by Dave Conifer
“Mr. Fargo? This is Liz Faribault,” she said. “Where are you?”
“I’m in Crosswicks,” he said after a pause.
“I’m going to need a land line number to confirm that,” she warned. “That was part of your contract.”
“Sorry, I don’t have one. I can go to a pay phone or something. It might take a while.”
“We can work that out later,” she said. “There’s been a change in plans. I know you weren’t scheduled to come in again until next week, but I absolutely need you to come in this afternoon. If there’s a problem with an employer you can have them call me. Can you be here at two o’clock?”
Employer. Yeah, right, honey. Every donut shop in Jersey’s looking for a convicted rapist to work the front counter. He tried to rub the blur from his eyes with his free hand, but that only made it worse. “Today?”
“Yes, Mr. Fargo. I’m afraid we don’t have any choice. It’s got to be today.”
“What happened?” he demanded. “What’s the rush?”
“I’m not able to talk about it over the phone,” she said flatly. “If you can just be here?”
Shit, he thought. Is this what they call getting a new start? “Well, it sounds like I don’t have a choice about it, do I?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Fargo,” she answered. “I’m sorry. It’s part of your agreement. I’m just doing my job. It isn’t up to me. I don’t have any idea where this came from.”
~~~
For the first time since he’d gotten out, he was scared. Until then, and it hadn’t been very long, of course, everything had gone as expected. This was different. Something, somewhere, had gone wrong. He knew he’d drive to Trenton and go inside that building willingly, under his own power. Would he leave the same way?
He fell back onto the bed and dialed Bismarck’s number. Come on, old man, he thought, but it rang and rang with no answer. Who else? He walked into the kitchen and scanned the refrigerator until he found the magnet with the phone number for Willmar and Karlstad. While dialing he realized that he wasn’t even sure who he wanted to talk to there.
“Billy?” Joanie asked. “This is Joanie. Everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, his voice husky and hoarse. “It’s good.”
“So what’s up?” she asked after an awkward pause. “Everything okay?” she asked again.
“Not really,” he told her. “My parole officer just called. About a minute ago. She told me to get my ass in her office by two-thirty this afternoon. Might have been two. I’m fuckin’ scared, Joanie. I know it’s only been a few days, but this hasn’t happened before.”
“Stay calm,” she said. “It could be nothing. Maybe you forgot to sign a form. You have no idea what it’s about?”
“She wasn’t sayin’ and I wasn’t askin’. Guess I should’ve, but it didn’t sound like it woulda’ mattered.”
“There’s nothing you can do except clean up and go,” Joanie said. “If you’re not sure what time, go early. I got a feeling that being late to meet a parole officer isn’t a good move.”
“Is Ricky Willmar around? I thought maybe I’d ask him if he had any ideas on what the hell’s going on.”
“Just left. He’ll be back around eleven.”
“Damn. Maybe I’ll call back.”
~~~
And he did, fifteen minutes later after a fast shower and a shave with one of the plastic razors he found under the sink. “Is he in yet?”
“No,” Joanie answered, “but he should be any minute now. Why are you stressing, Billy? It is what it is.”
“I know. That’s what I’m afraid of. Listen, I was thinking. Can I come by there on the way to Trenton?”
“It’s the opposite direction, but I’m sure you already know that. When are you leaving?” she asked.
“Right now.”
~~~
“Joanie says your PO called you in and you’re cranked about it,” Willmar said when they were face-to-face an hour later, this time in a pair of chairs in the front of the office where they could see the Broad Street foot traffic, what little there was of it. “Is that what this little tizzy is about?”
“Geez, you make me sound like a goddamned pansy, man. Yeah, damn right I’m fuckin’ scared. Why would she call me in like this?”
“Well, it’s not good, I’ll give you that,” Willmar said. “Parole officers are trouble. The less you see of them, the better you feel. But it could be some little detail that needs to get taken care of. You never know. At the beginning there’s a lot to set up. Something could have fallen through the cracks.”
