Free The Last Word by Lee Goldberg

bust?”
    “Because I’m a witty and generous fellow.”
    “No,” Olivia said. “Really.”
    “That’s it. There’s more pie here than I can eat, so I am sharing it.”
    She narrowed her eyes. “You must need friends.”
    “Desperately,” he confessed.
    “You’ve got one.”
    “But I can’t sleep with you,” he said.
    “I thought you weren’t interested,” she said.
    “I’m not.”
    “Just so we’re clear,” she said.
    “We’re clear,” he said.
    “So why aren’t you interested? Is something wrong with me?”
    She said that a little bit too loud, enough so Karen Cross, who’d just hung up the phone, raised an eyebrow, intrigued by the innuendo. Karen was half Caucasian, half Asian, and exceedingly thin, which gave her a deceptively frail look. She was anything but frail.
    “You don’t want to get involved with him,” Karen said.
    “You know this from experience?” Olivia asked.
    “I’m relying on instinct and good taste,” she said.
    “Gee, thanks,” Steve said. “It’s so nice to be wanted.”
    “The warrants aren’t going to be a problem,” Karen said, ignoring Steve’s show of false indignation. “I just hope Teeg isn’t lying and all of this effort actually leads to a cache of illegal weapons.”
    “You say that like you have some doubts about this,” Steve said.
    “I always do when you or your father are involved,” she said. “I’ve been burned before.”
    “You’ve also gambled and won,” Steve said. “Prosecuting those killer nurses rehabilitated your career.”
    “It wouldn’t have needed rehab if it wasn’t for the Lacey McClure debacle.”
    Karen was referring to her prosecution of movie star Lacey McClure, who was accused of murdering her cheating husband and his lover. It was a scandalous case, tried on live television, and it nearly ruined Karen, Steve, and Mark before it was over.
    She had also been part of the team that prosecuted corrupt cop Harley Brule and his Major Crime Unit cronies, another case that Mark and Steve handed the DA. The way Steve looked at it, his debt to Karen had been repaid twice over. After the Yokley bust, she was going to be owing him some favors.
    “Assuming you’re right about Yokley, and he has been selling guns to LA street gangs,” Karen said, “this arrest could cause us some serious political problems.”
    “How?” Olivia asked. “It’s a win for everybody.”
    “But which mayoral candidate gets to exploit it?” Karen asked. “DA Burnside or Chief Masters? If I’m smart, I’ll tip off Burnside about this. And if you two are smart, you’ll alert Masters.”
    “There’s an easy way to cover all of our butts,” Steve said. “We’ll tip them both off to the raid at the same time. Let them duke it out for bragging rights.”
    “Works for me,” Karen said just as her cell phone rang. She answered it, listened for a moment, then fixed her gaze on Steve before mumbling a “yes, sir” and ending the call.
    “You can tell Burnside about the raid yourself,” she said to Steve. “He wants to see you right now.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    District Attorney Neal Burnside’s office was huge, large enough for his massive desk and leather chair, two guest chairs, a couch, two armchairs, a coffee table, a round conference table with six more chairs, and a flat-screen TV the size of a sport utility vehicle.
    Outside his door, the ADAs on his staff were crammed into windowless offices that were roughly the size of the prison cells they were struggling to fill with criminals. The prosecutors had to wriggle their way into their chairs, which were wedged into what little open space they could clear amidst the jammed file cabinets, the computer monitors, and stacks of bulging case files.
    Steve doubted that any of the ADAs would vote for their boss. Burnside was lucky his peasants didn’t rise up in armed rebellion and drag him off to the guillotine.
    That happy thought kept Steve entertained as he stood patiently in