Maximum Bob (2 page)

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?”

“Your Honor, I don’t know that much about the family.”

“You’ve heard of them though.”

“I’ve heard the name, yes.”

“Well, you see my point. Anyway,” Gibbs said, “if there’s nothing any of you wish to offer in bar, mitigation or aggravation of what I’m about to impose, then I adjudge you guilty, Mr. Crowe. It is the judgment, sentence, and order of the law that you be confined by the Department of Corrections for five years, with credit for time served. You have a right to appeal…”

Kathy Baker said, “Your Honor?” at the same time Dale was saying, “Five years for what, hitting a guy? What was I suppose to do? The guy was all over me.”

The young public defender had his hand on Dale’s arm now as Gibbs asked him, “Who was, Mr. Crowe?”

“The bouncer, as I was coming out of the bar.”

“But I’m looking at the original charge, Mr. Crowe. Battery of a police officer, causing injury. That’s what I’m passing sentence on, your indifference to, if not utter disregard of, the law. Further, I’m gonna recommend you be sent to FSP, the Florida State Prison, where your daddy and uncle served their time. You’ll be carrying on the family tradition.”

Kathy said, “Judge, I’d like to remind the court, the defendant was on probation only two days when he was arrested.”

“That’s a good point,” Gibbs said. “It confirms what I’m saying. He doesn’t stop and think, does he?”

“What I meant, he hasn’t reported to the office yet. Find out about all the conditions he has to observe.”

Gibbs said, “That’s a violation right there, not reporting in.”

“No, that part’s okay. He still had time.”

“You haven’t talked to him before this?”

She began to see where this was going and wished she hadn’t said anything. “I saw him this morning.”

“Where, in the holding cell?”

“Yes sir.”

“So what is it you’re telling the court?”

“I don’t think it’s in the interest of the state to give him all that DOC time, five years, for something he drew probation on originally.”

“You don’t?” Gibbs said, frowning, trying to look concerned, then glancing over at his bailiff and his court clerk, his team, before looking this way again. “What would you give him?”

Playing with her. She should never have opened her mouth.

“It isn’t my place to say, Judge.”

“You think Mr. Crowe’s probation should be reinstated?”

Kathy hesitated. She wasn’t sure that would be a good idea, let him off entirely. “I just think five years—he’ll do about twenty months? That seems like a heavy sentence.”

“I asked you what you’d give him, you haven’t told us.”

“I would consider, well, a year and a day, if you think he should do DOC time.”

“You’re basing this judgment on your appraisal of his character… What else?”

“Well, his age, the offense…”

“Having talked to him,” Gibbs said, “what, about ten minutes in the holding cell? Through bars, in all that noise and confusion? I’d be interested to know what you talked about.”

“I told him his lawyer was right, he should plead guilty.”

“And what did Mr. Crowe tell
you
?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“If you want I can put it hypothetically,” Gibbs said. “What I’m getting at, how does an offender looking at five years get a pretty little probation officer to sympathize with his plight? What does he say to get you on his side?”

Kathy started shaking her head before Gibbs had finished. “Judge, I’m not on his side, I even told him that.”

“He never said a word to you.”

“Well, yes, he spoke…”

“I won’t tell the court what I’m thinking and have it go in the record,” Gibbs said. “But if you’re curious—Ms. Baker, is it? If you’d like to know what I suspect, stop in my chambers after we’re through here. In the meantime,” Gibbs said, making a notation in the case file before looking up again, “the decision of the court stands.”

