twenty-fourIt was four a.m. in the City, and everything was shut down tight. The bars had closed long before. The theaters and restaurants had all locked their doors. Two Doggie Diners, one on Sloat and another on Van Ness, stayed open for business all night. In front of them, their trademark seven foot tall, Dachshund heads rotated on tall white poles.
Market Street, wide and cavernous, was dead empty. Its old office buildings had become haunts for musty things. Beneath them a single, brightly illuminated trolley bus rolled down the street. The bus was empty, but as it came to Sixth Street, the driver, a bored black man with a graying goatee, saw two white men. They emerged from the cold shadow of the sidewalk’s nooks and crannies. The dark one wore a heavy navy blue pea jacket so dark i
