"And because of that, you went easy on me, is that it?"

Hunt chuckled. "Perhaps not. That's not really my style. If I'm gonna play, I'm gonna beat you."

"I noticed. Congratulations. Mission accomplished."

Hunt nodded in acknowledgment.

"So in theory," Mickey added, "that means you still owe me, right?"

"Up to a point, in theory." Hunt sipped his drink. "You getting at something?"

"Not much except the reason I came by in the first place. You want to try to guess which cops pulled the Dominic Como case?"

Hunt sipped at his lemonade, wiped some sweat from his brow, then wiped his hands on his tank top. He looked up at the side of the graffiti-tagged building across the alley. "Okay, since you ask it that way, I'm deducing Devin's one of 'em. And Russo's his partner."

"You ought to do that stuff as a party trick. You know that?"

Hunt shrugged off the compliment, spread his palms. "Elementary, my dear Dade. But, if I may ask you, this is relevant to us because . . . ?"

"Because we might be able to talk to them."

"About Como? Why do we want to do that?"

Mickey took a breath and launched into an explanation of his strategy, about midway through which Hunt stopped him. "Wait a minute. Nice idea, but the cops already have a unit to field reward calls."

"I know that. But the point is that we want the people who won't call the city, who won't call the cops."

Hunt said gently, "No offense, Mick, but that dog just don't hunt. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. We'd have to turn anything we get over to the cops anyway. So somebody calls us first, big deal. Eventually, they're talking to the police. We've got no privilege. We can't promise anonymity. We're just an extra phone call."

"Yeah, but the trick is to get 'em to call in the first place. Then we ease 'em into the process, which might not be too hard if it's a lot of money and they're not completely nuts. Maybe initially we don't ask for names. We can't disclose what we don't know. If it really looks like they've got something, we just explain that we'll have to give them up if they're going to get the reward. The whole point, Wyatt, is to get information from people who wouldn't normally give up anything at all. We can finesse the details later."

"So in your dreams, how much reward are we talking about?"

"I have no idea. Best case fifty, maybe a hundred thou, maybe more. I don't know how many hours we'll charge, but at least it would be work that could keep us solvent a while longer-"

"And how do we find these people who are going to offer a reward again?"

"Wyatt, c'mon, work with me here. I go by and talk to 'em. We create a groundswell movement among these people who are already so inclined. Como was large in half of these nonprofits, either as a consultant or an actual board member or director. He was the man. These people are going to line up to help find his killer."

Hunt got to his feet, paced across the alley, then turned around and leaned against the wall. He took a sip from his gla.s.s. "Has it occurred to you that the police might already be lined up to catch his killer too? And won't appreciate our involvement?"

"Well, that's where Juhle and Russo come in. We convince them of our value to their investigation."

"a.s.suming that Devin and Sarah are going to want to talk to me."

"I am a.s.suming that."

"Well, sad to say, that's not too likely going to happen either." Hunt pushed off from the wall behind him. "I've tried to keep a low profile around this, but Dev and I kind of stopped hanging out together after Gina ate him on the stand on the Gorman case."

"Yeah, I remember. But didn't he eventually get the collar on the real killer in that one? Because of you and Gina?"

"He did."

"Well?"

"Well, I agree. He should have been overcome with grat.i.tude at how we burnished his flagging career. But somehow he didn't see it that way. He kind of thinks I set him up and Gina screwed him. And she did make him look bad at the trial. No, worse than bad. Incompetent and stupid. And I helped her." He shook his head. "So, no is the answer. No to pretty much anything I've asked him since."

"But this is something new. And it will save him time and effort, maybe lots of both. He's got to see that. And if he doesn't, Russo will."

"Maybe." Hunt, now back at the stoop, lowered himself down again, finished his lemonade in a long swig, and placed the beaded gla.s.s on the cement between his legs. "I'll think about it. And I do appreciate you trying to keep us alive here, Mick, but I'm not sure this is the way. We need more than one case."

