"I intend to," Paul said.
"You better," the policeman told him. "There's a reward out for you—you know that?"
Paul nodded. "Somebody told me." He didn't want to name Louie. Anybody who knew anything about him could end up in trouble because of it.
"You're lucky it wasn't somebody who turned you in instead," O'Connell said. "Believe you me, kid, you don't know how lucky you are."
"Some luck," Paul said. "If I were really lucky, the Germans wouldn't be after me." Andy O'Connell just shooed him away. He might have been saying he'd already wasted too much time on him. Paul left. He walked for several minutes before he realized he'd been as lucky with the cop as he had with the short-order cook.
Eight
Whenever Lucy went out these days, she kept looking around to see if she could spot Paul. He'd turned up a lot when she wasn't looking for him. Now that she was, she never got a glimpse of him. Things often seemed to work out like that.
She wondered if he had any clothes besides the ones he was wearing. Once she saw somebody who looked a lot like him in an orange-and-black Seals shirt. She was glad when that turned out to be a stranger. She thought of Paul as a Missions rooter, the way she was. She didn't know whether she was right. They'd never talked about it. But she would have been disappointed to find out he backed the team the rich and famous cheered for.
Work just went on from day to day. She'd learned the things she needed to know to be a good clerk. Now the job was just routine, the way her time at the sewing machine had been. Her supervisor couldn't complain. She did everything that needed doing, and did it well.
Even though she did it well, she wondered what she had to look forward to. Another fifty years of this? That was probably what she would have had if she'd stayed at the sewing machine. She hadn't thought about it so much then. She wondered why not. The work had been a lot harder.
Maybe that was part of the answer. She'd been so busy at the sewing machine, she hadn't had a chance to think about anything. This job made her think, at least some. And it had slow times when she couldn't help thinking. She almost wished it didn't. She would have had more peace of mind.
Sometimes she felt ashamed of herself for worrying. Paul was the one with things to worry about now. The Germans held his father. They seemed to have stopped caring about hers. They weren't after her. They sure were after him. She had a job. He was, she supposed, looking for one. If he wasn't, she didn't know what he'd do for money.
She also had somewhere to go home to. The Feldgendarmerie were keeping an eye on his home. For all she knew, the Kaiser's secret police were standing between him and whatever brighter Sunset District he came from.
Lucy snapped her fingers in annoyance. She'd meant to ask him about that the last time she saw him. The visit to Stanley Hsu's must have distracted her. She laughed, not that it was very funny. Here she'd gone all her life without having anything to do with the Triads. She'd hardly even believed in them, any more than she believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. They turned out to be real, all right. And how had she found out? Because of somebody who wasn't even Chinese. That was funny, in a strange sort of way.
Stanley Hsu didn't think so, though. He took this whole business as seriously as life and death. What did he think Paul could tell him? How much difference would it make to whoever in China was trying to stand up against the Germans? And what difference would that make to the United States?
Lucy had no idea what living in a free country was like. How could she, when she'd never done it? (For that matter, her great-grandparents hadn't, either.) She didn't think about living in a free country now, not really. She did hope that, if China somehow came out on top, it would be an easier master than Germany was. That was as far as her ambition went. She couldn't get excited about politics. She'd never had any politics to get excited about.
When she walked into the apartment, her brother bounced up and down. "You've got mail!" Michael squeaked. "You've got mail! Open it!"
"Hush," she told him. She couldn't help being a little excited herself, though. She didn't get mail all that often. The advertising mail that came to the family mostly had her parents' names on it. That kind of junk went straight into the trash, anyhow.
She didn't recognize the handwriting on the envelope or the name in the return address. But the return address itself was on Thirty-third Avenue. Lucy found herself smiling. She knew who'd sent it. Paul had to have figured she would.
The letter inside was chatty. It might have come from a tourist, not somebody who'd grown up in San Francisco. He talked about the sights he'd seen: the twistiest street in the world, the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, the big bronze statue of Wilhelm IV in front of City Hall, and the museum and Japanese garden in Golden Gate Park.
Japanese garden came at the front of one line. Saturday came at the front of the next one. At three o'clock came at the front of the one below that. Paul hadn't used a secret code, not really. He'd just hoped Lucy would be awake and alert and figure out what was gong on. She was pretty sure she had. She was also pretty sure no Feld-gendarmerie man could.
Paul had signed the letter with the same name he'd used on the envelope. The Germans wouldn't know who that was, either, if they'd read the letter. Paul had to believe they would. They might think he was a school friend or someone she worked with.
"Who is this guy it's from?" Michael wanted to know.
"None of your business, brat," Lucy said sweetly.
"I'm gonna tell," Michael said, and then, much louder, "Mommy!" But Mother backed Lucy. Her mail was her business. Mother didn't say anything about the brat. She didn't always seem to realize Michael was one—she was, after all, his mother, too. But he had been snooping, and so she didn't get mad at Lucy.
Saturday afternoon came around much too slowly. When Lucy first got the extra half day off, she'd thought it was the biggest luxury in the world. Now she took it for granted. Things often seemed to work out like that, too. It was a little disappointing—but having to work the whole day would have been a lot worse.
She took the Fulton Street bus to Golden Gate Park and walked to the Japanese garden. She was way early, but she didn't care. Whether she was seeing somebody or not, it was a nice place to spend an afternoon. Everything was in its place, all the plants perfectly pruned. It was beautiful. And it smelled green and growing, too. She didn't notice missing that when she was away from it, but it was very nice when she found it.
She'd just stooped to take a closer look at some ferns growing by the base of a pine tree when someone behind her said, "Hello, there."
Lucy jumped up and turned. "Hello, yourself," she managed.
Paul was smiling, but he stood too straight and moved in quick jerks. He might have been a wire stretched too tight for too long. "You're early," he said.
"I like it here," Lucy said. "Besides, so are you."
"I like it here, too." Even his smile seemed brittle, as if it might break if she tapped it too hard. "I'm glad you worked out what I was saying in the letter. I'm glad you knew it was me."
"Who else?" she answered. "I don't get a whole lot of letters, especially from people I've never heard of. I know you couldn't put your own name on it, but you didn't really need to."
"Okay," he said. "Shall we walk around and look at things?"
"Sure." They strolled the narrow, twisting paths. Most of the people who came to the garden seemed to be from out of town. Some of them were from out of the country. Several spoke German. Any American recognized the rulers' language—and recognized it as a signal to get out of the way, to make sure you weren't noticed.