The scholars of subterfuge also learn how to use any branch of Domino’s Pizza to get an address when all you have is a phone number. Call Domino’s and order a pizza. When the operator asks your address, you then say: “I don’t know, I’m at this dude’s party. All I know is the phone number.” Read the fugitive’s number to the operator, and the sophisticated Domino’s caller-I.D. system will spit out the address.

Other ploys include phoning a fugitive’s credit-card company after procuring his Social Security number from the court record. Impersonating the fugitive, one says something to the effect of “My wife has run off with my credit card. I don’t want to press charges, but I wouldn’t mind finding out what she’s been charging.” With a bit of luck, a gullible employee will read off the last few purchases, giving the hunter an idea of where his man is hiding out. There is also a way to identify a credit-card company’s trip-up question (“What’s you mother’s maiden name?”) in advance, too complicated to relate here. Doesn’t this violate a ream of statutes? “It is legal for a bail-bondsman and his agent to access all of the defendant’s financial records,” says Burton. As for impersonating the fugitive, “it might be a gray area you could easily slip into,” Burton says cryptically.

After two days of lectures, the students are herded into the parking lot and taught how to handcuff efficiently and thread leg shackles and belly chains around disruptive captives. And don’t forget to make sure the captive sits in the right rear seat of the car: Otherwise, “he could push the seat forward, breaking the seat and pushing you forward to cause a wreck,” explains George F., a graduate of the course. “Or he could choke you to death with his handcuffs.”

Burton also discusses state and federal laws regarding bounty hunting and the carrying of weaponry (“In Arizona, it’s a felony if you don’t have a gun in your car,” Burton says, pausing to make sure his audience gets the gag before wrapping things up with a hearty “Suhn uhm’va bitch”). Students are presented with the option of buying from a whole line of “Death Gear,” which includes black SWAT-team-style clothing printed with FUGITIVE RECOVERY AGENT and a “Pneu-Gun ballistic baton,” which promises to “take out a 300-pound man at 20 feet” with a 2 1/2-ounce shot bag -- no permit required. A salesman with emphysema hawks the goods between doses of oxygen taken through a tube in his nose à la Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet.

At the course’s conclusion, all participants receive a certificate that entitles them to purchase a badge something like a sheriff’s star, useful mainly as a form of I.D. to be flashed at cops and prisoners. Burton admits in private that only about 15 percent of NABEA’s membership, or 300 to 350 people across the country, can earn a living as full-time hunters. Alumni send their cards to bondsmen around the country, schmooze a lot, and hope to get a trickle of small jobs. Some parlay their experience into something bigger. But that could take a while. “Don’t quit your day job if you have one,” says Bob R.

Louis McNeill and his posse are some of Burton’s more successful recent graduates. Hewing to the principle that there is safety in numbers, they tend to travel in a pack -- all wearing blue bulletproof vests under those black jackets emblazoned with the words FUGITIVE RECOVERY AGENT. Louis McNeill is 25 and lives in Bushwick, and when he isn’t hunting, he puts in time as a volunteer auxiliary cop. His view of things is Manichean: All fugitives are inherently evil, and anyone associated with them must be tainted, too.

“We’ve got a fuckin’ problem here!” McNeill shouts into his cellular phone in front of an empty house in Far Rockaway sometime after 10 p.m. He has just realized that the indemnitor -- in this case, the elderly mother-in-law of the woman they are looking for -- has sold the house she’d put up for collateral, disappearing with the proceeds. As he talks, self-proclaimed “Special Agent” McNeill works himself up into a frenzy of rage: “I want 30 grand the value of the bond! If she just sold the house, fuck the bitch!” Then he turns plaintive. “I’m working out here naked right now. I’m working my ass off right now, and I come to a gutted house!”

Determined to locate her, he makes a few phone calls to friends in the Police Department. Nothing comes up. So he resorts to that tried-and-true method: dialing 411. And what do you know? “The bitch is listed!” he shouts triumphantly, pumping the air with his fist. “Ain’t this a beautiful thing.”