Free The Judge by Steve Martini

turban."

    "Washing her hair, perhaps?" says Lenore. "Maybe she was going out, or getting ready for bed." Arguillo raises an eyebrow, a little tilt of the head, as if to say, "Read into this whatever you want." "Any evidence of sexual assault?" says Lenore.
    "Your guess," he says. "Half-naked woman, dumped in a trash bin, young, good looking. I wouldn't put it out of my mind," he tells us.
     
    "But we'll have to wait for the M.E.," he says.

    He motions for her to come a little closer, something private.

    "If you have a second I wanna talk to you alone," he tells Lenore.

    He motions her to one side of the alley, just out of earshot, where they talk. This exchange seems to take a while, and it is not a monologue by Tony. At one point there is a clear display of some surprise by Lenore.

    This, followed with more animated gestures by Tony and then raised voices that I can almost hear, until they both look in my direction.

    Finally Lenore seems to end this, walking away, leaving Tony standing there.

    When Lenore comes back her face is more ashen. I am thinking that perhaps Tony has imparted a few more grisly details of death, the sort of particulars in a criminal case that you don't want floating in the public pool of perceptions.

    "There's nothing more he can tell us right now." For Lenore this is a little white lie. She tells me it's time for us to go.

    I wanted to give you the heads-up," says Tony.

    "Right," says Lenore. sun Mmm "I thought maybe you'd be handling the case," he says.

    "I doubt it," she says. Lenore hasn't told him she's been fired. More deception.

    Tony starts to walk us toward the tape and my car.

    "I knew you'd be interested," he says. "You worked with her, in the Acosta thing. It's too bad. She was a good kid." Tony starts to turn a little teary. "We'll get whoever did this. She knew a lotta guys on the force. They'll be out for blood, turn over every stone." What is becoming Tony's mantra. One more reminder that cops take care of their own.

    The details of Tony's face are suddenly lost in the glare of headlights on high beam, a car nosing into the alley at the other end, large and dark.

    "I'll keep you posted," he says, moving down the alley now, back toward the fold.

    "Hey. We need to talk," I tell him. "Yeah. Later."
    "It's time we should be getting along," says Lenore. She's at my sleeve again, retreating to the tape, as I see the tall, slender silhouette exit from the rear of the vehicle, with uniforms trailing behind it as though on the tail of a comet: Coleman Kline.

    "There's something I have to see," she says. "Turn here." I'm on my way home and Lenore wants to take a detour. It's late and I have Sarah. I tell her this, but she insists that it will take only a minute.
    I follow directions down Fifteenth Street, away from the downtown area toward 1-80.

    I ask her what it was that she and Tony discussed. "I can't say right now," she tells me.
    "Where are we going?"

    "You'll see. Make a left at the next intersection." I do as I'm told.

    She's checking the painted addresses on the curb as I drive, and a few seconds later she has me pull over under an aging elm, massive and looming, home to a million crows. Their saturation bombing of the street gives it a dalmatian-like quality.

    It is one of those older neighborhoods, with turn-of-the-century homes, most of which have seen better days, elevated for the floods that once inundated the city each year, pilings concealed behind a facade of rotting latticework. There are a few apartments and a four-plex or two mixed in, built during the late sixties and early seventies, when the city made a brief attempt at renaissance, before crime and white flight nailed a stake through the heart of urban America.

    Three men or boys, I cannot tell which, are at the corner, hoods up, doing various renditions of the pimp roll, talking to someone in a car, engine running with parking lights, the commerce of the night.

    Before I can say a word Lenore's