Free Judging Time by Leslie Glass

tickling them with his mustache.
    The gesture got her in the stomach. No, no, and no. Flushing, she grabbed her coat and scarf from the back of the chair, making a face at the smell of wet wool as she put them on. "I take it you're coming with me."
    "To the ends of the earth, querida." Mike gave her a knowing smile.
    "That would be nice, chico, but I'm not going that far."
    "Uh-huh. What kind of hole do you have for people who work on special cases?"
    "Oh, a real nice closet, has a phone and everything. Just outside my door."
    "Bueno." Mike tucked his stiffening leather jacket under his arm and reached for the check. "Well, let's go meet the boys."
    April glanced at her watch again. It was 9:13. They really had to hustle now. She had to put in a call to
    Jason Frank. Funny, the food must have helped. She was wide awake now.
    At 9:29 Lieutenant Iriarte gestured with a cupped hand, inviting April and Mike into the already too crowded space of his office. Today he wore a glen plaid suit in almost mossy tones with a pale amber shirt and bold-patterned orange-and-khaki tie. His suit jacket was buttoned, and a thin stripe of long underwear ribbing peeped out from under his shirt cuffs.
    The cheerless trio arrayed around his desk included the woebegone Hagedorn, who warmed his chubby hands on a cup of precinct bilge that smelled a week old; Tom Creaker, a fierce-looking giant with a number of battle scars visible on his close-cropped skull who claimed he was three-quarters Native American and one-quarter Irish; and April's favorite, Billy Skye, a diminutive man whose biceps were so large they threatened to split his sleeves every time he moved his arms. The four men had been working together for years. No one offered Woo or Sanchez a chair.
    "How ya doin'. I'm Mike Sanchez." Mike looked them over, taking the temperature in a friendly way.
    Iriarte's office was deep in the bowels of the second floor. No windows fronting the street leaked in frigid air or gave a view of the prevailing weather as in the Two-O. But even so, there was no doubt about the season. Skye and Hagedorn had sweaters under their sport jackets, disproving the oft-told lie that the radiators in the building were working well.
    "Mike." Iriarte held out his hand. Mike leaned over the desk to shake it. "You've met Charlie Hagedorn. And you know Tom Creaker, Billy Skye." At his name, each man lifted a hand in a modified salute.
    "I got a call you were coming." Iriarte sniffed at the air like an animal with a new scent, then glanced at April with a raised eyebrow. You have something to do with this?
    She shook her head.
    The lieutenant returned his attention to Mike.
    "Well, good to have you with us, Mike, in your new position. How's it going?" lriarte tapped a finger on his desk and consulted a portion of puckering paint on the ceiling over his head.
    "It's going well," Mike replied. "How about you guys?"
    lriarte nodded. "I like a team that cooperates. Want a cup of coffee?"
    Mike glanced at April. "Thanks, we just ate."
    lriarte's eyebrow came up at April again. You sure you weren't the one to invite your old partner in on this?
    A spark ignited in her boss's eye that made April nervous. She'd only known lriarte for a few weeks. The lieutenant could have been a real bastard to her, could have withheld the kind of everyday information that would have made doing a good job almost impossible. But so far he'd been fair. He hadn't coddled her or made nice, but he'd been fair. April couldn't ask for anything more than that. He could still make life miserable for her, though. Anytime he felt she wasn't on his team, he could chop her up into little pieces and feed her to his three ugly musketeer henchmen.
    As the lieutenant had done only a second before, April sniffed the air and smelled Sanchez. Sanchez really complicated things for her. He edged even closer to the door now, smiling at a scenario he was beginning to get used to, that of the outsider who, depending on his