Frag Box by Richard A. Thompson Read Free Book Online Page B

and not yours or mine, everybody knows good old Bud is going to do some time.
    To that end, the arraigning judge sets bail at five thousand dollars, which he knows damn well Bud can’t raise. In any sort of just world, that would be a direct violation of the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, but we passed some quibbling laws a long time ago to make the issue of unreasonable bail go away. Nowadays bail is supposed to be unreasonable. That’s what it’s for.
    But even though Bud couldn’t raise five thou to buy his soul back from the Devil, he somehow manages to come up with five hundred, which he uses to buy a five-K bond from me. Which obliges me to insure his appearance in court, right?
    Wrong.
    Also wrong is the idea that I’m going to get some kind of security deposit from him so as not to be out anything when the guy craps out on both me and the court. It’s a nice thought, but not only would he not know five thousand if it rang his doorbell looking like Ed McMann, he also very much does not own a thing in the world that’s worth that much. His beat-up car probably has more than that against it in outstanding parking fines.
    But I write the bond anyway, because Bud Everett is one of my regular nonviolent, nontoxic, recidivist bail junkies.
    When his trial date comes up, he fails to appear, as I had no doubt he would. Or rather, wouldn’t. That should mean that I or my layoff bonding company, if I had used one, has to cough up the full five thousand dollars.
    But the thing is, the court doesn’t really want the money, they want him . So they give me ten days to produce the little nimrod, figuring I know where to find him, which I do because he’s an old regular. He’s out in his ex-brother-in-law’s old junker of a camping trailer, in the woods up by Forest Lake. He’s drinking boilermakers and watching soap operas and bitching to anybody who will listen, which mostly means his dog, Thumper, about how he doesn’t want to go to court because he knows he will get a raw deal and he didn’t really mess up the Mayor’s car all that bad, and the asshole had it coming anyway.
    So I send Wide Track Wilkie out to talk to him. He works as a bounty hunter when he’s not shooting pool, and he persuades Bud that he really ought to do the standup thing, if he wants to retain the ability to stand up, period. And they both go off to the courthouse together.
    But not to trial.
    He’s already missed his slot in the court schedule. That’s how this whole scenario got started in the first place. And since there are always more candidates than slots, it has been given to some other worthy. His original trial will now have to be rescheduled and he will be informed of the new date by postcard, no less. That’s if he’s still walking around free. But what he’s in court for this time is to get arraigned for jumping bail, or FTA, failure to appear.
    That’s not as bad an offense as the first one, since it didn’t involve the mayor’s car and also since he didn’t try to run away when Wilkie went to pick him up. So this time bail is set at a mere one thousand, for which Bud can buy a bond from me for another hundred. I have no idea where he gets the extra c-note and probably don’t want to know, but he does, and the game begins.
    That’s right, it merely begins.
    The next time his court date comes up, Bud will again be in a drunken pout, since that’s the only way he has of dealing with authority, and he will again fail to appear. And once again, Wilkie will go have a little heart-to-heart chat with the lad and bring him downtown for yet another arraignment. And with the backlog in the courts showing no sign of ever getting caught up, this scene can now replay itself roughly every one or two months, for just about forever. That means that for as long as good old Bud does not decide to face up to all his past charges or, even less likely, get a sudden flash of ambition and flee the jurisdiction, he will pay me an