Curious Notions

Nine

Paul thought hard about disguises. He had very few clothes to work with. He'd got away from Curious Notions with only what he had on his back. Buying more ate into his cash, so he'd done as little as he could. Luckily, San Francisco's mild climate meant he didn't have to have a lot of different kinds of clothes. Everything could be about the same, and he could mix and match.

He thought about growing a mustache like his father's, but decided it would take too long. He thought about buying a false mustache or a blond wig. The one, though, might not change his looks enough. As for the other . . . He didn't see how he could look like anything but a brunet wearing a blond wig.

If he went out as himself, the men from the Tongs were going to follow him. Since he couldn't do anything about that, he resigned himself to it. He even tried to make it work for him. He stayed in the shabby little room as much as he could stand. When he went out, he went to the most boring places he could find: to the laundry, to a little cafe around the corner, or to the newsstand to buy a paper. Then he'd head back to his room.

This San Francisco had buses, but it didn't have the BART subway lines. He couldn't disappear into a hole in the ground and lose people like that. All he could hope to do was lull them into thinking he was the dullest person in the world, somebody they could follow if they were half asleep.

He still had enough money to leave town. If this were his world, he would have done it if he saw the chance. As things were, he couldn't. He couldn't leave his father, and he couldn't get too far from Curious Notions. Down below the shop was the only way he could get back to the home timeline.

What were they thinking there? When shipments and messages stopped, they'd figure out that something had gone wrong . . . wouldn't they? But if they did, would they try to send somebody to this alternate to find out what? They might. If they did, though, they were liable to walk right into the Feldgendarmerie's hands.

However much Paul wanted to, he didn't see what he could do about that. He did try to get free of his followers one foggy morning. He went into that cafe around the corner—he often ate breakfast there. This time, though, he took off his denim jacket, put on a cloth cap he'd stuffed into his pocket, and left without ordering anything.

He kept his head down, walked with a limp, and muttered to himself in what he hoped sounded like an old man's voice. Maybe all that confused the men from the Tongs. Maybe the fog had more to do with it. Whatever it was, it worked. As soon as he rounded the corner, he sped up. He went left and right at random for several blocks. Every so often, he would pause in a doorway to see if he'd shaken off his followers. When he didn't see anyone, he'd move on.

There he was, on his own. The fog lifted. The sun came out. It turned clear and crisp and lovely, the kind of weather only San Francisco can have—and that San Francisco can have any month of the year. Everything was perfect. Well, almost everything.

He realized he had no idea what to do next.

He couldn't break Dad out of jail singlehanded. If he owned any brains, he wouldn't get anywhere near the jail. The Tongs and the Germans would both be watching it. He thought about going to see Stanley Hsu. The jeweler could tell him what was going on. He thought about it... and then shook his head. Here he was, free, and he wanted to go tell the man from the Tongs that he'd shaken his followers? How stupid was that? Stupid enough, for sure.

Then he thought about going to see Lucy. He laughed at himself. He really was dumb this morning. She'd be working. She liked being a clerk better than running a sewing machine. It paid better, too—not well, but better. Even so, it didn't seem right that somebody younger than he was should be working a fifty-five-hour week at a deadend job.

Nothing about the United States in this alternate seemed right. The country wasn't free. Nobody except the handful of rich people could hope for a decent education—and they had to suck up to the Germans. There was no chance of anything better. Back in an old book he'd read in school, somebody'd called tyranny a boot in the face of mankind forever. The home timeline was lucky. It hadn't worked out like that there. The home timeline had its troubles, but most people were free. Here . . . Here was the boot heel, right in the kisser.

Something else that didn't seem right was leaving somebody as smart and as nice as Lucy Woo stuck in a miserable place like this. Because of what she'd figured out, she was a security risk for the home timeline. But if he ever got the chance, he wanted to show her a Sunset District where even the stray dogs didn't have to look over their shoulders every few minutes.

