Mickey backtracked. “No, no, no. I’m just saying it could be an advantage that we know the inspectors, that’s all. And that they know us. It can’t hurt.”

Mickey didn’t know that this was true. Certainly, if Alicia was the bona fide prime suspect, she had a good chance of finding herself in handcuffs the minute the homicide inspectors felt that they had a strong enough case to arrest her. And regardless of any personal relationship between Hunt and either of them, they would move swiftly to put her into custody.

On the other hand, Hunt had been known to play devil’s advocate with Devin Juhle on other cases, which more than once had prevented Juhle from acting too quickly on his gut and arresting the wrong person. In one of Juhle’s most recent homicide cases, though, The People of the State of California v. Stuart Gorman, Hunt’s girlfriend, Gina, had crucified the inspector on the witness stand en route to getting her client acquitted, and this had severely strained the relationship between Juhle and Hunt. So the whole question of familiarity with the homicide pros was both nebulous and personal, but Mickey had seen times when it had worked to Hunt’s advantage, and he’d like Alicia to believe that this could be the case now.

“Maybe it can’t hurt knowing these guys,” Ian said, “but it’s kind of moot if Alicia’s not going to be your client. So let’s not get her hopes up.”

“Why can’t I be your client?” Alicia asked.

“There’s a money issue,” Mickey began, “but I’ve been thinking that over and maybe it’s not insurmountable. I’d have to talk to Mr. Hunt and see what he says, but I think I see a way to investigate this thing on your behalf, which is what you both want, and get paid enough to make it doable, which is what we want.”

“How would you manage that?” Ian asked.

Mickey temporized, since he wasn’t yet exactly sure. “The first step is to hook up with some of the other charities Dominic was involved in, and see if any of them might want to chip in on a reward.” Now he looked directly at Alicia. “Ian told me you’d gotten closely involved with him in the past several months. Is that true?”

She threw a quick glance at her brother, then came back to Mickey. “I was volunteering at the Sunset Youth Project. Getting involved in the process. I hope that’s going to be my life’s work.”

“So you know these people? The people Dominic worked with?”

“Some better than others, but I’m familiar with most of them now, yes.”

“So would you be willing to work with us if it turns out that this means we can help you out?”

She hesitated for only an instant, then met his eyes. “Whatever it takes,” she said.

“All right,” Mickey said. “Let me work out some of the details and run it by Mr. Hunt, see what he says.”

Again, she put her hand on his arm. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.” Her eyes had gone glassy, perhaps a prelude to more tears. “I really didn’t kill him,” she said. “I cared about him a lot, okay? He was a great man, and maybe we were getting a little too close, but I really didn’t kill him.”

“I’m taking that as a given,” he said. Mickey was also tempted to ask her what she meant by “a little too close,” but if she became a client, there’d be time for all of those questions. He was far too aware, he realized, of how her hand felt resting on his arm, so he patted that hand in a professional manner, and pushed himself back from the table. Standing up, he took a business card out of his wallet and handed one to her and one to her brother. “If the cops come again, make me your one phone call and I’ll at least be able to put you in touch with a good lawyer. Meanwhile, let me go see what I can do.”

Wyatt Hunt’s home was a unique environment incongruously existing in its light-industrial, south-of-Market ’hood. Less than three blocks away, San Francisco’s Hall of Justice-a six-story blue-gray slab of concrete that would have been at home in East Berlin before the wall fell-set the tone for the surrounding area. The flat, dirty, perennially windswept streets weren’t so much run-down or dangerous-like the Tenderloin district, for example-as simply depressing, and often deserted, especially now on a weekend.

Each street sported an abandoned storefront or two, some fast food, usually a bail bondsman’s office, a Chinese dentist or acupuncturist, other businesses selling auto parts or advertising specialties or discount clothes. In every block you’d find a bar, or more often a venue that rented itself out as a club catering to a different clientele every night-Monday a hip-hop dance spot, Tuesday a lesbian pickup joint, then salsa after-hours, or karaoke on the Japanese tour circuit. Vagrants and changelings and explorers and the lost among the substrata of humanity that existed in the margins and mostly at night in one of the world’s most glamorous and glittering cities.

In the midst of all this, in a former flower warehouse, Wyatt Hunt had created a kind of wonderland. Hunt had kept the original outer structure intact, so the first thing that hit you, if you entered by the door next to the garage entrance on the Brannan Street side, was the sheer volume of the space under the corrugated iron roof, perhaps twenty feet high, that spanned the building’s nine thousand square feet.

Once inside, you’d probably next notice either Hunt’s Mini Cooper parked by the garage door, or maybe it would be the NBA regulation half-basketball court he’d picked up for a song from the Warriors. When you crossed the court, you got to another play/work area filled with guitars and amps and desks with computers, and then you got to a door in a wall that ran from one side of the enormous room to the other.

Beyond that wall, Hunt had built his living area-bedroom, bathroom, library, den, kitchen-three thousand square feet. All white and pastel and modern, modern, modern. Lots of glass blocks in the wall to the alley out back, and above them high windows for natural light, the drywalled ceiling back here sloping down to fifteen feet or so.

Now, in natural light from the Brannan Street windows and the open garage door, Mickey was in a basketball game with Hunt, the sound of the bouncing ball and their grunts and the squeak of their shoes as they broke on the hardwood echoing off the noninsulated walls around them.

They were playing one-on-one, winner’s outs, which gave Hunt a tremendous advantage since he was the far better player and, despite the age differential of over fifteen years, in better physical shape than Mickey. Winner’s outs meant that every time someone made a basket, he got possession of the ball again at half-court. Early in the game, Mickey had scored four quick baskets, at one point each rather than two, but then Hunt had stolen the ball on him and put up an obscene twenty baskets in a row.

Mickey, by now feeling like a rag, dragged himself to center court just as Hunt brought the ball in, faked right, and broke left, a move that put Mickey ignominiously on his ass. Hunt then dribbled three times and laid up his game-winning twenty-first point with a triumphant shout. “Ha!”

They were drinking lemonade, recovering their breath-Mickey rather more so than Hunt-sitting side by side on the stoop that led out from Hunt’s kitchen to the alley behind his warehouse home.

“Twenty-one to four,” Mickey managed to say between breaths. “How pathetic is that?”

“We should have done loser’s outs. You would have had the ball more.”

“Great. Remind me next time. If there ever is a next time, which right now I’m kind of doubting.” Mickey chugged some lemonade, then rubbed the cold glass up against his forehead. “Why’d I let you talk me into this? I didn’t come over here to get creamed in basketball.”

“Yeah, but you got here and there I was, shooting hoops all alone. Talk about pathetic. You took pity on me, for which I’m grateful and in your debt.”