After Romero finished his bail argument, the prosecutor stood up and vigorously opposed bail, outlining in his argument the new charges against Scales. When I had represented him, he had been accused in a credit-card fraud in which he ripped off people donating to a tsunami relief organization. This time it was worse. He was once more charged with fraud but in this case the victims were the widows of military servicemen killed in Iraq. I shook my head and almost smiled. I was glad Sam hadn’t called me. The public defender could have him.

Judge Champagne ruled quickly after the prosecutor finished. She called Scales a predator and a menace to society and kept his bail at a million dollars. She noted that if she’d been asked, she probably would have raised it. It was then that I remembered it had been Judge Champagne who had sentenced Scales in the earlier fraud. There was nothing worse for a defendant than coming back and facing the same judge for another crime. It was almost as if the judges took the failings of the justice system personally.

I slouched in my seat and used another observer in the gallery as a blind so that Scales couldn’t see me when the court deputy stood him up, cuffed him and took him back into lockup. After he was gone, I straightened back up and was able to catch Romero’s eye. I signaled him out into the hallway and he flashed five fingers at me. Five minutes. He still had some business to take care of in the court.

I went out into the hallway to wait for him and turned my phone back on. No messages. I was calling Lorna to check in when I heard Romero’s voice behind me. He was four minutes early.

“Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a killer by the toe. If his lawyer’s Haller, let him go. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. Hey bro.”

He was smiling. I closed the phone and we bumped fists. I hadn’t heard that homespun jingle since I was with the PD’s Office. Romero had made it up after I had gotten the not-guilty verdict in the Barnett Woodson case back in ’ninety-two.

“What’s up?” Romero asked.

“I’ll tell you what’s up. You’re guzzling my clients, man. Sam Scales used to be mine.”

I said it with a knowing smile and Romero smiled right back.

“You want him? You can have him. That’s one dirty white boy. As soon as the media gets wind of this case, they’re going to lynch his ass for what he’s done.”

“Taking war widows’ money, huh?”

“Stealing government death benefits. I tell you, I’ve repped a lot of bad guys who did a lot of bad things, but I put Scales up there with the baby rapers, man. I can’t stand the guy.”