Puddle arrived with a huge tankard of my favorite food, that divine elixir that makes it necessary for me to work out. He'd drawn it from his private keg, hidden behind the bar. The Joy House doesn't serve anything but rabbit food and the squeezings thereof. Morley Dotes is a rabid vegetarian.

I took a long drink of bitter beer. "You're a prince, Puddle." I fished out a silver mark.

"Yeah. I'm in line for the throne." He didn't pretend to make change. A prince indeed. You could buy a pony keg wholesale for that, the price of silver being what it is. "How come you're in here instead of gamboling through acres of redheads?" My last big case involved whole squads of that delightful subspecies. Unfortunately, only one of the bunch turned out palatable. Redheads are that way. They're either devils or angels—and the angels are no angels. I think it's because they try living up to an image from an early age.

"Gamboling, Puddle?" Where did Puddle pick up a word like "gamboling"? The man had trouble with his own name on account of it had more than one syllable. "You been going to school or something?"

Puddle just grinned.

I asked, "What is this, teak on Tommy Tucker night? With easygoing old Garrett playing Tommy?"

Puddle's grin widened into an unappealing smear of rotten and missing teeth. He was one guy who should convert and become one of Morley's born-again vegetarians.

Saucerhead said, "You make yourself a fat target."

"I must. For everybody. You hear what Dean did?"

Dean is the old boy who keeps house for me and my partner and cooks for me. He's about seventy. He'd make somebody a fine wife.

While we jawed, Tharpe's tablemate filled and tamped, filled and tamped the biggest damn pipe I ever saw. It had a bowl like a bucket. Puddle snagged a brass coal bucket off the bar. Licks used copper tongs to transfer one small coal to his pipe. He puffed clouds of weed smoke potent enough to sky us all.