Kickin' Doors and Slappin' Whores: Tales of a Cowboy Bounty Hunter

by Tony Smith

Overview

I wrote this book to inform and entertain people about a most misunderstood profession. I wanted to convey the fact that I am not some superhuman or a supercool character out of a movie but just some guy trying to make a living in a hard and dangerous profession.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781546214656
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	10/26/2017
Pages:	126
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Rookie's First Bust

It's the 24th day of May and it's still cold up here in the Capitan Mountains of New Mexico. This is the same country that Pat Garret hunted Billy the Kid. Not much has changed I think as I sit in the bushes outside an apartment building on the outskirts of a little town near the Apache reservation.

I start to shiver and shake, is it the cold? Or am I just scared shitless? Probably both, I think to myself. Tucked inside the waistband of my jeans is an old 45, the metal touching my flesh is ice cold. I'm anxiously awaiting the return of my partner and for the sun to come up.

Adam has walked up the hill to a convenience store to call the cops and ask for some backup. Inside the building sleeps our quarry, a Mexican Mafia enforcer who has jumped bail on a piddly assed fraud charge up in Kansas.

I'm so tired and scared, I feel like a criminal myself sneaking around in the dark, packing a gun, and my brain does a reality check. Is this shit really legal? I remind myself of the State Statutes and case law that I have studied religiously and of the U.S. Supreme Court Decision of 1872 that upheld the Bondsman and their agents the right to pursue, capture and return their fugitives to custody using whatever means necessary.

My mind wanders back to how this all started when a Dodge City Bail Bondsman gave us our first case several months ago.

Even though Adam was an ex-cop and I was armed with a black belt in Ju-Jitsu we soon found out we were strictly rookies in this street-wise game of adult hide and go seek. Our skip was supposed to be living in Garden City, a rough, tough packing house town in Southwest Kansas about two hours from where we lived in Oklahoma. Our first night in the Barrio doing surveillance, we were confronted by some gangsters and literally run out of town. A few days later we heard from a contact in the neighborhood that everybody was laughing about how they ran the Gringo Bounty hunters out of town and how we're a bunch of pussies, but we also learned that our desperado is living with his girlfriends' parents and a good lead on their address.

Pistols, handcuffs, and flashlights, we head back to Kansas. I've also added a 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun my daddy gave me, minus about six inches off the barrel. As we cruise toward our destination Adam, who is always good for some intellectual conversation, is unusually quiet. I don't feel like talking either, something is gonna happen tonight I can feel it.

Its early evening, we arrive at our target location, still plenty of light and our guys' pickup is parked out front. We unload. Adam pounds on the front door as I run around back of an old one-story house in need of some paint. I can hear him arguing with a Mexican woman up front, she won't let him in. What should I do? I can't leave the back unattended and I've got no cover if somebody starts shooting.

In a heartbeat I make a decision that will change my life forever as the ball of my foot makes contact with the door right under the knob. My adrenaline must have been off the charts 'cuz the door just explodes open, tearing out some of the wood in the frame and breaking the door down the middle.

Me and the shotgun come in. "Hit the deck!" I'm screaming.

Adam unshucks his .38 special and pushes his way past the old broad. We're going through the house searching room by room. In the bathtub is an old man, buck-naked, who keeps yelling in English, but with a thick Spanish accent.

"What the hell is going on!" he repeats this over and over as we continue to search.

It finally dawns on us the prick ain't here and oh boy are these people pissed! They are yelling, the neighbors are coming out of the woodwork to see what's up. Right in the middle of this shit is two Anglo rookie Bounty hunters; it looks like the fucking Alamo all over. Somehow we made it thru all these assholes and get in the Buick. I put 'er in reverse and haul ass backwards down the street at a very high rate of speed spinning the car 180° at the end of the block we got the hell outa Dodge.

Now two months later, after paying an old girlfriend $200 for his address, we're back in business. My mind kicks back to reality as Adam arrives with two town Marshals. They won't help us though, since they don't have a warrant; however, they will hang around to keep the peace and to see if we get killed (I think to myself).

Even though the perps Bond is relatively small, we've been told by several people that this dude is a bad hombre that has killed people whose bodies have never been found. I think maybe there is more to the story than we know. Possibly he has done something else that he hasn't been charged with. I mean he's running way too hard for no more time than these charges carry.

The sun is just coming up as we creep up the stairs to his second story apartment. There are no lights on and the screen door is latched. Adam knocks on the screen, I'm standing to the right of the door just out of sight, my heart is pounding through my chest, and he knocks again louder this time. The guy answers the door rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Armando?" questions my partner. His eyes open wide, "OPEN THE DOOR!" he commands, and the outlaw hesitates.

