Maximum Bob

10

Leanne had said to Bob Gibbs, “When you get home from court today I’ll be gone. I’ll call one of my dear friends”-meaning some nitwit from one of her psychic workshops-”to drive me to the bus station.”

That was the extent of her intelligence, to leave here you took a bus. He told her, trying hard to sound dejected, to take the car if she wanted. Long as he had his pickup.

She said, “Don’t ask if I’m going to the Spring or back to my roots, Luna Pier, Ohio, because I won’t tell you.” She said, “I may not ever speak to you again, Big, for what you did. I hope someday I will have it in my heart to forgive you, but I can’t promise.”

Bob Gibbs said wait now, curious, forgive him for what?

She said, “Having that alligator brought to our house.”

He worked himself up protesting. How could she accuse him of something like that? What would be his reason?

Leanne said, “I don’t believe it was to see me dead, you pass that sentence in court and keep your hands clean. But I know now you want to see me leave, so I will.”

He couldn’t argue with that. Still, he told her she should try opening her heart. Get in touch with her spirit guide and seek her guidance in looking at this situation.

Leanne said, “Wanda Grace is the one told me you had the alligator brought.”

There was no way he was going to argue through Leanne with a twelve-year-old colored girl dead 135 years and hope to come out ahead. He helped Leanne with her suitcases full of rocks and books, and put them in her car.

That was forty-eight hours ago and he hadn’t heard a word from her since. So Bob Gibbs was feeling new life this afternoon in court. He had two sentencing hearings, one of them Dicky Campau up for alligator poaching… but no probation violations, damn it, no chance of the little girl making an appearance. Marialena Reyes was prosecuting. He asked her if she happened to see Kathy Baker in the courthouse. Marialena said no, not today. Bob Gibbs left the bench, everyone rising, stepped into his chambers and told his JA to call the Probation Office and ask for Katherine Baker, he wanted to see her about a matter. Then had a fit when she wasn’t there. “Well, where is she?” His judicial assistant, another Bob, who’d been with him ever since coming to the bench, said, “If they don’t know, Judge, how’m I suppose to know?” Bob Gibbs returned to the courtroom. This time as everyone rose his mood was taking a downward turn.

The first hearing didn’t help any.

It started out looking simple enough. The defendant, a repeat offender, had previously been given ninety days on a burglary of a conveyance, but before going to jail had been allowed thirty days on the street. During this time he was arrested again, twice, on a grand theft auto and a petty theft, stealing a pack of cigarettes. Marialena Reyes said they were dropping the grand theft auto, since they didn’t have much of a case, and would recommend enhancing the defendant’s sentence from ninety days to nine months in the county jail. But the defendant wanted state prison time so he could get his glasses and his teeth fixed, which the police broke when they arrested him on the grand theft auto, now dropped. Marialena Reyes said okay, then she was recommending twenty-seven months DOC time. The defendant said that wasn’t fair, twenty-seven months for stealing a pack of cigarettes? Marialena explained to him he would only do nine of the twenty-seven months; it would be the same as county jail time except he would have a chance to get his teeth and his glasses fixed. The defendant said no, originally he was going to do six months in the Stockade on the burglary of a conveyance and it was reduced to ninety days. So how about giving him eighteen months DOC time and he’d do six? How did that sound?

Up on the bench Bob Gibbs pictured Kathy Baker out at his place, strolling about in a white dress and a straw sunhat as he showed her his flowers, his orchids blooming in trees, watched her expression as she realized what a sensitive man he was, in close touch with nature. He could daydream and still follow Marialena and the defendant-okay, but that was enough. Time to end it. Bob Gibbs banged his fist down hard. He said, “What is going on here?” And to the defendant, “Keep arguing, you’ll do the entire twenty-seven months.” The defendant said, Judge, that wasn’t fair. And Bob Gibbs said, “Fair? What’s fair got to do with it?”

They showed utter contempt of the law but expected the system to be fair, which to them meant lenient.

There was Dicky Campau and his wife, Inez, a big ugly woman, in the first row behind the defense table, Dicky expecting his hearing to turn out fair. Get off for doing a favor. Except he hadn’t done the favor the way he was supposed to.

Leaving the bench Bob Gibbs told his clerk he’d be right back. In his chambers he said to his JA, “Call the probation office and get her home address and phone number for me, Katherine Baker.”

“I’m way ahead of you,” his JA said, and handed him a sheet of note paper. “She lives in Delray.”

Bob Gibbs, not caring for anyone to be way ahead of him, said, “Call them back. What I want is for her to phone me, at home if not before I leave here.”

“Give them your unlisted number?”

Be fair with the hired help too, show patience.

Bob Gibbs said, “Think about it. How would she call me otherwise?”

The allegation against Dicky Campau was that he had taken a young alligator from the Palm Beach Canal, approximately fifty yards south of Summit Boulevard, killed it and was skinning the tail when apprehended by a sheriff’s deputy. Someone in the neighborhood had called 911 upon hearing gunshots about fifteen minutes earlier.

Dicky Campau had told at his arraignment, he was on his way to Charley’s Crab with a load of fresh frog legs when he saw the gator on the spoil bank, not in the canal, and it was already dead when he stopped and checked. He said he would plead guilty to skinning the tail for meat before it turned as anybody would do that saw it laying there, but he had not killed the gator, a young male just under six feet. That was Dicky Campau’s story. As long as no one had seen him pull the gator out of the water with his snatch hook and hit it over the head with a tire iron, he was sticking to it.

What messed up Dicky Campau’s story, the deputy at the arraignment had testified there was a.22 rifle in Dicky’s pickup and because gunshots were reported he assumed this was the weapon used. Dicky swore that even those couple of times before when he’d been arrested for poaching, he never used a rifle. He testified the deputy had smelled the.22 and knew it hadn’t been fired. It must’ve been somebody else saw the gator before he did and shot it for sport. The deputy had said he was not a ballistics expert and Dicky had said, “He’s got a nose, don’t he?”

It was too late now to check the rifle, determine if it had been fired-this had happened over two months ago. They didn’t even know for sure what had killed the gator. But the prosecutor, a Latin woman, kept bringing up the.22 saying we know shots were fired and the defendant was found with a dead alligator and a rifle. What other conclusion can be drawn.

That was the case against him. Like saying the only way to kill a gator was to shoot it. That deputy hadn’t even looked at his tire iron.

Now Dicky Campau waited for Judge Gibbs to come through. Maybe say something about it being unfair to convict a man when all we know he did was cut some tail meat. The judge was looking right at him now.

“In that the defendant understands and appreciates the findings of these proceedings and is capable of entering into a plea… admitting he was in the process of skinning the alligator when apprehended, I have to agree with the state, at least in substance. But, I’m gonna go easy on you, Mr. Campau.”

Dicky liked the sound of that last part.

“I understand you’re a hardworking man with a wife to support. So I’m not gonna give you jail time, deprive you of your means of making a living. Instead, this court fines you five hundred dollars and places you on probation for a period of one year.”

There were legal words after that Dicky Campau didn’t understand, in fact barely heard, even staring right at the judge, who was coming off the bench now, everybody getting up as he left the courtroom. Dicky felt somebody take hold of his arm and knew it was his wife.

Inez said, “Do him a favor and he’ll do you one. That was some deal you made.”

Dicky walked away to get fingerprinted and sign some papers. It gave him time to think, wonder how he was going to raise five hundred dollars without killing another gator. It gave his wife time to think too, because when they were out in the hall and he mentioned it, she said, “That ain’t the way to do it. They catch you now, you go to jail.”

He asked her, “How, then?”

Inez said, “Get it off the judge.”