“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 glass. “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.”

“Assuming that Devin and Sarah are going to want to talk to me.”

“I am assuming 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 gratitude 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 glass 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 nobody 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? Nobody’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.”