“You, motherfucker,” he said, “are a dead man.”

The judge slammed his gavel. Ingraham made a motion to aggravate Baker’s sentence in view of the threat, and the judge slapped on another five right then and there.

The bailiff got the huge man to his feet, got some help from two deputies, and started pulling him across the courtroom while he glared at Ingraham.

Then Hardy did a stupid thing.

Baker’s glaring, his posing, his tough-guy bullshit struck Hardy as funny for a second-for just a second. But it was enough.

Here was this twenty-one-year-old punk, going down for a long time, who thought his ghetto glare was going to put the fear of God or something into the man who’d sent him there. So when Baker, struggling in his chains, fixed Hardy with the Eye, Hardy pursed his lips and blew him a goodbye kiss.

At which point Baker had really gone birdshit, pulling loose from the bailiff and two deputies and nearly getting to the prosecution table before he was quieted down with nightsticks.

The scene replayed itself in Hardy’s dreams for months; it wasn’t helped by the letter Hardy received during Baker’s first week in prison. He’d found out who Hardy was from his own lawyer, and when he got out, the letter said, he was going to kill Hardy too.

Hardy sent copies of the letter to the warden and the judge who’d sentenced Baker, but the parole board ruled on these matters, and since the judge had already bumped his time for threats, they didn’t feel compelled to do it again. The letter Hardy received back from the warden explained that although many inmates were bitter just after sentencing, most came around to serving good time and concentrating on getting an early parole.