April 5, 1992

THE campaign spokesmen of Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas and former Gov. Edward G. Brown Jr. of California said last week that the results of the Democratic primary on Long Island on Tuesday would be significant signposts of their strength in a year when suburban voters will be a majority for the first time. One-third of a million Long Island residents enrolled as Democrats are eligible to go to the polls, and they will face a ballot with six Democratic Presidential hopefuls. Politicians say that the campaign is intensifying and that the results in New York may indicate whether the nomination process will be orderly or uncertain.

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Suburban office towers often are derided for their sterile architectural styles, but Clearwater Associates, the owners of the Clearwater House in Stamford, Conn., a 10-story building, hope to change that stereotype by giving its facade a facelift with a nautical motif. The 106,000-square-foot building, on the banks of the West Branch River on Washington Boulevard, opened five years ago and houses mainly companies involved in the shipping industry.

When Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas was asked yesterday if he still thought of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo as "mean," he responded with a ritual answer about not wanting "to reopen old wounds." Then, in the tone of a combat veteran, he added, "But I tell you, after what I've seen in the last two weeks, every now and then, the Governor of New York ought to have to be a little mean to survive in this atmosphere."

THEY knock down doors in the middle of the night and stalk people who have forfeited bail and fled to places like Hawaii, Texas and Puerto Rico. They earn their living by capturing these fugitives, bringing them back -- by force if necessary -- and collecting rewards offered by the police and bail bondsmen. Those who resist them are in for a rough time. They can expect to be placed in handcuffs and leg irons or thrown in the trunk of a car for a long and uncomfortable drive back. These are modern-day bounty hunters, known officially as bail-enforcement agents. Two of these professionals, who operate out of Bridgeport, say they are not hemmed in by some of the legal restrictions -- like the need to obtain search warrants and extradition orders -- that cover police officers and Federal agents. They say that a 200-year-old United States Supreme Court ruling gives them powers that police officers only dream about, like the right to break into homes and cross state lines to capture their prey. One of the bounty hunters, a 32-year-old, works under the name Jim McNulty, an alias that protects him and his family from the revenge of those he has captured, he said. The other, Elvis Reyes, 27, a former police officer in San Juan, P.R., uses his real name, he said, because "everybody knows who I am anyway."