The hiss of the occasional taxi made the cool dark sound punctuated with ellipses. This was the city of broken thoughts, where you never knew if you'd end up finishing a sentence. The quiet slap of Lucky's shoes faded into the damp, blotted by the gentle simmer of a light warm rain; I followed a block behind, and it wasn't easy. She was in better shape from shoveling out drinks than I was from shoveling them down.

I lowered my hat down over my purdy eyes and bent down against the rain, and stretched my legs a little further. She was leading me down to the waterfront.

I pulled my shabby trenchcoat closer, comforted a little by the hard lump in the left breat pocket -- a small but accurate Belgian piece I had picked up years before from Toolose La Truc, a refugee castrato from Iran by way of Venice, Berlin, Rotterdam, and Halifax. He'd made his way to the city by singing tenor arias in falsetto on street corners until he came to the States. After that, he couldn't make ends meet, and he'd sold me the piece for a coupla sawbucks one night out behind the Loy Avenue Dairy Queen. Ya mever know when you're gonna need some unmarked hardware. Toolose had told me, and I guess he was right.

Suddenly the wet slapping sound of Lucky's footsteps stopped. I rounded a dark corner, and stared through the rain. She was nowhere in sight. I smelled trouble.