Driver's Log 11/02/14 3:00AM EST: Due to the time shift my body thinks it's 4AM, but I enjoy driving at this time of night. Baltimore's streets are empty, even the cops have gone home; red lights are now optional. I pick up a client in Mount Vernon. He's well dressed, tired, and gives off the air of someone that's been working all day. His phone transmits his drop off location, it pops up on my GPS with a ding. Druid Heights at 3AM, shiiiiiiiiit. This part of the city looks like the set of a zombie movie. Every storefront is boarded up, and the building are falling to pieces, some have un-repaired fire damage that looks a decade old. I head up Pennsylvania Ave, passing the Upton subway stop. The modern glass structure around the subway entrance is opaque with age and sickly brown like a smoker's teeth.

The drop off is in front of a green boarded up store front, but the passengers asks me to pull into a pitch black alley and drop him off in the back. My alert level jumps from "mildly cautious" to "no fucking way". Running through my head, "Could this be an ambush? Nah, that would be a pretty weird way to plan an ambush." Still, I should say no, but lack of sleep and caffeine are making me bold so I pull in without protest. The alley looks like a scene from the "Silent Hill" video game franchise. Plaster is falling away to expose raw brick, brick is crumbling to reveal rotting wooden joists and decaying steal i-beams. Each concrete backlot is surround by tall rusty chain link fencing that stretches up to the second story of the buildings.

I drop him off at his house. He opens the gate and cautiously surveys the concrete lot, before closing himself in and padlocking the gate to the fencepost. I understand now why he wanted to be dropped off in the rear. He's as frightened as I am. He probably doesn't want potential robbers to know anyone lives here, especially a person that can afford to dress the way he has and can afford to be chauffeured home in a shiny black car. I make my way out of the alley onto North Avenue and drive home for the night.