“Where to?” I asked Jacobi.

“The Tenderloin District,” he told me. “A black Mercedes has been seen cruising around down there. Doesn’t seem to fit in with the neighborhood.”

Inspector Warren Jacobi used to be my partner. He’d handled my promotion pretty well, all things considered; he had more than ten years on me, and seven more years in grade. We still partnered up on special cases, and even though he reported to me, I had to turn myself in.

“I had a few at Susie’s.”

“Beers?”

“Margaritas.”

“How many is a few?” He swung his large head toward me.

“One and a half,” I said, not admitting to the third of the one I drank for Jill.

“You all right to come along?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m fine.”

“Don’t think you’re driving.”

“Did I ask?”

“There’s a thermos in back.”

“Coffee?”

“No, it’s for you to take a piss in, if you’ve got to, because we don’t have time for a pit stop.”

I laughed and reached for the coffee. Jacobi was always good for a tasteless joke. As we crossed onto Sixth just south of Mission, I saw a car matching the description in a one-hour parking zone.

“Lookit, Warren. That’s our baby.”

“Good catch, Boxer.”

Apart from the spike in my blood pressure, there was a whole lot of nothing happening on Sixth Street. It was a crumbling block of grimy storefronts and vacant SROs with blank plywood eyes. Aimless jaywalkers teetered and street sleepers snored under their piles of trash. The odd bum checked out the shiny black car.

“I hope to hell no one boosts that thing,” I said. “Stands out like a Steinway in a junkyard.”

I called in our location and we took up our position a half block away from the Mercedes. I punched the plate number into our computer, and this time gongs went off and it spit quarters. The car was registered to Dr. Andrew Cabot of Telegraph Hill.

I called the Hall and asked Cappy to check out Dr. Cabot on the NCIC database and call me back. Then Jacobi and I settled in for a long wait. Whoever Andrew Cabot was, he was definitely slumming. Normally, stakeouts are as fascinating as yesterday’s oatmeal, but I was drumming the dash with my fingers. Where the hell was Andrew Cabot? What was he doing down here?

Twenty minutes later, a street-sweeping machine, a bright yellow car-sized hulk like an armadillo with flashing lights and honking back-up alerts, rolled right up onto the sidewalk, as it did every night. Derelicts rose up off the pavement to avoid the brushes. Papers swirled in the low light of the street lamps.

The sweeper blocked our view for a few moments, and when it had passed, Jacobi and I saw it at the same time: Both the driver’s-side and the passenger-side doors of the Mercedes were closing.

The car was on the move.

“Time to rock and roll,” said Jacobi.

We waited tense seconds as a maroon Camry got between us and our subject. I radioed dispatch: “We’re following a black Mercedes, Queen Zebra Whiskey Two Six Charlie, heading north on Sixth toward Mission. Request units in the area—aw, shit!”

It was meant to be a quick pullover, but without warning or apparent cause, the driver of the Mercedes floored it, leaving Jacobi and me in the freshly washed dust.

Chapter 5

I WATCHED IN DISBELIEF as the Mercedes’ taillights became small red pinpoints, moving even farther into the distance as the Camry backed carefully into a parking space, hemming us in.