“She’s done it before,” Max said. “That helps.”
What surprised him, reading the Booking Card, was Jackie Burke’s age. He had been picturing a fairly young airline stewardess. Now, the revised image was a forty-four-year-old woman who showed some wear and tear. But then, when the two deputies brought her in the front entrance, from outside dark into fluorescent light, Max saw he was still way off.
This was a good-looking woman. If he didn’t know her age he’d say she was somewhere in her mid-thirties. Nice figure in the uniform skirt, five five, one fifteen—he liked her type, the way she moved, scuffing the slides on the vinyl floor, the way she raised her hand to brush her hair from her face. . . . Max said, “Ms. Burke?” and handed her his business card as he introduced himself. She nodded, glancing at the card. There were women who sobbed with relief. Some men too. There were women who came up and kissed him. This one nodded. They brought out her personal property and inventoried it back to her. As she was signing for it Max said, “I can give you a lift home if you’d like.”
She looked up and nodded again saying, “Okay,” and then, “No, wait. My car’s at the airport.”
“I can drop you off there.”
She said, “Would you?” and seemed to look at him for the first time.
Right at him, not the least self-conscious, smiling a little with her eyes, a warm green that showed glints of light. He watched her step out of the slides and turn to press her hip against the wall, one and then the other, to slip her heels on. When she straightened, brushing her hair aside with the tips of her fingers, she smiled for the first time, a tired one, and seemed to shrug. Neither of them spoke again until they were outside and he asked if she was okay. Jackie Burke said, “I’m not sure,” in no hurry walking to the car. Usually they were anxious to get out of here.
Now they were in the car ready to go and he felt her staring at him.
She said, “Are you really a bail bondsman?”
He looked at her. “What do you think I am?”
She didn’t answer.
“I gave you my card in there.”
She said, “Can I see your ID?”
“You serious?”
She waited.
Max dug the case out of his pocket, handed it to her, and opened the door so the inside light would go on. He watched her read every word from surety agent licensed by state of florida down to his date of birth and the color of his eyes.
She handed it back to him saying, “Who put up my bond, Ordell?”
“In cash,” Max said, “the whole ten thousand.”
She turned to look straight ahead.
Now they were both silent until the car reached the front gate and Max lowered his window. A deputy came out of the gatehouse with Max’s .38 revolver, the cylinder open. Max handed the deputy his pass in exchange for the gun, thanked him, and snapped the cylinder closed before reaching over to put the revolver in the glove box. The gate opened. He said, “Ordinarily you have to go inside, but they know me. I’m out here a lot.” Leaving the Stockade he turned on his brights and headed in the direction of Southern Boulevard, telling Ms. Burke for something to say that no one entered with a weapon, not even the deputies; telling her the office trailer next to the gate-house was full of guns. He looked over as she flicked her lighter on and saw her face, cheeks drawn to inhale a thin cigarillo in the glow of the flame.
“You smoke cigars?”
“If I have to. Can we stop for cigarettes?”
He tried to picture a store out this way on Southern.
“The closest place I can think of,” Max said “would be the Polo Lounge. You ever been there?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s okay, it’s a cop hangout.”
“I’d just as soon wait.”
“I thought you might want a drink.”
“I’d love one, but not there.”
“We could stop at the Hilton.”
“Is it dark?”
“Yeah, it’s nice.”
“We need a lounge that’s dark.”
He glanced at her, surprised.
She said, “I look like I just got out of jail,” and blew a stream of cigar smoke at the windshield.
Dinner with a burglar, drinks with a flight attendant who did coke and delivered large sums of money. Cocktail piano in the background.
She looked different now, her eyes seemed more alive. Green eyes that moved and gleamed, reflecting the room’s rose-colored light. Max watched her open a pack of cigarettes and light one before taking a sip of Scotch and glancing toward the cocktail piano.
“He shouldn’t be allowed to do ‘Light My Fire.’ ”
“Not here,” Max said, “in a tux.”
