CHAPTER TWO
The light of dawn filled the eastern sky before Rebecca reached the alleyway where her tiny apartment was located. When she first arrived in the city, in search of excitement, romance, money—all the things small-town singles think of when they decide to leave home and go off on their own—she gravitated towards the streets and alleyways on the hillside just above the seedy Tenderloin, the area she had read about in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.
She found a small in-law apartment in a narrow, dead-end street off of Taylor called Mulford Alley. In San Francisco, Rebecca learned that “in-law” meant illegal, built against zoning restrictions, and most likely built without permits. At first, the idea of living in an illegal apartment bothered her, until she learned they ex
