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The sound could easily have been distorted by the sewer's weird acoustics.
    Since Erich hated talking about his seizures, Sol decided to keep his latest theory about the voice to himself--at least for now. "You didn't go down by yourself," he said.
    "Yes, I did." Erich looked at him and relented. "No. I didn't go down. But we're going down there tonight. I've decided."
    Sol got up and walked over to his window. Two workmen were erecting an awning above the entrance into what had been the furrier's basement and was now about to become a cabaret. From where he stood, he could not see the steps leading down; the awning looked like it was at street level.
    Once down those steps and through the door, there was a circular flight of metal stairs. After the basement--the cabaret--came a low-ceilinged sub-basement, on the same level as the cellar beneath the tobacco shop. And beneath both shops...the sewer.
    "Forget it," Sol said. "We're not going down there."
    "You're afraid." Erich joined him at the window.
    "Am not!" Sol knew he didn't sound convincing. Even if it had been Erich's voice playing tricks on him, they boys had promised on their honor never to play in sewers again--and their fathers had welded the tobacco shop's grate down just in case. "Our papas will kill us if they catch us. The watchman could see us--"
    "The construction-crew watchman won't be there tonight." Erich's eyes shone expectantly. "I saw him earlier this afternoon outside a Schultheiss. He was holding a quart of Pilsner and bragging to some girl about how his crew is so ahead of schedule he's been assigned to another project."
    "I still don't think..."
    "Tell you what." Erich sounded as if he'd just had an idea,   but judging from the look on his face, Sol suspected his friend had worked out the answers to all of Sol's possible objectives ahead of time. "Bet your pewter soldiers against my bike there's no woman in the sewer."
    Erich's voice had that it's no use arguing about this one tone to it that Solomon knew only too well.
    "You might as well hand over the soldiers right now. Voices come attached to bodies. If there ever was a real woman in the sewer, Papa would've found her."
    Erich's face darkened in anger and Sol guessed his friend was thinking about Bull. Neither of them were sure what Herr Weisser had done with the puppy; he had refused to talk to them about it. But Erich knew. Or so he said.
    "I have to hear her...the woman...or you lose." Erich dangled the lock-pick pouch in front of Solomon's face.
    "That's dumb! Your bike against my soldiers? Dumb!"
    Erich grinned and pushed a hand through his sandy hair. "I only bet on sure things. The voice was all in your mind. The trouble with you is, you read too much."
    Sol watched the sparrows pecking at cracks in the sidewalk.   They were not nearly as bad as the pigeons everyone hated--Berlin's second-worst enemy, the city council called them. What perversity kept him feeding the sparrows, he did not know. Habit, maybe. He had been taking them bags of crumbs since Recha was a baby. There were times, he thought, when he wished they would repay him by flying overhead and decorating his friend's hair. That would cure Erich of some of his arrogance!
    The cabaret's awning slapped and heaved in the breeze. Startled, the sparrows took wing. The black, red, and gold striped canvas billowed like a flag honoring the Republic; beneath it, newly installed hand and guard rails--painted the hue of ripe bananas--shone in the weak afternoon light. A door veneered with sculpted ceramics had replaced the mass of rusted iron and enormous locks and bolts that had formerly marked the entrance. It led into a basement likewise transformed, for the furriers had moved all their inventory--wardrobe crates, odorous with mothballs and filled with coats of leopard, mink, and seal--from there to the building's upper two levels.
    During the past month, he and Erich had watched the nightclub take shape. Sol enjoyed listening to the