True-Life Adventure

out of my head right away. I was too poor and vulnerable to be fantasizing a life of crime— the thing seemed entirely too possible.
    I dropped Booker at his chic Russian Hill digs and tried not to think about how he paid for them. Then I tried to think of something I could do besides go home, because if I did that, I would probably be forced to think about the shambles my life was in, there being no TV on the premises. But I couldn’t go anywhere because I didn’t know anybody who’d want to see me and I didn’t feel I could afford a movie. A bottle of jug wine would be slightly cheaper and have longer lasting anaesthetic effects.
    So I ended up at home again with Mondavi Barberone. I couldn’t tell if the sun was over the yardarm, since I didn’t have the least idea what a yardarm was, and anyway, the fog was in; so I took a wild guess, decided it was, and poured myself a glass of purple pleasure. Then I sat down to survey the damage.
    I strode bravely into the cobwebby corners of my psyche and I rooted around. There was some very ugly stuff in there, and it is a mark of my spiritual growth that I currently have the nerve to put it down for anybody to read.
    These were the facts: I was thirty-eight. I’d spent fifteen years on one major metropolitan daily or another. I’d written six unpublished detective novels. Unpublished in spite of my name.
    John D. MacDonald did it daily. Ross Macdonald did it deeper. Gregory Mcdonald did it with dash.
    Wrote thrillers and got them published.
    But not Paul Mcdonald.
    I just wrote them, supporting my habit with clients like Jack.
    Pretty soon, I figured, some publisher was going to see the light. It had to happen— it was inscribed somewhere, like the Second Coming, I figured. But meanwhile, I was thirty-eight and putting on a brave face for people like Debbie Hofer.
    Debbie and a lot of my ex-colleagues thought I was a model of courage to quit the Chronicle and suffer for my art. They were pretty amused when I talked about being a ghostwriter for a private eye.
    But they didn’t know what it was like in those cobwebby corners. I had a nice line of patter that made them think I was Joe Carefree, just a rake and ramblin’ man.
    Women liked it, too; I was a big hit on the first date. But usually there weren’t a whole lot more dates. You don’t have a lot to say to strangers when what you do all day is fill up blank sheets of paper with imaginary sex and violence. You could talk about your disappointment and desperation, but they wouldn’t want to hear it.
    So I was a lonesome cowboy. Spot’s company needed supplementing.
    It was getting to the point that my mother was asking not-so-subtle questions aimed at determining whether Sonny was gay or not.
    I wasn’t, but I knew it was pretty rare for a guy my age to be a bachelor. Unmarried middle-aged women aren’t so rare, and neither are divorced men— even twice divorced at my age. But I didn’t know any other guys who’d made it this far without so much as living with someone for more than a few months— which I hadn’t— and I was starting to wonder why and whether I was ever going to find a woman.
    I hated thinking about that kind of stuff, but I’d made up my mind to root around in the corners and I figured I might as well do it right.
    And that meant I couldn’t ignore the fact that I didn’t have anything to offer anyone anyway. I owned one minuscule bit of real estate and a cat and a car and a stereo, but I couldn’t even afford a secondhand TV to replace my stolen one.
    Not that I wanted the kind of woman who was looking for a sugar daddy, but I did want one who was going somewhere in the world, and a woman like that wouldn’t want me. Because I wasn’t.
    I had about two hundred bucks to last me the rest of my life.
    My only client was dead.
    The market for mysteries was terrible.
    I didn’t get out enough.
    I was getting crotchety.
    The only thing I’d ever done successfully was write newspaper stories.
    And I was sitting on a great story.
    I picked up the phone and dialed the Chronicle .

CHAPTER 4
    I asked for Joey Bernstein, who’s the city editor and the sweetest guy in the world.
    “Mcdonald, you nerd. I’m on deadline.”
    “I’ve got to talk to you, Joey.”
    “The only thing I want to talk to you about is when you’re coming back.”
    “I don’t see why you’re so sore about my leaving— you’ve got fifty or sixty other reporters.”
    “Yeah, and most of them a lot