“No. Thank you, Officer.” Rachel waited until she was alone with her client, then folded her hands over his paperwork. “Well, you really pulled a prize this time out. The woman you attacked was sixty-three. I called the hospital this morning. You should be relieved to know they’ve bumped her condition up from critical to fair.”

Lomez shrugged, his small black eyes gleaming at Rachel. He couldn’t keep his hands still. He began to beat a tattoo on the table with his fingertips as he tapped his feet. His system was skidding to a much wilder rhythm. “Hey, if she’d handed over her purse like I told her, I wouldn’t have had to get rough, you know?”

God, he sickened her, Rachel thought, fighting to remember she was a public servant. And Lomez, however revolting, was the public. “Knifing a senior citizen isn’t going to win you the key to the city. It’s sure as hell going to buy you a lock. Damn it, Lomez, she had twelve dollars.”

His mouth was dry, and his skin was cold. “Then it wouldn’t have cost her a lot to hand it over. You just get me out. That’s your job.” And the minute he was back on the street, he’d pressure one of the other Hombres to score for him. “I had to sit in that stinking cell all night.”

“You’re charged with attempted murder,” Rachel said flatly.

Lomez tapped his damp hands against his thighs. Even his bones were screaming. “I didn’t kill the old bitch.”

Rachel wished she hadn’t finished the coffee. At least she could have used it to wash some of the disgust out of her mouth. “You stuck a knife in her, three times. The officer responding pursued you as you fled the scene—with the knife and the victim’s purse. They’ve got you cold, Lomez, and your priors aren’t going to make the judge think leniency. Your repertoire includes assault, assault and battery, breaking and entering and two counts of possession.”

“I don’t need a list. I need bail.”

“Odds are slim the DA’s going to agree to bail, and if he does, it’ll be well out of your range. Now I’m going to do what I can to get him to toss the attempted murder. You plead guilty to—”

“Guilty, my butt.”

“It’s going to be your butt,” she said evenly. “You’re not going to walk away from this one, Lomez. No matter how many rabbits I pull out of my hat, you’re not going to do short time this turn around. Plead guilty to assault with a deadly weapon, it’s likely I can swing the judge for seven to ten.”

Sweat popped cold on his brow, on his lips. “The hell with that.”