The Hunt Club might be of real value managing the flow of information to the police, forwarding any genuine leads, and gatekeeping against reports from the nutcase front. The process would save the cops perhaps hundreds of man-hours of unnecessary work winnowing out the wheat from the chaff.

This was work the charities would want done, but they would be ill-equipped to do it themselves, and he and Hunt could do it with their collective eyes closed. Mickey thought that there might be several prospective clients who could chip in to pay for the Hunt Club’s services. Finding them would be a bit of a treasure hunt, but once Mickey did that, he might be able to give Hunt a couple of months’ respite before being forced to go out of business.

The more he thought of it, the surer Mickey was that the money was out there; he just had to find it. And if they did the job right and met with success, it might even help to restore the reputation of the Hunt Club within the legal community. It could, in fact, be a new beginning for Hunt, and maybe even for Tamara. And Mickey, disposed to like Ian Thorpe because they shared such similar tastes and backgrounds, might even be able to set his and his sister’s minds to rest.

All of this came to Mickey in a rush, his eyes glazing over. For those few seconds, he went still as a stone, until Thorpe tapped the table in front of him. “Mickey? You all right?”

He came back to himself with a small start, a fleeting smile. “You know,” he said, “I can’t really promise anything specific, but I don’t see how it could hurt to talk to your sister, maybe give her a heads-up on how the next couple of weeks might go. If you think she’d talk to me.”

“If I think she’d talk to you. Are you kidding me?”

Ian Thorpe already had his cell phone out. Was punching numbers.