The bells over the toy shop door rattled again. "Stop, thief!" shouted the fat Chinese, who came running up to Pendleton. The man shouted again and stopped on the corner, his hands on his hips, looking.
Pendleton crossed the street and turned down the alley the old man had used. This would cut off a block of the way to Beth's. He had kept quiet about the thief because he didn't want to get involved in a lot of delaying questioning.
Halfway down the alley he saw an arm dangling out of a garbage can. Pendleton blinked and approached the shadowed area around the can. He flipped the lid up and the coat sleeve that had been tangled on the can edge slipped free and dropped into the can. If the old man was wandering around naked, they shouldn't have much trouble catching him.
Pendleton liked the pre-quake apartment house Beth lived in. In almost any weather he liked to see its narrow brown wood front waiting there in the middle of the block. He smiled as a big blue-gray gull flew low overhead and then circled up and away behind Beth's building. Pendleton took the rough steps in twos and threes and swung at Beth's bell. There was a folded note for him glued on her mail box lid with Scotch tape. It told him she might be delayed a bit and to get her keys from under the rubber-plant pot on the porch and let himself in. He did that, thinking again that Beth's notes always looked as though she wrote them on horseback.
Upstairs he dropped her keys on the small mantle over the small real fireplace. Her bedroom door was slightly open. Just as he noticed this, Beth called out to him.
"I hope that's you, Ben?" she said from her room.