“How many is a few?” He swung his large head toward me.

“One and a half,” I said, not admitting to the third of the one I drank for Jill.

“You all right to come along?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m fine.”

“Don’t think you’re driving.”

“Did I ask?”

“There’s a thermos in back.”

“Coffee?”

“No, it’s for you to take a piss in, if you’ve got to, because we don’t have time for a pit stop.”

I laughed and reached for the coffee. Jacobi was always good for a tasteless joke. As we crossed onto Sixth just south of Mission, I saw a car matching the description in a one-hour parking zone.

“Lookit, Warren. That’s our baby.”

“Good catch, Boxer.”

Apart from the spike in my blood pressure, there was a whole lot of nothing happening on Sixth Street. It was a crumbling block of grimy storefronts and vacant SROs with blank plywood eyes. Aimless jaywalkers teetered and street sleepers snored under their piles of trash. The odd bum checked out the shiny black car.

“I hope to hell no one boosts that thing,” I said. “Stands out like a Steinway in a junkyard.”

I called in our location and we took up our position a half block away from the Mercedes. I punched the plate number into our computer, and this time gongs went off and it spit quarters. The car was registered to Dr. Andrew Cabot of Telegraph Hill.

I called the Hall and asked Cappy to check out Dr. Cabot on the NCIC database and call me back. Then Jacobi and I settled in for a long wait. Whoever Andrew Cabot was, he was definitely slumming. Normally, stakeouts are as fascinating as yesterday’s oatmeal, but I was drumming the dash with my fingers. Where the hell was Andrew Cabot? What was he doing down here?

Twenty minutes later, a street-sweeping machine, a bright yellow car-sized hulk like an armadillo with flashing lights and honking back-up alerts, rolled right up onto the sidewalk, as it did every night. Derelicts rose up off the pavement to avoid the brushes. Papers swirled in the low light of the street lamps.