“You had me at ‘it’s not good,’ Ricky.”
Willmar laughed. “I should have left the rest out.”
“Can’t you call somebody and find out what the hell’s going on?”
“Who, me? No way, man. We’re on the other end of the system,” Willmar said firmly. “We don’t have anything to do with that stuff.”
“So what does a bail bondsman do?”
“Pretty much what it sounds like,” Willmar explained. “We’re a bail posting service. If somebody needs to get bailed out and they don’t have the bread for it, they come to us. They pay us a percentage of the bail, like maybe ten percent for most people. Then we pay the entire bail to the court. But we get that back as long as the person doesn’t jump bail. And we keep that ten percent. That’s where our profit is.”
“I never knew that. But if the guy jumps bail, you’re screwed?”
“Exactly right. It doesn’t happen much. We try to make a show of force when we meet our customers, and we make sure they understand we’ll come after them if they run. It’s perfectly legal for us to do it, and we can play rough. That’s when the fun starts, when we get our guns and put on the bounty hunter hats.”
“Bounty hunters? Shit, man, I never knew all this went on. I never even knew what a bounty hunter was.”
“Most people don’t. It’s a sewer level business. We cater to scumbags. But don’t forget, I’m a licensed private investigator, too. A private dick, as Joanie calls it.”
“So if they arrest me and throw me back in jail, you guys can bail me out?”
“They’re not going to offer bail on an ex-con, pal. Hell, you’re not even an ex yet.”
“Thanks for nothing,” Fargo said as he stood to leave. “You’re a real barrel of laughs.”
“Relax, man,” Willmar said as he gathered his flowing blond hair into a pony tail and wrapped it with an elastic band he fished from his breast pocket. “In five or six hours you’ll be back home with a stack of papers they need you to fill out, and you’ll be laughing about all this.”
Joanie stood up and met him at the door. “Good luck,” she said as she took his wrist in her hand.
“Thanks,” he said. “I need a beer. I’m so freaked.”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll see you tonight?”
“Can’t wait. By then this will be over.”
“I’ll have a cold beer waiting for you.”
I don’t get it, he thought as he walked back to the car. Last night she wouldn’t even talk to me.
~~~
Nothing had happened at Willmar and Karlstad to make Fargo feel any better as he rolled north on Route 1, but it had been better than sitting around by himself worrying. He could see bridge after bridge to New Jersey as he drove north, but he knew all along that he’d stay on the Pennsylvania side all the way to Trenton and cross there. He just had to have another look at the Trenton Makes Bridge. Once again he focused on the rocks under the Pennsylvania end, where it all happened. It can’t be good to keep doing this. Next time he’d go a different way.
~~~
He saw the state trooper’s cruiser on the side of the road just before he pulled off the freeway. It was hard to miss, the plain white car with diagonal blue and gold stripes running down the side, and a dark blue triangle on the door. An instinctive glance at the speedometer told him there was nothing to worry about, but he knew what was
about to happen. The red and blue lights on the cruiser erupted even before Fargo had passed.
If this keeps up, he thought as the trooper zoomed up behind him on the exit ramp, I’ll know everybody on the force. One of these times it might even be Ryne Colfax himself who did the honors. In a way, he was sure Colfax already was. There was no doubt in his mind that he was behind this. He’d replaced Rip Mankato on top of the payback list, or at least joined him. He squeezed the car as far to the right as he could without scraping the guard rail and then turned off the engine. What will this one come up with?
There were the usual agonizing minutes, only two but it felt like fifteen, as the officer remained in his cruiser. Car after car passed by on the ramp, each driver rubbernecking to get a good look at the one who got caught. Fargo rolled down his window despite the cold, hoping that might get the cop moving, but it didn’t.
“You were moving along at a pretty high rate of speed there, sir,” the trooper said after he finally appeared.
Yeah? Fargo thought. Bullshit. But he knew it was better just to say nothing, so that’s what he did.
