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."
Ten
Paul's escorts started sticking to him like glue. Whenever he came out of the lobby of his miserable hotel, they walked up to him as if they were old friends. Once, just once, he tried going out the back way, the way the trash went out. Two of them were waiting for him in the alley. They didn't seem surprised to see him. He wasn't very surprised to see them. He walked down the rubbish-strewn alley as if it were the street. They tagged along.
When they got to the sidewalk, the rest of the young men from the Tongs fell in with them. The one who did most of the talking for them said, "Your old man's just about sprung, I hear."
"Good." Paul tried not to get too excited at the news—or at any news he just heard. Seeing was believing. Until he saw, he wasn't going to start jumping up and down. It was too easy for people to lie to him to get him to do what they wanted.
For that matter, even after his father got out of jail—if he did— their troubles weren't over. How were they going to get back into Curious Notions? How were they going to get back to the home timeline? How were they going to keep the Chinese and the Germans from figuring out at least the basics of the crosstime secret?
Good questions were so much easier to find than good answers. He'd noticed that before.
A San Francisco policeman walked by on the other side of the street. He was swinging his nightstick by the leather thong and whistling at the same time. He paid no attention to Paul—he was too busy showing off and having a good time.
"Dumb flatfoot," one of Paul's escorts said.
"Would you rather run into a smart one?" Paul asked.
The young Chinese man didn't bother to answer, not in words. By the way he threw back his shoulders and stuck out his chin, he didn't think there were any smart San Francisco cops. Paul's guess was that he was wrong. Paul also guessed his escort wouldn't listen if he pointed that out. One of these days, the fellow from the Tongs would probably find out the hard way.
"Find out the hard way," Paul muttered. He'd found out too many things about this alternate like that. How many more would he have to bang his nose into before he got back to the home timeline? That led straight back to the even more basic question he'd asked himself before—would he get back to the home timeline?
Up the street toward him came a middle-aged Asian man who reminded him of Bob Lee. It was dislike at first sight, as far as he was concerned. The man strode along as if he owned the sidewalk. He didn't get out of the way for Paul's escorts, and they didn't get out of the way for him.
That was liable to mean trouble. Such faceoffs could end up as badly here as in the home timeline or almost any other world. That Asian man was asking for a trip to the hospital if he thought he could take on so many by himself.
Then, just before he would have bumped into Paul and his escorts, the man spat out a sentence in harsh Chinese. The young men around Paul stopped as if they'd run into a brick wall. Paul took one more step forward, and found himself out in front of the pack.
The man pointed to him. "You," he said in tones that put Paul's back up right away. "You come along with me."
"What? Why?" Paul yelped.
"Triad business, that's why." The man added another sentence in Chinese. Paul understood not a word of it, but it kept his escorts frozen in their tracks.
Hesitantly, the one who did most of the talking for them said, "But we haven't seen you around here before, sir." It was one of the politest protests Paul had ever heard—a lot politer than he would have expected from the young men who led him around.
It didn't impress the stranger. With a sniff, he said, "Well, of course you haven't. I just got here from Hong Kong—he's that important." He jerked a thumb toward Paul.