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to put some real no-nonsense
     dicks on it with us?”
    O’Herlieghy licked his lips before he spoke. “Well, part of the idea is for the sheriff to look…progressive and all.
     You know, giving new people a chance to show what they can do.”
    The phone rang before he could explain any more. He answered it and suddenly his whole face seemed to melt into a smile. “Hiya,
     babe. Just a minute.” His big hand covered the mouthpiece, and he said to Leal, “Go out and get a fucking haircut and report
     back here down in the sheriff’s pressroom at thirteen hundred sharp for a press conference.”
    He went back to cooing into the phone.
    Leal stood up quickly and left, closing the door gently behind him. He winked at the secretary behind the desk and smiled
     as she blushed. As he walked down the hall toward the stairway, he felt like jumping up and clicking his heels like Gene Kelly
     in one of those old musicals.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Catch-22
    Leal pulled back into the court parking lot at twelve fifty, his hair freshly cut, and his mustache trimmed neatly. “Make
     it look politically correct,” Leal had told the barber. The guy had smirked a bit and gone to work. The result was a bit shorter
     than Leal would have liked, but he figured the almost-military style would make him look like Mr. Conservative. His old drug
     contacts probably wouldn’t even recognize him.
    Several news vans were parked by the front doors, their antennae raised in anticipation of the feed-in to the afternoon news
     broadcasts. Leal strode by the technicians preparing their camcorders and took the steps with a jaunty bounce. He went immediately
     to the public information room on the first floor and saw Sean O’Herlieghy standing by the door, packing tobacco into a pipe.
    “When did you take up pipe smoking?” Leal asked.
    O’Herlieghy flashed a grin. “Frank, glad you’re on time. The hair looks sharp.” He held up the pipe. “This is Bambi’s idea.
     Says it makes me look distinguished. Not extinguished. Besides, she likes the smell.”
    Without even having met the captain’s new love, Leal had the feeling that his old mentor and friend was heading for heartbreak.
     No fool like an old fool, he thought. But he knew better than to try to interfere or offer unwanted advice, especially about
     such a delicate subject. He was grateful to Sean, though, for setting up this great opportunity after the fall from grace.
    O’Herlieghy patted him on the back and they stepped into the sheriff’s anteroom. But as they entered the room the hairs on
     the back of Leal’s neck went up. In front of him were four people: a woman, a black guy, a white guy, and Paul Brice. Brice
     and Leal went back a long way.
    “Frank, you know Lieutenant Brice, don’t you?” O’Herlieghy asked. “He’s running the task force.”
    Leal knew him, all right. From when he’d first started his stint at the county jail. Brice had been a sergeant back then.
     “King Shit” of all the jail guards. Someone everybody—guards and prisoners alike—stepped aside from. With a barrel-like chest
     and oak-tree arms, Brice liked to show off his prowess by challenging some of the bigger prisoners, with their jail-house
     bodies, to bench-pressing contests. He always won, one time doing 425 pounds with accomplished ease. But when Leal had fingered
     one of Brice’s buddies to internal affairs for smuggling drugs into the jail, and the guard had lost his job because of it,
     Leal went to the top of Brice’s shit list.
    Leal’s tours of duty became hellish as Brice made snide comments about stool pigeons, and how they were the lowest of the
     low. Finally, they’d been told to settle it by a senior commander. The commander, an ex-marine, suggested that they put on
     the boxing gloves and climb into the ring for a little “physical training exercise.” Just before they squared off, Brice had
     leaned in to touch gloves, but instead knocked Leal’s hands down sharply and