I shove my 45 into the screen and pull the hammer back. CLICK! The sound is unmistakable and he reaches up and unhooks the screen door. Adam rips the door open and we spill into the room.

"Get on the ground" we're yelling.

Clad only in his underwear he readily complies. Adam cuffs him behind his back while I hold the gun to his head, then we stand him up this guy is in tremendous shape, very muscular and packing no body fat. He would be a very formidable opponent in a fight. He also has a piss hard on.

"What's that", says Adam pointing to his bulge. "Ya got a gun in there?"

"No" says Armando sheepishly.

I find his britches and we get him dressed and ready for transport back to Kansas where it turns out he is wanted on some other charges that hadn't been filed yet.

Armando will spend several years in the Penitentiary at Lansing while we roam free to ply over new trade as "Outlaw Hunters".

CHAPTER 2

Gittin' Rufus Wit It

A lot of time has passed since that first manhunt. Adam has moved from Oklahoma over across the line into Kansas. He has taken a job writing bonds for a company that has offices state wide and is somewhat his own boss. I think he was looking for a little more sure income and they offered me a job too, but I'm not interested. I like this bounty work better. It's not as stable, and the checks aren't regular, but few people can make a living doing it and my goal is to make a decent living and succeed at this most interesting occupation.

We are still free lancing though. I help Adam with his company skips and any outside jobs he takes on the side and he helps me do pickups on my files from other Bonding companies. We have been all over the nation, hooking up bad guys and are getting some better cases now. Our skip tracing is getting better and we've developed a lot of ruses and tricks for getting information. We've posed as preachers, social workers, telephone repairman, etc.

I just experimented with a new product called Pepper Spray. Man did it work good! The cops are not carrying it yet because they think it's like the old mace tear gas, which didn't work that good and sometimes made people actually more combative. My first victim was a mean, old, bad assed, biker we located at a salvage yard over in Missouri. We cornered him in the junk yard and he wasn't the least bit worried. He knew he could kick both our asses at the same time, but I dropped his butt to the ground with one shot of it and then to make sure it was really going to work, I shot him again. The only thing is I didn't know you were supposed to wash the shit off afterwards and he had to ride about four hundred miles with it burning the hell out of his face and eyes.

Here lately I've been working a lot by myself. Adam has been tied up with his Bail business and it kinda sucks because it's way easier to subdue a shit head with two guys and it's just more dangerous and boring working alone. I'm kinda picky too about who I work with, but at least I don't have to split the rewards, so I'm making more money.

I was actually getting a little cocky, which is not good, in fact it's downright dangerous, but I had snatched about thirty guys by myself. I often wore a cowboy hat and carried a six shooter and I probably looked like a crazy redneck cowboy and most of the pukes complied and did what I told 'em. However, I was about to get my thinking changed and get knocked down a couple notches.

Perry Silverman was an elderly Bondsman I did a lot of work for. His writing was barely decipherable and he was always writing bonds with little, if any, information. So when he sent me a file on a defendant we will call Rufus, I was delighted, because I had caught him before and felt like I could do it again. Besides, my kids needed new shoes. Rufus was a black male, 45 years old, and was a former professional athlete and a current con man and coke addict. He was wanted on nine counts of Felony Forgery. I had picked him up for Perry before so he would recognize me and even though he was quite a bit bigger than me, I wasn't worried. I had used a 200,000 volt hand held stun gun on him and he didn't want none of that.

The asshole did try to escape while in route last time. I had stopped in a little backwoods town for gas, and he was being good, so I was gonna get him a coke. But when I went up to pay for the gas, I see him get out of the car and run into the woods handcuffed. Alarmed at seeing next month's grocery money gone, I bolted out the door and gave chase. I finally ran him down out in the forest and I was pissed! I shoved, beat, and kicked that son of bitch all the way back to my car, where I opened the back door and karate kicked his ass into the back. As I sped out of town I grabbed a 45 auto and stuck it in his face and screamed at him. Well I'm not even gonna say what I told him. I did however remind him that we were in the rural South and if I blew his brains out, I would most likely be acquitted by an all-white jury, after that I had no more problems with him.

Now a year later I'm back to looking for the same guy, of course Perry has got shit for information, so I look at my old file from last time. Rufus was originally from a town in the eastern part of the United States. He played college ball in Oklahoma, then went up North and played before going to a well-known professional team in the states.

