Down to Earth

“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,” Pe

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

“Trouble,” Pe

“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?” Pe

“I know, I know,” Rance said.

“If we don’t run it up, we’re ruined when what we’ve got runs out,” Pe

“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,” Pe

“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,” Pe

“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,” Pe

“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 Pe

She gri

“Yeah.” Rance sipped, wheezed, and, for a wonder, managed not to cough. “Jesus, that stuff kicks like a mule.” As Pe

For once, Pe

“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 Pe

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,” Pe

“Go ahead. Bat your baby blues. You’ll get a better deal out of him than I could.” Rance wasn’t particularly worried about Pe

Now Pe

“We should manage,” Pe

“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 Pe

Richard was small and lithe and surrounded by bodyguards who looked a lot nastier than the ones Rance and Pe

“Sure do,” Pe

“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 Pe

Had he said he was a straight shooter, Auerbach would have believed that, too. Pe

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 Pe