Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US) one who arranges or adjusts matters, a go-between, esp. in an illegal context.

1889		Amer. Mission Dec. 363: Where the ‘boss’ and the fixer of elections are unknown [DA].
1901		C.R. Wooldridge Hands Up! 93: Charles Gundorf, known as a ‘fixer’ and also as the ‘King of the Con Men.’.
1912		A.G. Field Watch Yourself Go By 392: The stool pigeon after receiving the money [...] was supposed to be met by the fixer of the ‘Gift Show’, to whom he was to return the money the boss had given him.
1920		F. Williams Hop-Heads 20: Their stories running to the Hall of Justice and the ‘fixers’ that abound about the police courts.
1936		R. Chandler ‘Goldfish’ in Red Wind (1946) 157: A small time fixer, an alibi builder-upper, anything that smelled a little and paid a little more.
1940		D. Maurer Big Con ix: High police officials and politicians who act as fixers for criminals.
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 129: He is a fixer for everything, including Republican Wayne Morse.
1962		C. Clausen I Love You Honey, But the Season’s Over 160: The show’s ‘fixer’ was talking forty miles an hour to a police lieutenant.
1972		P. Fordham Inside the Und. 80: The one-time ‘fixer’ nowadays is apt to be used.
1989		in G. Tremlett Little Legs 72: We were well organized with plenty of fixers, bent solicitors and accountants who would sort things out.
1992		S.L. Hills Tragic Magic 142: The fixer would get things done, like job re-assignments and cell-block changes.
2002		L. Pizzichini Dead Men’s Wages (2003) 207: A fixer [...] is the man who acts as a go-between for villains and the police. Most of them are regarded as ‘dirt’.
2010		K. Richards Life 212: A tough bloke from North London soon to become the Stones’ fixer-in-chief.
2010		L. Berney Gutshot Straight [ebook] Tatum was considered the best go-to guy in the California state system. Even the blacks and Mexicans, who had their own fixers, used him.
2014		R. Hart ‘Confessions of a Taco truck Owner’ in ThugLit July [ebook] He assured me the fixer probably wouldn't be necessary.
2023		M. Herron Secret Hours 276: ‘I’d heard you were something of a fixer, Mr Otis. Is that true?’.