"Well, maybe not. We do good on one case, people might start remembering we do good work in general. What I'm just trying to do is get us back on the street. Get you back on the street, instead of sitting in the office waiting for the phone to ring."

Hunt let out a frustrated sigh. "Not to be defensive, Mick, but I've been doing a little more than that. A lot more. The way it usually works is your clients come to you. And n.o.body seems hot to let us play."

"So we make our own game. We can bring these people in, I know we can."

"How do you know that?"

Mickey took a breath, hesitating. Alicia Thorpe was the other foci in the elliptical orbit they needed to enter, and so far he'd left her out of it entirely. "There's a woman who may already be a suspect who knew Como and most of what he was working on. She can put us in touch with the people we need to talk to."

Hunt looked across at him. "She's a suspect?"

"She might be a suspect. Juhle and Russo talked to her."

"She got an alibi?"

"For when? n.o.body's got a clue when Como actually died."

"So that answer would be no, no alibi," Hunt said. "And otherwise we know she's not guilty because . . . ?"

Mickey let out a breath. "She's not guilty, Wyatt. Originally, she wanted to hire us to find out who killed Como. She wouldn't have done that if she did it."

"There's so many arguments against that one that I don't know where to start." Still, Hunt held up his hand again and sucked on his cheek for a minute. "She good- looking enough to be affecting your judgment?"

"I hope not." Mickey turned to him, met his eye, nodded. "Possibly, but I don't think so. For the record, though, I would marry her tomorrow if she'd have me."

"Good to know. And she was involved with Como? Intimately?"

"Don't know. Maybe."

"But she didn't kill him?"

Again, Mickey hesitated. "Let's say that I think we can choose to believe she didn't and not have it come back and bite us. It's a calculated risk and also pretty much the only game in town. And meanwhile, she can put us in touch with people who will pay you to be back in that game. Maybe that's short-term, but guess what?"

"Tell me."

"No. You told me about ten minutes ago. If you're in the game, you're gonna win it. Or die or kill somebody trying."

Hunt chuckled. "That's flattering, Mick, it really is. But that was basketball."

Mickey Dade shook his head, truly amused that his boss didn't seem to realize this fundamental truth about himself. "Don't kid yourself, Wyatt. That's any game you get yourself into."

6.

At six o'clock that night, Mickey checked the coals in his Weber kettle cooker and then came back into his purple kitchen. He walked over and opened the refrigerator, atypically loaded with food. After leaving Hunt's, he'd gone down to the Ferry Building, and though it was by then late in the day, the various stores there still had a selection of foodstuffs that put to shame most of the other, regular grocery stores in the city. Now he pulled out the paper-wrapped leg of lamb he was going to b.u.t.terfly and barbecue after smearing it with garlic, rosemary, salt, pepper, soy sauce, and lemon juice. He brought it over to his cutting board, where he'd piled up the ingredients you really didn't want to refrigerate if you didn't have to: heirloom tomatoes-green, purple, yellow-bunches of Thai basil, thyme and rosemary, two heads of garlic, a lemon.

He opened a bottle of Chianti and poured himself half a juice gla.s.s full.

Grabbing his favorite six- inch carbon-steel Sabatier knife off the magnetic holder on the wall, he honed it to a razor's edge with his sharpening steel. Then, whistling, he pulled the leg of lamb toward him and started cutting.

Five minutes later, Mickey laid the lamb out flat on the grill and covered it. Then, back in the kitchen, he took a saucepan down from its rung on the wall. He put it on the stove over high heat, throwing in half a stick of b.u.t.ter and some olive oil. In another minute, he'd added chopped shallots, garlic, thyme and rosemary, some allspice, and three cups of the chicken stock that he made from scratch whenever he started to get low. Some things you simply couldn't cut corners on.