Kathy kept watching Gibbs. The public defender was requesting Mr. Crowe be allowed time on the street, seven days to get his affairs in order. She watched Gibbs appear to think it over and finally rule okay, as long as the defendant reported to Probation on a daily basis. Now he was looking this way again, asking Kathy if she wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on her boy. She was thinking, You don’t have to smile. You don’t even have to answer. Or she could say, Who do you mean by my boy, Judge, the defendant? She heard Dale’s voice then, raised, and looked over, Dale saying to Gibbs, “Hey, Judge? I’m gonna see about this deal. You think you’re through with me, Judge, you’re fulla shit. Hear?” She saw Gibbs leaving the courtroom past two deputies who were moving quickly toward Dale Crowe with handcuffs and shackles. It surprised her the judge didn’t say something to Dale, hold him in contempt.

Marialena Reyes touched Kathy’s arm.

“You going to see him?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you’d better.”

“He didn’t say I had to.”

“No, but I think it would be a good idea.”

Kathy said, “I have to smile, too?”

Marialena stared at her for a moment. She said, “Do what you want,” and walked away.

2

O
ut of his robes Judge Bob Gibbs became someone else, pleasant, almost a regular guy, saying he didn’t mean to put her on the spot in there. No, what it was, he had a feeling young Mr. Crowe might have tried a sad story on her, he was sick or his mama needed him at home or he knew it would kill him to be locked up, the prey of older, lascivious convicts… “I said at one point, ‘Don’t thank me yet.’ Remember? Well, you can thank me now if you want.”

“For what, Judge?”

“Sending young Mr. Crowe away. Taking him off your hands. If I’d reinstated his probation like you wanted, he’d be in violation again before you know it and you’d have egg all over your pretty face. What’re you, Cuban?”

“Born in Miami,” Kathy said. “I don’t think I asked you to reinstate him.”

“You didn’t come right out and request it. I could tell, though, he’d been working on you. I was gonna say, you don’t look especially Latin.”

Like he was paying her a compliment. If she wanted she could say, And you don’t look like a judge.

What he looked like now, sitting behind his desk, was a farmer. The top of his forehead, where it disappeared into the dyed hair, was lighter than the rest of his face. A farmer or an Okeechobee fishing guide dressed for town in a short-sleeve white shirt and red patterned tie. He even had the cracker sound of those boys from the country. Old Bob Isom Gibbs, known as “Big” to his buddies. He sat with his hands behind his head, leaning back in his chair. From deep in the office sofa facing the desk, all Kathy could see of the judge were his raised arms, elbows sticking out, and his head, his hair shining in fluorescent light. On the wall behind him were framed photos of the judge posing with several different men holding strings of bass and what looked like speckled perch. No doubt taken at a fishing camp on the lake. In another picture the judge was standing in an airboat holding a two-foot alligator in each hand, by the tail.

“Don’t feel sorry for him, he was due,” Bob Gibbs said, “being a Crowe. You’ve heard the expression ‘Born to raise hell’? That’s young Mr. Crowe’s belief. Mine’s ‘Hard time makes the boy the man.’ He’ll come out of jail therapy with a brand-new attitude, or else we’ll send him back, won’t we?”

“I thought you might hold him in contempt,” Kathy said, “when he threatened you.”

“Was that a threat? What’d he say, he’s gonna get me? Sis, that’s nothing, that’s water off my back. You going with anybody?”

She had to take a moment to realize what he meant.

“Not anyone special.”

“You date police officers?”

“I have, yes.”

“Lawyers?”

“Once in a while.”

“Married ones?”

“I won’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I just won’t.”

“You want to have some dinner this evening?”

She said, “Judge, you’re married, aren’t you?”

He kept staring at her before he said, “You are too, aren’t you? Or I mean you
were
. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Married and divorced,” Kathy said.

“Sure, and that’s where you got your name. I
knew
it. What’s your maiden name?”

“Diaz.”

He seemed relieved. “Sure, Cuban, but born and raised here. What’s your dad do? Man, you people started coming—when was it, fifty-nine? You’ve just about taken over.”

“My dad was a police officer in Miami,” Kathy said. “Retired now on a disability. He was shot.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“My two brothers are cops, also in Miami. One with DEA, the other Metro-Dade. My sister’s married to an assistant state attorney.”

