“You want me to sit down, judge?” Mrs. Martino walked up closer to the bench and put her hands on her sturdy hips. “Then I tell you what. You do the right thing. You hear Johnny’s case this minute, listen to his guilty lying stealing ass. Then let these fine crusading ladies be on their way out there saving more lives, helping more folks who can’t help themselves, delivering us from evil.”

“Ma’am, I am hearing the case,” Judge Bovine tried to explain. “That’s what we’re doing . . .”

But Mrs. Martino had her mind made up about the way things were. She turned around and gave Johnny the eye.

“Tell me now.” She swept her arms over the courtroom, touching all. “Anybody here who insists on stepping ahead of these Christian ladies?” She looked around, taking in the silence, not finding a raised hand to count. “Speak now,” she called out. “All right then! Do we want to set these ladies free?”

The courtroom cheered and roared, people doing high-fives for Batman and Robin, who could do nothing but watch, enchanted.

“Johnny Martino, how do you plead to ten counts of robbery with a dangerous weapon?” the A.D.A. called out.

Judge Bovine’s teeth were clamped and a sleeve of her robe flapped empty and useless as she held in her objections, her legs crossed.

“Guilty,” Johnny Martino mumbled.

“What says the state,” the judge whispered, in pain.

“Mr. Martino boarded a Greyhound bus on July eleventh at one-eleven P.M.,” A.D.A. Pond summarized. “He robbed ten passengers at gunpoint before being apprehended and restrained by Chief Judy Hammer and Deputy Chief Virginia West . . .”

“Yo Batman,” someone yelled.

“Robin!”

The cheering began again. Judge Bovine could endure no more. She might have called the sheriff for intervention, but she had more pressing concerns. She had been polite, well mannered, well bred, and had lost control of her courtroom. This was a first. Someone had to pay. It might as well be the son of a bitch who caused all this when he climbed on that damn bus.

“The state agrees to consolidate sentencing under ten counts,” the judge announced rapidly and with no attempt at drama. “Defendant is a prior record level two and will receive in each of the ten counts a sentence of seventy months minimum or ninety-three months maximum for a total of seven hundred months minimum and nine hundred and thirty months maximum. The court is recessed until one.” She gathered her robe in one hand and fled as Mr. Martino checked the judge’s math.

Reporter Nicks fled back to South McDowell Street, where Today’s Hot New Country and Your All Time Favorites could be heard on 96.9. It was rare his station got breaking news, scoops, tips, or leaks, as if to imply that a country music audience didn’t vote or care about crime or want crack dealers in jail. The point was, no city official or Deep Throat had ever bothered to think of Nicks when something went down. This was his day, and he was out of his ’67 Chevelle with such urgency that he had to run back twice to get his notepad and lock the doors.