He had married a Canadian woman as well as several other women throughout North American. I was having hell getting any leads. I tracked down one of his ex-wives back East. She told me she has a son with him, but they haven't seen him for years. She also said he knows his way around the United States and most of Canada and that he is a con man. He can travel with almost no funds, but one thing about Rufus, he will eventually always show back up in the Tulsa area, for some reason he likes it there.

It took me nearly four months of striking out before I got a lead, of course I was working other cases too, but I needed this guy. He was worth some bucks.

It seems he had taken somebody in a con game in Tulsa and one of my phone contacts gave me the phone number of his latest victim. I called the guy to talk to him about it, not really expecting the man to know where he was, but he might know something that would lead to something. Bingo! The dude knew right where he was.

"He's staying at a hotel here in Tulsa and I want some revenge" he exclaimed.

"Well I can help ya with that" I said.

Hanging up, I called the hotel and verified he was in fact there. "He is a weekly rental", they said. Tulsa is about six hours from my house in the Oklahoma Panhandle and I split, immediately arriving at about 9:00 P.M. I talk to the night manager showing him my warrants and a picture.

"Yeah, he is staying here, Room 412 end of the hall, fourth floor." he says. "But he ain't here now. Usually comes in late. The room across the hall is empty though. I could put you in there" he offers.

I quickly accept and we hop on the elevator and go to the fourth floor. This hotel was nice at one time, but had kinda went downhill, instead of tourists and families spending the night on their way to the Ozarks, it's full of part-time hookers and petty dope dealers renting by the week. The manager is trying to run a tight ship and doesn't like any illicit activity going on, so when he gets a chance to evict someone he will. He is also real concerned about things getting broke especially doors and I assure him I won't tear anything up when I make the arrest. He opens Rufus' room and we take a quick look around; not much, some dirty clothes and a few personal items, then he lets me inside room #411 across the hall and leaves me the key. I've got some pepper spray and handcuffs in one pocket and a little ol' 38 caliber Derringer, I took off a bail jumping, hooker down in Florida in the other, as well as a bail enforcement picture I.D.

Rufus knows me and he will come along peacefully I hope. I settle in with one eye looking out the peep hole in my door waiting for the fugitive to return. I can't tell you how uncomfortable it is to stand hour after hour with your eye up to a peephole. After nearly four hours of constantly switching eyes, my legs hurt, my back hurts, and my eyes hurt. You can't sit down and peer through the hole. No, you've got to stand up. I'm only going to have a split second when I see him unlock his door to pounce on him. I've got to stay awake! I keep fighting sleep. I eventually fall asleep standing up, knees locked leaning with my face against the door, eyes closed, but close to the peep hole. Shit, I was probably snoring. I don't realize it, but it's after 2:00 in the morning. I hear a key sliding into a lock across the hall. I am instantly awake, my adrenaline pumping as I look out the hole. It's my guy!

I fling my door open and yell "Rufus, you're under arrest!" Just as he gets the door open.

"No I'm not!" he yells back as he tries to slam the metal door in my face.

I stick my foot in the door and he can't shut it. Then he goes into his Pro-football mode and begins ramming the door like it's some kind of blocking sled. The door actually starts bending and he is screaming like a wild maniac. It ain't hurting my foot a bit. It's stuck in there down by the floor encased in a good boot and it just ain't getting the torque the rest of the bent up door is getting.

So anyway, I pull my mace out and stick my arm through the crack in the door and give him a dose of pepper spray. I really can't see him behind the door, but I hear him shriek, so I give him another one. He grabs a big wooden coat hanger like you see in some motels and whacks my hand that's stuck through the crack still spraying him. Sum bitch that hurt! I pull my hand out of the crack and see that besides smacking the shit out of my hand, he has knocked the button off the canister of pepper spray rendering it useless. Right then he quits pushing on the door, flinging it wide open and catching me be surprise, he punches me with a straight right hand, giving me one of the two dozen broken noses I would sustain during my career. Blood goes everywhere. I grab him as he runs by me heading for the hallways fire escape.

We fight up and down the hall. I'm between him and the fire escape and I know if he gets to it, he is gone. My shirt is ripped to shreds and soaked in blood. I've got a hold of his shirt, facing him, my grip is high near the collar as he tries to run right over the top of me just like he is still playing football. I guess the fire escape is his end zone. Suddenly I remember a throw that I learned when I studied Judo; it's called Tomoe-Nage circle throw. I had never used it in a real fight, but I was out of options, so as he ran me backwards, I yielded to his superior size and strength holding on to his shirt I kicked him in the balls with my right shin and fell backwards holding on to his clothing. His momentum carried him into the throw flipping him clear over as I held on to him. I went over too landing on top of him.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Kickin' Doors and Slappin' Whores"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Tony Smith.
Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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