When Lee stepped onto the street, he remembered he had meant to tell Andy his name was Leland Wallace or Lee Reid or Wallace Wheeler, but telling her his real situation had made her his accomplice, which was less lonely. He had thirty-five cents and no safe place to stay, and he was beginning to feel guilty for having left without telling his mother what he was doing. Still, he walked as if San Francisco were his home. A confident gait struck him as a fine disguise.

He imagined himself a running stream. He was dappled with sunlight, and trouble passed through him, leaving him clear, cool, intact, and, best of all, shallow. He had read the Fairbanks book Laugh and Live, and had realized that such had to be the root of Fairbanks’s personal philosophy, for surely one had to decide aggressively to be so shallow. He hoped he had been shallow enough with Andy.

He was now hip-deep in Boy Scouts. He tipped his cap, and they waved Liberty Bell door hangers at him.

Every Boy Scout in the city was similarly employed, fanning out from encampments in North Beach, Golden Gate Park, the Fillmore, and Union Square to canvass the city with reminders. Their secret orders, given over campfires in the predawn darkness, were to ring doorbells and then run, as quickly and quietly as if tracking a white-tailed deer, to the next residence. When they were done, and business hours had begun, they would ask every storekeeper if he had bought a Liberty Bond today. Boy Scouts— trustworthy, loyal, clean, and so on—were irresistible forces.

But the financial district of downtown San Francisco was a tougher nut to crack. Although corporations subscribed in force, junior clerks and auditors, secretaries and copyists tended to hide under their employers’ wings. Surely, if the New York Life Insurance Company had pledged $450,000, its employees who owned but a suitcase, a few drinking glasses, and two pairs of shoes needn’t contribute personally?

The Liberty Loan Committee determined to deploy here their most devastating resource: Girl Scouts.

Rebecca Golod made an excellent Girl Scout.

Her parents and her aunt and uncle had left East Texas soon after the train-station riot (too many Golods in Beaumont), moving steadily west, month by month. They tended to stay in a town until the locals realized the hardworking family with the boisterous arguments might actually be lying when they said they didn’t know where their neighbors’ horses had gone.

Then they reached San Francisco. This city had a fluid relationship with crime and truth. As long as you had a sense of humor about the crimes you planned, someone somewhere would find a place for you at the table.