He walked along for half a block. Then he stopped, kicking at the bumpy, uneven concrete of the sidewalk. He was thinking about what he wanted, not about what Lucy would want. This was her home. Her family was here. Taking her away would be kidnapping, even if it were possible. And she couldn't go for just a visit. That would be—what did Shakespeare call it?—the most unkindest cut of all. She'd know things could be better, and she wouldn't be able to tell anybody. What could be more unfair to her?

And she'd know the whole crosstime secret, not just most of it. That wouldn't do, either.

Could things get better here? Could the United States be free again, after close to a century and a half of getting its nose rubbed in the dirt? Could the Chinese help? Would they help, or would they just want to be top dogs instead of the Germans? Those were all good questions. Paul had answers to none of them.

He wondered what Lucy thought. Everything kept coming back to her. That was . .. interesting. He hadn't realized she'd got so far under his skin. He'd never kissed her, never even held her hand. She wasn't under his skin like that, exactly. But he liked her. More than that, he admired her. She had problems bigger than any he'd ever imagined—till now, anyhow. She didn't even know how big some of them were, because they were the problems of this whole alternate. No matter how big and how tough they were, she carried on. She didn't complain or make a fuss. She just did what she needed to do. He admired that, too.

What about me? Paul wondered. What do I need to do? How do I need to do it? Lucy seemed to know without even thinking about it. Paul had an idea of what he needed to do: get Dad out of jail and get back to the home timeline. How? That was a different question.

He also didn't know what he ought to do now that he could do it without leaving the Tongs any the wiser. He realized he should have thought that out before escaping his followers. Now he was all dressed up with no place to go. And if he had to get free of them again, it wouldn't be so easy. They'd know he could, so they'd keep a tighter watch on him.

Maybe I ought to go back. Maybe I ought to pretend I didn't know they weren't keeping an eye on me. Paul shook his head. He couldn't stand that. He had managed to get away. Not doing something with his new-found freedom seemed a criminal waste.

Casually, his hands in his pockets, he ambled in the direction of Curious Notions. Who could say what might turn up? If he didn't go and take a look around, he'd never find out.

"Lucy, where is Frances Klingerman's personnel folder?" Mrs. Cho asked.

"Isn't it in the maternity file?" Lucy asked. The sewing-machine operator had had a baby boy a week earlier.

"Oh," Mrs. Cho said. "Let me check there." She did, and then nodded. "Yes, I have it. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Lucy said. She made a face behind her supervisor's back. Mrs. Cho knew everything there was to know about the shoe factory's paperwork. She understood company policy and rules and regulations in a way Lucy wouldn't for years and years. Most of the time, she knew where all the folders were, and which papers lurked in each one.

But she didn't know Frances Klingerman had had a baby. She didn't have the faintest idea who Frances Klingerman was. To her, the woman was jut a name on a label on a manila folder. Lucy had worked a few machines away from the new mother. She knew her husband stayed out at night in saloons, and sometimes came home drunk and mean. She knew how the little girl the Klingermans already had was starting to lose her baby teeth. She knew Frances liked to eat sandwiches with really smelly cheese in them for lunch.

Frances Klingerman was a person to her. The woman was nothing but her folder to Mrs. Cho. That seemed wrong to Lucy. What seemed even wronger was that Mrs. Cho could fire Frances Klinger-man or demote her or cut her pay without ever finding out who she was.

Then, all of a sudden, Lucy shivered. If she stayed in the personnel office till she was as old as her supervisor, wouldn't she learn all the ropes? Wouldn't she find out everything there was to know about policies and rules and regulations? Wouldn't she stop thinking about the people who actually made the shoes—stop thinking of them as people? Wouldn't they just turn into ... folders for her? Wouldn't she turn into Mrs. Cho?

She'd never had a scarier thought.

What can I do about it? How can I help it? Like a trapped animal, she looked around the office. Where was the way out? How could she help becoming what her supervisor already was?

Did they have offices like this in the world Paul came from? If they'd figured out how to make the Sunset District a nice place, wouldn't they also know how to turn work into something people could stand or even enjoy? She sighed. They sure hadn't done that here.

