Frag Box

by Richard A. Thompson

  I stayed where I was and smoked for a while, making no attempt to hide the fact that I was looking at the guy across the street. He kept his back to me, facing the glass, hands in pockets, pretending to be interested in the unremarkable display of boxes and dust. When I turned and headed east, back toward Lefty’s, he seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then he, too, headed east. Ten seconds later, I looked at my watch, put on a phony expression of dismay, and did an abrupt one-eighty, once again heading west.

  My man on the other side of the street suddenly had an overwhelming need to make a call on his cell phone. I thought I could pretty well imagine the content.

  I think I might have been made.

  Then you have been, idiot. Get out of there.

  Of course, it was also possible that I was supposed to make him. They might let me have a glimpse of the scrubs, just so I wouldn’t look too hard for the A-squad. That’s assuming that I was worth a multiple-person surveillance team in the first place. If so, then my stock had gone up dramatically since I became the heir to a phantom estate and a cardboard box in some unknown location, a box that might have also been a frag pot.

  I suppose I should have been flattered. I hadn’t been the subject of that kind of interest since my Uncle Fred was being investigated by the feds for some trumped-up RICO charge. I was one of his collectors back then, so I got watched a lot by shadows that were ludicrously easy to spot. Back then, the FBI agents, even when they were working undercover, were strictly required to be clean shaven and wear a coat and tie at all times. But none of them made enough money to buy anything but off-the-rack suits and imitation silk ties. J. C. Penney’s spies. I thought they were adorable.

  I dressed better than any of them. In my early twenties, I thought of myself as a young professional, even though the job sometimes required more muscle than polish. I wore tailored wool-blend suits and button-down shirts made of the new permanent-press cotton blends. I preferred the wide ties that were popular then, but I wore narrow pineapple-knits, just to needle the feebes. I knew they weren’t allowed to have them, because Mort Sahl, the comedian, always wore one. J. Edgar Hoover thought Sahl was a communist, and he hated him.

  Fred’s numbers and bets always came to him by phone, but the money came to about two dozen collection points around the city, mostly in bars, corner groceries, and laundries. I made the rounds several times a week. Any time I accumulated more than about three hundred dollars, I would feed it into a hidden box that I had welded behind the dash of my ’72 Barracuda. It started its life as the housing for a defroster blower, so even if you stood on your head to get a look back there, it looked as if it belonged. If anybody ever demanded to know why I had $300 cash in my pocket, I would say I was going to buy a car from a friend. If they had been smart, they would have put some pressure on me by threatening to arrest me for failure to register for the draft, which was a federal misdemeanor. They had me there. The draft officially ended in 1973, but you were still legally required to register. But the feebes were never anything resembling smart. When Uncle Fred eventually went away for bookmaking, it was an undercover unit of the Detroit PD that nailed him. They weren’t hampered by cheap suits.

  Things were easier back then. Back then, it was a game. Now, my anonymity and maybe even my freedom were starting to feel a bit fragile, and it was not a good feeling at all.

  Ahead of me, the so-I-tole-that-bitch monologue was still in full boom, though the extra distance helped a little.

  “She so full of shit, I don’t even mess with her. I just slap her right in the face.”

  Again, no reaction from the small, sad woman.

  “That’s what I do, all right. I slap her right in the face, knock her down, one time. She couldn’t believe that shit. And then I says, ‘Listen, bitch…’”

  They stopped for a red light at Cedar Street, and I turned and walked south, leaving them behind me. I had no doubt that the loud one would keep retelling her story until Ms. Sad Eyes either became suitably impressed or told her she was full of shit. I was betting on her doing neither, and I wondered how many more times the routine would be replayed and how much more it would escalate. In half a block, it had gone from a story of mere bad-mouthing to one of physical violence. In another few blocks, it could well be up to murder.

