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shrugged off her profoundly cool, and extremely badass, leather jacket.
    A jacket would add some dignity to her strawberry dress, hideous shoes and Koosh-ball hair, but that rocker-chick jacket would make her look like the lead singer for Hole.
    “It has zippers,” she muttered.
    “Lots of jackets got zippers.”
    “But five or twenty? Anyway you’re a size six...I’m a ten.”
    “ Four zippers. I’m an eight, and Bad is super roomy.” Gloria held it up. “Let’s slip it on.”
    Resisting the urge to say something juvenile like I can dress myself , Joanne opted for her best withering look, the one she liked to give prosecutors to let them know she’d had enough of their bull.
    But all her petty, mean-spirited intentions evaporated when she looked up at her friend’s face.
    Miss Tough-PI-Chick was smiling so sweetly, her eyes all sparkly-happy, Joanne felt like an idiot for reacting to the cannoli shell and forgetting its sweet insides. Gloria’s intentions came straight from her heart...a good, decent heart.
    “Time for me to get Bad,” Joanne said, sliding her arm into a sleeve
    Worse case scenario, she’d slip off the jacket before going into the courtroom. On the other hand, maybe Bad would look good on her.
    As Gloria adjusted the jacket collar, Kimmie spoke quietly to Lenny. Joanne looked away, wanting to give them privacy, but the room was too small to not overhear.
    “Tell Dita her lawyer will be meetin’ her outside the courtroom. Describe what Joanne will be wearing, and be sure to explain this is a one-time deal. Oh, and tell her to not stare at her lawyer’s hair.”

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Chapter 3
    L ate Friday afternoon , special agent Mike Day walked into the office of his boss and friend, Assistant Agent in Charge Theodore “Harley” Lambert, who sat at his desk flipping through papers. They worked in the Glendale office of the Los Angeles division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, although the agency still went by its old acronym, ATF. Whenever someone asked Mike why it wasn’t ATFE, he replied omitting the “E” was another of the agency’s cost-cutting measures. A joke with a ring of truth. After several press exposés about ATF botching its gun-smuggling investigations and costing the government millions of dollars, the agency had gone “lean and mean” to clean up its image, including tighter scrutiny of agents and massive cost-cutting measures.
    Eight years ago, his boss earned the nickname Harley after infiltrating the outlaw motorcycle gang Sons of Secrecy as a biker-gun dealer. At ATF he was a legend for being the first agent to be “patched in,” or made a member, in an outlaw motorcycle gang, a distinction similar to being a “made man” in the Mafia. While working deep undercover with the Sons, Harley gathered enough evidence about its gun- and drug-trafficking network for the Department of Justice to file charges.
    Soon after Harley and his ATF partner, Max Dakin, were ambushed in a drive-by shooting. Dakin died at the scene. Harley took six bullets, resulting in permanent nerve damage from severed tendons in his left leg and hand. After that, ATF took him off the streets. Some agents damn near begged to get out of field work, but busting bad guys was Harley’s calling. Sticking him behind a desk, even with a promotion, was like sticking Clint Eastwood behind a snow-cone stand.
    Maybe he hated the desk, but he kept it clean as a neat-freak’s wet dream. Reports in color-coded folders, a carved six-hole pen holder, a compact scanner aligned just so with his desktop computer that currently scrolled the news. The star of the show was a sparkling crystal bowl filled with wrapped hard candies, his only vice. Pissed him off when people helped themselves without asking.
    A cup of steaming tea scented the air with peppermint, suggested by Harley’s doctor to ease his stress levels. From this angle, Mike saw how carefully his boss had combed his thinning dark