Enjoy it or not, she kept going till the end of the day. Every time she took care of something without even thinking about it, she worried. Am I turning into Mrs. Cho? She hoped not. She wouldn't have had to wonder about anything like that if she'd stayed at her sewing machine. Nothing could have made her turn into somebody like Hank Simmons.

She felt even more tired than usual when she started for home. Putting one-foot in front of the other took work. But she kept going. She wondered how Paul was doing. Next to the worries he had, hers were small potatoes.

Thinking about Paul also made her think about Curious Notions. She wondered if Feldgendarmerie men still lurked inside.

She also wondered if the Triads had come by to grab whatever they could. How much would the Germans have left? Was there stuff inside the Germans didn't know about? Was it stuff Paul might have told the Triads about?

It won't hurt to take a look, Lucy told herself. Nobody will pay any attention to me if I just walk by. Vm only another face. For that matter, Vm only another Chinese face. The Feldgendarmerie will think I look like every other Chinese girl in San Francisco.

Talking yourself into doing something dangerous and foolish could be amazingly easy. Lucy didn't worry about that till later— which only went to show how easy it was.

Almost before she knew it, she was walking up the street toward Curious Notions. Paul would have told her she was dumb. Her father would have told her she was dumb. Even Michael would have told her she was dumb. She didn't want to think about what her mother would have told her. She walked up the street anyhow.

And she turned out not to be the only one drawn like a moth to the flame. Paul stood across the street from Curious Notions, leaning against a telephone pole. He seemed casual enough, till she saw his face. He eyed the shop he and his father had run the way a hungry dog eyed at a steak.

He eyed Curious Notions—and didn't even notice the two big, beefy cops sneaking up behind him. The cops looked like something out of a bad movie. They were so obvious, people should have been pointing at them or running away from them. And people were.

Everybody except Paul, whose attention was elsewhere.

"Look out!" Lucy yelled. "They're after you!"

Paul jumped a foot in the air. When he came down, he took off as if he had wings on his shoes.

"Stop!" one of the policemen yelled.

"Stop in the name of the law!" the other one added. They both pounded after him. They didn't draw their guns. Lucy thought that was interesting. They wanted him, all right, but they wanted him alive.

She put her head down and kept walking. The policemen hadn't noticed who she was. They'd been watching Paul as hard as he'd been watching Curious Notions. They had no idea who'd shouted the warning.

One of them blew a whistle—Tweeeeet! The long, shrill blast of sound did nothing to slow Paul down. The cop blew again anyway— Tweeeeet! Paul scooted around a corner. Big black shoes thumping on the pavement, the policemen gave chase. He was speedier than Lucy had thought he would be. The two cops weren't going to catch him unless he fell down and sprained his ankle—or unless they started shooting.

Before long, Lucy heard sirens. More policemen were coming. She hoped Paul would get away. She couldn't do anything more for him right now. It was only luck that she'd been able to do what she had. She walked faster. Some helpful soul was liable to tell the cops what the girl who'd shouted out that warning looked like. Better if she wasn't there when that happened.

When she got back to the apartment, she told her mother what she'd done. That turned out to be a mistake. Lucy should have seen it coming, but she hadn't. "That boy has caused nothing but trouble," Mother said. "You shouldn't have anything to do with him."

"I don't have anything to do with him, not like that," Lucy said.

"A good thing, too." Mother pointed to a big pile of shrimp on the counter. "You can peel those out of their shells."

"Okay." Lucy didn't want to quarrel about Paul. And, while peeling shrimp was work, eating shrimp was pure pleasure. She pointed to them, too. "Where did they come from? They're always so expensive."

"Your father did some work for Charlie Antonelli, the shrimper up at Fisherman's Wharf. Mr. Antonelli paid him back with shrimp instead of money."

"Father should work for him more often," Lucy said, and her mother laughed. Maybe she wasn't going to nag about Paul. Lucy hoped not, anyway.

Mother had boiled the shrimp. They were a lovely white and orangeish pink, not the greenish color they had when they were fresh. Most of the shell, along with their little legs, came off easily. Lucy used her fingernail to take out the black vein along each shrimp's back. She got meat under it, but she didn't care.

