I finished off my dog, tossed a few coins over to the vendor and grabbed a coke from the
cooler. I saw a few hacks running up and down the boulevard and I waved one down. I gave the
cabbie the address, he clicked the meter and we were off into the throng of city traffic. It didn’t
take too long to get to the pier. Traffic naturally thinned out in this area as the evening
progressed and the cabbie looked all too eager to let me out and keep going. He of course managed
to linger long enough to implore me for a tip.
As the hack peeled off toward the more lively sections of town I realized just how unsettling
the pier could be this time of evening. The ocean breeze felt heavy and it carried the smell of salt,
old fish, and seaweed. I wasn’t too worried about running into any trouble, but I still hurried my
pace the few blocks I had to walk to Barriger street. Very few people knew I was here and very
few would care if anything happened to me. I found Digby’s address and quickly cased the
building to make sure I wasn’t missing anything or becoming a patsy for a setup. There was one
small light in one of the upstairs rooms, but I got the impression he was in his studio. There was
no sign or sounds of life from what I could tell, but that didn’t mean anything if he was running
the kind of racket I thought