a member of any of the criminal trades in which we are only occasionally interested, I would have let him alone. But stickups are always in demand. The Continental’s most important clients are insurance companies of one sort or another, and robbery policies make up a good percentage of the insurance business these days.
When the Whosis Kid left in the middle of the main event—along with nearly half of the spectators, not caring what happened to either of the muscle-bound heavies who were putting on a roommate act in the ring—I went with him.
He was alone. It was the simplest sort of shadowing. The streets were filled with departing fight fans. The Kid walked down to Fillmore Street, took on a stack of wheats, bacon and coffee at a lunch room, and caught a No. 22 car.
He—and likewise I—transferred to a No. 5 car at McAllister Street, dropped off at Polk, walked north one block, turned back west for a block and a fraction, and went up the front stairs of a dingy light-housekeeping room establishment that occupied the second and third floors over a repair shop on the south side of Golden Gate Avenue, between Van Ness and Franklin.
That put a wrinkle in my forehead. If he had left the street car at either Van Ness or Franklin, he would have saved himself a block of walking. He had ridden down to Polk and walked back. For the exercise, maybe.
I loafed across the street for a short while, to see what—if anything—happened to the front windows. None that had been dark before the Kid went in lighted up now. Apparently he didn’t have a front room—unless he was a very cautious young man. I knew he hadn’t tumbled to my shadowing. There wasn’t a chance of that. Conditions had been too favorable to me.