'Moll.' Dental augmentation impeded his speech. A string of saliva dangled from the twisted lower lip.

'Heard ya comin'. Long time.' He might have been fifteen, but the fangs and the bright mosaic of scars combined with the gaping socket to present a mask of total bestiality.

It had taken time and a certain kind of creativity to assemble that face, and his posture told-me he enjoyed living behind it. He wore a pair of decaying jeans, black with grime and shiny along the creases. His chest and feet were bare. He did something with his mouth that approximated a grin. 'Been' followed, you.'

Far off, in Nighttown, a water vendor cried his trade.

'Strings jumping, Dog?' She swung her flash to the side, and I saw thin cords tied to eyebolts, cords that ran to the edge and vanished.

'Kill the fuckin' light!'

She snapped it off.

'How come the one who's followin' you's got no light?' 'Doesn't need it. That one's bad news, Dog. Your sentries give him a tumble, they'll come home in easy-to carry sections.'

'This a friend, Moll?' He sounded uneasy. I heard his feet shift on the worn plywood.

'No. But he's mine. And this one,' slapping my shoulders, 'he's a friend. Got that?'

'Sure,' he said, without much enthusiasm, padding to the platform's edge, where the eyebolts were. He began to pluck out some kind of message on the taut cords.

Nighttown spread beneath us like a toy village for rats; tiny windows showed candlelight, with only a few harsh, bright squares lit by battery lanterns and carbide lamps. I imagined the old men at their endless games of dominoes, under warm, fat drops of water that fell from wet wash hung out on poles between the plywood shanties. Then I tried to imagine him climbing patiently up through the darkness in his zoris and ugly tourist shirt, bland and unhurried. How was he tracking us?