Apart from broad daylight and mutual signals, I don't much like following women. They are rightly suspicious of the night, and they have those astral eyes that pick up vibrations, unless they are stupid enough to have Walkmans on, which is one of the main causes of women on slabs in the county morgue. Lucky was not going to end up on anyone's slab, if she had anything to say about it. It was incredibly tiring work: ordinarily you could only do it in relays, planned and set. The only easy thing was that I knew where she was going, so I could double back occasionally: but I wanted to make sure that she wasn't being followed herself. Also I had no idea what she was getting into, or for that matter what I was getting into, and I hate that.

The truth is, though I talk a good game, I worry about Lucky. I worry about them all. I worried about Samantha in grade 4, we would sit together on the school bus, and when her stop came, she would get off, and I would lean out of the window as long as I could see her pigtailed head, the bus would turn the corner, and I would worry about whether she would get home alright, 30 yards away from the end of the driveway. I worry about them all, and when I get involved with them I can't stand it: I want to put them into a warm soft room and make sure they are never hurt by anything ever again, which is crazy. It is one good reason why they leave. On the other hand, when she was 30 years old, Samantha took an overdose of pills one bright May morning in her fine house in Phoenix because she couldn't stand being the wife of the 2nd best realtor in the city any more; so maybe I wasn't that crazy after all.

We came down into the part of town I hate the most, the part the City Fathers have buffed up and cobbled and pipe music into during the day, and electrocute any stray homeless people who find their way by mistake into it. There was a flatiron building adjacent to a pocket park, and, taking a last look around, which forced me to duck quickly back into the alley alongside the "Oh Honey Isn't That What We Were Looking For Shop", Lucky slipped through the entrance. There was a row of lights on up on the third floor. I was just about to follow, when the stretch limo I had seen earlier pulled up at the entrance. And out of it stepped Lawrence of Arabia with his legs sawed in half, until I realised that the guy in the Bedouin costume was just very short. I wondered if he got half price at the Flowing Robes Emporium in Cairo. He stepped forward into the streetlight, and immediately after him, carrying a guitar case, and dressed from head to foot in black, came Condolezza Schwartz. She looked like a tassel of corn going to a funeral for the Kelloggs' Rooster. What the hell was going on?

I had to get closer, and was just stepping sideways to make a move for the fire escape ladder alongside the flatiron building, when something heavy hit me on the back of my head, and I went spinning down into total darkness just like the no fail high tech stocks my brother-in-law recommended to me last year.