  Somewhere once I read the number of times we can tell the same lie before we start to believe it ourselves. It was rather shockingly small. Something less than thirty. That probably meant that by this time tomorrow, the motor mouth would seriously believe she had assaulted somebody. That’s if the offending other person even existed.

  And maybe that didn’t even matter.

  That got me thinking about Charlie. He had decades to tell his stories. By the time I heard them, did they have anything at all to do with reality? Would he even know?

  I thought about the day I first met Charlie Victor a little more than four years earlier. He had come into my office to ask about a bail bond, even though he was obviously not under arrest at the time.

  Jackson Bail Bonds is the totally unglamorous name on my storefront, picked because “Herman Jackson, Bail Bonds” would have been just as unglamorous, as well as longer. But that’s who I am and what I do. The sign is unilluminated, some would say just like its owner, and painted in a lettering style that the sign company called “Railroad Gothic.” I think I liked the name more than the appearance. It called up images of wizened, colorful hobos with bizarre stories to tell. Under the main sign is a smaller one, in red neon, that says “24 Hour Service,” with a phone number to call when the office is closed. Agnes says that’s my lighthouse beacon, competing with the blue-lit crucifix of the Souls Harbor Mission over in the wino district north of Lowertown, for the traffic of souls lost in the night. That’s what she says, that is, when she isn’t complaining about the fact that the 24/7 service means she has no social life whatsoever. I never did have one, so I don’t worry about it.

  Charlie walked in during regular business hours and said, simply, “What’s it cost for a bond?”

  “For a friend?”

  “No, man, for me.”

  “What did you do?” I said.

  “When?” He looked behind him, as if there might be a train wreck in the street that he hadn’t noticed, one that he might be blamed for.

  “When you did whatever you did that you need a bond for.”

  “If I’d already done it, I couldn’t be here now, could I? I mean, I’d be under arrest, wouldn’t I?” He looked at me as if he were talking to a total idiot.

  “That would be a problem,” I said, “yes.”

  “Well, there you are, then,” he said. “I ain’t done nothing yet. I want to know what it costs first.”

  And they say there’s nothing new under the ancient sun.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re contemplating doing some kind of crime, but first you want to know what the bail will be if you get caught?”

  “Oh, I’ll get caught, all right. I don’t know how to do much, but I know how to get caught, all to hell. I wouldn’t waste your time, otherwise.”

  “Of course not.” And there I was, indeed.

  I motioned him to my classic Motel Six lobby chair, even though Agnes shot me a look that clearly said, “Don’t you dare!” She gets a little nervous when we have clients who look as colorful as they really are.

  Bonding is a funny business, and in some ways, she has never gotten used to it. Bonding is safe, is the thing to remember. In a system that is full of attitude and even rage, people almost never get mad at the bondsman. It’s a little like being a ringside doctor in a prizefight where lethal weapons are allowed. The fight stops momentarily, you assess the damages and do what you can about them, and then the bell rings and the chaos starts all over again. A lot of the customers don’t even remember you.

  I once had a guy in my office, in cuffs and leg irons, who tried to attack the cop who was escorting him. He used his feet and te
eth and head, but he mostly just managed to get the living crap beat out of him. But he never made a move of any kind toward me. When it was all over, the cop was kneeling on the guy’s back with a nightstick jammed down on his neck.

  “You gonna bond this guy?” he asked.

  “That’s a trick question, right? A sobriety test?”

  “I got to hear it officially,” said the cop.

  “No, I’m not going to bond him. Is that official enough?”

  “Perfect.” He jerked the man, who was still officially only a suspect, to his feet and bopped him once more on the ear, just for punctuation. Then he hustled him out, ignoring a sputtering tirade about police brutality.

  “You don’t know who you’re fucking with, pig.” The man was screaming, despite split lips and missing teeth. “Someday I’m gonna get out, and I’ll find you and spill your blood and wipe your woman’s face in it. And then I’ll start on her.” Then he turned to me, and in a completely calm voice said, “Sorry about the mess on the carpet, man.”

