Chapter 9 chapter eight

On Thursday night Max waited at the table in the reception room for the deputy to bring Jackie Burke out.He had seen her registration card and forced arrest report, and prepared the various forms, court bond and power of attorney that must be filled out for her release.At this moment he was chatting with a police officer, a young man named Terry Boland.Max had worked under his father, Harry Borland, when Harry was in charge of the County Sheriff's Department of Detectives.He's a colonel now, leads the SWAT unit, and is Max's good friend and source. "I saw that they finally started to repair the new prison number."

Terry said yes, and when these cell numbers were built, a few new ones would have to be built. "It's too bad," Max said. "The prison shouldn't be invested like land development and keep expanding." Terry didn't seem to know whether he should agree or disagree, so Max said, "Ms. Buck How is it? Is she doing well?" "She's all right." "You didn't think she'd get into trouble either, did you?" "I mean she didn't break down," Terry said. "Some of them, coming here from the civilized world, wouldn't take it."

"She's been in prison before," Max said. "It's helpful." He looked at the registration card and what surprised him was Jackie Burke's age.He kept imagining her as a rather young stewardess.The now reworked image is of a forty-four-year-old woman who appears to have suffered a little.However, when the two deputy sheriffs took her from the dark outside to the front door and walked to the fluorescent light, Max realized that what he was thinking was out of line. This is a beautiful woman.If he didn't know her age, he might say she was about thirty-five or so.The uniform skirt set off her graceful figure, she was five feet five inches tall and weighed a hundred and fifteen arms-he admired her demeanor, the way she walked with her feet scrubbing the slick vinyl floor, and the way she brushed her hair with her hands. The gesture of pulling away from the face. ...Max asked: "Ms. Burke?" While introducing himself, he handed over his business card.She glanced at the business card and nodded.Some women choke with relief at this moment; men feel the same way.Other women would pounce on him and kiss him.And the woman just nodded.They took her personal belongings, counted them and returned them to her.As she signed the receipt, Max said, "I can drive you home if you like."

She looked up, nodded again, and said, "Okay!" Then, "No, wait a minute. My car is at the airport." "I can drive you there." She said, "Will you?" as if looking at him for the first time. She faced him without the slightest unnaturalness, her green eyes were slightly smiling and shining brightly.He watched her come out of the sliding door, turn around and put her butt against the wall, take off one shoe, then the other, and put on her heels.She straightened her back, combed her hair with the tips of her fingers, and smiled for the first time, a tired smile that seemed to shrug.Neither of them spoke again, and it wasn't until after they came out that he asked her if she was okay."I can't tell," Jackie said, walking unhurriedly toward the car.Usually, people leave here in a hurry.

He could feel her staring at him as they sat in the car getting ready to drive. "Are you really a bail bondsman?" she said. He looks at her. "Or, who do you think I am?" She didn't answer. "I gave you my card there." She said, "Can I see your ID card?" "You really want to see it?" she waits.Max took the wallet out of his pocket, handed it to her, and opened the car door to keep the lights on.He watched her read every single word, from the Florida issue, to the surety attorney's license, down to his date of birth and the color of his eyes.

She handed him the wallet and said, "Who paid the bail, Ordell?" "In cash," Max said, "a whole ten thousand dollars." She turned and looked straight ahead. They didn't speak to each other until the car reached the front door, at which point Max rolled down the window.A police officer emerged from the sentry box, Max's .38 caliber revolver with the revolver magazine open.Max handed the pass to the officer, exchanged it for the pistol, thanked him, snapped the magazine shut, and stowed forward, putting the pistol into the front glove box.The door opened."You're supposed to go in there, but they know me. I go out here a lot," Max said. Leaving the facility, he turned on his headlights and drove toward South Boulevard, talking to Ms. Burke. To strike up a conversation, he said no one was allowed into the lockup with a weapon, not even a police officer; and told her that the mobile office next to the sentry box was full of guns.As she pressed the lighter, he turned to look at her face, her cheeks clenched in the firelight, smoking a thin cigarillo.