The tail was separate. Sometimes you could peel that off, too, and leave the meat on the shrimp. Sometimes the tail broke off, with the little bit of meat still inside. Lucy would crack the tails with her fingers and get the extra meat out. When she did, she'd pop it into her mouth. That was the bonus the person who peeled the shrimp got.

Michael came into the kitchen when the job was almost done. "Can I help?" he asked.

"Mother told me to do it," Lucy said, and she ate the meat out of another shrimp tail right in front of his nose.

"Mommy!" Michael said—the magic word.

"Let him have a few to do, Lucy," Mother said. Michael looked so smug, Lucy wanted to drop a shrimp down the back of his shirt. If Mother hadn't been standing there watching, she might have done it. But then who could guess what her little brother would do to her to get even?

Michael didn't just eat the meat out of the tails. He ate a couple of whole shrimp, which was cheating. When Lucy told on him—and she did—Mother only wagged a finger at him. She had an indulgent little smile on her face. Michael could get away with stuff where Lucy couldn't because he was a boy. It wasn't fair, which didn't mean it wasn't true.

Supper was wonderful. They all had as much shrimp as they wanted. "Hooray for Mr. Antonelli!" Lucy said. Not even Michael argued with that. Lucy asked her father, "What did you do for him?"

"I put a radio direction-finder in his boat," Father answered. "I hate to say it, but it's a lot better than an ordinary compass."

"Why do you hate to say it?" Michael asked.

"Because Chinese people invented the compass, a long time ago," Father said. He made a sour face. "The direction-finder is a German gadget. It's a good one, though. It does just what it's supposed to do."

"How did you get hold of a German gadget to put on Mr. An-tonelli's boat?" Lucy asked. Michael looked angry, maybe because she'd beaten him to the question.

"Well, sometimes you get to know people who will sell you things if the price is right, and who won't ask a lot of questions about what you want to do with them." Father winked. "The Germans are just like any other people. Some of them will do things like that. For this, though, it would have been too expensive. Getting my hands on the drawings was more complicated, but a lot cheaper. Then I made it myself. All the parts are right off the shelf. That's one of the things I like about it."

"Wow," Lucy said.

Father only shrugged. He was a modest man. If he'd been less modest, he might have had more money. "It's not that hard," he said. "Anything ordinary people use, I can deal with and not have too much trouble." He cocked his head to one side. "That was what drove me crazy about your friends from Curious Notions. Some of the things they had . . . Well, they worked. I saw them work. I'm still not always sure about how or why, but they did."

I know why they were strange. I know why they were different. Lucy wanted to tell her father. She wanted to, but she didn't. Letting him know would make him happy—if he believed her and didn't think she'd gone crazy. But letting him know could endanger Paul. The Feldgendarmerie had already grabbed Father once. They might come back. They might not just throw him in jail this time, either.

Lucy didn't like keeping secrets from her family. She wasn't keeping Paul's secret only from her family, though. She was keeping it from the whole world.

One of the things Paul had learned in Crosstime Traffic training was to act as normal as he could. That wasn't always easy, but it was good advice. As soon as he got away from the first two San Francisco policemen, he stopped running. People stared at someone dashing down the sidewalk. They remembered him. Some of them would give him away if the cops came by a little later on.

But somebody sauntering along the street without a care in the world . . . Who noticed somebody like that? He might be on his way home from work, or off to visit a friend, or maybe just heading to the grocery store around the corner. Whatever he was doing, there were hundreds more just like him.

A police car drove up the street past Paul. Its red dome lights spun and blinked. Its bell clanged. The cops inside had to be on the lookout for him, and for nobody but him. They didn't give him a second glance. The car shot past and was gone.

For once, coming into the Tenderloin was a relief. Policemen who came here had more criminals than him to worry about. He wouldn't even have minded running into the young men from the Tongs. They wouldn't give him to the Feldgendarmerie.

What they might do to him themselves was an interesting question. They couldn't be happy with him for giving them the slip. He might have made a good-sized mistake of several different flavors by showing he could get away.