“And here you are a probation officer. I’d call that a law enforcement family. How long you been with Corrections?”

“Almost two years. I went to Florida Atlantic…”

“Got married when you were in school?”

“After I got out. While I was working in screening at South County Mental Health.”

That seemed to interest him, the way his eyebrows went up.

“I was working on my master’s in psychology, but changed my mind. Those seventy-hour weeks were too much.”

“So you’re familiar with mental patients, how they act.”

“At South County we had ‘consumers.’ They’re not patients till they’re admitted somewhere for treatment, or we sent them to detox. Most of the ones we saw were on drugs or alcohol, or both.”

“You quit there to work for Corrections?” the judge said. “All you did was trade crackheads for fuckups. You like dealing with misfits, huh, losers?”

“My ex-husband used to ask me that.”

“He was after you to quit?”

“If I could find a job that paid more. I was supporting him. He was in medical school when we got married, a first-year resident when we divorced. No, the problem, he was a superior being, but I didn’t find it out till after we were married.” Bad, talking too much about her personal life and the judge liked it, grinning. She got back to her job. “Working for DOC at least I’m outside most of the time. I have close to eighty-thousand miles on my car.” If he wanted they could talk about her VW she’d bought secondhand that needed new tires again, a battery…

“You’re in the wrong profession, the Probation Office? A bright, attractive girl like you? It’s a dead-end street. Where do you go? Isn’t there something you want to be?”

“When I grow up? I don’t know,” Kathy said, “I’ll probably get married again someday. I’d like to have kids.”

“You already tried that. You have any offenders on Community Control? Wear the anklet, can’t leave the house?”

“In the office. I don’t handle any myself.”

“Sometimes you call it house arrest? Like being in jail at home. Or married to the wrong person. Am I right?”

Kathy said, “I guess you could look at it that way,” wanting to get out of here. Next thing he’d be telling her his wife didn’t understand him, they were married in name only, had separate bedrooms, and that was why he saw other women occasionally and it would be okay if they had dinner together.

But he didn’t. He said, “You studied psychology, you were at South County awhile… I can see you’re a person who naturally feels sympathy for others, their problems.”

He was back on the track, coming at her.

“What would you do if you’re having a conversation with someone and all of a sudden she becomes a different person?”

He had to be talking about his wife.

“Like a mood swing,” Kathy said.

He leaned close over the desk to shake his head at her. “I’m not talking about a change of mood or tone of voice.” The judge speaking now, laying down the law. “I’m telling you she becomes somebody else, in voice and manner and what she says.”

“Your wife,” Kathy said.

“Leanne,” the judge said. “Originally from Ohio.”

Chronically undifferentiated
popped into Kathy’s head, but she wasn’t that sure it applied and didn’t want to get too far into this anyway. She tried to pass it off saying, “You’re different now, Judge, than you were in court. Don’t you think?”

“You can call me Bob, or Big, if you like.”

No she couldn’t. She said, “I’m different from time to time…”

“How different?”

“Well, like if something’s bothering me, or I don’t feel too good.”

Or like right now. Wanting to get out of here.

In the next moment he was Bob Gibbs again, this farmer-looking guy, his voice quiet, confiding. He said, “But have you ever been so different you became a twelve-year-old colored girl who lived a hundred and thirty-five years ago in Clinch County, Georgia? A slave girl by the name of Wanda Grace?”

Kathy Baker said, “Your wife might need help.”

“One of us does,” the judge said.

3

T
he first time Bob Gibbs saw his wife she was performing sixteen feet beneath the surface of Weeki Wachee Spring, in a mermaid outfit.

He watched her through the glass wall of the underwater theater. Saw her gold lamé tail undulating, saw her long golden hair moving slow motion, Leanne smiling, showing her perfect teeth in that clear springwater before taking the tip of the air hose in her mouth, making a delicate, feminine gesture of it.