"Do you smoke?" "When we have to smoke. Shall we stop and buy a pack?" He tried to recall a store near this south boulevard. "The closest place I can think of," Max said, "is the coffee shop at the Polo Hotel. Have you ever been there?" "I don't think so." "Great. It's a police hangout." "I'd rather wait." "I thought you might like a drink." "I wanted a drink, but I didn't want to go there." "We can also stop at the Hilton." "Isn't it interesting there?"

"Yes, it's nice there." "We need a place to rest out of the way." He glanced at her in surprise. "I look like I just got out of prison," she said, blowing a puff of cigar smoke into the windshield of the car. Dinner with a dude and drinks with a stewardess who was carrying loads of cash and was a drug dealer.Sip cocktails to the accompaniment of the piano. She looked very different now, her eyes seemed to be more delicate.The green eyes turned and flickered, reflecting the rose-colored light in the room.Max watched as she opened a pack of cigarettes, lit one, took a sip of Scotch, and glanced at the piano.

"I'm afraid he won't be allowed to play 'Light My Fire.'" "Not here," Max said. "He's wearing evening clothes." "Nowhere." She pushed the pack of cigarettes toward him. Max shook his head. "I quit three years ago." "Have you gained weight?" "Ten pounds more. I lost some and then gained it back." "That's why I don't quit smoking. That's one of the reasons. I was detained yesterday with two packs of cigarettes, and those two packs got me through the middle of the night. A cleaning lady named Ramona gave me advice. She didn't smokes."

It didn't sound like she was too distraught. "Ramona Williams," Max said, "she snuffs. I've written her a couple of pledges. She has a quirk where she loses her temper when she drinks, and hits people with a hammer and a baseball bat.  … Are you getting on well?" "She asked for forty yuan to clean my apartment, including cleaning the windows." It sounds a lot more serious now. Max spun around in his chair. "She gives you advice, huh? . . . What does she want you to do?" "I don't know—I think what I need is a lawyer. Help me figure out what I can do. At this point, I'll cooperate, maybe, and get a reprieve. Otherwise, I'll hold my tongue, Five years in prison. Does that make sense?"

