“Of course it does,” Auerbach said. “This is the boondocks, the ass end of nowhere. Nobody makes anything here; everything gets shipped in from places where they really do make stuff. No wonder we pay through the nose.”

“Hey, they do make one thing here,” Penny said.

Rance raised a dubious eyebrow. “Yeah? What’s that, sweetheart?”

“Trouble,” Penny answered with a grin. “And they make it in great big carload lots, too. Why else would we be here?”

“But we don’t have enough money to make all the trouble we want,” Auerbach said. “If we’d brought a hundred pounds of hundred-dollar bills-”

“Where was Gorppet going to get his hands on hundred-dollar bills in Cape Town?” Penny broke in. “Don’t make me laugh. We’ve got a stake; we just can’t afford to get fancy till we run it up some.”

“I know, I know,” Rance said.

“If we don’t run it up, we’re ruined when what we’ve got runs out,” Penny said flatly. “If there’s one thing this place runs on, it’s cold, hard cash. They don’t give a damn about whose cash it’s supposed to be, either.”

“I know that, too?’ Auerbach paused and lit a cigarette. He coughed as he sucked in smoke, which made his ruined chest hurt. And that wasn’t the only ache the coffin nails gave him here. Holding up the pack, he said, “You know how much these goddamn things cost?”

“You bet I do,” Penny answered. “Give me one, will you?” He took one out and handed it to her, then awkwardly bent forward, putting a lot of weight on his stick, so she could start it on his. Her cheeks hollowed as she inhaled. “Listen, I’ve got a line on a guy who’ll sell us some ginger. Now all we need to do is get a Lizard to buy and we’re in business for a while longer.”

“Who’s the guy?” Rance asked. “Somebody new, or do you know him from before?”

“From before-I dealt with him back when I was working with those people in Detroit,” Penny said. “His name’s Richard.” She pronounced it Ree-shard, which meant the fellow was a Frenchman.

“Is he pals with the guys you used to work for?” Rance asked. “If he is, he’s liable to want you dead after the way you stuffed them.”

“Nobody’s really pals with anybody in the ginger racket,” Penny said; from what Auerbach had seen of it, she wasn’t far wrong. “I didn’t stiff Richard, so him and me won’t be anything but business.”

“Here’s hoping you’re right.” Auerbach limped into the kitchen, poured himself a drink of the nasty local brandy, and cut it with a little water; the stuff was too harsh and too potent for anybody in his right mind to want to drink it straight. He poured a knock for Penny, too.

She grinned and blew him a kiss when she saw the drinks in his hands. When he gave her one, she raised the glass and said, “Mud in your eye.”

“Yeah.” Rance sipped, wheezed, and, for a wonder, managed not to cough. “Jesus, that stuff kicks like a mule.” As Penny also drank, he studied her. If he were this Richard, how far would he trust her? About as far as I can throw her, he decided. The fellow selling the ginger would have to be wondering where she’d got the cash this time, and whether she’d try to cheat him. He’d be a jerk if he didn’t come loaded for bear.

For once, Penny didn’t seem to know where his thoughts were going. She said, “We get ourselves a discount on the herb for paying in gold.”

“Do we?” Auerbach thought about that, too. Not all his thoughts were pleasant. “We’d better talk with Jean-Claude, then, or with somebody. We’ll want some firepower along so your pal doesn’t try redistributing the wealth.”

He watched Penny. She took a deep breath. He knew exactly what she was going to say: something along the lines of, Oh, he wouldn ‘t do anything like that. Rance intended to land on her with both feet if she did. But she didn’t; instead, she looked sheepish and answered, “Yeah, we’d better do something about that, hadn’t we?”

He let out a rasping sigh of relief. “Oh, good. You remember Frederick after all.”

“Yeah.” Her mouth twisted. “That stupid, greedy son of a bitch. You even told him there was plenty for everybody, and you were dead right, too. But would he listen? Hell, no. Of course, Frederick was an amateur; and Richard’s a pro. He’s been doing this for a long time.”

“Anybody can get greedy?’ Rance spoke with great conviction. “Best way to make him think twice is to show he’d pay for it if he tried.”

“Well, I won’t try and tell you you’re wrong, because I think you’re right,” Penny said. “You want to talk to Jean-Claude, or would you rather I did it?”

“Go ahead. Bat your baby blues. You’ll get a better deal out of him than I could.” Rance wasn’t particularly worried about Penny fooling around with the Tahitian muscleman. For one thing, Jean-Claude was only in his mid-twenties, so he wasn’t all that likely to find her appealing. And, for another, Jean-Claude had a girlfriend of formidable proportions and equally formidable temper. Auerbach wouldn’t have wanted to cross her, and he didn’t think Jean-Claude did, either.

Now Penny was following his thoughts, for she stuck out her tongue at him. He laughed and said, “You don’t want to do that at a native; it’s sort of like asking for a fight. Now, the next question is, once we’ve got the ginger, how much trouble will we have selling it to a Lizard?”

“We should manage,” Penny said. “There’s always plenty of ’em around. This place draws shady characters the way honey draws flies.” She took another sip from her brandy. “We’re here, aren’t we?”

“Uh-huh. I wondered when you’d mention that,” Rance said.

But she was right. The Free French ran a wide-open outfit. They stayed in business by skimming a little off the top of the deals that got made in their territory, by not asking a whole lot of inconvenient questions, and by keeping the Japanese, the Americans, and the Lizards all too busy eyeing one another for any of them to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.

And so, even as Penny and he went to meet Richard along with Jean-Claude and several other large, beefy pieces of hired muscle, Auerbach saw half a dozen Lizards on the streets of Papeete, all of them in conversation with humans who looked shady. Takes one to know one, he thought.

Richard was small and lithe and surrounded by bodyguards who looked a lot nastier than the ones Rance and Penny had along. He spoke English with an accent partly French, partly southwestern, as if he’d learned the language by watching a lot of horse operas. “You got the goods?” he asked-the subject under discussion might have been wagon wheels, not gold.

“Sure do,” Penny answered. “Do you?”

“You bet,” Richard said, and gestured to one of his henchmen. The burly Tahitian held up a parcel wrapped in twine. At Richard’s gesture, he opened it. The spicy tang of ginger tickled Rance’s nose. Richard gestured again, this time to Penny. “Check it-go right ahead. No false weight. No false measure. I’m a straight dealer.”

Had he said he was a straight shooter, Auerbach would have believed that, too. Penny did check, tasting the herb and probing to make sure the package held nothing but ginger. When satisfied, she turned to Auerbach. “Pay him, Rance.”

With a nod, he passed a little case-it didn’t have to be a big one-holding ten pounds of gold to Richard. This was the nasty moment. As soon as the case was out of his hand, that hand slid down toward his own pistol. The temptation to keep the ginger and grab the gold had to be there-had to be there on both sides, in fact, for Richard and his bodyguards were awfully intent themselves.

But here, unlike the Cape Town park, everything went smoothly. The Frenchman examined the gold as carefully as Penny had checked the ginger. When he said, “C’est bon,” his bully boys visibly relaxed. Then he returned to English: “Good luck unloading that stuff. Enjoyed doing business with you.” And off he went.