Mr. Crainpool grins slyly when I replace the receiver. “There’s no such serum,” he says.
“Botheration, Mr. Crainpool, this is intolerable! Listening to my private conversation, were you?”
“Wasn’t private, was a business call.”
“Blow on your hands, sir. Button your sweater. Look cold.”
“It’s almost April.”
“Out there, Mr. Crainpool.” I point to the Venetian blinds, so tightly shut that their louvers make a solid creamy wall. “Out there it’s almost April. In here it’s the Dark Ages. There’s capital punishment, men languish in prison for debt, hang for a stolen horse, poaching, a loaf filched for love. Severed heads, could you but see them, perch taking the weather on the flagstaffs above Riverfront Stadium, and not the pennants of the National League. The executioner’s head like a black bullet in its hood. Yes and class divides like the surgeon. It Moseses us left and right. You eat too much, Mr. Crainpool, you’re too well-fed. Easy on the starch and sauces, sir. Make yourself wan and drawn, if you’d be so kind.”
Mr. Crainpool chuckles. His master is a strange old codger.
“Cool the cackle, Crainpool. I’m talking about image. How would tapers look in here, do you suppose? A bit much, you think? Eh? Oh well, you may be right. We must learn to make do with what’s given — fluorescent tubing, running water and the rulings of the late, unlamented Warren Court.”
The door opens and a little bell sounds. Like in a bakery or an old candy store. I don’t suppose much of this registers on my clients, but perhaps I get to them subliminally.
Mr. Crainpool, per his training, scratches arduously in a ledger. I look up casually and greet the newcomer, a man in a checkered sports coat, loud matching shirt and tie, new style cuffs on his flaring trousers. He has a sort of crew cut and looks for all the world like an off-duty cop. (I cast no aspersions. I like cops, but they do look vacuous sometimes. That air they have of concentration that comes from having to remember their lines, the unnatural vocabulary they’re lumbered with, that abject, dispassionate diction of the trade, having to say words like “Negro” and “alleged” and “suspect,” speaking as they do increasingly these days for Xerox and the tape recorder, for bookkeeping and the public record. And that sense of direction cops have, having always to be oriented, going about like human compasses, knowing the avenues, forced to think in terms of east and south, his left, my right — that’s what does it.) So this fellow looks abstracted. We often get them in here. They tip us off about raids and sometimes consult us about the nature of the charges to be brought. One man’s collusion is another man’s professional courtesy. (But the cops don’t really like us. They envy us our powers of arrest, stronger even than their own. And we don’t have to deal with the technicalities of extradition, and carry guns lightly as credit cards.)
“Top of the morning,” I tell him pleasantly.
“Top of the morning yourself.” This man is not a policeman.
“Raise the blinds please, Mr. Crainpool. A little sunshine on the tough here. You had me fooled, son.”
“You the Phoenician?”
“I am Mr. Alexander Main, the bailbusinessman.”
“I’m from out of state.”
“You’re lost?”
“I’m Mafia, Pops.”
“Mafia, wow.”
“Wow? This is how you talk to a mobster?”
“One call on the hot line and you’ll never talk out of the side of your mouth again. Me and the Don of all the Dons are like that. I call him Donny. Behave yourself. Nice folks don’t come in off the street on a bright and sunny morning and say ‘I’m Mafia, Pops.’ Who are you, son? Where are you from?”
“Chicago. They call me ‘the Golfer.’”
“The Golfer, eh? What do you shoot?”
“People,” we both say together. I turn to Mr. Crainpool. “Mr. Crainpool, do you hear this dialogue? What a business this is! The nearer the bone you go, lifewise and deathwise, the saltier the talk. Peppery. You could flavor meat with our exchanges.”
It’s true what I tell Crainpool. I’m called on to make colorful conversation in my trade. Don’t think I enjoy it. I’m a serious man; such patter is distasteful to me. When day is done I like nothing better than to ask my neighbor how he’s feeling, to hear he’s well and tell him same here, to trade what we know about the weather, to be agreeable and aloof and dull. Leave poetry to the poets, style to the window trimmers. I’m old. I should have grandchildren. But I turn back to the young man who will tire one day, should he outlive his apprenticeship, of such cheap excitements. We’re doing business. He’s come from Chicago and expects his money’s worth. “All right,” I tell him, “you’re Mafia. What do you want, you gonna put a jukebox in here? I got to change the beer I been using thirty years? What?”
“There’s a man in town. We don’t know where he is, but the pigs do. He’ll be picked up. We want you to spring for him.”
“What? On your recognizance? Do you hear this, Mr. Crainpool? I put up my money—if the man is even bailable — then the Golfer here takes him out in a hole-in-one, and when the yobbo doesn’t show up for his trial I’m out of pocket.”
“You won’t be out of pocket. The cops don’t know what they’re getting. His bond won’t be set higher than a few thousand — five thousand. We advance you the cash forfeiture. You make five hundred bucks.”
“Young fellow, no. I don’t need the business.”
“Mr. Main, it’s Command Performanceville,” he says softly.
Oh, he’s very sinister. “Why didn’t you say Command Performanceville in the first place? Command Performanceville’s another story. For Command Performanceville my commission is thirty percent.”
“Drinks all around,” he says agreeably. “I’ll put you in the picture.”
“I read the book, I seen the picture. Your man downtown calls my man downtown who tells me your lad is under arrest. It’s strictly offside vis-a-vis the other bondsmen, but I get to him first, arrange the bail, and he steps out into the sunshine a free man.”
“A hundred percent.”
“That will be sixty-five hundred dollars please.”
“C.O.D.”
“C.O.D.?”
“Phoenician, Mr. Main, I’m a sporty young man. I drive fast cars fast. How would it look I was picked up for speeding and the cops found sixty-five hundred bucks on me? Use your keppeleh. Did we know you drive such a hard bargain?”
“I drive hard bargains hard.”
“Of course, of course. You’ll be paid. The handle plus thirty percent. You’ll get registered mail. Who’s more honest than a syndicate man?”
“Then why do you speed?” I ask gloomily.
But there’s reason on the young fellow’s side. We shake and he leaves. The little bakery bell jingles behind him. Mr. Crainpool looks at me reproachfully, sorrow in his eyes like the toothache. “Something on your mind, Jiminy Cricket?”
“No, sir.”
“What would happen if I refused? Fetterman would do it, or Klein. Adams would. Does Macy tell Gimbel?”
“It’s only fifteen hundred dollars after the forfeit.”
“Oh ho. I see where it is with you. It’s all right to finger a man, just make sure you get a good price. Mr. Crainpool, kid, my finger comes cheap. If they ask how I do it, say it’s my terrific turnover.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We would rather be a banker in a fine suit. We would rather conduct discreet business over drinks at the club. Heart to heart, man to man, gentlemen’s agreements and a handshake between friends. We would prefer silver at our temples and a portrait in oils in the marble lobby. But…”