"Do you mean that it is only that, or that it must be? I want to say that if you are tried and found guilty, you will not be sentenced to more than one year and one day. That is the prison time stipulated by the law." "Great." "But they didn't want to interrogate you. They decided you were only guilty of possession, and you were locked up for a few months according to the county's regulations, and a year or two of probation." Max took a sip of the whiskey, and the whiskey was floating on it. ice cubes. "You've been in court before this one. Didn't you learn anything from that one? You lost your job for carrying drugs... Last year I wrote a bond for a woman, a habitual thief. I saw it in court again the other day She. Looks like she's got a different face." "I don't deal drugs," Jackie said. "I haven't even smoked marijuana in years." "You brought forty-two grams for someone else." "Apparently so. I knew I had money, but I didn't know there was cocaine." "Who packed your suitcase, maid?" "You crack jokes like a cop," she said. In the dim light of the cafe, she looked directly at him with those crystal green eyes, and her tone was very serene, and he said, "Well, you don't know how it got in your bag." That's not good enough to say.She sucked the food, as if she didn't care whether he believed her or not. So he said it again.He said: "I figured that day that I had written close to 15,000 affidavits since I started this job. About 80 per cent of them were drug offenses, maybe, drug-related. I know How that system works. If you want, I can help you figure out what to do." Suddenly she noticed him. "Don't you hate this job?" "Actually, I hate it." That's all for Max, he doesn't need to listen to himself. "What about you? Have you spent half your life in the air?" "Even when I'm not flying, I'm bored with this job," Jackie said. "I think I've hit a wall in my life. Right now, I don't even know where I'm going." She looked up He, put out the lighted cigarette. "I just know where I don't want to go." She could say such things because he was almost twelve years older than her.This is how he feels.He said: "Let's see if we can figure out what you should do. Do you want another drink?" Jackie nodded, lighting a cigarette.One after another.Max gestured to the waitress for another drink.Jackie was looking at the pianist, a middle-aged man in evening urea and apparently a wig, playing the "Rocky" theme. "Poor thing," she said. Max looked over. "He's giving it his all, isn't he?" Then looked at Jackie again. "Do you know who put the drugs in your air bag?" She stared at him for a moment before nodding. "But that has nothing to do with it. They've been waiting for me." "Wouldn't that be a purposeless search?" "They knew I was carrying money. They even knew the total. The guy who searched my airbag, a guy named Tyler, just looked at the money and did nothing more. 'Oh, I gotta say there's fifty thousand dollars here. You still What is there to say?’ He wasn’t surprised at all. All they could do was threaten to hand me over to Customs, and I knew they didn’t want to do that.” "They're working with the federal government courts," Max said. "They want you to tell them about it." "They did that as an excuse, and then they found cocaine, too." She picked up the glass and held it up. "You see, they were as surprised as I was. Now they'll have an excuse to use." "Did they ask you anything?" "Ask me if I know a guy named Volka in Freeport. They also mentioned a Jamaican..." The waitress came over with the food they asked for. "Beaumont Livingston," Max said. The waitress picked up the empty glass and put the ingredients on a fresh napkin. Jackie kept staring at him. The waitress asked if they wanted some nut platter. Max looked at her. She shook her head. He told The waitress is not polite, she waited until the waitress had gone before speaking. "How did you know Beaumont?" "I wrote him the bond on Monday," Max said. "They found him in the trunk of a car yesterday morning." She said, "Is it Ordell's bail?" "Ten thousand, the same as yours." She said, "Smelly shit!" Picking up the food, she said, "They told me something happened to him. . . . The federal agent, according to him, Beaumont was bang." Max leaned over the table. "You didn't mention it. One of those two guys is from the federal government? What is it, the district police?" "Ray Nicolet, he's in charge of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. I thought I told you." Selling Ji's gaze shifted to the pianist again. "The piece that's playing right now is 'The Sound of Music.' He likes the rhythm of big pieces." "When he starts playing 'Climb Every Mountain,'" Max says, "we'll just go somewhere else." He's excited and just about to smile when he realizes what it's all about.He said, "Ray Nicol—I don't know him, but I've seen his name in arrest warrants. He's the one who needs you. He's using you to get leads on Ordell, get hold of case, and turn him over to the federal government." Max was very pleased with this insight. Until Jackie said, "They never said his name." This sentence interrupted his complacency. "You are joking." "I don't think they know anything about him." "They talked to Beaumont." "Yes, what did he tell them?" "So, you know what Ordell does, don't you?" "I've got a pretty good idea," said Jackie. "If you don't drink and tobacco, what's going to get an Authority guy on me?" Max said, "Did he never tell you he sold weapons?" "I never asked." "He won't stop there." She said, "Do you want to get to the bottom of this?" Max shook his head as she leaned closer to her arm against the table, watching the light in her eyes. "What kind of gun are we talking about?" It gave him