The Sourdough Wars

open a new and different Pandora’s Box and don’t give a damn about the consequences. It was the main problem I had with Rob; if he weren’t a reporter, he’d be perfect.
    I kept my mouth shut until we pulled up in front of a properly rundown warehouse. It’s a hideous neighborhood, that one, a place of things, not people. There’s a spooky old railroad switchyard there, and the San Francisco RV Park, where the old Southern Pacific Station used to be. Also, there are two bridges across China Basin itself, which is a little finger of the bay. The Peter R. Maloney Bridge, hard by Blanche’s, is really part of Fourth Street, and my personal favorite, the Francis “Lefty” O’Doul Bridge, is part of Third.
    Mostly, there are a lot of warehouses of varying sizes and conditions of decay. The place always seems dead, even in the daytime, when occasional human beings and dozens of cars dot the landscape. At night, it can oppress you like a paper bag over your head. What little light there is gets swallowed up by a large and mighty blackness.
    So we couldn’t see much after Rob turned off his headlights. “Is this it?” I said.
    Rob shook his head.
    At first I thought he was making fun of me for asking such a dumb question, but no—he pointed down the block to our left. “I don’t want to alert the guard if there is one. Let’s walk over quietly.”
    We both had on jogging shoes, so quiet was easy. We were a couple of cats slinking on fog feet, and suddenly I was having fun again.
    I forgot I was mad at Rob. I forgot everything except being in that great, black, quiet place where nothing moved and nothing ever would—or so it seemed. Rob ought to be getting lots of colorful details for his sidebar—a desolate crisscross of railroad tracks; a pitiful thicket of neglected buildings, shabby, uninhabited, squat, full of things that would leave soon; a quiet that was thicker than blood. I almost giggled at that one, knowing Rob would die before he’d put his byline on a phrase like that. But I didn’t because it would have been such a travesty to shatter the quiet.
    Something else had other ideas. The quiet didn’t shatter exactly, but as we got closer to the old corrugated metal warehouse, we heard something chipping away at it. Little shuffling sounds, the sounds of things being moved about. Rather clumsily. The sounds were coming from the back of the building.
    “Wait here,” said Rob, and started trotting toward the noise. I was right behind him.
    As we rounded the corner, we saw a dark figure leap from a pile of stacked-up debris and take off away from us. One glance told the story; the debris—mostly boxes—was piled up under a window, which was clearly the target of an amateur burglar—who was even now disappearing around the opposite corner of the building.
    “Go back, Rob,” I hollered. “Head him off.”
    I figured that way we’d have the guy trapped—I’d be behind him and Rob could make it back to the front of the building before the intruder could. We’d have a finger-lickin’ good burglar sandwich. But Rob wouldn’t play. He kept on coming behind me, and passed me in about a second, so I turned and went back to head the guy off.
    Rob stopped a minute, apparently not knowing what to do, started to turn toward me, then changed his mind and started chasing the burglar again. I’m a slow runner, and Rob had just illustrated once again the sad fate of he who hesitates—the burglar was already running down the street by the time we got to the front of the building. We rounded our respective corners at about the same time, huffing, puffing, and feeling silly. At least in my case. I was also mad. We’d lost the burglar, and the way I looked at it, it was Rob’s fault. I’d had a perfect plan and he’d messed it up.
    But the fact that we’d lost the burglar didn’t stop us. We kept chasing him, all the way to the end of the block, then into a sort of never-never land where there were a lot of railroad tracks. And a train bearing down, fast. But not too fast for the burglar to get across in front of it. For a moment, Rob looked as if he might try it, too, but I grabbed him. I didn’t want him hesitating and waiting too long with a train coming at him.
    We didn’t speak for a moment, just tried to get our breath back while the train passed. Then Rob apparently had an idea. He couldn’t tell me about it because the train was making so much noise. He just grabbed my arm and mouthed,