“License and registration, please?” the trooper asked, but as always it wasn’t a request. Fargo quickly handed them over, sure that this man knew perfectly well who he was. He didn’t believe for a second that a statie just happened to be hanging around on the shoulder of the freeway a few yards from that exit, just a few minutes before his appointment with his parole officer in a nearby building. Back to the car with the license, another five minutes, and he was back. Would he dare write a ticket for the phantom violation? Fargo didn’t think so. Nobody wanted a permanent record of this. That wasn’t the point.
“I’m giving you a warning,” the trooper said as he passed some paper and Fargo’s driver’s license into the car. “Keep it at fifty-five.” Without another word he was on his way back to the cruiser, another message delivered.
~~~
The procedure was the same as last time. He parked, checked in, and waited for Faribault to come get him. This time, after the initial greetings were over with, she led him to a small room. The change was unnerving, even before he caught sight of two uniformed guards headed in the same direction. He was in the room with Faribault with the door closed but he knew, he just knew, that they were there because of him and that they were stationed outside the door. That was how everything was going.
“What’s wrong with your desk this time?” he asked, looking for some clues. “What’s up with this little room?” Besides two chairs and the long, narrow table that they faced each other over, the room was barren. Without answering, she unpacked a mountain of paper and spread it across the table. “Hello? Why are we here?” he demanded. “Talk to me, damnit!”
“Mr. Fargo, please calm down,” Faribault said. “There’s been some trouble. I won’t lie to you. But if you work with me, I can smooth it out. Nothing irreversible has happened.”
He sat back in his chair. If Russ or Joanie were here, they’d tell me to take a few deep breaths. So he did.
“You’re in some trouble. We can get through it. But before we start,” she said, leaning in, “I’m going to tell you something that I may have forgotten to say last week. You have to trust me and you have to be honest with me. I’m not your enemy. I want you to succeed. I don’t like meetings like this any more than you do. But Mr. Fargo, I’m sorry to point this out, but you lied to me. So let’s start over. Where have you been staying since you were paroled?”
She knows. Of course she knows. “Was it the cop on the bridge?” he asked. “Or did somebody else rat me out? Hell, there was a Philly cop all over me too. Was it him?”
“I’m being honest with you, the same way I want you to be with me, when I say I don’t know where this came from. All I know is that you’ve been going out of state.”
“Why are the cops hasslin’ me?” he asked. “And watchin’ me? I thought I was supposed to get a second chance.”
“You are, and you will,” she said. “But you have to follow the rules.”
“I didn’t have no place to go,” he protested. “Can’t you understand that? I didn’t have too many friends when I went in. Now I got none. What did you expect, coming out after all those years? Russ said he’d take me in. How the hell was I supposed to know he was about to move to Philly? Don’t seem fair to send me back over that.”
“Nobody’s sending you back, Mr. Fargo,” Faribault assured him. “We reviewed your case yesterday, and they hardly batted an eye. It helps that you came in here right on time with just a few hours warning. Believe me, that’ll be noted.”
“Whatever,” he grumbled.
“So here’s what’s going to happen. You’ll be required to wear an ankle bracelet. Can you live with that? Because I think we can agree that it beats the alternative.”
“A fucking ankle bracelet? One that tells you where I am and if I’m taking a piss or something?”
She smiled. “It isn’t that intrusive. Yes, it tells us where you are, but you’re privacy will be respected.” She leafed through a stack of papers. “Of course, you have the right to say no.”
“But that lands me back in jail, right?”
“Most likely,” she agreed. “It’s all a matter of where you want to finish your sentence. It’s up to you.”
“Like I have a fuckin’ choice,” he said.
“You had a choice. You chose to violate your parole agreement,” she reminded him. “If you agree to the monitor, I’ll send you to a lab tech upstairs. It’ll take about two hours to get you set up.”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll do the damn bracelet.”
“That’s a wise choice.”