But he didn't see any of his watchers when he got to the cheap hotel where he was staying. Had they fanned out all over San Francisco looking for him? If they had, they wouldn't be very happy to find out he'd returned right under their noses. No, he probably hadn't been very smart to show what he could do. He couldn't stand being watched all the time, though.

Too late to worry about it now. He went up the worn, grimy steps and into the worn, grimy lobby. The desk clerk sent him an incurious glance, then went back to his picture-filled story.

Paul clumped up the stairs to his room. The elevator, he was convinced, would never be repaired. And when were the walls of the stairway last painted? They were a very peculiar color, halfway between dirt and fog. It was a color that had given up on itself a long time ago.

The carpet in the hallway wasn't as old as that sad, sorry paint, but Paul would have bet it was older than he was. The locks and dead bolts on his door, on the other hand, were shiny new. He took out his assortment of keys and worked them one by one. At last, with all of them unlocked, he turned the knob and went into his room. He let out a sigh of relief. This wasn't much of a home. Such as it was, it was his castle.

Bob Lee sat on the edge of the bed.

Paul's jaw dropped. "What are you doing here?" he demanded. "How did you get in?" He still had the key ring in his hand. It felt useless for anything except perhaps throwing at the intruder.

"Gomes, you are a lot of trouble," Lee said.

That didn't answer either of Paul's questions. Paul got the idea the Chinese man wasn't going to tell him anything more, either. "Get out," he said. "Get out or I'll. . ."

Lee laughed in his face. "You'll what? Call the police? Go ahead. I'll give you a nickel for the phone. Throw me out? You can try." A small automatic pistol appeared in his right hand. One second, it wasn't there. The next, it was. The man from the Tongs looked as if he knew what to do with it.

As steadily as he could, Paul said, "Shoot me and you'll never find out any of the answers you want."

"Not from you, maybe." Bob Lee shrugged. "I know where someone else who's got them is stashed." He had a smile only a reptile could love. But the pistol vanished as fast as it had appeared. "You have some explaining to do. How did you get away from my ... associates? They said you must have used some of your special tricks, because they were watching you all the time."

Now Paul laughed. Bob Lee's eyebrows rose a millimeter or two. Paul said, "If I had as many special tricks as you think I do, would I be in the mess I'm in?"

"Who knows?" Lee's voice was hard and flat. "Anyone can have things go wrong—anyone at all. Now answer my question. How did you get away?"

Paul thought about jumping him. Then he thought better of it. He said, "No special tricks, not like you mean," and told what he'd done at the cafe.

The man from the Tongs studied him. At last, Lee gave a reluctant nod. "Okay. I believe you. I think you caught them napping. I don't think you'll catch them napping again. You'd better not, or I'll have some new associates." He didn't say what would happen to the ones who'd been watching Paul. Paul didn't think they would just get a lecture.

He said, "What are you going to do with what you get from my dad and me? I can tell you, it won't be as much as you think it is. We don't work miracles."

"Close enough," Bob Lee said. "Some of the things you were selling . . ." He eyed Paul like an eagle eyeing a rabbit. After a moment, he went on, "What will we do? Some people have been in the driver's seat here for a long time. Now, maybe it's the turn of some other people." He didn't quite point a thumb at his own chest, but he might as well have.

"How will you be better than the Germans?" Paul asked. "Will you be better than the Germans?"

For a split second, naked surprise showed on Lee's face. Plainly, being better than the Germans had never occurred to him. It probably hadn't occurred to anyone else in the San Francisco Tongs or back in China, either. All they thought about was being on top. Paul wasn't surprised. He couldn't say he wasn't disappointed.

At last, Lee answered, "We won't be the Kaiser. We won't be the Feldgendarmerie. Is that enough?"

"What do I know? I'm just the goose with the golden eggs, remember?"

Lee's laugh was anything but amused. "Some goose."

"Have it your way." Paul shrugged. "Looks like you will anyhow. But if you put the Emperor of China where the Kaiser used to sit and the men from the Tongs move into the Feldgendarmerie offices, what's really changed? Why should anybody who isn't part of your gang even care whether you win or lose?"

