"Why are you turning on Geary? We have to head back downtown to meet with Olson and the guys from Vice."
Steve smiled faintly, having expected the Lieutenant to complain the moment he entered the turning lane. Three years of intense partnership taught him that Mike Stone's senses never slept. Not even when he did -in fact- sleep.
"There's one angle I want to dig into some more before we head back.", Steve said and waited for traffic to clear, before swinging the Galaxy into the busy eastbound lane, avoiding a hubcap lying in the middle of the road from a poorly cleaned up fender bender.
Mike glanced over at him from underneath the gray fedora, waiting for a more elaborate explanation, when Steve grinned.
"You got a twenty on you?"
"A twenty? Who are you bribing?", Mike asked exasperatedly and reached over to run a hand across his partner's black designer dress jacket and lilac tie, "If you can afford threads like these, what do you need a twenty from me for?"
"I need the twenty from you because I did spend all my money on these threads.", Steve answered matter-of-factly and grinned, as he opened up his dress jacket to expose the light blue silky inner liner, "You like this? Imported from Italy. I can hook you up and have one tailored for you in two weeks max. It'll make you feel like a thousand bucks, I guarantee it."
"It will make me feel like I am a thousand bucks poorer, that's as far as I believe you, Buddy Boy.", Mike grunted in feign ill temper before reaching for his wallet, "So, who are you looking for in the Tenderloin?"
Grinning at the fact that Mike once again had read his mind about where he was headed, Steve slowed down at a stop light, getting ready to turn south on Hyde Street. As the rain began to come down hard, he hoped and prayed that his usual suspects could be found in their ever-so predictable hangout this afternoon. And it was the one place he couldn't enter with Dixon on his heels, or the bar would empty in an instant.
Glancing over when Mike patted his chest with a twenty-dollar bill in hand, Steve nodded in gratitude and slipped the bill into his breast pocket, before turning south, his eyes automatically scanning the playground and park ahead.
"Tahoola…", he whispered and squinted against the heavy rain, hoping to see a certain set of street colors amongst the few guys out in this weather terrorizing the once peaceful children's playground, that had turned into a drug trafficking area a decade back.
"What makes you think he's out and about?"
"My gut feeling.", Steve said, his voice turning serious, "Tahoola is greedy. He also likes to live a million-dollar lifestyle on a ten dollars an hour budget. He needs to make money to support his habits, so he has to be out working the streets. With the market being shook up from all these murders, he might want to garner some additional clientele out of either district. Now would be the prime time for him to be out casing the streets."
"Why not wait until we've discussed the case with Dixon and Williams? Have them do the dirty work?", Mike asked and kept his voice nonchalant, his eyes never moving off the road. Steve knew it was a test to see how he'd react to his old partner being thrown into the loop, so he waited until he found a parking spot for the Galaxy along the southbound lane.
Sliding the car in park in front of Rudy's Bar and Grill, he glanced over at the Lieutenant's questioning blue eyes and smiled.
"Marc shoving his badge into everybody's face, with those cheap imitation suits that smell of cigarette butts and stale coffee? That'll never work. See, I like to get my information in style. These threads right here, paired with a crisp twenty, will have Tahoola thanking me for the opportunity to provide us with the latest piece of street intel and hoping to be of my service again soon."