As promised, a tale of the amoral and the story of their demise…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 10:15 PM Permalink …I hated chasing hookers, lazy booking officers would, while snapping her picture, save himself time by asking her for her height, weight, hair and eye color, etc., which meant that you could easily read five different arrest reports and get five different descriptions: Height: 5' 6"-5'!!" Hair: red, brown, blonde, multicolored Weight: 105-145 lbs Eyes: Blue. Grey, Brown, Hazel.…They carried their chosen trade with them around the "circle" from Sac to Portland to Seattle skip over to Washington DC to work the 59th Street Bridge, down to Florida for spring break, Houston to Ft. Worth to Dallas to Phoenix to, sometimes Albuquerque, back into L.A., back to Sac to start all over again. your best chance was to catch them on the stroll in Sac or scam their location from friend or family.I dialed a girl's mom one morning, as usual having no ida what I was going to say, and when the woman answered the phone she had to be momma 'cause she was at least sixty-seventy years old. This is what transpired:
She: H-Hello?
Me: (out of the blue) Is this Mrs. Smith?
She: Why yes. Who is this?
Me: Ma'am…I just don't know where to start…so I guess I'll just bite the bullet and tell you that I spilt an entire pot of coffee all over my desk…and honestly, I did my best to save all my paperwork, but your daughter's application was filled out with a felt tip pen and the info on it was almost totally obliterated, so it's my fault that your daughter and her three kids won't be getting their check on the first. Hell, I could just barely make out your number.
She: But she need that money for her children. What are we gonna do now?
Me: Well…listen your the grandma to these kids, right?
She: Yes, and they just have to get their money in time!
Me: Look, let's try this, Do you happen to have the names, ages, DOBs, and social security numbers for the kids?
She: I sure do. Give me a minute to get 'em.
…brief passage of time…
She: Are you still there?
M: Oh, yes ma'am, I've got to get this straightened out or my boss will have my ass. So, start reading off the names, DOB, and social security numbers of those babies and I think we can reconstruct his application.
She:…takes about fifteen minutes reading off all the info on the kids…
Me: (I also asked many questions I supposed a welfare worker would ask) Oh, ma'am I just can't thank you enough. I might have lost my job behind this.
She: Oh,my Lord, I'm so happy I could help. So she'll get her check on the first?
Me: We have one last problem, ma'am, does your daughter have residential phone service?
She: No, why?
Me: Because this isn't ready for submission until I get your daughter's signature. Since I caused this mess why don't you just give me her home address and on my lunch hour I'll drive over to her and get her signature so those babies don't have to go without.
She: (By now absolutely convinced I was with the welfare department) Well, she just moved over to 123 Jefferson St, but I'm sure she'd be home.
Me: Don't you worry about it. I'll have this taken care of within an hour now that we have this application reconstructed.
She: God bless you, sir.
It never crossed her mind that she had not asked, nor that never had I offered her my name.
I saddled up my old 750 Honda (I had to change transportation every few months as each vehicle became attached to me.) and called my old friend …Wally… and aked him if he wanted to transport the gal for me since I was on the bike. He of course agreed as I always gave all the credit to the cops who helped me serve warrants, sending an "atta-boy" letter each time, which can make or break a promotion.
Twenty minutes later I knocked on the door at the address given, a child answered the door, "Where's your momma?"
The child pointed toward the living room where son-of-a-gun my skip was sleeping after a hard night's work. I cuffed her up while she slept and when Wally showed up minutes later boy! was she pissed!
Off to jail went she, less than an hour total time from getting file to cuffing, Wally got his letter, I got paid an exorbitant sum of money for the locate, it was a beautiful day, so I spent the day floating on the American River with my Warrior Woman.
We made quite a site carrying a two-man raft, a large cooler, and paddles. We'd dump everything on the beach, I'd ride a short distance to a tree suitable for chaining the bike to, and we'd hit that wonderfully cold water on a 105º day. Life was good.
Labels: bounty hunting, disinformation, liars, profitable
6 Comments:
Tell me Bill,
Is this your attitude towards "hookers" in general, or are you just talking about the kind that-- uh -- a-sexually screw their johns over?
Throughout most of human history and most probably even during a great deal of woman-kind's prehistory, peddling ass has been just about the only way most females of our species could gain any degree at all of economic independence.
To a greatest extent, it has only been during the psychotically amoral domination of Xtianity that peddling ass became a
(not too infrequently) death-penalty "sin" of legal culpability within most of the (Abramically crippled) "Western" world. Other than that, mostly because poontang is a commodity that women have in unending abundance and (virtually all) men can only counterfeit a very stinky and coitically inferior substitution for, the sexually unimpressive element of our male-dominated cuture had to make damn sure that women couldn't use their biologically guaranteed monopoly on this most sought-after circumstance in order to unduly exploit it as any "normal" kind of a political tie-breaker.
