Lee was walking, then trotting toward the Curran Theater, feeling an unmet, sickening, growing need in his chest, the type of crushing emotion found only in men condemned to having depth. With every step, he recounted ways he should have ignored Andy, asserted his life of ease and disdain, and then he was carried far enough away that the marquee of the Curran loomed ahead.

Andy and her father talked (he had repeatedly been rebuffed by George Lewis about the ideal-cut diamond, but he had persisted, and persisted, and finally had been thrown out of the store for shouting). Andy held the sack of jewels, feeling as if the day had tossed her around like an ocean wave. She was considering how to break the news to her father— robbed, saved, how she had behaved perfectly the whole time—as they walked back to their own store.

Which they found had been robbed a second time.

As for Golod, McKinney took him up Grant and through the entry into Chinatown, where, turning a corner, he let go of his sleeve. On the second floor of a safe restaurant, the two of them met with Rebecca.

She was still in her uniform—McKinney pronounced her “adorable” and “a real heartbreaker.” McKinney lingered, and Golod wasn’t sure if he was going to be asked to be paid again, but the fact was, he was delighted to be part of the caper and didn’t particularly want to see it end.

“We’re really done?”

“It’s all over.”

“You plan well.”

“Thank you.”

Overhead, songbirds were singing in their elaborate cages. McKinney had a kind of starlight in his eyes. When Golod saw this was so, to sew up the idea of future mutual endeavors, he gave McKinney a tip: an earring.

McKinney was touched. He tried to give it to Rebecca, but she announced she was only thirteen, wasn’t allowed to wear jewelry yet, but thank you very much, sir.

“When I earn the Silver Fish from the local Girl Scout committee, Papa will let me wear that, sir.”

McKinney clicked his tongue, what a polite young girl, pocketed the earring, thanked everyone all around again, and left, whistling to himself.

Immediately thereafter, Rebecca opened her knapsack, to show her father the haul she had managed to liberate from Pike’s Place. It was a glorious moment for Mordecai Golod, an early supper with his beautiful, intelligent daughter. They toasted with small blue porcelain cups of tea. L’Chaim!

10

Lotta’s Fountain burbled compliantly at the triangle where Market decapitated Kearny and Geary. It was an ugly cast-iron drinking trough with a strange lopsided pillar featuring scrollwork that might or might not have included lions’ heads (they were animals of some sort), but it had had the fortune to survive the Earthquake, pipes intact, and so it had become a symbol of resourcefulness, manna, and all the off-kitler pleasures San Francisco had to offer.