Games to Keep the Dark Away

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The wind whipped my jacket open as I went up to the guardrail. The sheer, rock-strewn face of Potrero Hill dropped away for fifty yards or more, and I could look down on the roofs of the houses below. I turned, pulling the jacket tightly around me, and walked down the street from where I’d parked at the dead end. Broken glass and other debris crunched beneath my feet.

All the buildings save two in this short block were condemned or half demolished. They stood silent in the early October dusk, gaping holes where windows had once been, jagged timbers silhouetted against the dying light. I shivered, only partly from the biting wind.

Number twenty-one was surrounded by a six-foot red-wood fence on which the number was spelled out in carved letters. I pushed through the gate into a deep front yard that was choked with vegetation. A gravel walk overhung by scraggly palm trees led to the front door. I went up and rang the bell.

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