Tantalizing food smells are always a lure, especially when they're redolent with pungent spice. So I figure that if I throw something in the open back door, I can slide through the window, grab stuff for a quick meal or two, and hop back out.

Much too easy, and I should have known better. One of the guards, a burly fellow who looks like he's been kicked by a yak once too often, does stick his head out the door, but I'm already dropping through the window, and that's when I get a bucket full of slop scraps; wet and fairly slimy slop scraps in the face.

I flip over backward the same way I came in, and try to make it look deliberate. I hear a low, throaty laugh, and a roasted bird comes flying after me, which I do not need a hint to grab before it hits the sand.

"You wet, but now wet and fed," laughs the buxom woman from behind the window frame. "Like your style," she adds,"but next time, you pay. Hokay?"

"Hokay!" I shout back, lighting out while the guard is still deciding whether ot not he should move. Kowloon Kate's a sharp one; and hey, I can pick the money up somewhere.

Good chicken; good joss.