“Yo, Miss Logan, what’s happening? Lookin’ good today.” Sly Evans is a criminal. He’s got a sheet as long as the proverbial arm. The stereotypical product of a broken home, a Watts matriarchy of fundamentalist churches and laundry hanging in backyards of stubby grass and broken bottles. Sly Evans likes to wear suits and gold chains. He has a pierced ear from which usually dangles a heavy knot of gold chain; but it is now empty and slightly scabby from where he’s been picking at it. He’s growing out a conk, and his hair is tied in a tiny ponytail at the back of his neck.

“My old lady here? She give you some money for me?”

Sly Evans is the kind of guy who hits women, hangs out in the back of liquor store parking lots.

“No, your old lady’s not here. I haven’t heard from her.”

Sly scratched his chest above the top button of his blue county overalls. Around his neck hung a stringy white pouch with money and cigarettes. They make these by ripping up their socks. County overalls don’t have pockets. Sly is torn between the belief that I will flash my gams at the DA or go to bed with the judge so that his case will be dismissed and the belief that I am as green as snot and he is going to eat a big one because of my incompetence.

“Sly, I’m talking to the DA. I’m trying to get them to offer you two years.” I imagine state prison to be like a small Midwestern college campus with walls around it. Folsom is supposed to have an incredible weight room. They have world-class boxers. Suddenly I had an unpleasant thought about Lupe’s brother, “Manos” Ramos, chasing me but I pushed it out of my mind. I was getting jumpy as a cat.

“Man, I’m innocent. I am not doing no two years. I am not doing no time. I want you to talk to the judge today about getting me out of here or an OR. You tell him I got me a job waiting for me.”

What kind of job? I was about to ask, but Sly was quicker than I was. “I got a cousin who got a cab. He’s gonna let me drive it part-time.”