  “Hey, no problem,” I said. He was a suspect, all right. At least, I sure as hell suspected him.

  Anyway, Agnes watched the whole scene in appalled silence, and since then, she keeps a .38 revolver in her desk. As far as I know, she has never fired it, and I have never made it an issue.

  I managed to look somewhere else as Agnes eased open the drawer where she kept her heat. Then I offered our possible new client a cup of coffee.

  He took a look at the carafe on the table in the corner and said, “You got to be kidding.”

  “Some people are happy to get it,” I said. I mean, gee, it wasn’t all that old.

  “Some people are happy to get a shot of radiator juice,” he said, “but that don’t make it bottled in bond. What do I look like, a goddamn bum?”

  I looked him over before I replied. He had a wedge-shaped face that was too large for the rest of his body, and he made a lot of sudden, jerky motions with it, like a cat who’s been out on the streets too long and can’t ever relax. It was hard to tell with all the rags he wore, but I thought he must have had a powerful frame and broad shoulders once. Now he had a permanent stoop and one hand that was curled with arthritis, though he still carried himself with a certain stubborn dignity. Ex-military, I decided. Maybe that unit patch on his old fatigue jacket was real, at that. There was something else, too, some quality that made me think that he was down but definitely not out.

  “Actually,” I said, “you look more like a hobo.”

  “A connoisseur,” he snorted. “I come in to ask about the cost of a bond, and I get a goddamn connoisseur of untouchables. A gourmet of street people.”

  “I used to be,” I said, “but it’s harder to tell them apart nowadays.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’ll help you out. I used to be a stockbroker, okay? Had friends in high places, money in low ones, and prospects up the wazoo. But I got sick of all that crap, and I dropped out of the system to give all my time to helping the oppressed, legalizing pot, and freeing Tibet.”

  I had no idea what kind of response that was meant to evoke, so I gave him none. After I had looked blank for half a minute, he spoke again, this time with a lot less energy.

  “That was a joke,” he said. His shoulders suddenly sagged even farther, and his face fell. His mind had switched to a different channel.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “About lost causes, see.”

  “I see. And you’re into lost causes? Or is that the joke?”

  “You shitting me? I am a lost cause, son. I been down so long, it looks like up to me.”

  This time I laughed, and so did he. And for reasons I couldn’t begin to explain, I knew I was going to like the guy.

  “So tell me about this crime you’re planning on getting caught for,” I said.

  “Well, I haven’t picked one yet. I mean, you got to see what opportunities come your way. And you gotta be careful, too. Purse snatching is good, but if you pick some hyper old broad with gardening of the hearteries, say, she can get a stroke or a heart attack, and all of a sudden, it’s murder. And breaking and entering is okay, but if you pick a place that’s got too much money inside, that can turn into big-time hard time, too. What you want is some nice little felony misdemeanor that will get you ninety or a hundred in the County workhouse, and no hard feelings. Smashing a window on a cop car is all right, as long as you make sure there’s no damn dog behind it, but sometimes—”

  “Are you telling me…”

  “Winter’s coming on, Harold.”

  “It’s Herman.”

  “No, it’s fall. And pretty soon, my cardboard box down under the wye-duct just ain’t gonna cut it anymore.”

  “I think it’s time to brush up on your O. Henry,” said Agnes from her keyboard.

  Good grief, was that really what this was all about? Were we about to play out “The Cop and the Anthem,” about the bum trying to get thrown in jail for the winter? If so, I was sure it would be without the surprise epiphany at the end.

  “What’s a wye-duct?” I said.

  “It’s like a bridge,” he said, “only not over a river. It goes over some train tracks or a road or something. You know, like in the old song: ‘Oh, I live under the wye-duct; Down by the winny-gar woiks.’”

  “Oh, that old song.” Huh? Where the hell was he from, anyway, an old black-and-white movie? “So you’re looking to get locked up someplace warm for the winter?”

