“Yes? You’re being a very good daughter, Miss Pike.” He stood from his stool, sighing, and then touched his fingers to the brim of his hat. And with two strides, he was out the door.

Andy shrieked. She shrieked at the top of her lungs, which did her little good, since the atmosphere outside was still overrun with the dissassembling parade. She dashed from the store, and shrieked again, “Thief!” But at that moment, the Miss Hamlin’s School for Girls Marching Band was passing by, part of the rush to Lotta’s Fountain and the speeches by Hollywood actors.

“Thief!” Andy cried, her eyes fixed on Rabbi Golod’s receding form— he was walking slowly across the intersection, head down, hands clutched together as if lost in a conversation with God (which, although he wasn’t actually a rabbi, was not a pose). In seconds he would surely be lost— Andy’s eyes were watering with blind panic, and then, looming over her, was six feet four inches of Lee, who was feeling melancholy.

“Hello, Andy,” he murmured.

“Oh, God—Lee!”

“I’ve just been thinking how meaningless—”

“I was just robbed! He’s over there!” She pointed.

“Robbed,” he said.

“The rabbi.”

As if he were jumping into one of the station boats, Lee was already dodging through pedestrians, a broken field of obstacles, shoving them out of the way, crying “Excuse me,” until he was at the curb. Rabbi Golod was in the crosswalk. Lee broke from the tight bands of foot traffic and darted into the road itself. The patrolman blew his whistle at him just as Lee grabbed Golod by the overcoat and spun him out of the crowd.

Golod didn’t struggle. He put out his hands in supplication and looked at Lee like a kitten with a wounded paw.

“Hey!” The patrolman had brought out his club, and put his hands to his hips. It was unclear upon whom he most wanted to use his weapon.

“Officer,” Lee said, swallowing hard, “this man robbed that jewelry store.”

The patrolman used the baton to push back his cap. “The rabbi? The rabbi robbed a jewelry store?”

“Yes,” Lee said, not quite sounding sure of himself. Where was Andy?

“I see.” The cop, whose badge said McKinney, was now regarding Lee as if he might want to beat him like a carpet.

“I just—” Lee caught his breath. “I’m a little—I just saw Chaplin,” he said, as if that might help.

McKinney looked interested. “Really? Huh. Is he smaller than you’d think?”

“He looks delicate.”

Andy arrived now, out of breath. She began to tell her tale: Rabbi Golod coming in, the long negotiations, the thousand-dollar bill and the change she’d made, her going out for egg-salad sandwiches, how her father had been sent to Shreve, the dumping of the jewels into a sack, and so on.