More rattling and scraping from the roof made Paul look up. The jeweler ignored the racket. He was good at ignoring anything that didn't matter to him. That was part of what made him so formidable.
He went on, "We still have a bargain to finish, too, don't we? Now you and your father are both free of the Germans. That means we have some talking to do, eh? I look forward to asking you a lot of questions."
Paul believed that. He also knew he could afford to answer none of them—not with the truth, anyway. What had Dad said to the Tongs? For that matter, what had Dad said to the Feldgen-darmerie? Dad was looking back at him, but Paul couldn't tell what his expression meant.
Dad yawned. So did Stanley Hsu. They both crumpled to the floor. The jeweler banged his head on the counter as he went down. Paul hoped it wasn't. . . too bad.
A couple of minutes after that, Sammy Wong walked in the front door. He wore denim overalls and carried a tool chest. Except for the derby perched on his head, he could have been a repairman in the home timeline. 'They out?" he asked.
"You better believe it." Paul pointed behind the counter.
"Okay." Sammy Wong went over there and gave Paul's father the antidote for neofentanyl. As Lawrence Gomes grunted and sat up, Wong began breaking into jewelry cases and putting some of the best pieces in the toolchest.
"Hey!" Paul said. "What are you doing that for?"
"Let 'em think it's robbery," the man from Crosstime Traffic answered. "Let 'em think the whole thing with Curious Notions was just a setup to rip them off. They'll want to kill us, of course, a millimeter at a time." He sounded much too cheerful about that. "They'll want to kill us, but they won't believe in crosstime travel, any more than they believe in Santa Claus."
"He's right," Paul's father said as he climbed to his feet. He nodded to Sammy Wong. "Nice scheme. Do we know each other?"
"I don't think so." Wong gave Paul's father his name and went on stealing jewelry. Paul didn't need long to decide it was a good scheme. The Tongs might decide they'd been conned. That was okay, as far as Crosstime Traffic was concerned. While the Chinese in San Francisco might tear things apart looking for robbers, they wouldn't look for people from a different alternate.
Sammy Wong straightened. "Have enough?" Paul's father asked. Wong nodded. Dad said, "Cool. Let's get out of here."
"Second the motion," Paul added.
"No arguments from me," Wong said. Out the door they went. Paul worried. The police, the Feldgendarmerie, and the Tongs all knew what he and his father looked like. The cops and the Germans just wanted them back. Sammy Wong was right: the Tongs would want them dead.
The Chinese man from Crosstime Traffic strode along as if he hadn't a care in the world. So did Dad. Paul did his best to imitate them. He'd seen for himself that acting normal helped fool anybody who might be after you. It wasn't easy, though. He kept wanting to run, and to look down at the sidewalk so nobody could get a good look at his face.
When they turned on to Market Street, Paul let out a sigh of relief. True, Market was the main drag, and had more cops on it than other streets did. But it was also packed with people. As long as Paul didn't do anything to draw policemen's eyes, why should they notice him? He kept telling himself the same thing over and over.
They didn't. He and his father and Sammy Wong got back to the little house south of Market with no one the wiser. They had one problem solved, maybe even one and a half. Too many still lay ahead.
"We have to be careful around here," Lucy told Sammy Wong. "We don't want anyone from the shoe factory to see me."
"No, that wouldn't be so good," Wong agreed. "Okay, you lead the way around it so nobody's likely to spot us." Once they got up on Market Street, he nodded to her again. "Very neat. Very smooth. You know your way around, all right."
"I'd better," she said. "This is my city, after all." How much longer will it be my city? How different will that other San Francisco be? Is that other San Francisco real? Sometimes, when she was feeling what she'd once thought of as sensible, she had trouble believing it. But nothing that had happened to her lately was even close to sensible. When common sense stopped making sense, you stopped using it, didn't you? That was only . . . sensible.
She tugged at a wisp of hair that had got loose. She was wearing it pulled back into a ponytail, not falling free on both sides of her face. She had on more makeup than she usually used, too. It made her look older, and not much like the serf she was used to.
She remembered the not-quite-hidden-enough glances Paul had sent her way before she went out the door. She thought they meant he found the changes interesting. She hoped so.
Then she stiffened and worried about things that mattered right this minute. Here came a Feldgendarmerie man. People got out of his way, where they wouldn't have for any American. He walked past Lucy and Mr. Wong without even seeing them. Sure as sure, to the Germans all Chinese looked alike.
The streets around her father's shop had a funny kind of familiarity. When she was little, she'd come here all the time. Since she'd got a job of her own, though, she'd gone there instead. So she mostly remembered what things had looked like a few years before. Some of the shops had new owners now. Some had closed. A few had opened. Things weren't quite right, but she wasn't always sure just how they were wrong. She kept blinking and looking around, trying to figure out what had changed.
"You're not going in," Sammy Wong reminded her. "Too big a chance they'd recognize you. That's one place they will be watching, to see if you show up."
"I know," Lucy said. "It's okay. We'll do it just the way you planned."
"Good." Wong eyed her. "You're a solid kid. Paul was right about that much."
With a shrug, she answered, "I know what needs doing."
"I think maybe we both just said the same thing." Wong chuckled. "One thing the Feldgendarmerie won't be looking for is an old guy bringing in a radio to get it fixed." The radio he was carrying really didn't work. Lucy liked that. It showed attention to detail.
There was the shop. It looked exactly the way it was supposed to. The dragon with the electric-plug tail sprawled across the window. Sammy Wong steered Lucy to the little cafe across the street. The fellow behind the counter was new. She'd never seen him before. Better yet, he'd never seen her before. He didn't know she was Charlie Woo's daughter. She ordered fried rice with pork and sat down where she could keep an eye on her father's shop.
A man in the cafe seemed to be watching the shop more than he was eating. Maybe she was imagining that. Then again, maybe she wasn't. The man didn't pay any attention to her.
She knew what Sammy Wong would be doing across the street. He'd wait till he was the only customer—he probably wouldn't have to wait long. Then he'd show her father the TV pictures he'd shot of her. The camera was smaller than her closed fist. The screen was just a little square of plastic with some switches and controls on the back. Nobody in this San Francisco had anything like either one. They'd helped convince her that other Sunset District really was out there . . . somewhere. If they didn't convince her father of the same thing, nothing ever would.
Mr. Wong came out of the shop as she finished the fried rice.
He looked down the street, as if towards a friend, and nodded twice. Lucy got up and left the cafe. This was the part that made her nervous. She crossed the street and walked by in front of the shop. She didn't go in. She didn't even look in the window. She just wanted to show Father she really was okay. But if that man in the cafe realized who she was . . . That wouldn't be good at all.
She came up to Wong. "Everything all right?" she asked quietly.
He nodded one more time. "They'll be there. Now let's us disappear."