Elmore Leonard - Maximum Bob

“I think a year and a day. He’ll only do ninety days, but it’s state time. Maybe it’ll scare him good.”

“He’s just a dumb kid, thinks he’s tough.”

“Sure, that’s his problem. Look at the positive side. It’s one less you’ll have in your caseload.”

“I’ll still have seventy-three. I trade Dale for his uncle Elvin. He came in Saturday, this big guy from the swamp in a cowboy hat. He sits down, starts fooling with things on my desk… He doesn’t think it’s fair he had to do ten years DOC time and now five years probation-listen to this-for shooting the wrong guy. Not the one he was after. He wants to tell me all about it sometime. His attitude, it’s like okay, so he killed a man, what’s the big deal? I can see Dale Crowe in about twenty years…”

“If he makes it,” Marialena Reyes said. “Yeah, I think he’ll get at least a year and a day. Although you never know about Gibbs. If he got laid last night he could be in a good mood. He’ll ask you for a recommendation.”

“I know, and there isn’t much I can say.”

“You get along with him? He must’ve noticed you by now.”

“We’ve never spoken outside of court. He calls me Ms. Bacar.”

“That’s close. He thinks he’s funny, so everyone humors him.”

“But I’m not Ms. Bacar,” Kathy said. “And I don’t feel I have to smile for him.”

“You don’t see him practically every day. At least I don’t have to go out with him,” Marialena Reyes said, “he likes them young. You see he was up before the Qualifications Commission again?”

“I heard something about it. Asked a woman to take off her clothes?”

“In his chambers, a public defender, a new one. Asked her to, quote, ‘show me your goodies.’ He told her he was helping select contestants for the Miss Sugar Cane Pageant and said, I believe you have what it takes.’”

“And they let him off.”

“With a reprimand. They ruled his behavior reflected a misguided sense of humor rather than social maladjustment.”

“I’m surprised,” Kathy said, “she filed a complaint.”

“Yeah, not many do. The last one was a court reporter. Not his, some other judge’s. Gibbs asked her if she wanted to play Carnival. She said she didn’t know how to play it and Big said, ‘You sit on my face and I guess your weight.’”

Kathy caught herself trying to picture it.

“Maybe he’s crazy.”

“It’s possible,” Marialena said. “What we know for sure, he’s pretty horny for a guy his age, almost sixty.”

There he was now, and to look at him he appeared harmless. About five-seven with a solemn, bony face, dark hair combed flat to his head. Maybe too dark, Kathy thought. He dyed it. A little guy in judicial robes that looked too big for him. Round-shouldered in a way that made him seem purposeful crossing to the bench. His bailiff, Robbie, a sheriff’s deputy in a uniform sport coat, told everyone to rise. Kathy glanced around. There weren’t more than a dozen spectators, friends or relatives of offenders sitting in the front row, the ones in state blue.

Everyone remained standing as Judge Bob Gibbs looked over his court, his gaze moving from the public defender, a young guy Kathy didn’t know, to a county deputy removing Dale Crowe’s handcuffs. Now he was looking this way, where Kathy stood at the prosecution table with Marialena Reyes.

He said, “ Buenos días , ladies. I see we have the Latinas versus the Anglos today. Good luck, boys. You’re gonna need it.”

The young public defender smiled. Dale Crowe, standing next to him now, didn’t smile. The judge turned as his court clerk, Mary Ellen, handed him a case folder. He glanced at it and then looked toward the court reporter relaxed behind his steno machine. “You want this one in English, don’t you, Marty?”

Marty said, “Yes sir,” without moving, as deadpan about it as the judge.

Looking this way again, Gibbs said, “Ladies, is that okay with you? We take it slow and talk Southern? Else I don’t think it would be fair to the defense.”

Marialena Reyes smiled and said, for the people of the state of Florida, “I would prefer it, Your Honor.”

“Ms. Bacar, is it okay with you?”

The little bigot with his solemn face and dyed hair stared at her, waiting.

Kathy said, “It’s Baker, Judge.”

“Excuse me?”

“My name is Baker, not Bacar.”

Gibbs looked down at the case file and up again.

“It was Bacar though, huh, before you changed it?”

“It was always Baker,” Kathy said.

Let him figure it out.

The next time Kathy Baker had to speak was when Gibbs asked if the Department of Corrections was happy with Mr. Crowe entering a plea of guilty. She said, “Yes sir.”

Gibbs said, “You know it means I can revoke his probation and sentence him on the original charge, battery of a police officer. That’s a third-degree five-year felony.”

Kathy said, “Yes sir,” wondering why he was telling her instead of the defendant.

“I see by the Offense Report,” Gibbs said, “this business took place in the parking lot of the Club Peekaboo on Lake Worth Road. The officers asked Mr. Crowe for his identification… It says Mr. Crowe responded in a rude and belligerent manner.” Gibbs looked up from the case file. “How is that Club Peekaboo, Mr. Crowe? They take care of you in there?”

Dale grinned. “They sure do.”

“How about this other place, where you socked the guy?”

“I’d stay away from there, Judge.”

Kathy noticed Dale moving now, shifting from one foot to the other, anxious, beginning to have hope.

“You have size on you for a young boy,” Gibbs said. “Been working out at Glades Sugar the past year… You’re what, only a few months shy of the legal age… So, I’m gonna overlook the beer drinking. Is that all right with you, Mr. Crowe?”

Dale said, “Yes sir,” grinning.

Marialena Reyes said, “Excuse me, Your Honor, but Mr. Crowe is in violation of a trust we placed in him. I think if probation is to have any meaning, he should be given at least a nominal amount of county time.”

“Hey, Marialena,” Gibbs said, “you and I are on the same side. We both work for the state and realize a sanction is in order here. Ms. Bacar, you do too, don’t you?”

“It’s Baker,” Kathy said.

“Baker, that’s right. You changed it.”

“I think I said it was always Baker.”

She stared back at this redneck judge who wanted everyone to talk Southern.

“You insist,” Gibbs said, “I’m not gonna argue with you.”

Kathy said, “Thank you,” and saw his expression change, that hint of fun go out of his eyes.

He said, “Don’t thank me yet,” and Kathy wondered what he meant. Now he turned to Dale Crowe.

“I can overlook your beer drinking, but not the attitude you apparently have, that if someone gives you a hard time it’s okay to take a sock at him. Was it your daddy put that idea in your head? The reason I ask, I’ve had Dale Crowe Senior before this court on several occasions in the past. Either caught poaching alligators or apprehended with quantities of marijuana in his boat, coming off the lake.”

Dale said, “That’s when I was a little kid.”

“I imagine learning on your daddy’s knee,” Gibbs said, “the one the alligator didn’t bite off. I’ve had your dad, I’ve had your uncle Elvin, an individual I think of as a model repeat offender. Smuggling, armed robbery, hitting people over the head for their coin… I almost forgot the big one, a capital felony. They ever erect a statue to memorialize convicts, Elvin could be the model. And I believe I’ve had other Crowes, all of them your kin.” The judge’s gaze shifted. “Marialena, just out of curiosity, have you ever known of any good Crowes?”