Bovine saw the look on Hammer’s face, too, and also misinterpreted, and was further
aroused. Hammer had not supported Bovine in the last election. Bovine would see how
big and important Hammer was now.
“When I call out your name, please stand. Maury Anthony,” announced ADA Pond.
Pond scanned despondent faces. He searched people slumped back, pissed off and
sleeping. Maury Anthony and his public defender rose near the rear. They came forward
and stood before the ada’s table.
“Mr. Anthony, how do you plead to possession with the intent to sell cocaine?” the
ADA asked.
“Guilty,” Mr. Anthony spoke.
Judge Bovine stared out at the defendant who was no different than all others.
“Mr. Anthony. You realize that by pleading guilty you have no right to appeal,” she
stated rather than asked.
Mr. Anthony looked at his public defender, who nodded. Mr. Anthony returned his
attention to the judge.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Laughter was scattered among those awake and alert. Mr. Anthony realized his
egregious error and grinned sheepishly.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. My eyes ain’t what they once was.”
More laughter.
Judge Bovine’s big flat face turned to concrete.
“What says the state,” she ordered as she sipped from a two-liter bottle of Evian.
ADA Pond looked over his notes. He glanced at Hammer and West, hoping they were
attentive and impressed. This was his opportunity to be eloquent, no matter what a dog
of a case it was.
“Your Honor,” the ADA began as he always did, ‘on the night of July twenty-second, at
approximately eleven- thirty, Mr. Anthony was drinking and socializing in an
establishment on Fourth Street near Graham . ”
“The court requires the exact address,” Judge Bovine interrupted.
“Well, Your Honor, the problem is, there’s not one.”
“There has to be one,” said the judge.
“This is an area where a building was razed in nineteen- ninety-five, Your Honor. The
defendant and his associates were back in weeds ..”
“What was the address of the building that was razed?”
“I don’t know,” said the ADA, after a pause.
Mr. Anthony smiled. His public defender looked smug. West was getting a headache.
Hammer had drifted farther off. The judge drank from her bottle of water.
“You will provide that for the court,” the judge said, screwing on the cap.
“Yes, Your Honor. Only, where this transaction occurred isn’t precisely at the old address, but rather farther back, approximately eighty feet, and then another fifty feet, I’d
say, at a sixty-degree angle, northeast, from the Independence Welfare building that was
there, that was razed, in a thicket where Mr. Anthony had set up a hobo camp, of sorts,
for the purposes of buying and selling and smoking crack cocaine and eating crabs with
associates on that night. Of July twenty-second.”
ADA Pond had the attention, however briefly, of Hammer, and West, plus Johnny
Martino’s mother, and the conscious courtroom, in addition to two bailiffs and a
probation officer. All stared at him with a mixture of curiosity and lack of
comprehension.
“The court requires an address,” the judge repeated.
She took another gulp of water and felt contempt for her psychiatrist, and for manic-
depressive people everywhere.
Not only did lithium necessitate drinking a tub of water daily, but it caused frequent
urination, which by Judge Bovine’s definition, was double jeopardy. Her bladder and
kidneys were a drip coffee maker that she could feel and measure as she drove back and
forth from Gaston County, and sat on the bench, and went to the movies, and flew on
crowded airplanes, or walked on the track and found the field house locked.
Because she was a superior court judge, she could adjourn every fifteen, twenty, or thirty
minutes, or until after lunch, if her need was great and she so chose. She could wheel in a
damn Porta-John, do whatever she liked, ipso facto. But what she would never do, not
once during this life and on this planet, was to interrupt a case after it was started,
because above all else, the judge was a well-bred lady who had grown up in an
antebellum house and gone to Queens College.
Judge Bovine was tough, but never rude. She did not tolerate fools or classless people,