The waiting area for Fresno's after-hours court is the lobby of the Fresno County Jail.

A deputy signing people in, says night court is not going to be interesting.

"No Bull the Bailiff, no magic tricks," he says referencing Night Court, the 1984-1992 TV series featuring a young, juggling judge who idolized Mel Torme.

But he's wrong. Night court is interesting.

At 5:30, a half-hour past the appointed time for after-hours civil court to begin, there is no judge.

One of the young deputies in front is expressing consternation as plainly as an actor in a sixth-grade skit. He taps a pencil. He scratches his chin. He shrugs his shoulders.

"Can you call the bailiff at the main courthouse? If he shows up there, have them chase him over here," court clerk Earl "Skip" Schmidt tells the deputy.

The last time a night court judge didn't show up without warning or explanation, Schmidt, a man with a lanky cowboy frame, lizard-skinned cowboy boots (he has eel, and alligator ones at home) and a handlebar mustache, faked it.

He spent several minutes pretending to talk into a cell phone saying "yes, uh-huh, yes, no."

Then he told the waiting crowd that the judge was still tied up in day court and still had six more cases to go and night court would unfortunately have to be canceled.

On this night, the would-be plaintiffs and defendants don't yet seemed to have noticed that something is amiss. A young woman, who wants her chiropractor bills paid by the driver who rear-ended her, is engrossed in the magazine article "Can You Be Friends With Your EX?" A woman who is missing a shift as a telephone surveyor intently flips the pages of "Extreme Science Fiction".

At 5:45, Schmidt decides to come clean.

"Folks," he says. "Our judge is MIA".

There's silence. Everyone looks at the judge's bench, which has a fake house plant sprawled across its width, one that stretches back to a plastic trellis next to the Seal of California in a windowless courtroom in a jail.

"Did you call his house?" someone asks.

"How about his cell phone?" helpfully queries another.

"Judges aren't listed in the phone book," says Schmidt. "Think about it."

"Can we give him until 6 p.m.?" says a man in the back wearing thick socks with sandals.

He's Paul Dictos. He ran for Board of Supervisors.

"I lost," he says. "Bad. Third out of three. I'm a Greek immigrant. People don't like my accent."

Everyone agrees to wait until 6 p.m. There is more silence.

"We're like patients in a doctors waiting room with no doctor," one woman finally says.

Dictos wants to use his cell phone. He thinks he knows someone who might know someone who has the judge's personal cell number.

"Have at it," says Schmidt. "Just hang up if the judge, you know -- shows up."

Schmidt says that those who want to be rescheduled for day court go to the courtroom in the old Casablanca restaurant.

"We took it over, except we didn't get to keep the tequila bar," he says.

"Except in the judge's chambers, right? Is that what happened to our judge?" says a man who drove in from Stockton for court.

"The taxpayers are not happy with this situation," says Dictos.

"How do you think I feel?" says Schmidt. "I'm the messenger. You know what they do to messengers."

At 6 p.m. there is no judge and night court is over.

Dictos has brought a trunk full of carefully filed documentation for his $5,000 case against the Pinedale Water District.

"Lift it," he says. "It weighs at least 10 pounds."

He's right.

He says he missed a Toastmasters and a Republican Central Committee meeting to be here.

"Put in there that Paul Dictos was very organized and that he missed a lot of meetings to be here," he tells a journalist. "And that he was hungry."