“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.’”