"I just come back from across the bridge, I can walk." She got up and winced her way across the floor to the door, her right foot all sticky on the carpet. She shoved the doorlatch down and hobbled out.

Put her head back in. "You don't come in there," she said.

And slammed the door.

She glumly dressed again in the bathroom, having further business to take care of—new clothes and they looked like old, dusty and stained and the sweater still damp. So was her cap. She carried it in her hand when she went out of the warm little room and limped and winced down the stairs to the tavern-proper.

The help had been putting the chairs to rights when she came in; unshuttered windows and the open front door let sunlight in. Ali was behind the bar, serving a straggle of blear-eyed customers; Ali hooked a thumb toward Moghi's office.

So Ali had indicated when she came back to the front door that Moghi was stirring about. So now Moghi was up to talking. In the office.

She went to that door beside the bar. She had ventured only rarely into that cubbyhole full of papers and bits of this and that, once when she had started work, once when Moghi had told a gangling kid she had a couple of special barrels to handle, because someone who worked for him had taken sick. Fatally. Case of greed. Moghi towered in her memory of that night, bulked larger than reality. And she never could get rid of that shivery feeling when she stood at Moghi's door.

She knocked. "Moghi. It's Jones."

A grunt came back. "Yeah," that was. She shoved the latch down and walked into the cluttered office.

Dusty light streamed through two unshuttered windows— inside shutters folded back against the shelves inside; and thosecould be drop-barred top and bottom, backup to the iron gratings outside the dirty glass. Papers and crates were everywhere, a tide that rose around the littered surface of Moghi's desk. Moghi sat amid it all, a balding, jowled man with massive arms that said even that vast gut was not all fat.

"How you doin', Jones?"

"Good and bad."

He motioned to the well-worn chair by his desk-side. She dragged it over where she could look at him, and sat. Not a sound from Moghi. Her heart was beating hard of a sudden. —Lord, I got to be careful. I got to be real careful.

"Need your help," she said. "I got a boat missing."

"Where'd you leave it?"

"Del Suleiman, by Hanging Bridge."

"That all you need?"

"Quiet. Lot of quiet. It'd be real nice if that boat just showed up to the porch tonight."

Moghi's seam of a mouth went straight; his jaw clamped and calculation went on in his murky eyes. "Well, now, you come up in life, Jones, up there in the Room. Real pretty fellow, so I hear. And you a canaler. Now I know somehow you c'n afford all this. I got standing orders, anybody asks for that room, they gets it. And we don't talk about money. You get fancy stuff. You want a bottle of something special, you just tell the boys; you want a little favor, you just tell me. If there's expenses above and beyond I add 'em to the tab. You know me. I never ask into private business. It's characterI ask about. You I got no doubts of. But what's this pretty boy you took up with?"

"He's real quiet."

"Now that's nice to hear. But you know there's lots of trouble in town. Lots. And here comes Jones with money—I know you got money, Jones, you wouldn't run a tab you couldn't pay—and you got this pretty feller and you mislaid your boat. Now, I don't ask into your business. But look at things from my side. Would you want to take in a fellow you don't know right about now? I don't like noise. I sure don't want the blacklegs chasing nobody in here."

"Moghi." She lifted her right hand. "I swear. No blacklegs."

"What's his trouble?"

"Six guys trying to kill him."

"Ali says he talks real nice."

"He's no canaler."

"Now, Jones, you know there's a lot of difference there. Man has a set-to with the gangs, that's a little problem. Gang goes after an uptowner—big money's hired 'em. You c'n figure that all by yourself. You want to tell me, Jones; this nice-talking feller done talked nice to you? Maybe got you twisted all round? Maybe got hisself where nobody ever got with you, huh?"

Her face burned. "I ain't stupid, Moghi."

"Now you and me ain't talked since you was a kid.

Lord, first time I saw you, you went round in them baggy pants with that cap down round your ears—your ma lately dead; and I set you up with old Hafiz, didn't I? He didn't want to deal with no kid, had this feller all set up to do that job—some fellow going to do things a bit on old Hafiz' side, huh? And I told you then—what'd I tell you, Jones?"

"Said if I wasn't smarter that man'd send me to the bottom."

Moghi chuckled, a heave of massive shoulders. "I tell you, Jones, long as I had you or your ma running my barrels, ain't never worried 'bout the count on 'em. You got good sense. You still got it?"

"I hope I do."

"Pays your debts?"

"You know I do."

"Anything comes under this roof is business, Jones. I got a rule. You know what I say about my men and manners under this roof? If Ali out there ever laid a hand to you I'd kill him. Flat. I'd kill him. He knows that. Now I got to tell you: if you laid one to him, I'd kill you. You know why? 'Cause you work for me. You ain't on salary, but it's all the same. I don't want no team-ups with my employees unless they come to me and ask proper. Mad lovers get spiteful. And a man hi my business don't need nobody spiteful going talking outside. You understand me? I ain't talking to no kid anymore."

"I understand you."

"When I want a woman, I go over to eastside. I never bring no woman here. I never make no move at a woman who works for me. So I'm talking to you like you was my daughter. I tell you if you been stupid and brought somebody here because he's got you thinking all skewed, what you got to do is tell me, and I forget anything you owe me, so don't think about the money. You just let me have him. You got to think, Jones, you got to go on living here, and by living I mean if we get trouble I'll find you."

Her hands wanted to tremble. She shoved her right into her pocket and came up with one of the gold sols. Laid it on the desk in front of him.

Moghi picked it up, rubbed it in his fingers. Looked at her with no expression at all.

"He's business," Altair said. "Man upstairs is business."

"What kind of business?*'

"Not the kind you're thinking, dammit, Moghi! You know me." She tossed off a gesture toward his hands and the sol. "You tell me what the rate is, eastside. You hand out that kind of money for a night?"

Moghi's heavy brows lifted. "For what, then?"

"Gratitude. Keeping the gangs off him. Getting him here alive. This is money, Moghi. This is more damn money than I ever saw, and maybe connections."

"Maybe a throat cut." Moghi hammered the coin edge into the desktop. "You think on that, girl?"

"Jones. Jones, Moghi; and I'm damn tired of scraping by. You think I'd risk my boat for some man wanted to payme for a night? Damn, I'd gut him. I got this to spend. I got better prospects 'n I ever had. So I come to a man I trust like kin, a man who might as well have good of this money I got to spend—"

"—and uptown trouble."

"Uptown trouble and uptown friends, Moghi, one goes with the other."