Bob Gibbs, already a judge, saw the purity of this healthy girl suspended in crystal water, air bubbles rising out of her, carrying her breath to the sunlight way above. Young enough to be his daughter, but that didn’t matter. The man inside the judge said, “Oh, my,” lured by a mermaid, taken with the idea of landing her.

He saw her outside after, pink shorts molded to her cute butt, hair still wet, turning wide-eyed and no doubt apprehensive, a man coming up to her in a dark suit and necktie. Introducing himself as a circuit court judge didn’t exactly warm her up, but she did start to relax once he expressed how much he enjoyed the show and began asking her questions. He learned that her name was Leanne Lancaster, that she was from Luna Pier, Ohio, and had been at Weeki Wachee—this was her third year and she loved it, even if it wasn’t doing her hair a lot of good. That their changing room was down underneath “where we zip up our tails,” smiling at him by now. There were three mermaids named Kim in the show, out of thirteen, and last year there were four,
really
, all named Kim. He learned that a hundred thousand gallons of pure water a minute rose from the depths of the spring, up through cracks way way down there, and that he ought to catch the Birds of Prey Show and then take the jungle river cruise, see pelicans, raccoons, sometimes even alligators. Leanne hunched her shoulders and gave him a cute shudder as she mentioned gators. She said they could swim into the spring from the river but hardly ever did ‘cause the water was so cold, hunching her little shoulders again as she said, Brrrr… Bob Gibbs said, “Why don’t we sit down and have a Coca-Cola?”

He told her he was from right here in Hernando County originally, born and raised, but had never seen the mermaid show before today. “You imagine that? The show’s been here what, forty years and this is my first time?” He told Leanne he had returned home to attend a funeral but came here instead, acting on some impulse. Strange? He didn’t mention being hung over from partying the night before, unable this morning to bear sitting through a Baptist eulogy. “And I used to work for the deceased when he was Hernando County state attorney, back before I moved to West Palm as a prosecutor, ran for judge of circuit court and have been presiding ever since.”

Leanne had kept staring at him, nodding very slowly as he spoke.

She said, “I have been visited by a wise man,” her look becoming strange, trancelike. “You’re famous, aren’t you? Sure, I saw you on the cover of a magazine.”

“That’s right. It was
Newsweek
.”

Nodding again. “But I don’t recall it had your name.”

“On the cover? No, it said, ‘In Florida Maximum Bob Throws the Book.’ It was a story about the courts getting tough on drug traffickers.”

“Just a while ago.”

“Yeah, what they did, they made a big to-do over my giving a drug dealer thirty years, plus a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar fine, when the state attorney was willing to let him off with probation.”

“I wish I’d read it.”

“I might have a copy lying around somewhere I’ll give you. It’s accurate—what I object to is the tone of the article, like I’m
accused
of throwing the book at defendants. I said, ‘What is the book for if you don’t go by it and, yes, occasionally throw it at a criminal offender.’ They put that in. Then they cite how I reject pleas of leniency. I said, ‘I send people to prison when they kill somebody. I see that as my job.’ They mention that many of my rulings have not been popular and quote my saying, ‘I’m not
in
a popularity contest.’ When I sentence a man to death by electrocution, it’s because I think he deserves the shock of his life.” Bob Gibbs smiled at her. “Now you got me started.”

Leanne smiled back saying, “This is interesting,” hunching her shoulders and giving them a little shake.

“Listen, I’ve even been accused of having a low opinion of women. Which I’m here to tell you is a lie,” Bob Gibbs said, and grinned.

“Why would they say that?”

“Oh, one time, sentencing a defendant for wife-beating, I happened to say, ‘You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them,’ injecting a note of levity at a serious moment, that’s all, and the media and different women’s groups jumped all over me.”

She said now, surprising him, “What’s your sign?”

Bob Gibbs wasn’t sure. He told her he was born on the second of December without giving the year.