“I never seen one of these things,” Fargo said. “Is it heavy? Does it have, like a big ass lock or a chain or somethin’ so I can’t chuck it in the sewer?”
“Oh, you could get it off relatively easily,” she answered. “But Mr. Fargo, they’ll know right away. And as soon as they know they’ll come get you and then you’ll be out of choices.”
“It had to be that goddamned cop on the bridge that day,” he said again. “Just level with me, will you? Am I right? Do they watch everybody this close or am I just the special one?”
“I said it before. I don’t know how it came up,” she said. “It was unusual, I’ll give you that.”
“Okay. It don’t matter anyway, I guess. And you can tell your goons at the door to back off. I won’t make no trouble.”
“Great. First I need you to sign off on the new agreement.” She slid a document across the table. He flipped through the pages, not even trying to make sense of it. When he reached the final page he looked up at her with a scowl on his face.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s legalese,” she told him. “I can hardly understand it either, and I’ve had a lot of practice. This just says you understand the violation, you understand that you can’t leave the state of New Jersey without permission, and that you are agreeing to wear the monitor ankle bracelet.”
“It takes this many pages to say that?” He went to the last page and scribbled his name on the line at the bottom. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fargo. You’ll still be required to make your regular visits here, of course.”
“Hot damn.”
She scooped up the rest of the papers and jammed them back into folders, which she forced into a cardboard box. “The officers will escort you upstairs to the lab.” She stood up, and so did he. “And Mr. Fargo?”
“Yeah?”
“I suggest that you not make a scene with them. That would be really bad for you. And I can put up with the language, but not many others around here will. Okay?”
He sighed and looked away. “Got it.”
“When you’re done in the lab you’ll come back down. The guards will bring you. I’ll sign you out.”
~~~
He pulled away when one of the guards reached for his elbow. He glared at the guard, who glared right back. “Don�
�t push us, pal,” the other said, reaching out for the other arm. They walked him through the vast room to a corner elevator. One produced a key and inserted it, causing the gleaming metal doors to fly open so they could board. Two floors up they stepped back out. It looked so similar to where they’d come from that Fargo wondered if there’d been a mistake.
“Right over here,” the first guard said.
“Hey, guess what?” his partner said to Fargo. “They’re expecting you! What do you know?”
It didn’t look like much of a lab. To Fargo it was nothing but more desks and cabinets, and blank faces moving back and forth. They walked into a small room that was a lot like the one he’d just left two floors below, where a lanky man with shoulder-length hair was standing behind a table as he extracted plastic-wrapped items from a cardboard box. Nobody had to explain what the one currently in his host’s hand was. It was clearly the ankle bracelet he’d been warned about and had agreed to wear.
“Mr. Fargo!” the lanky man said. “Welcome to my lab. I’m Rex Mandan. You can leave him with me, gentlemen,” he said to the guards, who didn’t need to be told twice. They were gone before he’d finished the sentence.
“I’m guessing by the expression on your face that you already know what this is,” he said as he peeled the plastic away from the bracelet. “Relax. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“It don’t look as bad as I was expecting,” Fargo conceded. “Looks more like a watch,” he added, tapping his wrist.
“That’s the spirit,” Mandan said. “It isn’t much heavier than one, either. It weighs about five ounces.” It was a black square, noticeably bigger than a wrist watch, actually, but nothing that would slow anybody down. The rubbery strap had a complicated clasp made of metal, the only part of the bracelet that wasn’t black. When Mandan placed it on the table Fargo snatched it up for a closer look.
“Not much of a lock,” Mandan said. “Is that what you’re thinking?”
“Pretty much,” Fargo answered as he handed it back across the table.
Mandan swung his foot on top of the table, hitched up the leg of his pants and wrapped the bracelet around his own ankle. “No big deal. It goes on like this. Don’t mind the scar,” he added, pointing to a tiny pink mark just above the strap. “Did that a few years ago with a weed wacker.”