The Gentlemen's Hour

160

As does Mary Lou Baker.

At John Kodani.

She looks up from the stack of documents that he dropped on her desk, shakes her head again, sighs, and says, “You’ve been a busy boy, sergeant. First the arrest of Dan Nichols, then a raid that nets Cruz Iglesias, then this . . . dirty bomb. Anything else you want to drop on me today?”

“That ought to do it.”

“Oh, it ought to “do it,” all right.”

Johnny picked Mary Lou Baker to bring the records to because (a) she’d been busting his chops on the Blasingame case and (b) she was the one prosecutor he knew with the integrity and the stones to take this up and start filing charges.

“You do know you’re ruining my career, don’t you?” she asks him as she looks at the papers and winces.

“Or making it,” he says.

“Same for you, chum,” Mary Lou says. “Romero wanted you strung up by the cojones, but he can’t do that now that you’re the hero of a shoot-out, and Iglesias and all. But did you have to save a defense attorney, John? Bad taste.”

“She was the only lawyer in the room,” Johnny answers. “Besides, she pulled me out of the soup.”

“We should recruit her for the good guys team,” Mary Lou says.

“We could do worse,” Johnny says. “What about Corey Blasingame?”

“What about him?”

“What are you going to do?”

Her intercom buzzes. “

Alan Burke and partner here for you.”

“I’ll be right out,” Mary Lou says. Then, to Johnny, “I don’t know yet. Let’s go find out.”

Johnny follows her into the conference room.