My Life of Crime (A Valentine's Day Story)

An Illinois tale about cash bail and Valentine's Day in jail, reposted from 2021

Photo by Rajesh Rajput on Unsplash

I am not good at most things. But at one time in my life, I was very good at getting arrested. 

I was arrested dozens of times. I was even arrested twice on the same day.  

I had bonded out quickly the first time, which gave me an opportunity for the repeat performance. 

“Didn’t we already bust you today?” a cop asked. “Don’t you learn anything? Is there something wrong with you?”

“I think there is something wrong with you,” I replied. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Does your mother know you arrest people like me?”

You are probably not surprised that I was not given the opportunity to bond out quite as quickly the second time.

All my arrests give me a perspective unusual among my peers in the journalism community, many of whom are wary of even taking a leak in a police station, concerned they might catch the cooties.

I, on the other hand, have experience in navigating a sit-down on a lockup’s toilet that has no real seat.

The first time, you drop trou and kind of hover above it, then carefully deliver from a distance. 

Later, when you’ve been in the cell long enough to have to visit a few more times, you are not so particular. After all, the commode without the seat is also without privacy and toilet paper. Why be persnickety?

I was arrested all those times for doing something you may not have realized was illegal. It’s against the law for the driver of a suburban taxicab to pick up a fare in Chicago and drop off elsewhere in Chicago.

I was an Evanston cab driver, and I broke this law a lot, as did most of my peers. The reason was that Chicago radio-dispatched cab companies were less than thrilled with their units being marooned on the edges of town, so they would often take orders from the far North Side and then not fill them. This left the prospective customers waiting around for cabs in the dark, susceptible to the whims of the assorted cannibals and miscreants wandering their neighborhoods.

So they called us. We picked them up quickly, for about the same price, despite the considerably higher risk. Chicago police officers of the “Vehicle Squad” driving plain-wrapper cars would sometimes follow us, and bust us after we dropped off. 

They would do this mainly when the heat was turned up by calls from the bosses of the Chicago cab companies. This, despite the fact that they shunned service in the area -- Rogers Park -- anyway. 

This concept was explained by the famous Greek cabdriver Aesop in “The Dog in the Manger.” That’s the one about the dog sleeping on the ox’s hay pile. He’s awakened by the arrival of the ox at the end of his bovine workday of hauling people wherever they want to go.

The dog chooses to bark like a madman to drive off the ox instead of just letting him have a little well-earned dinner. This, despite the dog’s own distaste for hay.

The Yellow Cab Co. had little fondness for Rogers Park hay, but still liked to nap there unmolested.

The mother of one of the Vehicle Squad members lived in Rogers Park, and was one of our regular riders. Upon arrest, I once told the cop, “Your mom says hello. She said you should call her more often.”

It took me a long time to bond out that time, too.

I eventually learned not to mention anyone’s mother to someone who considered handcuffs a fashion statement.

These experiences came to mind recently when I heard that the state bill to get rid of cash bail had been passed by the General Assembly. I don’t have a lot of experience waiting for friends and relatives to bail me out of any county jail, but I spent a lot of money on bail bonds used to spring me from Chicago police lockups.

I never got any of it back.

Most of the time, the prosecutor would offer to non-suit a case in exchange for turning my $50 bond over to the Cook County court system. That was a good deal because it was the only deal.

One time, however, it was different. I got a Get Out of Jail Free Card.

That time was an early Saturday morning Valentine's Day.  I was pinched on the first load of the day. They locked me up and forgot about me.

Luckily, since it was winter, I had a coat to spread out on the stainless steel bench in the cell. The bench was too hard and cold to sit on comfortably for very long. But with the coat laid out, I could try to nap until they came by to let me bond out.

I rarely was able to sleep in a lockup, but I did this time. There was no one else in the cellblock, so no screams of “Where’s my baloney sandwich?” or “There are things crawling out of the wall!”

When I woke up, I put my head against the bars to look at the clock, and it was almost noon. 

That was not good. Not only had I missed perhaps the final chance to buy a last-minute Valentine’s Day gift for my girlfriend, but I had also missed the productive hours to pay for it. I was carrying just enough for bond, unless they decided to charge extra.

Worse, I had promised to call Janet in the morning to figure out where we were going to go the afternoon of Valentine’s Day. So I was being a very bad jailbird boyfriend.

“Hey,” I yelled at the turnkey, “What about letting me out of here?”

He didn’t look up from the comic book he was reading. “Nobody’s said nothing about you. If they had, I’d have brought you out.”

“Can you check? Maybe somebody forgot.”

Long silence. “Whaddaya think?” I asked.

“I think you shouldn’t break the law.”

“Isn’t there a law that says I get a phone call?”

“You didn’t ask for a phone call.”

“You’re right. Can I have a phone call?”

“No.”

“Then aren’t you breaking the law?”

“No. You’re the one.”

“I broke a stupid law. You’re breaking a good one.”

“I’m not breaking the law. It just says you get a call. It doesn’t say when.”

My throat was starting to get sore from all the yelling. “So, when?” I croaked.

“I have to get someone else here before I can let you out of the cell.”

“That actually makes sense,” I yelled. “So call somebody. This place is full of cops.”

“Everybody’s busy.”

“They can’t all be busy. You just don’t want to call anybody because they’ll say ‘No.’ ‘Cause nobody likes you.”

He laughed. “A guy comes down at two. You can probably call then.”

Two o’clock came and went and no phone call. “Hey, I really got to use the phone.”

“Maybe pretty soon,” he said.

“Hey, listen,” I yelled. “It’s Valentine’s Day. I’m supposed to be with someone. She’s gonna think I’m with somebody else. That I’ve been two-timing her all along.”

“Have you?”

“No. Not that ambitious.”

“When you get out, you can show her the bond slip.”

“By the time you guys let me out of here, she’ll hate me.”

“Nah. You got a good excuse.”

“Telling her I’ve been missing all day because I’ve been in jail will definitely ease her mind.”

“Don’t worry about it. She already knows what kind of guy you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m sure this isn’t the first time you’ve been locked up.”

Two hours later, I tried again. And then again. Finally, a different jailer came up to the cell door and told me I could bond out in about an hour.

“Great. Can I get a phone call before then?”

He unlocked the door and slid it open. “Over there on the left. Need a quarter?”

Janet wasn’t home. I told her sister what had happened, and when I was supposed to get out.

“OK,” she said. “I’ll tell her when I see her. But she didn’t say when she’d be back.” 

It was after 7 p.m. when I was escorted to the police desk. Janet was already there, ready to bail me out. She seemed to be a big hit with the cops.

On the strength of her charm, the sergeant offered a recognizance bond. I didn’t know if that was the best thing for me, but she was having such a good time being the hero of the piece that I went along.

Eventually, the city would get tougher. Not only would we evil drivers be arrested, but the cars would be impounded, and it would cost about $2,000 to bail them out.

But that Valentine’s Day, it was free, and not just because of the I-bond. Janet was so enthusiastic about rescuing me that she took me out for dinner and dancing and insisted on paying the freight. 

All that night, she called me “My Bad Boy.” It’s fun to be a bad boy.

When I went to court on the bust, I had no bond to trade. I asked the prosecutor if he would agree to just let me pay a $50 fine in exchange for non-suiting the charge. 

“Nope. You’ll have to take your chances with the judge,” he said.

I was convicted and fined $400.

I never told Janet about what happened in court. She had turned a rough day into one of the best we’d ever had, and it was worth a lot more than $400 to not risk ruining it for her.

Wherever she is, I hope she still remembers me as her Bad Boy. In a good way.

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