  “The County Workhouse,” said Charlie, nodding vigorously and looking suddenly gleeful. Another channel switch. “Not just someplace. And for sure not the damn jail.”

  “Then why do you need a bond?”

  “So I don’t gotta sit in jail while I wait for my hearing to come up so I can get my sentence and go to the workhouse.”

  “So instead, you sit in your box and freeze?” I said.

  “Life’s a bitch, Howard.”

  “Herman.”

  “Him, too. See, the timing is everything. Just like in war. You ever been in combat?”

  “No.” At least, that’s not what it was called. In the part of Detroit where I grew up, the streets were never exactly peaceful, except when the night people were asleep and the working stiffs were off at their jobs. Or maybe when there was a free barbeque at the UAW hall. So I knew a bit about timing, but I still didn’t get why he wanted the bond. “What’s so bad about sitting in jail for a week or so?”

  He gave me a pained look, then spoke slowly and carefully, as if it were explaining a difficult topic to a retarded child. He tapped his finger on my coffee table to empathize each syllable.

  “Jail,” he said, tapping and then pointing to the brick building a little over a block away, “is not like the workhouse.” Tappity-tap. “Jail is full of crazy people!” Big bunch of taps. “You can get hurt in there.”

  I had absolutely no argument for that.

  Since he might actually be about to become a paying customer, and also just because he seemed to need it, I walked him over to the Gopher Bar and Grill on Wacouta and bought him lunch. We had Coney Islands, the house specialty, and mugs of draft beer, and after a few follow-up beers plus a shot or two to cut the bubbles, he got that faraway, changing-channels look again, and we both traveled back to the jungle on the other side of the world.

  Chapter 8

  In Country

  South Vietnam

  1965

  On Charlie’s first night in country, he was put with a company on perimeter night-guard duty at an artillery firebase. They manned a string of two- and three-man foxholes fifty yards outside their own concertina wire, well into the fringe of the bush. Their orders were simple. “If you see any VC trying to sneak up with sapper charges, kill them.”

  The catch was that they couldn’t see anything at all.

  Nobody had any night vision goggles or even any flares, except for one of the sergeants, who had a sniper rifle with a starlight scope. A few grunts h
ad brought flashlights, but they didn’t dare turn them on, for fear of drawing fire. And the jungle in front of them was as black as only true wilderness can be.

  Their only other order was that no matter what happened, they were not to leave their foxholes.

  Charlie was in a sandbagged foxhole with a goofy kid from some wide spot in the road in Georgia and a big black guy from some ghetto in Washington, D.C. The kid was named Junior Sauer, and the black guy called himself Bong. Charlie thought they were either screw-ups or nut cases. But even so, they knew the territory and the drill, and he didn’t.

  “This is a bullshit detail, man,” said Sauer.

  “Uh huh,” said Bong. “What you think they put us on it for? We get overrun, it don’t matter, because the firebase is all safe back behind us yet. But we get attacked and kill some gooks instead, then the lieut back in the hooch gets a nice little pat on his West Point ass for upping his body count. So he puts nothing out here but fuckups and FNGs, dig? Which one are you?” He gave Charlie a gentle poke.

  “What’s an FNG?” said Charlie.

  “Fucking new guy. What I tell you, Junior? Nothing out here but us disposables.”

  “Well, it’s still bullshit. Hey new guy, you carrying anything?”

  “Am I carrying anything? Are you serious? I think I’m carrying every damn piece of gear the Army ever bought.”

  “Jesus, Bong, was we ever that new?”

  The big man laughed. To Charlie he said, “He’s talking about dew, Man. Something to get high on. Some Mary Joanna or some uppers or something.”

  “You can’t get high on guard, for chrissake.”

  “Sure you can. Sarge don’t care. You watch; he’ll be one of the first ones firing up a joint. Acid’s no good, though. Guys on that stuff do crazy shit, like try to fly or go playing around with grenades. You try dropping any acid, I’ll kick your ass.”