We Know

He pouched his lips and leaned forward, appraising me. "I help you, bro. But why? I don't know what you do with this key. Maybe I should better call cops on you."

He paused for dramatic effect. Then he clamped the key bit into the milling machine, adjusting screws, gripping handles. "But I don't. That's how it work. Like for my grandfather. First they have him turn in his hunting rifle. For war effort, bro."

He bent to the task, and the cutter head revved up and bit metal. Setting the second piece of the broken key, he did his best to align the angle. He spoke between blazes of sparks, short sentences offset by the shrieking cuts. "Then they tell him he and my grandmother will be relocated. For own good. Always for own good. They were escorted. Escorted, like one of your prom date. Across

Anatolia. On the way they rape the women. Starve many to death. No water. They die in ditches. The skin, like paper over the ribs."

He ran the key along the deburring brush. More sparks flew, creating an orb of light in the dark shop that illuminated his face, his wide, firm cheeks. He did not wear eye gear. For a moment he looked like a boy. He swept his fingers over the teeth of the new key. Then he shook his head, dissatisfied, threw the key into the trash, and started over with a fresh blank. "You know this story. It is same story. Crusades, world wars, Croatia, the Sudan, Iraq. This is mankind."

Again with the deburring brush, again the sparks flew, his face a ruddy portrait in focus. "On the march, a peasant woman hide my grandparents in chicken coop. Why? I do not know. If she was discovered, she would be killed. People help people sometime. They don't know why. But this is also mankind."

He sat back on his creaking stool, stuffing showing through the split vinyl at the sides. He looked at the latest key, his mouth twitching. "I am sorry, bro. Here I go on like windbag about help, but I cannot. I cannot make working key from pieces. Not with substitute key blank. I can order proper key blank from Canada."

"I don't have time to wait."

Raz mused on this weightily, chin set on the boulder of his fist so his cheek rose in wrinkles beneath the eye. "I have idea. Way to get P.O. box open. One time only. You will have one chance. It is confidence game. You must commit. You can commit?"

I said, "I can commit."

I cased the block by the post office and found no one waiting, but given their technology, if they were hiding, I wouldn't see them. The bus stop was two blocks away, waiting to whisk me back into oblivion. I looped over to Homer, sitting on the curb in a strip-mall parking lot up the street.

"I'm gonna go. Meet me at the bus stop in five?"

He waved me off dismissively.

Tentatively, I approached the Sherman Oaks post office, moving behind trees and parked mail trucks. Every passing car put a charge into me. Finally a break in traffic. I slipped through the front doors and put my back to the wall. The lobby with the counters and registers was locked up, but the wing to the left with the banks of boxes was open as advertised, if dimly lit to discourage nighttime visitors.

A movement from outside caught my eye. Homer strolling boldly down the sidewalk. He shoved through the front doors, regarded me, and said, "What? I got bored."

I let out my breath in a hiss.

He dipped into the trash can by the door, found wrapped taco remains to his liking. "You really think if they're watching, you tiptoeing in like Sylvester J. Pussycat's gonna keep you under the radar?" He moved on to the supply table, stuffing priority-mail envelopes inside his jacket, either for insulation or just because he could.

I headed back into the banks of P.O. boxes. Crouched in the weak glow of the energy-saving fluorescents, I held the two pieces of the key in my hand and stared at the stamped numbers: 228.

I'd assumed that the P.O. box was at the same location as the last one. The sequential numbers seemed to suggest that, but if the last four days had taught me anything, it was not to expect the obvious. I'd have only one play at this, and it would be hard enough without worrying about failing because I'd taken my shot at the wrong post office.