Free A Wild and Lonely Place by Marcia Muller Page B

has always been abrasive, even when—eons ago—we were lovers. Something about our personalities,
     which doesn’t allow us to blend our strengths and dilute our weaknesses. With us there’s always a competitive edge—and not
     the sort that allows us to be the best we can. Over the years we’ve both mellowed, but I still don’t know how things will
     go when I contact him.
    That night we must’ve both been in a very mellow phase; his voice was playful, and the remark simply amused me. “Yes,” I said.
     “I want to buy you a drink.”
    He laughed. “As I recall, you buying me a drink usually leads to me doing you a favor. Where are you? Your office?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then I’ll see you at the Remedy. Half an hour, max.”
    I closed up the office, stowed my briefcase in the MG, and walked downhill to Mission Street. The usual Friday-night crowds
     were out; the usual sex and drug deals were going down. I spotted one of my informants, Frankie Cordova, leaning against an
     iron-grated storefront, beer in hand, his arm draped across the shoulders of a stoned young Latina. When I nodded, he toasted
     me with his bottle.
    The Mission had long ago lost its charm for me. Years before, when I lived in a tiny studio apartment near Twenty-second Street
     on Guerrero, it was a hospitable area, if a little rough at the edges. I had good neighbors in the building good neighbors
     across the street at Ellen T’s, my favorite bar-and-grill. But then one of the tenants on the floor above me was murdered
     and my investigation into her death showed me the ugly underside of the district. As soon as I could afford to, I bought my
     house and moved away. In the intervening years gangs and pushers had moved in. Ellen T’s husband, Stanley, was shot to death
     in a holdup, and Ellen sold the bar and moved back to Nebraska. Now parts of the Mission came close to being war zones. Drug
     dealers terrorized residents on their own front steps; gunshots were commonplace. Parents were afraid to let their children
     walk to school alone; the ever present gang members looked nothing like the highly romanticized figures I’d cynically viewed
     during a recent rerun of
West Side Story.
    Some of the Mission’s residents hadn’t caved in to the criminal element. Frustrated by the lack of police protection, they
     banded together with merchants to organize and fund citizen patrols. Women and men stood guard at such trouble spots as the
     Sixteenth-and-Mission BART station. Armed only with nerve and wits, they were determined to take back their neighborhood.
     I wished I could believe they’d succeed. The McCone who had inhabited that tiny apartment on Guerrero would have naturally
     assumed so, and probably joined in. But she was someone I hardly knew anymore, distanced by a number of eye-opening years.
    Noise greeted me as I pushed through the door of the Remedy Lounge; patrons crowded around the bar and jammed the booths and
     tables. When I finally got to the bar, I ordered an espresso from Brian, the owner, then settled down in a booth that had
     just been vacated.
    After twenty minutes the crowd began to thin. I went back to the bar, got another espresso to fortify myself against the long
     drive ahead, and ordered a glass of red wine for Greg. I’d just sat down again when he came through the door—a big man with
     sandy blond hair that was now shot with white and a body that as yet showed few signs of middle-age spread. He grinned when
     he spotted me, quirked one dark blond eyebrow when he saw his drink was already on the table.
    “Service with a smile, even,” he said, planting a kiss in the vicinity of my right ear. “Thank you, ma’am.”
    “It’s about the only service you’ll get in this place.” The Remedy has never been able to keep a waitress or waiter longer
     than a week, and Brian refuses to extend table service to anyone but Rae, who reminds him of his dead sister.
    Greg sat opposite me, took a sip of wine, and