Page 22 of Two Kinds of Stranger (Eddie Flynn #9)

Eddie

Bail bondsmen keep odd hours.

Part of the game. Mornings are for court.

Getting paperwork signed for bail – application forms, indemnity agreements, promissory notes and confessions of judgement, all the pieces of paper to cover their business.

Afternoons are most often appointment times.

Their customers check in by phone or call into the office to confirm they are still where they are supposed to be, they are keeping to their curfew if any, they will make the next court date, and they haven’t jumped bail.

Evenings vary – but most bondsmen are on the clock, charging by the hour, hunting down wayward defendants who haven’t turned up for a court appearance that day and had a warrant issued for their arrest. The bondsmen find them and bring them in or sometimes manage to persuade them to surrender to the court with an excuse, and a higher bail bond, which means more money for the bondsman plus the fees for finding their asses in the first place.

Richard Reynolds got out of his Mercedes and opened his shop at seven in the morning, hauling up the graffiti-covered rolling shutters and letting himself in to the office.

I waited in my Mustang, watching him through his shop window.

He switched on the office lights, took off his coat, went in back.

Probably to make some coffee. I waited for six minutes, the average time it takes for a cheap machine to brew a pot, picked a gym bag off the passenger seat beside me, locked up the Mustang and crossed the street to Richard’s place.

As I did, I passed Richard’s Mercedes. It was registered to him, personally.

One of three cars. The second was a brown ten-year-old Ford, which he used for chasing down his wayward customers, and the third was a Bentley Continental.

Richard, like a lot of guys who suddenly find themselves making a lot of dough illegally, was terrible at hiding money.

The sign above the window said Richard Reynolds, Bail Bonds in white lettering on a red board. Below it was his phone number and below that – BONDS 4 U .

He hadn’t locked the front door, and I pushed it open. Heard the ting of an electronic bell to tell Richard a customer had come in.

Richard Reynolds was in his early fifties with a full head of silver-blond hair, a jaw that looked like the engine block from a Chevy Chevelle and a moustache that might have been the same color as his hair at some point, but which was now much darker either with age, coffee or an inability to match it with the dye he used on what remained of his hair.

He was a big man. He’d been into bodybuilding semi-professionally for years.

Even though his tan suit had been made for him, it didn’t quite fit.

It was still too tight around the shoulders, which either spoke to the lack of talent on the part of the tailor who cut the suit, or Richard had been through a bulking phase since he’d bought it.

‘We’re not open,’ he said, coming out of the back office, a cup of coffee in his hand.

There was one desk in front of him, with two chairs, a phone and a laptop on it.

The rest of the shop was a waiting area with cheap plastic office chairs that looked like they’d been accumulated over many years from several different fire-damage sales.

‘My name is Eddie Flynn,’ I said.

He paused.

‘I know you. We’ve never met, but I’ve seen you in court.’

Richard was now interested. He smiled, offered me a chair. I could almost see the dollar signs rolling around his eyes like they were in a slot machine.

I slipped the gym bag off my shoulder and let it hit the floor as I sat down.

‘How’s that coffee?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Would you like one? Fair warning, it’s an old machine and it’s not great.’

‘Sold,’ I said.

He smiled, put his coffee down and disappeared in back to fetch me a cup. He returned with hot coffee for me in his best branded mug – Reynolds Bonds , white lettering on red.

‘Do you have a client who needs a bond?’ he asked. ‘I do a lot of white-collar crime. No problem.’

‘Have you heard of the TikTok murders? It’s all over the news,’ I said.

‘Sure, sure, I heard about it. Elly Parker, right? I heard Busken set bail at a one-mil bond and a million in cash. I can help with the bond, that’s no problem, but the premium will cost her . . . ’

He opened a desk drawer on his left, brought out a folder, opened it and began to shuffle through blank forms.

‘Payment isn’t going to be a problem,’ I said, taking out my bill fold from my pants pocket. ‘I’ll pay her premium in full, right now.’

Richard watched me peel off a single bill from the fold, put it on the table and slide it toward him.

He stared at the bill. Looked at me.

‘One dollar?’ he asked.

I nodded.

He laughed, said, ‘Eddie, you know my premium fees are set by law as a percentage of the bond. Ten per cent of the first three grand of the bond, eight percent from three to ten grand, and then I charge six percent of any amount over ten thousand. For your client, you’re talking about sixty thousand dollars. ’

‘Don’t ever try to lecture a lawyer about the law. Those are the maximum fees. There’s no minimum. Is that what you tell your customers, that your fees are set down in law and you have to charge them that rate? Things aren’t looking good for you.’