“Sagittarius, the Time Traveler,” Leanne said, “I thought as much. You like to explore and have a highly developed sixth sense that guides you even when you don’t exactly understand where it is you’re going. You
do
know. It’s just that you aren’t in touch yet with your inner self.”

“That must be it,” Bob Gibbs said, and saw her expression change.

“Oh, my Lord,” her eyes going wide. Now she brought her hand to her mouth and seemed embarrassed.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just had a feeling… Don’t laugh, okay?”

“I won’t.”

“You promise?”

“On a stack of Bibles. What?”

“All of a sudden it hit me, that I may have been your mother in a previous life.”

Bob Gibbs smiled, he couldn’t help it.

“You said you wouldn’t laugh.”

“I’m not. It’s just—I’ll tell you, you don’t look anything like my old mother.”

“I’m talking about way before,” Leanne said. “It could’ve been hundreds or even thousands of years ago when we were both somebody else. You understand? In our past lives.”

She kept staring at him in what he thought of at the time as a cute way she had about her. So serious. This healthy girl, good-looking even with wet hair. She said, “You don’t believe in reincarnation, do you?”

“The metaphysical is out of my jurisdiction,” Bob Gibbs said, “but I do keep an open mind as evidence is presented.” Actually believing this.

“But you’re not too good at being told something and just accepting it. You like to do what you want, huh? I mean even though you’re a judge, you’re not tied down by what people think, you’re unconventional.”

It seemed okay to smile at that. “I could tell you some stories, too.”

She said, “Are you married?” and right away got that serious look, half closing her eyes. “No, you were for quite a few years, but now you’re divorced.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Your wife didn’t like it in Palm Beach.”

“You’re right again. Rosellen, being from Ocala, had trouble adjusting to the life.”

Now she was frowning, giving him a puzzled look.

“But you don’t live right in Palm Beach, do you? I was there once, I loved it. All those big homes on the ocean?”

“No, my property is out in the country. All kinds of trees, flowers…”

“You love nature.”

“I do, yes. I’ll tell you, I like being married, too, and almost was again but changed my mind.”

The reason being, you seldom ever married the woman your wife finds out about and divorces you over. It was another type of law, unwritten, he could have told Leanne about that day at Weeki Wachee, trying to see into her tank top whenever she reached down to scratch at sand fleas biting her legs.

Putting on her serious look, no doubt thinking she was reading his mind, Leanne said, “With your sign, it could happen again when you least expect.”

“I’m ready anytime,” Bob Gibbs said. “How about having dinner with me tonight?”

That was how it began with them nearly seven years ago. Before Leanne had her Experience. Before she hung up her lamé tail, moved to Palm Beach and a few months later they were married.

For a time he continued to accept her strange behavior as part of the cute way she had about her.

Not anymore.

•          •          •

T
he way it was with them now, Leanne would say, “Big, do you know why you’re not a happy person?”

Here we go.

“Why you drink so much?”

She had told him why enough times that it didn’t matter what he said or if he answered at all. Leanne would maintain that serene, netherworld, airy-fairy expression on her face, one Bob Gibbs had come to believe was pure dumbness, and say, “You’re not happy, Big, ‘cause you let your negative ego control you. You haven’t learned how to open your heart and you won’t even try.”

He might say to her, “How do you know my heart isn’t open?”

“I can see it isn’t.”

“Yeah, how?”

“By your aura.”

“I forgot, my aura. What’s it look like today?”

“It’s bright red.”

“Maybe it’s my high blood pressure. Ask me how come, I’ll tell you.”

“Your aura should be mostly blue. Yours is orangy red, Big, and way too wide. Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Only when you bring it up,” Bob Gibbs said.

Then she might get a scared look, eyes rolling up into her head before they closed and opened again and she’d say, in her squeaky little colored-girl voice, “She keep telling you, Judge, what you doing to yourself. She must’ve did a hundred times, you still don’t never listen.”

