"Well, I…"

    "You'll be rich enough by the time I leave," Gabe said, "that you won't need any crumbs from Twill. I promise you that."

    "Rich? Me?"

    "We're all gonna be rich. You just stick by me and get ready to jump when I say frog."

    The girl, as if to head off Gabe from a topic she disliked, said quickly, "This Twill-who's he?"

    "Just a guy," Gabe growled.

    Francis smiled. "He's better known as Boss Twill, king of the underworld on the West Side of New York."

    She turned to lay her hand across Gabe's arm on the table. "So that's why you left New York. You were in danger from this big shot. You're not really going back there?"

    "When I'm ready," Gabe said. He seemed to be trying to lift his glass, but the girl was holding his arm down. He turned a glare on her. "Look, nothing you can say or do is going to change my mind, so forget it." He swiveled the glare toward Francis and Francis sat a little lower in the chair. "And you. Some associate."

    "Associate?"

    "Never mind," Gabe said. "Look, are you in or out?"

    "In what?"

    "With me. To get rich. Or are you satisfied being Twill's errand-boy associate for twenty-five bucks a telegram?"

    Francis really didn't have to consider it very hard. He was getting very sick and tired of living on the economic fringes. Gabe had talked about gold; Twill hadn't mentioned anything of the kind.

    He said, "Well of course I'm in, old cock, if my talents can be employed profitably."

    "Okay. I'll be in touch." And abruptly Gabe got to his feet, lifted the girl out of her chair, and steered her toward the door.

CHAPTER NINE

    As they went out, Vangie looked back from the door at the thin fey dude smiling at them from the table, waving his Pink Lady with cool insouciance. He had been a surprise to her, in a lot of different ways.

    On the street she said to Gabe, "I like your friend."

    "Urn," he said.

    "I didn't think I would at first. But he's really kind of nice."

    "Urn," Gabe said. He stood there squinting down the street as though he wasn't really a part of this conversation.

    Vangie studied him, thinking he had to be a more complex character than she had at first supposed. Not a simple Eastern roughneck after all, if he had artistic friends like Francis Calhoun. "I'm surprised you and he are such good friends," she said.

    "Yeah," Gabe said. "It kind of surprised me, too."

    "I bet his flat is lovely."

    "Yeah. Probably. Listen, what about that hotel room?"

    "We've got one place left to try," she said. "If that's no good we can go back down and check the keybox again."

    "That's fine," he said. He didn't sound as if he meant it.

***

    "What's the matter?"

    "The thought of going all the way down to the docks and then all the way back up these hills again."

    "You'll get used to it."

    "Not me," he said. "I don't intend to stay here long enough to have to."

    It troubled her the way he kept talking like that. She didn't quite know why but she didn't want to lose him. She wondered if, when the time came, he'd ask her to go back to New York with him. And if he did, she wondered if she would. She felt about New York roughly the same way he felt about San Francisco.

    She took him around the corner into Powell Street and waited for the cable car; when it came clanging by they got on it and rode up toward Nob Hill. She explained the cable car to Gabe; he didn't seem overcome by enthusiasm-he kept looking back from the open platform down the steep hill and making remarks about what would happen if the cable car slipped off its rails and cable.

    It was one of the small exclusive Nob Hill hotels she was heading for, and she didn't hold out much hope. But she took Gabe there anyway, left him again at the stairs, and walked down the corridor boldly enough. At first this kind of thing had terrified her, but she'd learned it was easy enough to avoid trouble by acting sweet and innocent. She had the key to the wrong room-they must have made a mistake at the desk. That was all there was to it.

    Still, there was always that second's hesitation just before inserting the key in the lock.

    But this time she forced herself to act without a pause. She was aware of Gabe's eyes on her from the other end of the corridor, and her feelings for him seemed to have deepened in a way that amazed her.

    She opened the door, stepped quickly inside, and found the room empty. She checked the closet and under the bed, and found no luggage; so they hadn't rented it again. She went back to the door and signaled to Gabe to join her.

    He came hurrying on tiptoe and whispered when he got to her, "Is it okay?"

    "It's fine," she said, in a normal voice. "Come on in."

    He came in and looked around, and it seemed to her she could detect disapproval in his expression. It was true it wasn't a very good room, definitely one of the cheaper accommodations in this hotel-very small, with a pockmarked brass bed that looked more than ordinarily lumpy, and a narrow window that looked out on nothing but another wall half a dozen feet away. The porcelain pitcher and bowl were both cracked, the dresser drawers were missing half their handles, and there wasn't so much as a throw rug on the wide plank floor.

    "It isn't much of a room," she said, suddenly awkward and sheepish with this fellow she'd met only today, even though this was hardly the first time she'd been alone in a hotel room with a man.

    "It's all right," he said, shrugging and moving to look out the window.

    "I'm sorry it doesn't have a view," she said. "I'll try to do better tomorrow."

    He nodded, turning away from the window. "Yeah, I'd like that," he said. "I'd like a view."

    "You would?"

    "Yeah. A view of the Mint."

    Feeling both irritated and disappointed, she said, "Aren't you ever going to give that up?"

    "Not for a second," he said. He shucked out of his coat and hung it neatly on the back of the room's only chair. "In fact," he said, "you can take me up there and show me the place. Do they have tours for the public, anything like that?"

    "Gabe, I wish you'd…"

    "Do they?"

    She sighed and nodded. "Yes."

    "Good."

    "Maybe it's just as well," she said. "You'll see for yourself it's impossible to break in there."

    He grinned as though he didn't believe it. "Then I'll give up, won't I?"

    "I don't know. Will you?"

    He came over, still grinning, and touched the line of her jaw with two fingertips. His finger pads were smooth and soft, not like the horny calluses of most men out here; though the feeling couldn't be described as feminine either. Touching her that way, still grinning, he said, "You seem to be fretting over me."

    She felt foolish and more than a little weak. "Damn it anyway, Gabe," she said, and tried to turn her face away from his touch.