“I told you it was my treat,” said Aristide as they settled at a table. Kostos had a cup of coffee and a slice of plum cake with an unpleasant sticky sheen on its surface. “And this is what you picked?”

Kostos held out his hand. “I’ll take whatever change you’ve got in your pocket, if you like.”

“It wasn’t meant to be a bribe,” said Aristide. “That comes later, if you’re interested.”

Kostos fished a crumpled pack of brown cigarillos from the pocket of his overcoat, which he had not removed. Under the harsh lights of the automat, he looked gray and old and Aristide almost pitied him before remembering he needed this man’s help. Then, he felt ashamed, and suddenly conscious of his own age and appearance. He forgot, often, that he was no longer in his prime.

“So what do you got for me?” asked Kostos, lighting up. “’Cause if it ain’t your half of the DePaul scoop, it better be rotten good.”

Aristide took his own case from his pocket and picked a straight from beneath the band. “Oh, it’s good. And lucky you; I hear you have to get your numbers up or it’s curtain call.”

Kostos poked a bent fork into his food. “Should have stuck to print. I ain’t got a radio voice. Or at least that’s what they’re telling me. But if Marlowe Flanders can reel folk in with that Eel Town drone of his, why can’t the city settle in with a little first-precinct sass?”

Something shifted behind Aristide’s ribs like broken glass, and it took him a moment to place the pain. It had been some time since he thought of Cordelia as a guttersnipe out of the bad end of the first precinct; that version of her had been eclipsed by the maimed and furious fighter, making arms deals with people she hated, far away from home. Still, her pragmatism had pulled through. And those flat vowels, the tongue held close to the roof of the mouth. The way Kostos spoke, he could have grown up down the street from her.

“How would you like to tear up Emmeline Frye?” asked Aristide.

Kostos put his fork down, still heavy with uneaten cake.

“Not that I presume to understand your personal politics,” Aristide went on, pressing his memories down beneath banter. “But I used to tread the boards. I know a thing or two about drawing a crowd. However you plan to vote, you know this will have folk tuning in.”

Either pushing through his shock or shaking it off, Kostos finally bit into the plum cake. His next words came around a mouthful. “You got something that’ll scratch her?”

“Perhaps.”

He swallowed, wiped his mouth on a cheap paper napkin. “All right. Let’s hear it.”