“Not anywhere.” She pushed the pack toward him.
Max shook his head. “I quit three years ago.”
“You gain weight?”
“Ten pounds. I lose it and put it back on.”
“That’s why I don’t quit. One of the reasons. I was locked up yesterday with two cigarettes. And spent half the night getting advice from a cleaning woman named Ramona, who doesn’t smoke.”
Not sounding too upset.
“Ramona Williams,” Max said, “she dips snuff. I’ve written her a few times. She has a tendency, she gets mad when she’s drinking, to hit people with hammers, baseball bats. . . . You get along okay?”
“She offered to clean my apartment for forty dollars and do the windows on the inside.”
Sounding serious now.
Max shifted around in his chair. “She was advising you, huh? . . . To do what?”
“I don’t know—I guess what I need is a lawyer. Find out what my options are. So far, I can cooperate and get probation, maybe. Or I can stand mute and get as much as five years. Does that sound right?”
“You mean just, or accurate? I’d say if you’re tried and found guilty you won’t get more than a year and a day. That’s state time, prison.”
“Great.”
“But they won’t want to take you to trial. They’ll offer you simple possession, a few months county time, and a year or two probation.” Max took a sip of his drink, bourbon over crushed ice. “You were brought up once before. Didn’t that tell you anything? You ever get hooked on that stuff . . . I wrote a woman last year, a crack addict. I saw her again the other day in court. She looked like she’d had a face transplant.”
“I don’t do drugs,” Jackie said. “I haven’t even smoked grass in years.”
“You were carrying the forty-two grams for somebody else.”
“Apparently. I knew I had the money, but not the coke.”
“Who packs your suitcase, the maid?”
She said, “You’re as much fun as the cops.”
In her quiet tone, looking right at him in cocktail lounge half-light with those sparkly green eyes, and he said, “Okay, you don’t know how it got in your bag.”
It wasn’t good enough. She sipped her drink, not seeming to care if he believed her or not.
So he started over. He said, “I figured out the other day I’ve written something like fifteen thousand bonds since I’ve been in business. About eighty percent of them for drug offenses or you could say were drug-related. I know how the system works. If you want, I can help you look at your options.”
She surprised him.
“You’re not tired of it?”
“I am, as a matter of fact.” Max let it go at that; he didn’t need to hear himself talk. “What about you? You spend half your life up in the air?”
“Even when I’m not flying,” Jackie said. “I think I’m having trouble mid-lifing. At this point, with no idea where I’m going.” She looked up at him, stubbing her cigarette out. “I know where I don’t want to go.
Able to say things like that because he was older than she was by a dozen years. That was the feeling he got. He said, “Let’s see if we can figure out what you should do. You want another drink?”
Jackie nodded
, lighting a cigarette. One after another. Max gestured to the waitress to do it again. Jackie was looking at the piano player now, a middle-aged guy in a tux and an obvious rug working over the theme from Rocky.
She said, “The poor guy.”
Max looked over. “He uses every one of those keys, doesn’t he?” And looked at Jackie again. “You know who put the dope in your bag?”
She looked at him for a moment before nodding. “But that’s not what this is about. They were waiting for me.”
“It wasn’t a random search?”
“They knew I was carrying money. They even knew the amount. The one who searched my bag, Tyler, didn’t do much more than look at the money. ‘Oh, I’d say there’s fifty thousand here. What would you say?’ Not the least bit surprised. But all they could do was threaten to hand me over to Customs, and I could see they didn’t want to do that.”
“Get tied up in federal court,” Max said. “They were hoping you’d tell them about it.”
“What they did was stall, till they lucked out and found the coke.” She raised her glass and then held it. “You have to understand, they were as surprised as I was. But now they had something to use as leverage.”
“What’d they ask you?”
“If I knew a man named Walker, in Freeport. They mentioned a Jamaican . . .”
The waitress came with their drinks.
“Beaumont Livingston,” Max said.
