Sheepdogs: Keeping the Wolves at Bay by Gordon Carroll (good books to read for beginners TXT) 📕

wasn’t a street anymore, it was grass and there was no snow, and it was daytime. I was in the park and Amber was playing in the jet streams of water that shot up from the holes in the cement, only it wasn’t water it was blood, and Amber was begging me to save her — to save her — to save her.

I came awake, my clothes drenched in sweat, breathing hard. I sat up and looked at my watch. Two-thirty in the morning.

I stripped, showered, put on a new set of clothes. I went to the living room and called the Denver City Jail. A bored sounding desk sergeant answered. I asked what charges Kevin Burbank was being held on and his bond. He put me on hold for about ten minutes in which time I got to listen to loud static accompanied by a buzz about as annoying as Jim Carey in Dumb and Dumber making the most annoying sound in the world. When he came back on the phone he told me Burbank and his pal had been bailed out a couple of hours ago. I asked him who bailed them out and he told me First Class Bail Bonds.

I looked them up on the Internet and called them. I told the lady who answered I was trying to get some info on a couple of guys they’d just bonded out. She told me she couldn’t give me any info on clients. I told her I’d be right down.

After all I wasn’t going to get back to sleep tonight.

First Class Bail Bonds was a dump, both on the outside and on the inside. A homeless person lay passed out against the wall outside, a crumpled brown paper sack with the neck of a bottle peaking out the edge rested in one limp hand. He’d urinated on himself and the sidewalk shined wet around him. Talk about clichés. Still, he had a smile on his stubbly face and was snoring contentedly.

I gave the woman behind the counter my most charming smile. She was a black lady with long bushy hair and giant arms and breasts to match. She was sitting behind a counter surrounded by bulletproof glass so I couldn’t see the rest of her. She wore a bright pink top that looked to be at the limit of its stretching ability and chewed gum that popped so loudly I could hear it through the inch-thick glass. Her name-tag read “Sasha”. Sasha saw my smile and looked at me like I was a bug.

“Hi,” I said, acting like I was taking note of her name-tag, “Sasha.”

“Do I know you?” she said, popping her gum. “‘Cause I don’t think I know you. You ain’t my brother, you shore ain’t my mother and I don’t ‘member having no white boys even on my crazy Uncle Larry’s side of the family. So don’t you go taking no familiarities with me without me telling you you can. Do we understand each other?” Her gum snapped louder than my .45.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She nodded sharply. “Good. Who you wanting to bail out?”

“Nobody. I’m the guy that called about Kevin Burbank.”

Her eyebrows drew down and I was glad there was glass between us. She looked kind of mean. “Don’t you be wasting my time, fool. I told you we don’t give out no information on clients. Didn’t you hear me tell you that on the phone? Course you did. So why you come down here, boy?”

I opened my wallet and took out a twenty. “It’s very important to me.”

Her gum popped and she sat back. “I ain’t some cheap ho you can buy off with a Jackson. Do I look cheap to you?”

I took out another twenty — held it up.

She sat up, looking mean again. “I said I don’t take no Jacksons. Clean out yo ears, boy.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I thought you meant in the singular.” I put the bills back in my wallet and took out a fifty.”

She shook her head as though I were slow. “You got any Franklins in there?”

“I don’t want to buy their records I just want to look at them.”

“I like Mr. Franklin. Any man willing to fly a kite in the rain just so he could discover ‘lectricity is okay with me.”

“Well I’m fresh out of hundreds, so it’s Grant or nothing.”

She shrugged her big shoulders. “Nothing gets you nothing.”

I shrugged my shoulders back at her and turned to leave.

“How many Grants you got in there?”

I stopped. “Just the one.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

A slight smile worked across her lips. “You find another one in there an I’ll let you call me Sasha.”

I smiled back. “How about a Grant, two Jacksons and three Hamiltons?” I held open my wallet for her to see everything I had, which was exactly three singles more than I had offered.

She nodded, popped her gum and smiled real big. She had beautiful white teeth. “Raise me three Washingtons and we got us a deal.”

I laid the money in the little tray she slid out from under the glass. “A deal it is… Sasha.”

She flashed me that beautiful smile again and slid copies of Pimple’s bonding papers back out to me on the tray.

She had them there all the while.

A lawyer from the very high-priced law firm of Kinsley, Gifford and Vanderzee named Ralph Ramsden had bonded Kevin Burbank, AKA Pimples, out. Same deal for Baldy. I’d dealt with lawyers from their firm a few times when I was still a cop. They were heavy hitters, one of the best legal defense firms in the state, if not the country.

Pimples had been charged with possession of a Class II Controlled Substance, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, Third Degree Assault on a Peace Officer and Obstruction of Justice. His bond was ten thousand dollars, cash, property or surety, which meant First Class Bail Bonds made a straight fifteen hundred bucks apiece on the deal. Three thousand smackers. Not bad for an hour’s work. Of course they