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rates this month. Three hundred dollars to register. Eighty-five a month after that.”
    “I can’t afford to survive.” I stood up.
    “We can work out a payment plan,” he said, coming around the desk and handing me a pamphlet with a rough green paper cover.
    “No, thanks.” I pocketed the pamphlet.
    “Didn’t think so,” he said with a sigh, picking up his bow and arrow. “But remember where we are and pray that you have enough warning to get to us when you realize that the enemy is in the streets. You forgot something.”
    “What?”
    “Twenty-five cents for the pamphlet.”
    I dug out a quarter and handed it to him. He grinned.
    “There’s hope for you yet,” he said. “You’ve just taken the first small step. It starts with curiosity and ends with commitment.”
    Pathfinder Helter held the door open for me, and I went out of the house of the mad tea party into the sunlight. The quartet ushered me up to the gate and watched as I got into the Crosley.
    “I’ll call before I come next time,” I said through the open window.
    “We don’t have a phone,” Timerjack said.
    “Of course,” I said and drove away, not looking back at them.

CHAPTER  4
     
    D ANGEROUS THOUGH THE journey was through streets that might suddenly be filled with war-painted, hatchet-wielding Hurons, I decided to go to my office to read the pamphlet. I also wanted to do some checking on Timerjack and talk to our receptionist, Violet Gonsenelli.
    The trip was also dangerous because I had to get up to my office on the sixth floor of the Farraday Building without being drawn into Manny’s Tacos on the corner, get through the lobby to the elevator or stairs without running into my landlord, Jeremy Butler and, most important, avoid an encounter with Juanita the Seer from New York City.
    Parking was easy. A spot was open on Hoover, a few doors down from the building entrance. It was too small a spot for anything but a Crosley.
    Traffic wasn’t bad for a weekday afternoon, partly because of the gas shortage.
    It took me about ten seconds to fail to get past the first obstacle in my path to my office.
    I was hungry. I smelled tacos. Through the window of Manny’s, I saw a businessman in a neat suit with a briefcase on the counter eating a taco special. I went in. The businessman was the only customer. The businessman ate solemnly, taking small businesslike bites.
    Manny stood behind the counter, his potbelly covered by a white apron. Manny was smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. His son was fighting Nazis somewhere in Europe, and Manny had become an expert on the war thanks to the L.A. Times and the radio updates by Drew Pearson, William Shirer, and H. V. Kaltenborn.
    The radio was on, a swing version of “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby?”
    I sat a few stools down from the businessman, and Manny looked over his newspaper at me.
    “Two and a Pepsi,” I said.
    “Right,” Manny answered, folding the newspaper and putting it neatly down on the counter.
    “Big battle in the Pacific,” he said from the grill. “Seventeen Jap planes, two freighters, one cruiser blown to hell.”
    “We lose any?” I asked.
    “Four planes. Boyington’s missing.”
    Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington was the 31-year-old ace credited with shooting down twenty-six Japanese planes. The young man from Okanogan, Washington, headed the Black Sheep Squadron. His twenty-six enemy planes tied him with Major Joe Foss and World War One’s Captain Eddie Rickenbacker.
    “Got a bad feeling about it,” said Manny, placing a plate with two hot tacos in front of me.
    “We should have used gas on Tarawa,” Manny said. “The New York Times says so. The Washington Times-Herald says so, and I say so. Lot of American kids got killed there. International law says it’s okay to use gas. The Hague back in 1899, Geneva in 1925. Saves lives.”
    “Maybe,” I said.
    “Maybe, hell,” Manny said. “You know how many casualties we have in this