"Tips from her are no more punishable by law than those from our stoolies…", Mike grumbled as they headed north toward the impressive building on 140 New Montgomery that housed the writers and staff for the San Francisco Telegraph somewhere on the 5th level.

Despite the reasonably light traffic for the day after a holiday, the short 15-minute commute felt dreadful at best, as both detectives fell into a quiet cadence of one-line thoughts and arguments, said out loud in the judgement-free atmosphere of the Galaxie, wanting to dismiss Gifford's lead, even going as far as handing the case back to Haley and Hassejian as to avoid feeding the ego of the eccentric writer any further.

"It could be, once we find out where she got the information from."

"She's not going to be so dumb as to incriminate herself. No…you and I both know exactly what she's after."

Them.

It was a cut and dried as it came.

And despite Lenny's repeated suggestions, downright urging them to stay away from her, they did the exact opposite by following up on this lead.

It felt like a mistake in the making to Mike, but his instincts drove him to that office, wanting to see Gifford's reaction upon their visit and ensuing conversation, knowing that if there was as much as a snowball in hell's chance she had something to do with this case and decided to taunt them, he'd be able to see right through it.

Best case, they'd make headway on their murder investigation.

Worst case, they'd drive Gifford's desire to dig into their private lives to a whole new level.

In any case though, he knew it would be important to follow up on the lead, and that sending any of his other detectives would give off an equally strange sense of insecurity or avoidance that might make the reporter even more eager to get in their way.

"The lead might even be fake.", Steve breathed as he turned the corner onto 2nd Street, "Somebody as obsessed as she is might go quite a length to get our attention. There's a big risk she'll make us chase down the wrong rathole altogether."

"Well, I guess then we would have something we could charge her with, wouldn't we?", Mike returned with a smile and let his eyes drift over the busy downtown streets, the cacophony of characters going about their business, some good, some bad; kept in check only by the thin line of officers sworn to uphold the law.

And just like integrity and respect, the law was a fragile object to defend and honor, invisible to the eye and yet to be found everywhere, a valiant effort to instill order amidst chaos so long as people believed that it existed and punishment would ensue upon breaking it.

Mike found no greater pride and joy in the fact that he'd chosen to do just that each time those handcuffs clicked, ending another realm of evil before more damage could be done.

"You're not the least bit worried about this whole situation?"

The exasperation in Steve's voice pulled Mike back out of his daydreams and he glanced over at the young Inspector, then shook his head.

"We'll keep our guard up like we always do. And we'll question her no different than any of the other leads we received. We do have to establish the legitimacy of her information one way or another."

And interesting information it was.

According to Gifford, the tattoo belonged to a group of street artists from the World War II era, young men who spent their days entertaining the crowds to improve morale, then donated any proceeds to the local food banks. The tattoo was found on both legs, the right one featuring "San Francisco", the left one "Happy Art".

His quick call into Vice and R&I had yielded nothing so far, the movement having stayed comfortably far under the radar during those troublesome times. There was no mention of the size or members of the group on Gifford's note, or what eventually happened to them.

It was his plan to ask some questions at some of the harder-hit areas around town later on, see if anybody remembered such a group and if there was merit in pursuing the rest of the members.

Until then, they'd have to make due with prying some answers out of the nosy reporter.