Would Bob Lee even understand what he was talking about? A lot of people who made revolutions made them for their own sake and thought no more about it. Lee, meanwhile, studied him again, this time with a different kind of surprise.

"You think about these things, don't you?" Lee said.

"I hope so," Paul answered. "Do you?"

"I also hope so," the older man said. "I know this, though: whatever I think doesn't matter till we overthrow the Germans. If we don't do that, if we can't do that, nothing else matters. Nothing at all."

Paul would have liked to tell him he was wrong. He would have liked to, but he couldn't. He said, "I'll tell you what matters to me. Getting my father out of jail matters to me, that's what."

Lee rose. "I think maybe we have to do that. If he talks to the Germans and you talk to us, nobody is better off. So all right, we take care of it."

He walked out of the room with no more good-bye than that. He wouldn't be trying to free Paul's father as a favor now. He'd be doing it because he saw an advantage for himself in the doing. That meant he was much likelier to get the job done.

Lucy kept walking past Curious Notions every so often. No one in that neighborhood knew who she was. She strolled right by San Francisco policemen and Feldgendarmerie officers. Neither Americans nor Germans gave her any special notice. Why should they have? Whoever she was, she obviously wasn't Paul Gomes.

Sometimes the Feldgendarmerie men had their big Alsatians with them. The dogs took no notice of Lucy, either. She was glad of that. They were even meaner than most of the Germans who led them.

Little by little, the Germans and their American stooges began to pay less attention to Curious Notions. Or maybe they just paid less obvious attention to the store. All Lucy knew was that she saw them less often. No, she knew one other thing, too: she didn't miss them a bit.

She'd just walked past a Feldgendarmerie sergeant with an Alsatian when the dog began to bark. The noise sounded like ripping canvas. Lucy jumped. When she turned around, the sergeant was tugging on the leash for all he was worth. "Nein, Fritz!" he shouted. "Nein!"

Fritz wasn't interested in Lucy. He was trying to get a marmalade cat. And the cat seemed ready for him. Its ears were flat against its skull, its back arched, the fur on its tail puffed out till it looked like a bottle brush. Its green eyes blazed. A snarl showed off needle teeth. That the Alsatian would have made a mouthful of it seemed to bother it not a bit. It would go down swinging.

"Fritz!" the Feldgendarmerie man yelled again. He gave the leash a yank that must have almost choked the Alsatian. With a last growl and then a yelp, the dog came. The sergeant tipped his cap to Lucy. In accented English, he said, "Sorry if he scare you, miss. Dogs and cats, ja?"

"Dogs and cats," Lucy agreed. She liked cats better herself. The sergeant led the dog away. Lucy knelt by the red tabby. She didn't hold her hand out. The cat had been ready to fight. It might bite or claw her. She just waited to see what it would do next.

It eyed her. When she didn't do anything, it started licking a paw and using the wet fur to wash its face. Then it washed its side for a while, and then started nibbling at the tufts of hair between its back toes. It also gnawed at one of its hind claws. She could hear the noise of its teeth. It sounded like a man biting his nails.

After the cat finished taking care of its person, it looked up. It seemed mildly surprised to find Lucy still there. Now she did stretch out her hand towards it. She was ready to snatch it back as fast as she could. But the marmalade cat leaned forward till it seemed about to topple over. It didn't, of course. It sniffed her fingers, then rubbed the side of its head against her hand and started to purr.

"Hello!" Lucy said softly. "Hello!" She scratched behind its ears and stroked its nose. It purred louder. After a minute or so, though, it shook its head till its ears rattled. Then it trotted off, tail held high, as if it had just remembered it was late for dinner with a friend. It didn't look back once.

Lucy wished she could go where she pleased when she pleased. She wished she could make friends and forget about them, both in the blink of an eye. She wished she were a cat, in other words. She wasn't, and she couldn't do any of those things. She could only wish.

When she got home, she went into the kitchen to help Mother with supper, the way she usually did. Instead of handing her a knife or a spoon or an eggbeater, Mother said, "There's something in the mail for you."