Jackie stared at him while the waitress picked up their empty glasses and placed the drinks on fresh napkins, while the waitress asked if they’d care for some mixed nuts, and shook her head when Max looked at her and waited until he told her no thanks and the waitress walked off.
“How do you know Beaumont?”
“I wrote him on Monday,” Max said. “Yesterday morning they found him in the trunk of a car.”
She said, “Ordell put up his bond?”
“Ten thousand, the same as yours.”
She said, “Shit,” and picked up her drink. “They told me what happened to him. . . . The federal agent, the way he put it, Beaumont got popped.”
Max hunched over the table. “You didn’t mention that. One of the guys was federal? What, DEA?”
“Ray Nicolet, he’s with Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. I thought I told you.” Jackie’s gaze moved to the piano player. “Now it’s ‘The Sound of Music.’ He likes big production numbers.”
“When he starts to do ‘Climb Every Mountain,’ ” Max said, “we’re going someplace else.” He felt animated and could have smiled, beginning to understand what this was about. He said, “Ray Nicolet—I don’t know him, but I’ve seen his name on arrest reports. He’s the one who wants you. He uses you to get a line on Ordell, makes a case, and takes him federal.”
Max was pleased with himself.
Until Jackie said, “They never mentioned his name.”
And it stopped him. “You’re kidding.”
“I don’t think they know anything about him.”
“They talked to Beaumont.”
“Yeah, and what did he tell them?”
“Well, you know what Ordell’s into, don’t you?”
“I have a pretty good idea,” Jackie said. “If it isn’t alcohol or tobacco, what’s left that would get an ATF guy after me?”
Max said, “He never told you he sells guns?”
“I never asked.”
“That wouldn’t stop him.”
She said, “You want to argue about it?”
Max shook his head and watched as she leaned in closer, over her arms on the edge of the table, that gleam in her eyes.
“What kind of guns are we talking about?”
It gave him the feeling they were into something together here and he liked it and if she was putting him on, using him, so what.
He said, “You name it. We’re living in the arms capital of America, South Florida. You can buy an assault rifle here in less time than it takes to get a library card. Last summer I wrote a guy on a dope charge. While he’s out on bond they get him trying to move thirty AK-47s, the Chinese version, through Miami International going to Bolivia. You know what gun I’m talking about?” She shrugged, maybe nodding, and Max said, “It’s a copy of the Russian military weapon. Couple of weeks ago there was a story in the paper, how the cops pulled a sting on a guy who was buying TEC-9s in Martin County, no waiting, and selling them to drug dealers in West Palm, Lake Worth, all convicted felons. There’s a guy in Coral Springs sold cluster bombs to the Iraqis, he says before we went to war in the Gulf. I don’t see Ordell into military hardware, but you never know. What amazes me about him, he’s a bad guy, there’s no doubt in my mind, but he’s only had one conviction and that was twenty years ago.”
“He told you that?”
“A friend of mine at the Sheriff’s office ran his name. And Ordell’s the kind of guy loves to talk about himself.”
“Not to me,” Jackie said. “When I first met him he was flying over to Freeport a lot, he said to gamble. He’d tell me how much he won, or lost. How much he paid for clothes . . .”
“He hints around,” Max said, “wants you to guess what he does. Tell him you think he deals in guns and watch his face, he’ll give it away. Gets paid in the Bahamas, so he’s dealing out of the country. You bring the payoff here on one of your flights . . .” Max waited.
So did Jackie.
After a moment she said, “I used to bring over ten thousand at a time. Never more than that or any of my own money. I’d have to keep enough in my car for parking, to get out of the airport.”
“How many trips did you make?”
“Nine, with ten thousand.”
“He’s got that kind of money?”
“He wanted me to start bringing over a hundred thousand at a time.”
Max said, “Jesus,” in a whisper.
