"Grab her!" someone yelled but the tiny girl slipped into the crowd of tourists and vanished. The two police officers stopped in disgust. They had been sent out specifically for that kid and after three days, they still hadn't laid a finger on her.
"How can a five year old run like that?" one said to the other.
His partner shrugged "She's got home field advantage."
"That what we are gonna put on the report?" The first said sarcastically.
The girl watched them from only five feet away. She had slipped under the vegetable stand after disappearing into the crowd. As the two cops strolled off she plucked carrots through the opening at the bottom of the box she was using for cover. Tucking four into her tunic, she worked out a pair of big potatoes and stuffed them into her pants. With the shopping done, she once again vanished into the crowd and arrived at her destination two minutes later.
Her mother lay on a pile of carefully folded rags the girl had spent days culling from the garbage. Unpacking her groceries, she stroked her mother's forehead then turned to the pot of water she'd hauled earlier. Deftly she pumped up the tiny propane camp stove and lit it with a Bic lighter she'd lifted off a tourist when her old one had given out. Placing the pot on the wire rack, she dropped the vegetables into the water then stirred it with a finger.
Her mother didn't talk anymore and it was getting harder to get her to drink the soup. She was a resourceful child but sometime, resourcefulness wasn't enough.
Gentle hands lifted her from her place of vigil beside the pallet and held her as her tears flowed. Soft, gruff words she could not understand soothed her sobs and when she woke, the sun illuminated a small, very clean, room with simple furnishings. She sat up and looked around the room. She was lying in a narrow bed with a soft, soft mattress that molded to her body and a thick blanket covered her to the waist. She fingered the cloth then sniffed it. It smelled of flowers. There was a single window beside the head of the bed with a pressboard desk and plastic chair with five wheels. On the opposite wall from the bed was a simple five drawer dresser with a mirror hung above it.
There was a knock on the door and she looked around in a panic. Bolting from the bed she threw open the window and looked down into the teaming street below, four stories below. As the door began to open she turned to face it, back pressed to the desk. As she drew in a breath to scream, she stopped.
A wizen old man stood before her with a steaming bowl and chopsticks. He came toward her and set the bowl on the desk. She backed around him, keeping a meter between them until her back as to the door. She started to break for the street but the man spoke and pulled out the chair for her. It was Chinese, she knew, but she could only speak Japanese. He gestured to the bowl then carefully walked around the edge of the room toward the door.
It was the aroma of chicken that did it. She stomach growled and she covered it with both hands. The man grinned and made a shooing gesture toward the bowl. Displaying the speed that had so frustrated the cops, she was at the bowl and gulping it down before the old man had turned away. He disappeared from view but left the door open.
Only three times in the next ten years did the girl, Fuji, come close to being nabbed by the cops. Each time her knowledge of the warrens that made up San Francisco's Chinatown allowed her to slip her pursuers and return to Papa Tonks. Each time, with heart pounding, she found her foster father waiting for her with a long lecture in Cantonese that though she'd tried hard not to learn, she understood completely. The last time, the men in black had been waiting for her.