It sounds at least a bit like you enjoyed busting hookers simply because they were hookers ... or perhaps I'm just drinking too much whiskey again this weekend ... .
DanD
You seem to have misconstrued my comments. I expressed no hostility or malice against hookers in any way, shape, or form. I've never held any personal animus against any type, kind, or variety of skip with one notable exception: baby-rapers, child molesters, pedophiles, or any who would harm children. Some women, whether through abuse, a pimp, desperate personal circumstance or just desire to live that lifestyle, and I certainly was not in any position to judge them, and would not if I could.
She, as will be future examples given, was a bail skip, only a bail skip, and I had no personal stake in anything regarding that bail skip other than to locate them and return them to court or jail to make my money.
And I did indeed enjoy busting ANY bail skip, seein' as how that was how I made my living and all. I know you to fair-minded DanD, and if you reread the post you will not find a sign of even disrespect: I just hated hunting hookers because they are a tough skip to track.
Some are rather amazing in their own way. a friend that regularly dated …Lacy…a Louisiana hooker and my wife and I were having dinner one night when the subject of violence against hookers came up. Lacy finished swallowing a bite of food, washed it down with some wine, and my friend said, "Lacy, right now, show 'em your razor." She reached into her mouth and from somewhere in the upper right part of her mouth she fished out a single bladed razor blade and then put it back and went right on with dinner and drinks.
Any contempt or frustration in this post, if read fairly, is against the cops who never did their jobs, the nationwide track they followed, and the best odds and one way I used to catch a local who hadn't hit the track yet.
"I hate chasing hookers…" i bear them no ill will whatever.
Well, I generally hate chasing hookers also, mostly because the really good ones just cost too much ... .
(Ahem ~) Anyway, perhaps my judgement is forever jaded by my general distrust of the institution of law enforcement. As individuals, I find that most of the law enforcers I have met in a social way and even some I have had contact with regarding an enforcement issue are (marginally at least) decent people.
Now, even from your own self-description as a bounty hunter, I'm predisposed to view bounty hunting as just another version of the (quasi-)criminal class that enjoys eating its own. When your job ultimately forces you to so casually lie to people (and yes, skips are still people) in order to make your daily bread, on a moral level, there is something deeply flawed with the perpetuating culture.
From my perspective, bounty hunters (especially the "Dog" types) have no real interest in serving "justice." As you relate, it seems that you were never really concerned whether a skip had done so because the system was in the process of criminally fucking them over. Now,I do realize that -- as you had apparently treated it -- bounty hunting was just another job.
Do you know if a skip you "recaptured" ever lost his life after being repatriated to a bad conviction? This would include somebody who may have got shanked in prison after capture.
I have re-read your headline post, and you are right, no upfront hostility is related, and yes, it well could be a hostility towards those other, more malicious (or otherwise incompetent) elements of the greater law enforcement community.
It does sound like you've had a very exciting life. In any event, I would have found doing what you have done as (at least sometimes) morally distressing.
Oh well, I'm just a panty-waist about such things.
DanD
DanD, I never carried a gun, fancied myself a cowboy like the Dog type bounty hunter, and it is a point of personal pride that no one ever got injured - me the skip and the cops assisting me, with one single exception, and that was a stupid jerk that thought the could jump from a second-story window (at night!). He broke his leg.
Antoher thing most people don't understand about bail is if a guy came to our offices and laid the ten grand or whatever the size of the bond, as fare as we were concerned, that was it. A bondsman enters a contract between the court, the bailee, and the surety company that the bailee will show up as necessary or the surety company, six months later, will have to pay the amount of the bail bond, If he/she walked in and said it was just too heavy a case to fight, paid us the money for his bond, we'd shake hands and never see each other again.
I gotta quit for tonight DanD, all my meds seem to be hitting me at the same time. I'm sure we'll be discussing this in the days head. Good night kind, Sir.
The Vidiot is right of course, you should compile a history of your timeline ... even include tales of other compatriots and contemporaries that segue with your own life adventure.
It would ultimately become part of the greater contemporary history of a Viet-vet. Something that better-defines the human element that survives among an increasingly incorporated world.
DanD
DanD, this whole thing began as a cathartic way for me to detail the life of a professional liar. As time went by I literally got so good at reflexively lying in order to catch skips, who had already been arrested, bailed, and promised to appear or pay the bail money, so I was chasing suspected criminals who had broken their word to both the court and the surety company, two wrongs that did not necessarily make me feel right about having become such an intuitively functioning order of professional liar that it finally scared the hell out of me that I could do such things.
Read today's post.
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