“He kept after me until I said okay, I’ll bring whatever fits in a nine-by-twelve manila envelope and I want five hundred dollars. He said fine and arranged it. His friend Mr. Walker in Freeport gave me the envelope. . . .”
“You didn’t look inside to check?”
“For what? Walker said he put in fifty thousand. Fine. It could’ve been any amount. What he didn’t mention was the baggie with forty-two grams in it.”
Max said, “If you knew bringing in anything over ten thousand was risky, why not pack a hundred grand? What’s the difference?”
“Whatever the amount, it had to fit in my flight bag and not hit you in the face if the bag was opened. That was the idea.”
“Even ten thousand at a time,” Max said, “you don’t have to ask what he does to know he came by it illegally.”
“You’re right,” Jackie said, “I don’t have to ask, since I’m not with the IRS.” She paused, still looking at him. “Every once in a while you sound like one of them. Not so much Tyler as Nicolet.”
“I have trouble being myself with you,” Max said. “At the Stockade you weren’t sure I was a bail bondsman. You thought I might be a cop, didn’t you? Trying to pull something sneaky.”
“It crossed my mind,” Jackie said.
“I spent ten years in law enforcement,” Max said, “with the Sheriff’s office. Maybe it still shows. Or the business I’m in, you tend to speak the same language.”
She said, “You aren’t by any chance hiring? I haven’t missed work yet, I was off today. But if I can’t leave the country I’m out of a job. And if I can’t work I won’t be able to hire a lawyer.”
“Ask, they might give you permission.”
“If I cooperate.”
“Well, you have to give them something. You want to stay out of jail, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but not as much as I want to stay out of the trunk of a car.”
“I’m pretty sure,” Max said, “whether you give them anything or not, they’re gonna be watching you.”
She hunched over the table again, intent. “I’ve been thinking, if all I can give them is a name, nothing about
what he does, I don’t have much to bargain with, do I?”
“Offer to help,” Max said, “short of wearing a wire. That’s all you have to do, show a willingness. Once they get him, and that’s all they really care about, they’re not gonna say, well, you didn’t do enough, too bad. No, once they have Ordell, they’ll get the state attorney to nolle pros your case and you’ll be off the hook. That means they can refile in thirty to sixty days, but they won’t. If they get him before you’re arraigned, they’ll let you off on an A-99, a no-file.”
She said, “You’re sure?”
“I can’t guarantee it, no. But what else have you got?”
“Walk in and offer to help.”
“Tell them who gives you the money, who you take it to, how much you get paid, all that.”
“Name names.”
“Your Mr. Walker, you’ll have to give him up.”
“Act contrite?”
“Play it straight.”
He watched her now, Jackie staring at her cigarette as she rolled the tip of it in the ashtray, and he kept quiet, giving her time. But moments passed, Max felt himself running out of patience and said, “Where are you?”
She raised her head and he saw her eyes, that gleam, that look that could change his life if he let it.
She said, “You know something?” The gleam becoming a smile. “I might have more options than I thought.”
9
Louis walked into a liquor store on Dixie Highway in Lake Worth that Thursday evening. They had vodka now that was imported from Russia, from Poland, Sweden, fifteen to twenty bucks a fifth. They might’ve had it before he did his forty-six months at Starke, but Louis couldn’t recall having seen any. He had always drunk the cheaper stuff.
Not anymore.
An older guy behind the counter came over to him saying, “What can I do you for?” Older but bigger than Louis, with a gray brush cut. The guy looked like a boozer; he hadn’t shaved in a few days and was wearing a T-shirt with GOD BLESS AMERICA on it, the kind that was popular during the Persian Gulf War. The guy’s belly had AMERICA stretched out of shape.
Louis said, “Let me have two fifths of that Absolut.”
The guy reached to get them from the shelf and Louis stuck his right hand in the pocket of the dark blue suit coat he’d found in the closet and was wearing as a sporty jacket with his white T-shirt and khakis. As the guy turned with the bottles and placed them on the counter, Louis said, “And all the money you have in the till.”