Excerpt: Mel Corbin's beat was from eight at night to four in the morning. The pay was fair, but unfortunately his duties prevented him from studying his law books. About all he could do as he tramped the water front, weaving in and out of the huge warehouses, and punching his clock, was try to review what he had learned the previous day in class. A big man who'd served a hitch in the Navy after graduation from SC, with the modest help of Uncle Sam he was now trying to finish three years of law in two and finding it difficult. Approximately four hours of sleep plus an occasional nap in the afternoon, was slowly draining his energy, ruining his disposition and retarding his education. Even with his vitality he had come to the sickening realization he could not keep it up indefinitely. It was one of those pea soup fogs that quite frequently drift in from the Pacific, settle like a smothering blanket over the San Pedro docks, and make even a watchman's rounds more hazardous. It was the kind of a night when thieves, cutthroats, and muggers ply their trade with little fear of apprehension. Close to three thirty by his watch, Corbin reached the end of the line of warehouses, with the black oily looking water lapping with a dispirited appetite at the encrusted piling. The silence was almost as smothering as the fog. Corbin could barely hear the distant fog horn on Point Fermin; it was a vagrant sound that came and went with dismal irregularity.