I stammered, backing away from her. She stood there, a big smile on her face, that knife cold and gleaming.

“No thank you, ma’am,” I said. “You be having a good evening though.”

“It isn’t safe,” she said. “Walking into a place like the Skinny Yellow Dog without any protection.”

“I’ll be careful,” I called to her, still backing away.

“Sorry is what you’ll be!” she hollered, and gave me a dainty little wave. “Toodleloo!”

Well, so far I’d been heckled, sneezed on, and offered weaponry. I guess Gentlesburg was every bit as wicked and low-down as folks said it was. I had a thrill just walking down the street, seeing people leer at me from under caps and through grubby windows, wondering at me just like I was wondering at them. It made me feel like a baby mouse scuttling through a whole yard full of snakes, each one sizing me up. Maybe I should have bought a knife from that lady. Maybe I should have had some money on me. Maybe I was in way over my head here, chasing down the two killers who made off with my daddy.

I looked up at the moon and stars, I heard the river lap up against the pier, I felt the knapsack full of my daddy’s Parsnit cards.

I needed to get my mind right.

Pop always said, “You win at first sight. An ace hustler wins just by walking into the room, if only your walk is good enough.”

I wasn’t any mouse running scared through a yard of snakes. I was the durn snake. And all those creepy no-goods gaping at me with their peepers better remember it. And I strutted all the way to the Skinny Yellow Dog.

I found it, three stories tall and at a weird angle, like it was about to topple over into the street. The windows were lit bright and the doors were wide open and it seemed stuffed full of people, like any moment arms and legs would start dangling out the windows because there wasn’t space inside for them anymore. I could hear music and laughing and cussing and hollering, cigar smoke lingering around like a fog of lazy ghosts.

It seemed like just the place for a kid like me.

I walked my swaggering self right through the front doors, and nobody even said a word to me about it.

It was even wilder inside.

There were scraggly fellows with big bushy beards and folks with scars all over their faces and women with rings on their ears and lips and noses who scowled and spit and roared louder than the men. A woman with long black hair and a red hat played the fiddle while a man stomped and hollered and strummed a guitar. A one-eyed man danced on a table, banging a spoon into a metal plate. Barefoot women turned circles, their dresses floating out like jellyfish. Another fella walked around on his hands, a knife carried between his teeth. Best of all was a pale boy about my own age, wearing a tuxedo and a top hat. The pale boy was a magician. He grinned and pulled a large-mouth bass out of his top hat. The bass was alive and wriggling in his hands. The pale boy bowed while folks threw coins at his feet. I wanted to clap for him myself. I never saw a fella pull a fish out of a hat before.