Chapter 37: Say What Happens Next
The phone at Vega Bail Bonds is a beige unit with four lines and a hold button that sticks.
Monday it rang at 8:52.
I said, “Vega Bail Bonds, this is Cass.”
A woman's voice, older, careful with her consonants the way people are when they have rehearsed.
Her name was Aguilar. Her son was Danny, nineteen. He had been picked up Friday night.
She had not slept since Friday night. You can hear that. It flattens the top of the voice.
She said, “I don't know what I'm supposed to do.”
Here is what I did not say. I did not say it would be fine.
I said, “I'm going to tell you what happens next, in order, and you write it down.”
She said she had a pen. I waited until I heard her find the paper.
First: the booking number. Not his name. The name gets you nothing at a window.
She had it on a piece of paper from Friday. Twelve digits. I had her read it back to me.
Second: arraignment. Weekend arrests go on Monday's calendar. Today was Monday.
I told her the sheriff's bus leaves the facility at five-forty and the first calendar call is nine-thirty.
I told her she would sit in a courtroom two hours and see him for ninety seconds.
She asked if she should go. I said yes, and I said why.
Not because it changes anything. Because he will look at the gallery, and either there is somebody there or there is not.
Third: bond. Until it is set, nobody can post anything, and any office that takes her money first is one to walk away from.
Fourth: our premium is ten per cent of the face amount. It is a fee and it does not come back.
I said that twice, in the same words, because it is the sentence people do not hear the first time.
Fifth: if she cannot pay cash, we take collateral, which is a lien on something she owns.
I said, “If the only thing you own is your car, and your car is how you get to work, you need to think about that before Wednesday.”
Sixth: property. His wallet, his phone, his belt.
Property release is nine to eleven and one to three, closed for the count between.
If his bus does not get back by three because a trial ran long, the window shuts and she drives home with nothing.
Go to property first. The queue at nine is eleven people. The queue at one is forty.
Seventh: the telephone. Collect calls are expensive. The cheaper way is an account with the vendor.
I gave her the vendor name and said twenty dollars, no more. The balance does not follow him if he is transferred.
Eighth: commissary. Also an account. Also a vendor. Also twenty dollars.
I said, “Not fifty. Twenty. Money on those accounts is the easiest money in the world to lose.”
Then I stopped and let her write.
She read the whole list back to me. She had numbered it one to eight, which I had not asked her to do.
Then she said, “How do you know all this?”
There is a four-minute version of that answer and a four-word version.
I said, “I did six years.”
The line was quiet for about two seconds. I have timed that silence before, in a different context, from the other side.
Then she said, “Was anybody in the gallery for you?”
I said, “No.”
She said, “All right.”
Then she said thank you and hung up and I put the receiver down and wrote the call on the log sheet: time, name, matter, action.
Marisol was standing in the doorway between the two rooms with a coffee in her hand.
I do not know how long she had been there. That floor does not creak.
She did not say anything about the call.
She went back to the counter and I heard her open the front drawer, and the second drawer, which is the one with the stationery.
At 9:40 she came in and put a new index card on the desk beside the old one.
The old one said 400 and, under it, in my pencil, say what happens next.
The new one said $15.00 — EFFECTIVE TODAY, and her initials, and the date.
She did not say it out loud. She wrote it.
I said, “Thank you.”
She said, “You cost me a dollar seventy-five an hour more than you did on Friday.”
Then she said, “Don't be late.”
Mrs. Aguilar went to property at nine-fifteen and got the wallet.
Danny's bond was set at seven thousand five hundred and she came in Wednesday and paid the premium in cash, in twenties, out of an envelope.
She kept her car.
I know all of that because I scanned the file.