Feature

Citizen’s Arrest

Four carloads of angry hunters drive off to Jamaica to pay a house call.

At eleven at night, Marquita, her middle-aged son, and her two teenage grandsons are in bed. There’s a persistent knocking at her door. She and her son eventually come down the stairs. They look through the screen door and see seven men and one teenage woman, all dressed in black, standing around the porch.

Flashing badges, the visitors identify themselves as fugitive-recovery agents.

“Why you come to my house this time of night?” says the woman, who stands firm in her skimpy lace nightgown, seemingly more irritated than frightened.

“We have the right to search your house,” McNeill booms. Since he has no knowledge that the fugitive is in the house, and since he is not empowered by any search warrant, McNeill is skittering about on thin ice here. But the woman doesn’t know it. And even if she did, who is she going to complain to? The hunters aren’t about to go away, and she wants her door left intact. Reluctantly, she lets them in. Theoretically, had Marquita refused to open her door, McNeill could not have entered her house legally. But by telling her he has this power, and playing on her ignorance of the law, he has managed to get himself invited in.

The crew ushers Marquita and her son and two grandsons into the living room. A few peel off and station themselves around the house. There’s no violence, but there is definitely menace.

McNeill, wearing a backward baseball cap, sits down on the sofa with Marquita and begins to interrogate her. His spiel ricochets from lawyerese to cop talk to psychobabble to the words of a parent scolding a wayward child. Repeatedly, he says, “I’m trying to keep this on a professional level.” He informs Marquita of her legal position as indemnitor even though she already knows it. She’s not happy with her daughter-in-law, either, and calls her a “dog” for running off on bail. He tells her that if the daughter-in-law doesn’t show up, Marquita’s pension from her years as a NYNEX operator will be subject to partial seizure. It is, he confides in her, “a messy situation.” But if she works with him, he’ll work with the judge on saving her pension. (Since bounty hunters have no special influence with the court, this is a somewhat extravagant promise. But it’s all part of Louis’s rap.)

James, a Nassau County security guard with prematurely salt-and-pepper hair, a little man with a puffed-up ego, goes into the kitchen to rifle through Marquita’s address book. He is accompanied by the teenage girl, who lives on Long Island and is riding with the boys for kicks. Playing tough for the girl’s benefit, James asks if there is a photo of the fugitive in the house, and when Marquita answers that there isn’t, he shouts at her that she’s a liar. “Don’t get funky with me!” the grandmother shoots back. When her son, the bail jumper’s husband, protests the search, James assumes a deep voice and growls, “I have the right, sir!” He finds a few old numbers in the phone book and announces victoriously, “You said you hadn’t heard from her. Her number’s in here five times. Your credibility’s crap!”

Marquita’s son alternates between rambling fury and sullen cooperation. While the others are making a lot of noise and finding out nothing, Jamaican-born “Special Agent” Rali takes him on a walk and, seducing him with the bonhomie of a fellow countryman, gradually squeezes out a few tidbits.

The hunters depart, leaving behind a business card in case the family hears anything. It’s midnight, and the cars speed back toward Brooklyn on the Van Wyck Expressway. “Rali, we gonna piss people off tomorrow?” McNeill asks jovially. “You know that, baby! You know!”

They’re confident that in the morning, Marquita’s son will phone Rali and provide additional information allowing them to locate the woman. But the call doesn’t come. And James’s phone numbers lead nowhere. A couple of weeks later, at NABEA’s Lyndhurst seminar, McNeill reveals that the bail jumper’s husband mentioned a name the woman might be using to Rali during their walk. McNeill ran it through his computer and discovered that the fugitive had changed her name and Social Security number. But he couldn’t get her address. What he does know is that the indemnitor surely knew as much as the husband, and wasn’t telling. “That lying bitch,” he snorts.

In room 136 of the Marriott Hotel, on the outskirts of La Guardia Airport, Sean, still handcuffed, settles into a green armchair by the window. Scott turns the TV on for him and surfs the channels until he lands on HBO. It’s 9:35 in the morning, and Scott and George are waiting for Louis and Rali, who -- for a small fee -- will sit on Sean until the bondsman shows up to escort Sean back to Greensboro.

Ten minutes later, the junior hunters knock on the door and enter the room. Feeling generous, Scott hands a wad of cash to Louis and tells him to order up a pot of coffee and some bagels for all of them, including Sean. The older men tell Sean to take care of himself as they head out to make their second catch of the day.

Later that night, Sean phones Melissa from North Carolina. He is going to stand trial, do his time -- probably only a few months -- and then return to New York. All things considered, Melissa is taking things fairly calmly. She thought George, who had done most of the shouting, had been “pretty rude.” But “the smaller guy, under the circumstances, was as pleasant as he could be.” She’d known that Sean was wanted for jumping bail, and once Scott and George had identified themselves as bail enforcers, she’d felt no physical fear. What upsets her most is that Sean will miss Nasira’s first birthday.

Sean is philosophical about being taken back into custody. “I did wrong,” he says with resignation. “But I wasn’t out in New York selling drugs. I was working -- I’d been looking for a job every day for three months and just got one two days ago. Now I’ll have to start all over again when I get back to New York. I hate it when they ask you about those gaps: ‘Where were you?’” His father, though, will be a happy man. “He’s the one who, uh, bailed me out,” Sean says, grinning sheepishly.