the feeling that they were involved in something here together, that he liked it, and that it didn't matter if she was fooling him, using him. He said, "You tell me. We live in the arms center in South Florida, USA. You buy an assault rifle here in less time than you get a library card." Last summer I wrote a bond for a guy, it was about a drug crime. When he got out on bail, they made him try to ship thirty AK-47s, Chinese style, to Bolivia via Socialist International in Miami. You know what I'm talking about Weapon?" She shrugged, maybe nodded, and Max said, "It's a copy of a Russian-made military weapon. There was a story in the papers two or three weeks ago how the police caught a The guy who bought the TEC-9 in Martin County, he sold it right away without delay to the drug dealers in West Palm Lake Worth, all of them convicted. There was a guy in Coral Springs who sold bombs to Iraq Man, he recruited before we went to fight in the Persian Gulf. I don't see that Ordell is in the arms business, but no one can tell. It surprises me that he is a bad guy, which I never doubted in my heart , but he has only one conviction, and that was twenty years ago." "Did he tell you?" "A friend of mine in the Department of Justice looked up his name. And Ordell is one of those braggarts." "But I'm not that talkative," Jackie said. "The first time I met him, he was flying to Freeport, and he used to take that flight all the time, and he said he was going to gamble. And he told me he How much he won, how much he lost. How much he spent on clothes..." "He's running round and round to hint at you," Max said, "to make you guess what he does. Tell him you think he's in the arms business, and keep an eye on his risk, and he'll show his tail." .checks out in the Bahamas, so his business is done abroad. You bring the money you make here on the fly..." Max waited. Jackie waited too. After a while she said: "I usually take 10,000 at a time. I never take more than that, and I don't take too much of my own money. I always put the money in the car, enough to pay the parking fee, and just leave the airport." "How many times have you flown with money?" "Nine times, ten thousand each time." "Does he have that much money?" "He started asking me to bring one hundred thousand at a time." Max whispered, "My God!" "He kept pestering me until I promised I could take anything that would fit in a Luzon envelope twelve inches long by nine inches wide, and I wanted five hundred dollars for it. He said okay, That's it. His friend, Mr. Volka of the Freeport, handed me the envelope. . . . " "You didn't look inside, check?" "Why bother? Volka said he put fifty thousand in it. All right. That's all. He didn't say anything about the packet with forty-two grams of drugs in it." Max said, "If you know you're risking bringing in something worth more than ten thousand, why not bring in a hundred thousand? What difference does it make?" "It doesn't matter how much it is, it has to be able to fit in my airbag and not be too conspicuous when I open it. That's my idea." "Even with ten thousand at a time," Max said, "you don't want to ask him what he does, and you don't want to know where the money comes from?" "That's right," Jackie said. "I don't have to ask, since I'm not cooperating with IRS." She paused, her eyes still on him. "You make it sound like one of them. You're more Nicolai than Taylor." "I'm talking to you personally, I have my problems," Max said. "In the detention center, you can't figure out if I'm a bail bond. You think I might be a cop, don't you? Trying to sneak some Confession." "I was so dazed," Jackie said. "I've been in Law Enforcement for ten years," Max said. "Jurisdiction. Maybe there's a hint of it. Or maybe it's what I'm doing now, and it's always about three words." "You're not employed, are you? I haven't lost my job yet, I'm off today. But if I'm banned, I'm going to lose my job. And if I don't have a job, I can't afford a lawyer," she said. "Ask and they may allow you." "If I cooperate." "Well, you gotta tell them something anyway. You don't want to be in jail, do you?" "Yes, but not as strongly as not wanting to be in the trunk of a car." "I'm sure," Max said, "no matter what you tell them, or keep your mouth shut, they'll keep an eye on you." Leaning over the table again, she said eagerly, "I've been thinking, if all I can tell them is a name and nothing about what he does, I have nothing to bargain with them, right?" "Help," Max said, "but don't know. It's all you can do. It's a willingness. When they get hold of it—that's what they really want to do. They don't say, okay, You didn't try your best. Nope, as long as they catch Ordell, they'll make the state's attorney drop your case and you'll be fine. That means they'll have thirty to sixty days to process your case case, but they won't. If they catch him before your case, they'll get you out of prosecution under A-99, which is the no-case clause." She said, "Are you sure?" "I can't promise, really. But what else can you do?" "Walk in and offer to help." "Tell them who gave you the money, who you gave it to, and how much you got paid for it, tell them all." "Call out the names." "Your Mr. Volka, you must give him up." "Express remorse?" "To the point." He looked at her now: Jackie stared at the cigarette as he twisted the butt in the ash red.He said nothing, giving her time to think.But after a while, Max felt that he had lost his patience and said, "What are you thinking?" She looked up and he saw her eyes, that light, that look, that would change his life if he wanted to. "You know what?" she said, the gleam in her eyes turning into a smile. "I probably have more options than I originally thought."