He stirred a minute more, added a cup and a half of Arborio rice and some orzo, then turned the heat all the way down to the lowest simmer and covered the pan. This was his own personal version of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat, a simple pilaf, but he liked his strategy of first making the kitchen so fragrant that it drew his roommates to the feast whether they were inclined to eat or not.

And sure enough, here was Jim following his nose through the doorway from the living room. "That smells edible."

"Should be," Mick said, pouring wine into another juice gla.s.s and holding it out for him. "You ready yet for some hair of the dog?"

"That was one ugly f.u.c.king dog," Jim said, taking the gla.s.s, "but salut." He and Mickey clicked their thick gla.s.ses and both sipped.

And then Tamara appeared in the doorway. "I'm not really hungry, but I might have a little of whatever that is."

"We call that a side dish, Tam. It goes with the other stuff that'll be ready in a half hour."

"Well, I don't know if I'll have much, but I'll sit with you guys."

Mickey handed her a half gla.s.s of wine. "Whatever," he said.

Tamara and Jim sat on the green benches on either side of the table, dipping the still-warm sourdough bread into a small bowl of extra virgin olive oil. The finished, medium- rare lamb rested under foil on the cutting board as Mickey finished cutting the tomatoes for "Donna's famous salad" (named after an old girlfriend and early cooking influence), which was going into his big wooden bowl and was composed only of tomatoes, basil, salt, and balsamic vinegar, no oil.

When the doorbell rang, Mickey turned away from the cutting board. "Tam," Mickey said, "you want to get that?"

She turned the k.n.o.b and pulled the door open and just stood there. "Wyatt?"

"Hey, Tam."

"I don't . . ." She inhaled, then let out the breath. "I . . ."

"Mick didn't tell you I was coming over?"

"No." Another long exhale. "He knew if I'd known, I might have left."

"Why would you have done that?"

"Because . . . because I don't know. I didn't want to face you."

"You want," Hunt said, "I can go now."

"No. Don't be stupid. You're here."

"I can just as easily be gone, Tam. I don't want to cause you any pain." He hesitated. "Mickey should have told you he asked me."

"No," she said. "He was right not to. He's trying to force me to change the way I've been lately."

"How's that?"

"Isn't it obvious? Look at me."

"You look fine."

"No, I don't. I look like death."

"Death should look so good."

She snapped at him. "Don't bulls.h.i.t me, Wyatt. If you're going to patronize me, then maybe you really ought to get out of here."

Hunt's gaze went hard. "And then what? I mean between you and me. That's just it?"

"Even if it is, what does it matter?"

"I hope you don't mean that." He took a breath. "It matters because, like it or not, you're family, and I don't have so much of it that I can afford to lose any of it. I love you, Tam. I'm always going to love you. Don't you know that?"

Looking down, she shook her head. "Sometimes I feel I don't know anything anymore. I thought you hated me."

"I could never hate you. Why would I hate you?"

"Because I left." She met his eyes. "I'm so so sorry. I just couldn't handle"-a tear broke and trickled down her cheek-"any of it."

"That was all right. I understood. It was fine." Hunt brushed the tear away with a finger. "You handled what you could and did what you had to do, Tam. You've got nothing to be sorry about."

"No? Then why do I feel like if I'd stayed on . . . maybe things with the business wouldn't have gotten so bad?"

"That was nothing to do with you. You in the office wouldn't have made any difference, wouldn't have brought in any clients. That's all on me and n.o.body else. What's gone wrong is because of me and the decisions I made."

Hunt stepped toward her. "Whatever you want to do, Tam, whenever you want to do it, I'm with you. I'm on your side. Really," he said. "Really and always."

She dropped her head and shook it one last time before bringing her gaze up to look at him, as something seemed to break in her. "Oh, Wyatt. I'm so sorry. I'm such a mess." And then suddenly she was in his embrace. Her shoulders let go, deep sobs racked her body, and she held on to him with all of her might.

Hunt brought his arms up tightly around her.