"Is there?" Lucy said—that was always a small event, a break from routine. "Who's it from?"

"I don't know. No return address." Her mother paused and then added, "Whoever it is, he has very nice handwriting."

"Oh." That disappointed Lucy, though she tried not to show it. She'd hoped the mail came from Paul, and his handwriting was pretty ordinary. You could read it, but you couldn't say it was anything special.

The envelope sat on the dining-room table. The handwriting was nice. It was so neat, it was almost elegant. The paper was much finer than what she usually saw, too. She thought she knew who'd sent the note even before she opened it. And she turned out to be right.

If I could have the pleasure of your company at seven o'clock on the evening of the seventeenth, I would greatly appreciate it. Under the single sentence, Stanley Hsu had signed his name with a fancy flourish. The seventeenth was . . . day after tomorrow. The jeweler had made sure the invitation would get to her on time.

She stuck it in her purse. She didn't want Michael finding it and reading it. She didn't know what sort of rude, nasty thing he would say, but she was sure he'd come up with something.

"Well?" Mother asked when she went back into the kitchen.

"It's from Mr. Hsu," Lucy answered. She wished for one more thing—that she had nothing to do with the Triads. She was no more likely to get that wish than to turn into a cat. "He wants to see me night after next."

"Does he say what it's about?" Mother asked. Lucy shook her head. Mother said, "You've got to go."

"Yes, I know." Lucy sighed. "I wish I didn't."

"You can't help it," her mother said. "He's being polite about things, but that can change." She snapped her fingers. "It can change like that. You don't want it to change. Believe me—you don't."

Lucy sighed again. "I believe you. I'll go." She reached for a knife and started chopping up vegetables. Mother set a wok on the stove and put a little—just a little—oil in it. The vegetables and a bit of leftover chicken would go onto rice for supper.

Lucy liked the wait before she saw Stanley Hsu about as much as she liked waiting before the dentist called her in. Her teeth were good. She'd had only two cavities. But getting them fixed hadn't been any fun at all.

Work was slow. That gave her more time to think, and to wonder, and to worry. She would almost sooner have been back at her sewing machine. But no sooner had she thought that than she heard Hank Simmons bellowing at somebody. Maybe he had reason to bellow, maybe he didn't. He always did it, though, whether he had reason to or not. All of a sudden, being right where she was didn't seem so bad.

The evening of the seventeenth was cool and foggy. Car horns were everywhere, warning people—and threatening them, too. Lucy stepped off corners very carefully. Twice she came close to getting run over anyhow.

Because of the fog, she almost walked past the jewelry shop, too. She stopped two paces past it, feeling foolish. She would rather have kept on walking. Maybe her feet were trying to tell her something. Whether they were or not, though, she couldn't afford to listen to them. She opened the door. The bell above it rang.

"Good evening, Miss Woo," Stanley Hsu said from behind the counter. "And how are you today?"

"I'm all right," Lucy answered, "or I will be when I find out what you want from me." She knew she was supposed to be polite to the jeweler. He was an important man with even more important connections. But it wasn't easy.

His smile said he didn't even notice her rudeness. No—it said he noticed, but he was too nice a fellow to care. That kind of smile was almost always a lie. He said, "I have someone here I would like you to meet. Excuse me for one moment." He ducked into the back room.

When he came out again, Paul Gomes' father came out behind him. Seeing a smile so much like Paul's come out from behind that big mustache was a jolt. "Good to see you again, Miss Woo," Lawrence Gomes said. "Good to see anybody but Feldgendarmerie men again—you'd better believe it is."

"It's great to see you free," Lucy said. "Does Paul know you're out yet?"

Paul's father glanced toward Stanley Hsu. Now the jeweler looked faintly embarrassed. "There is one slight problem with that. We hoped you might be able to help us, Miss Woo."

"What is it?" Lucy asked.

"Paul. . . seems to be missing. We don't know where he is. Do you, by any chance?"

Helplessly, Lucy shook her head. "No."