"Maximum Bob" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leonard Elmore)

2

Out 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.