Chapter 32

People’s sense of beauty, their feeling for it, their need for it, ranked second only to their hunger for wealth and power.

And in some strata, those that could never hope to seize wealth or power, the need for beauty would overtake both and become the foremost thing they pursued.

William’s good looks were a kind of beauty too. And when that policewoman took a liking to him, when his distress over the lost ring he had meant to give his girlfriend stirred something sympathetic in her, the shape of things began to shift.

Of course, even without that shift, William would still have pushed events forward. He was in a phone booth outside the antique shop. He had just been about to call the police and report that a fencing deal was taking place here when a car with its roof light on, but no siren, pulled up outside the shop.

Two officers got out. One of them even drew his pistol. From the look of it, they were here on business.

That left William feeling somewhat ... puzzled. He hung up the phone and hesitated. He had spent the entire morning into noon watching Michael’s house. He was not sure whether Young Michael had actually taken the ring, but now it seemed the matter was a little more complicated than he had expected.

Just as he was considering whether he should slip back into Michael’s house and check on the ring himself, he saw Young Michael being dragged out in a struggle by the two officers, then watched them clap irons on him. At the sight, William finally let out a breath. Suddenly, the faint trembling in his legs from tailing him no longer seemed wasted.

He had chased Young Michael’s car all the way on his bicycle. If that Bison had not been so conspicuous, he might have lost it back at the last intersection. Fortunately, the orange body and the great red flame pattern stood out on the whole street, and he spotted it at a glance.

Young Michael could never have imagined that this gold ring would turn him into a prisoner. Still less could he have imagined that, because he had deliberately gone farther afield, he would be seized in another precinct’s jurisdiction.

Every city in the Federation had a regional police headquarters. That headquarters was usually near city hall, and most of its work was administrative. Put another way, the regional headquarters managed, it did not answer calls in the field.