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South San Francisco, September 1997
For the McKees and the Spinellis
You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol.
I had one from women.
—Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO
September 1997
1
At 4:14 p.m. I was smoking a cigarette. My smoking pattern had finally come full circle. After five religious years of pack-a-day Marlboro Reds, I quit, started up again, switched to Lucky Strike filters, switched to Drum hand-rolling Dutch tobacco, quit, started up on Lucky Strike Straights, switched to American Spirit Blues, quit, started again on American Spirit Yellows, quit, and finally resumed my regimen of Marlboro Reds, a pack a day. I was now convinced that the chemical additives that had driven me to Spirits in the first place would kill me quicker than the cancer the tobacco alone would eventually cause.
By 4:19 the cigarette was burning out in the brown glass ashtray, sending a lone last tendril of smoke in a sacred mission to the ceiling. I looked out the window to the dismal backyard—beaten dirt and broken concrete, straggling stubborn bushes, empty plastic trash bags. I was having a thought, a post-cigarette thought, of fullness, hope, and genuine optimism. It passed quickly. For lack of anything better to do I was reaching for the box of Reds when the phone rang. I looked at it in disbelief and waited a full five rings before I picked it up.
“Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?”
I cleared my throat and remembered I should have spoken first. “Yeah. Crane here.”
“Itchy, damn you. Why the hell don’tcha say hello like a normal guy?”
“Whatever gave you the impression I was normal?” It was McCaffrey, a second-rate private investigator down in LA. I had done a local research job for him a couple of years before and never been paid. Since then I’d
