First-time jurors in the criminal courts had a way of becoming intoxicated by the romance, the raw voltage, of the evil world they were now getting a box-seat look at, and the young women became the tipsiest of all. To them the defendants were not chow; anything but. They were desperadoes. And these cases were not pieces a shit. They were stark dramas of the billion-footed city. And those with the courage to deal with the desperadoes, wrestle with them, bridle them, were . . . real men . . . even a court officer with a four-inch tube of fat riding up over his gunbelt. But who was more manly than a young prosecutor, he who stood not ten feet from the accused, with nothing between the two of them but thin air, and hurled the charges of the People in his teeth?

Now she was in front of Kramer. She looked right back at him. Her expression said nothing, but the look was so frank and forthright! And she wore brown lipstick!