The door flew open, and the door frame protested, metal on metal. Beano stood inside, white as diluted milk, in tight, torn jeans and a T-shirt that seemed likely to die of exhaustion crossing his pectorals. He frowned when he saw me. He began to swing the door shut.

“No,” I said, my voice breaking. “Listen to the deal first. Then make decisions.”

“A deal?” Beano asked. “Or a screw job?”

“A deal. Can we come in?”

I don’t think he’d seen Frances until then. “Who’s she?”

“A package I want to deliver.”

“Fastened with tape,” Frances said blandly, “and not with string. Don’t look at me; I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Can we come in?” I repeated.

After a moment Beano said, “I’m busy.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here.” And I met and sustained his rose-colored glare.

“It is a screw job.”

I shook my head.

I think he let us in out of unadulterated curiosity. He hurried us through the back rooms to the shop, where the air was thick with old and new incense. Frances sat, one ankle across the other knee, on the corner of a little table stacked with denim and leather pants. It would have been a convincingly casual pose, if she hadn’t spoiled it by watching me. Behind her, hanging from a nail, was something made of knotted silk cord, like the web of a wealthy spider. Beano went behind the counter and leaned on it. That told me my place. I was the supplicant; I was to have judgment passed on me and my offer.

“So?” he said.

Out of habit, and a desire to make everything normal again, I began to think of how to ask for what I wanted without revealing how much I wanted it, or how much it was worth. I stopped myself and swallowed all the words I’d formed. This was not the time.

“We’ve crossed the City bossman,” I said to Beano’s unreceptive face, because I didn’t think I could explain about Tom Worecski. “And he wants us so badly he’d drink the river if he thought we were at the bottom of it. I want to buy passage for her” — and I nodded at Frances — “past the roadblocks and safely out of the City.”

“What about you?” Frances asked, her voice sharp.

“How’m I supposed to do that?” Beano asked me. We both ignored Frances. She wouldn’t like it, but I hoped she’d put up with it.

I took a deep breath. I might be too late… “Right now, someplace around here, people are unloading barrels of methanol that were never within shotgun range of a tax stamp. Like they do every Friday. She can go out by the same method the barrels came in.”

Beano had been relaxed when I began. He wasn’t relaxed anymore. “Or City finds out about the ’nol? That’s not how it works. City’s out there. You’re still in here.” He straightened up, and his shoulders and chest seemed suddenly to occupy the whole side wall.