Thomas’s address and phone number was on a separate piece of paper. I knew from working a previous case that the address was on a street in a neighborhood of affluent African-American professionals and business people. I strolled over to the public library and checked the city directory to see if it listed a business address for Thomas, but all it had was his home, the same as Lucy had given me.
I picked up a sandwich at the Front Street Deli and returned to my office. I ate lunch while I returned phone calls and went through the mail. In one envelope was a check for $800 from a client that I had decided was never going to pay. This was looking like one of those days that it did pay to get out of bed.
About two thirty, I headed down to the Ajax Bail Bond Company. It was located across the street from the Criminal Justice Center, on the north edge of downtown, at 201 Poplar Avenue, the main thoroughfare from the river out to the affluent suburbs of Germantown and Collierville. The Justice Center is an imposing gray stone building built in the early 1980s to relieve prisoner crowding. It was nicknamed the Glamour Slammer because of the supposed amenities it would offer prisoners. Ask any local businessman who has spent his 48 hours there for a first-time DUI and he’ll tell you how glamorous it is.
Ajax had a blinking blue neon sign that operated even in the afternoon. It was in a one-story brick building separated from its neighbors only by firewalls. A liquor store occupied the space on the west, and a pawnshop was on the east. It was a complete urban strip mall, offering liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the means for financing both.
Black men, young and old, loitered on the sidewalk in front of the three businesses. Almost all smoked cigarettes, and some sucked liquor or wine from bottles hidden in paper sacks. Women strolled back and forth across Poplar to and from the jail, some carrying babies or holding children’s hands, obstructing traffic and not seeming to notice. Visiting day.
Cars waited more or less patiently for a gap in the pedestrians. Memphians don’t blow horns unless someone is about to run into them.
I walked in through the propped open door of Ajax Bond and stopped to let my eyes adjust to the dimness. When I could focus, I saw I was in a square room divided by a waist high wooden counter. There were rows of file cabinets covering the back wall behind the counter, and two metal desks with rolling chairs. On my side of the counter there were cheap vinyl-covered chairs and stacks of magazines on end tables. A strong odor of disinfectant filled the air. In one of the chairs a man sat looking at me.
He was dressed in blue jeans and a tight white t-shirt that showed an athlete’s torso. He wore a semiautomatic pistol in a holster high on his right hip, and a gold watch on his left wrist with an intricately braided gold band. His hair was cut short, but not shaved. He wore half lens reading glasses, and a book was closed on his left forefinger.
“May I help you?” he asked without much feeling.
“I understand you wrote the bond for a man named Thomas Tuggle,” I answered. “I’m trying to get a lead on him and thought you might help.”
“You’re not a cop. I’ve never seen you before,” he said. “Unless you’re a Fed. But I’d say you’re a lawyer.”
“Neither one. I’m a private investigator,” I said as I handed him my card.
He took it, stuck it in his book as a bookmark without looking at it, and placed the book on the counter.
“Are you the owner?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m the owner,” he replied.
“I’m John McAlister,” I said, and stuck out my hand.
He looked at my hand for a second, then took it softly in a big dry hand.
“Henry Jackson is my name,” he said. “So you’re looking for Thomas. Well, me too.”
“So you did write his bond?” I asked.
“Yeah, I wrote it and I regret it. He missed his court date last week and I’m looking at nine thousand dollars if he’s not back soon,” he replied.
“I thought it was twenty thousand for the bond, which would leave you eighteen grand since he paid you two,” I said.
“I reinsure half my risk, but I still don’t want to pay nine. What’s your interest in Tuggle?” he asked.
“Missing person case,” I said. “The family hired me.”
“You’re bullshitting me, right? If Thomas even has a family, they’re not the type to hire a PI to look for him.”
“His mother is his family. She said you would know who she is.”
“Oh, God, yes, I remember her now. I bailed her out on an assault. But don’t tell me she hired you to find Thomas.”
“Well, a friend of the family got me involved,” I said.
“A white friend, huh? Noblesse oblige and all that,” he said.
“Maybe. I’m working for the money.”
“Yeah, me too. If I don’t find him I lose a lot of it. What have you found so far?”
“You’re my first stop. I’ve got a picture and an address, and that’s it.”
“You don’t have shit. You working contingency or hourly?” he asked.
“Hourly,” I said.
He laughed. “You don’t have shit and you don’t give a shit, right?”
“Well, I’ve got my reputation to think of.”
“I’ve never heard of you,” he said.
“I try to keep a low profile, you know,” I said.
“Must be real low,” he said. “Well, it’s early, not much going on. I might as well tell you what I can about Tuggle. Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.”
He apparently shared Lucy Tuggle’s assessment of my abilities.
“Sit down,” he said, gesturing to a chair covered in aqua blue vinyl. He went behind the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee from an old-fashioned electric percolator with a glass bulb on top. “You want some?” he asked.
“No thanks. Too late in the day for me,” I replied.
“Man, I’m just getting started. I open at two in the afternoon and close at two in the morning. I wish the police would just arrest folks between nine and five.”
“Must be tough on your social life. Now what can you tell me about Tuggle?”
He knelt and opened the bottom drawer of one of the filing cabinets, pulled out a file folder and sat down at one of the desks.
“Thomas Jefferson Tuggle,” he read from the file. “He must be the last black man in America to be named after a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Born November fifteenth, nineteen seventy-seven, arrested four times, served four months of an eleven month, twenty-nine day sentence at the penal farm for receiving stolen property. Always showed up for hearings in the past. Rated a very good risk.”
“Maybe he was scared of a crack rap,” I said. “That would carry a lot bigger jolt than receiving stolen property.”
“They would have never made a crack dealer rap stick on Thomas. He knew that,” he replied.
“Do you think he was dealing crack?” I asked.
“Thomas dealing crack? Man, you weren’t lying when you said you didn’t know much about him. Thomas doesn’t deal crack, he’s the Designer.”
“He’s