Great Highway….

Note: The following is the opening of a kind of 1940ish noir type detective novel I am working on called “Great Highway”. I present it here as a kind of short story of its own.

(Copyright)

By Tony Walther

The N car begins its journey on Market Street in downtown San Francisco and eventually enters the darkness of the Sunset Tunnel to go under the Twin Peaks and comes back out into the light of day and runs through the neighborhoods of the Sunset District until it almost reaches the ocean at the foot of Judah Street where it turns around to make its journey back downtown.

During the afternoon of a pleasant sunny day in 1949, the street car trundled by the open entrance of the Seagull Bar, with the clicking sound of rails and the hummumum sound of the trolley-powered electric motor and the clang of the bell which meant someone had signaled to stop.

A man dressed in hat and overcoat stepped off and walked into the darkened barroom, the open entrance of which was on the corner of Judah Street and 48th Avenue. He took in the sweet aroma of beer. The man was city police inspector Krackov.

“Hiya ‘Cracky,’ ” the bartender, wearing a white apron, announced upon seeing his regular customer. There were a couple of men already sitting at the bar stools playing dice with a leather cup. They stopped for a moment to nod their heads in greeting.

The police inspector was served his usual, not beer, but a scotch and soda. He was on duty, but he always started his shift this way. He would nurse the one drink for as long as he chose to stay at the bar. Most everyone knew him. No one ever commented that he was drinking on duty.

The bar was his top source of information, and he was often the source of news for its patrons.

The Sunset District, with its homes built over the sand dunes and its various local businesses, was his beat. He investigated disturbances, robberies, and an occasional murder.

“Another young girl has gone missing,” the bartender commented.

“Yeah Stevey, so they tell me.”

“You think it’s a coincidence?”

There was a slight pause and then the inspector answered: “You know I don’t believe in them.”

“Neither do I Cracky. I think things are usually as they appear. Some pervert probably got to them both.”

“Yes, that much we can deduce. The hard part is finding which pervert.”

Stevey, called such not because his name was Steve, but because he was a retired stevedore, nodded his head. He took up bar tending after retiring from a career of loading and unloading ships on the San Francisco waterfront.

“There were some strange types that used to work down on the docks. They wouldn’t talk much. But it was the look in their eyes that would give ya the creeps.”

“Well Stevey, it’s not always that easy. I’ve seen rapists and murderers who you couldn’t tell were a bit offbeat to look at them.”

Stevey shrugged his shoulders…