‘My charges are fair. I got no complaints . . . ’ He didn’t quite finish his sentence. He’d fired back without taking in every word I’d said. Now it was beginning to sink in.

‘What do you mean, things aren’t looking good for me?’

‘You’re about to have thirty plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit set your ass on fire.

Right now, I’m not going to ask you to work for me for free.

A buck seems about fair considering what you’ve been up to these past few years.

You see, I know you, Richard . I know what your clients call you – Tricky Dicky .

I know about the overcharging for copies of court records.

I know about busting your own clients’ bail so they get hauled back to court and the bond increased.

I know about the overcharging for hours, for incidentals. I know all of it . . . ’

I reached into my gym bag and took out the thick file of court receipts from my office, dumped them on the table.

Tricky Dicky said nothing, he could plainly see from the first page of the bundle that it was a receipt from the court office. He reached for it, and I slammed my hand on top.

‘I know the Department of Financial Services will shut you down, and the DA will prosecute, and they’ll seek a fine in the millions plus jail time, but that’s the least of your problems . . . ’

I took out the pillowcase, laid it flat on the desk, then the duct tape and the .45 ACP cartridge.

‘I asked one of your former clients what they would expect in compensation. He gave me this crap. Said the bullet had your name on it. I was talking about him coming in on a class action suit against you, but he said it would take a lot of money to spare your life. He says he’s going to put this pillowcase over your head, duct tape it in place then load this round into his gun and fire it through your skull. ’

Sweat broke on his forehead. The perspiration caught the ceiling lights, made his head shine like a glitterball.

‘What client?’

‘You think I’m going to break confidentiality so you can take out a hit on this guy? No, thanks.’

He stared at the file of papers, then the pillowcase, duct tape and his eyes settled on the cartridge and stayed there for a while. His hand shook as he tried to bring the coffee mug to his mouth.

‘There’s a way out of this for you, Dick , and I’ll even throw you a bone if you co-operate,’ I said.

‘What do you want?’

‘I want my client, Elly Parker, out of Rosie’s today, if possible. I know a bond of this size takes some time to arrange with the insurance company so tomorrow morning is acceptable. You’ll write the bond, pay the cash surety and when her case is over you’ll close up shop and move to Canada.’

‘I can’t do that. I have a business. I have responsibilities. I have—’

‘You’ve got a house of cards and there’s a hurricane on the way. Here’s how we settle this. You get the bond. You put up the million in cash. And you sell your Bentley.’

‘Wait, what ?’

‘Hear me out. The reason you got caught isn’t because you’re stupid.

It’s because you got greedy and you’re shit at hiding money.

I need your files. Everyone you overcharged in the last year, to the dollar amount.

You’re going to sell your Bentley and divide the proceeds up among the worst affected.

Here’s your bone, Dick – when the Parker case is over, and that million dollars is returned to you, guess what? ’

‘What?’

Right then I knew I was on a winner. Dicky had a million in cash, somewhere, that I hadn’t been able to find during my research. He probably had more, but a mil was all Elly needed.

‘Because you’re a bondsman and you deal in cash with the courthouse all the time, and you already have a bill of good health from the Department of Financial Services, no financial checks are going to be done on that million dollars you deposit . . . ’

His eyebrows lifted. I guessed he had finally seen the bone that was coming his way.

He said, ‘So when the million comes back to me in cash, after the case, it’s clean.’

‘No finer money-laundering service than the New York Criminal Court Funds Office,’ I said.

‘You do this for me, the class action goes away with the proceeds from the Bentley sale. I hold off on the DFS report and I throw some extra cash to the guy who wants to kill you. When your million comes back, you disappear. I hear Canada is a nice place to live . . . ’

‘What if I don’t want to go to Canada? I’ve got a good thing going here.’

There was no class action lawsuit. No threats to kill him.

It was likely the vast majority of Dicky’s clientele didn’t even know they’d been scammed, and the rest couldn’t do anything about it other than complain.

There was no justice for these people other than to close Dicky’s operation, try to throw them some money by way of a refund and make sure he never scammed another poor defendant.

‘It’s up to you. But you can’t spend that clean mil in cash when you’re in a wooden box.’

He took a moment to stroke his big chin.

‘Maybe Canada doesn’t sound so bad,’ said Dicky.