Sometimes he’d tell her, “Now quit that.” Or he’d snap at her, “What’re you talking to me like that for?”

Leanne might look surprised and say to him in her own voice, “Like what?” Claiming she had no idea what he was talking about. If someone had spoken to him, it was this other person occupying her body.

That was the first year or so of their marriage. Now Leanne claimed she could be present while the other person spoke, the other person occupying only her invisible etheric body, her spiritual self. See, while she remained in her actual body.

The one putting on weight.

Going on seven years of this, since the day she had her Experience.

•          •          •

T
he way Leanne thought of it, it began just after one in the afternoon of a gorgeous day.

She remembered rising from the underwater chamber behind the screen of air bubbles, their curtain for the show, and seeing the surface of the spring above shimmering in bright sunlight. She remembered flashes going off inside the glass front of the theater, families on vacation with cameras and little girls who wanted to be mermaids. She believed this was the way spirits might see our world, like looking at us through sparkly water and glass from over on the other side.

She remembered they were doing the magic show that day, one of the Kims working dry, playing the theme music and doing the narration topside. Another Kim went into the box they pierced with swords and came out with a few rolls and flutters, smiling, showing the kids she was okay. Leanne remembered swimming to her position, flipping her tail out in the mermaid crawl, holding the end of her air hose and the banana in the same hand. Her part in the show was to make the banana disappear. “How?” asked Kim the narrator. “By eating that banana, sixteen feet underwater!” Actually about twelve feet, closer to the surface than the other four mermaids in the magic show, Kim out of the sword box now getting ready to drink a Coke. “Yes, sixteen feet underwater!” the Kim working dry said. Leanne believed she might have been even a bit closer than twelve feet, because she felt herself rise just a little as she was peeling the banana.

She remembered placing herself in profile to the audience, so they would see what she was doing, raising her chin slightly as she took a bite, began to chew… This was the part that still gave her goose bumps. First, the shadow, or a feeling something was up there, right above her. Then looking up and seeing the alligator, its pale belly, its snout, its stubby legs moving in the water almost on top of her as she was swallowing the bite of banana, in that exact same moment, that’s why she choked and it got caught in her throat and she gagged, swallowing the banana but also a lot of water. She didn’t remember dropping her air hose until she realized she didn’t have it, but did remember not knowing which way to go. She saw the alligator’s tail fanning in the water as it turned and came back, so she started to dive, coughing now, knowing she couldn’t make it all the way to the air lock chamber, not without her hose. She remembered twisting frantically in that sheath of lamé binding her legs. She remembered the swirl of bubbles and sounds, her breath rushing out of her lungs and a terrible pain pressing against her chest…

The next part she remembered even more clearly, because
it
was the actual experience.

Being underwater… okay, then just for like a few seconds seeing her body being pulled out of the water into a boat and the Kim who’d been working dry starting to give her mouth-to-mouth, seeing four mermaids in the water, their heads showing, seeing all this from way above looking down. Then it got dark and she was somewhere else that was
like
being underwater only she could breathe now.

Leanne was asked later on by different people if it was like that tunnel you hear about. The one with the bright golden light at the end?

No, because there wasn’t any shape to where she was that she noticed, or any light, just kind of a soft fuzzy glow. Like being way up in the sky as dusk turns to night except there was no wind as you might expect and it wasn’t cold, it was nice. Leanne said she was moving, but not swimming now or doing the mermaid crawl, she was standing upright and sort of gliding through this huge expanse of nothing without moving her legs. Until all of a sudden she saw the little girl appear out of the mist, a little black girl raising her hand, and something stopped her. The little black girl had on a simple white dress and stood, oh, about twenty feet away, though not actually standing on anything, she was just
there
. She put her hand down and said, “Go on back, Leanne.” She did, she called her by name. Said, “Go on back, Leanne. You cain’t come here yet.”