turned from his typewriter. "I walk in, I just got back from seeing the judge about Reggie, she calls."
He paused as Winston sat down and hunched over the desk on his arms, Winston staring at him now, waiting.
"She's at the mall. Something she ordered, three olive pots, arrived COD and she needs eight twenty right away. That's eight hundred and twenty."
"What's a olive pot?"
"How should I know? What she wanted was for me to drop whatever I was doing and bring her a check."
Winston sat there staring at him, his head down in those heavy shoulders. "For these olive pots."
"I said, 'Renee, I'm working. I'm trying to save a young man from doing ten years and I'm waiting for him to call.' I try to explain it to her in a nice way. You know what she said? She said, 'Well, I'm working too.''
Winston seemed to smile. It was hard to tell. He said, "I was out there one time. Renee act like she didn't see me and I'm the only person in there."
"That's what I mean," Max said. "She says she's working-doing what? You never see anybody unless she's got the wine and cheese out. You know what I mean? For a show. Then you have all the freeloaders. You see these guys, they look like they live in cardboard boxes under the freeway, they're eating everything, drinking the wine . . . You know who they are? The artists and their crowd. I've even recognized guys I've written. Renee's playing like she's Peter Pan, has her hair cut real short, and all these assholes are the Lost Boys. The place clears out, she hasn't sold one fucking painting."
"So what you're telling me," Winston said, "you're still supporting her habit."
"She's got a Cuban guy now, David, I mean Da-veed, she says is gonna be discovered and make it big, any day now. The guy's a busboy at Chuck and Harold's."
"See, what I don't understand," Winston said, "you let a woman don't weigh a hundred pounds beat up on you. It's the same as how you treat some of these lowlife assholes we dealing with. They give you all kind of shit and you go along with it. Then I see you pick up a guy that skipped, some mean-drunk motherfucker and you cuff him, no problem, and take him in. You understand what I'm saying? Why don't you tell the woman to pay her own bills or you gonna divorce her? Or go ahead and divorce her anyway. You don't live together. What're you getting out of being married? Nothing. Am I right? 'Less you still going to bed with her."
"When you're separated," Max said, "you don't get to do that. You don't want to."
"Yeah, well, I imagine you do all right with the ladies. But where she getting hers, off the artists? This Cuban busboy, Da-veed? If she is, that's a good reason to divorce her. Catch her going out on you."
"You're getting personal now," Max said.
Winston looked surprised. "Man, we been getting nothing but personal. It's your personal life has you messed up, one problem pressing on another. The way Renee has hold of your balls, you don't have the strength to get the insurance company off your back. All the money you put in her picture store, paying her bills, you could shut down here and live on it till you start up again clean, with a different insurance company. You know I'm right too, so I'm not gonna say another word."
"Good," Max said. He turned to the Power of Attorney form in his typewriter.
"You take her the check she wanted?"
"No, I didn't."
"She call back?"
"Not yet."
"She cry and carry on like she does?"
"She hung up on me," Max said. "Look, I have to finish this and get out of here."
"Don't let me disturb you."
Max started typing again.
He heard Winston say, "Hey, shit-" and looked over to see him standing at the desk now holding his coffee mug.
"That goddamn Louis, you see what he done? Put his cigarette butt in here. I'm gonna punch him right in his smokin' mouth."
Max turned back to the form, GLADES MUTUAL CASUALTY printed across the top. He said, "I know how you feel. But when you hit an ex-con who's done three falls, they say you better kill him."
Chapter 3
Ordell asked one of his jackboys to get him a car with keys in it and leave it in the Ocean Mall parking lot over by the beach. The jackboy asked him what kind of car he wanted. Ordell said, "One has a big trunk with a shotgun in it."
He liked jackboys because they were crazy. They made their living ripping off street dealers for their blow and change and busting into crack houses with assault weapons. Jackboys liked Ordell because he was cool, not some homey everybody knew; the man was big-time from Detroit, had different women he stayed with as it suited him, and could deliver you a full-automatic weapon on two days notice. So now some of the jackboys worked for Ordell, picking up special kinds of guns he needed to fill orders. The one who was getting him the car, Cujo, called him that Tuesday evening where he was staying with one of his women to say it was there waiting, an Olds Ninety-Eight, 12-gauge in the trunk.
Ordell said, "The car, if it's clean now it won't be after."
Cujo said, "It don't matter. Bread, it's stole. Was a brother had it that's dead from the other night. You hear of it? Policeman shot him both in the front and in the back. We try to get him from the house, but he bled out on us so we left him."
"I saw it in the paper," Ordell said. "The cop told them yeah, when a man is shot sometimes he'll spin around on you, it ain't unusual, and that's what happened. But where did he shoot him first, in the front or in the back?"
Cujo said, "Yeaaah . . . tha
t's right, huh?"
You could mess with a jackboy's head, get him to I think what you wanted, their brains cooked from doing crack.
Ordell thanked him for the car and Cujo said, j "Bread? They's a piece underneath with the keys, case you want it. Belonged to the brother was shot for dead."
Ordell had three women he kept in three different homes.
He had Sheronda living in the house on 31 st Street off Greenwood Avenue, in West Palm. Sheronda, a young woman he'd picked up coming through Fort Valley, Georgia, one time on his way back from Detroit. There she was, standing at the side of the road, no shoes on, sunlight showing her body in the wornout dress. Sheronda cooked good collards with salt pork, black-eyed peas, chicken-fried steak, cleaned the house, and provided Ordell with grateful pussy, anytime day or night, for taking her out of the peanut fields. There was nothing in this little redbrick ranch that told what Ordell did for a living. About once a week he'd have to explain to Sheronda how to set the alarm system. She was afraid of getting trapped in the house, not able to get out with grillwork covering the windows.
Simone, a cute woman for her age, sixty-three years old, was from Detroit and knew all about alarm systems and liked the bars on her windows. Ordell had her living in a stucco Spanish-looking house on 30th Street near Windsor Avenue, not two blocks from Sheronda's, but without them knowing about each other. Simone put weaves in her hair and believed she resembled Diana Ross. Her pleasure was to sing along with Motown recordings and do the steps and gestures accompanying the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Syreeta Wright, all the oldies. Whenever Ordell let Simone take him to bed, it was ten times better than he thought it would be. Simone could write a book on the different ways to please a man. Ordell would store guns temporarily in this house, semiautomatic weapons like TEC-9s purchased legally by "straw buyers" that Simone hired to do it, mostly retired people. Give an old woman the cash plus twenty bucks to buy an assault rifle. None of the straw buyers knew about Ordell, at least not by name.
He had his white woman, Melanie, living in the apartment in Palm Beach Shores, located at the south end of Singer Island, only two blocks from the public beach. Melanie was the fine big girl Ordell had met in the Bahamas when he went there to see the husband of the woman he and Louis had kidnapped. Melanie was only about twenty-one then, making her thirty-four or so now, but had hustled her tail all over the world taking up with rich guys. She had been with the husband of the kidnapped woman, but when Ordell looked for him he was hiding and she wouldn't tell where he was. So Ordell, what he did was have his friend Mr. Walker take them out in the ocean in his boat and Ordell threw Melanie over the side. They went off a ways, circled around back to where Melanie's blond head was bobbing in the water, and Ordell asked her, "You want to tell me where the man's at?" She was a show. Told Ordell after she would help him score off the husband of the kidnapped woman 'cause she liked him, Ordell, better. She said also 'cause she didn't want to end up in the fucking ocean.