43. He rode it out Fell along the Panhandle, halfway to the zoo and the ocean and then back again, back along Oak Street, along Market to the Embarcadero and then Fisherman’s Wharf.

The night was still very alive down along the waterfront, postmidnight, out-of-towners most of them, honeymooners, lovers on lovers’ long weekends, groups of three or four or five or six, more than a few in them in red sweatshirts with somebody’s logo, a convention of somebodys.

And Sailors.

That didn’t surprise Jimmy. This is where they’d be. And when. Was that why he’d come down here, looking for his kind? That felt a little pathetic to him. The bus he’d ridden in was one of the last of the night, five or six other passengers and Jimmy. Maybe there’d be another run, one last loop when the bars closed, whenever that was.

Most of the people were at Pier 41, where the red-and-white boats over to Alcatraz docked. The last Alcatraz boat came back at six or seven, but the ticket windows were still open for tomorrow’s runs. It sat out there, Alcatraz, across the night, swathed in the clouds of fog that sat on the Bay. Other nights you’d be able to make it out from here, the lights, even the shape, the edges, but not tonight. Tonight there was only a sweeping light on the highest building, behind the cotton of the fog, and a moon up there somewhere, too, or a piece of one, a dull glow at two o’clock.

There were street entertainers, each with his own little knot of audience. There was a juggler. There was a close-up magician, making things disappear.

There was a man painted silver. Head to toe. In a silver tux and tails, silver spats and silver shoes and a silver top hat that stayed somehow on his silver head. With a boom box. Dancing like a robot.

The Sailors moved among the tourists, bumping into them like pick-pockets, knocking into strangers just for the joy of it, for the harshness of it, with a rough laugh whenever a man from Kansas or a woman from Germany would excuse themselves, though it was the Sailor who had run into the innocent. Same as it ever was. Some of the tourists would check their pockets, to make sure.

But it wasn’t their wallets that had been taken.

A couple of the crab stands were still open. Five bucks got you a red-and-white square paper tray of shredded Dungeness crab with a quarter lemon and a tear of sourdough baguette. Jimmy sat on the stool, close enough to be getting a facial from the stinking steam that came out of the stainless steel box. He’d already shoveled a forkful into his mouth. It was good.

“What do you want?” the teenager working the stand said. It was a Leone Brothers stand. This kid was likely a Leone grandson, maybe great-grandson.

His tone was a little quick. Jimmy waited.

“You look like you want something else.”

“More cocktail sauce, I guess,” Jimmy said.

The kid put an open paper cup of red sauce in front of Jimmy, the kind of little cup they put pills in, in a hospital. “You want horseradish, say it.”

“I do.”

The server spooned an amount of white horseradish that would have been too much for the average person into another paper cup and set it beside the first one.

“That’s the way I eat it,” the boy said.

“You still eat it?”

“Every day.”

“I thought maybe you’d get sick of it.”

“Every day. Ask him.”

“Who?”

The boy looked over Jimmy’s shoulder at a busboy pulling up black rubber mats, hosing off the underneath. The stand was in front of the mother restaurant, closed up at midnight.

“Do I eat crab?” the kid asked.

“Every day,” the busboy said.

From twenty feet away, a Sailor was watching them, watching the dumb little play, the tourist getting stroked by the Welcome to San Francisco Committee. This one, this Sailor, sat on the closed lid of a Dumpster, a blond man who’d been a bit overinflu enced by Billy Idol, a little too pretty, lips too full in that pouty Billy Idol way. He wore what a lot of them wore, the ones with that certain attitude, the navy peacoat and watch cap. This one also wore black straight-leg 505s, pegged skintight, and pointy-toed fairy boots like The Beatles used to wear.

Only red.

“I know you, Brother,” he mouthed to Jimmy. There was just a hint of blue around him, as if he were wrapped in another kind of fog. And he had