<br/><br/><br/>The night train screeches in the distance, a diminished-seventh moan that sets my teeth on edge. The streetlights spark into life overhead. Shadows flicker to new angles. I'm surprised the electricity makes it this far at all, these days. The center does not hold.  The city grows darker every night. And every night I see more dirt in the cracks.<br/><br/>I check my watch.<br/><br/>It starts to rain. Heavy drops. Raindrops like tears and raindrops like spit - take your pick. Me, I long ago stopped mourning or hating this place. I just want the evening over. I want a glass of scotch. I want a shave. I want a lotta things. I pull my collar closer, the brim of my fedora lower as the storm rolls up its sleeves and gets to work.<br/><br/>Another night. Another client. Of course, they're late.<br/><br/>I check my watch.<br/><br/>The gleaming harmonica of a Buick's grill smirks at me as it passes, wheels kicking gutter water up like a bullying kid. For a moment, I see myself reflected in the pitch-tinted windows. My temples are starting to streak with grey, and my five o-clock shadow turned midnight a week ago. Pretty boy they used to call me. Theres something of that in me still, and if it makes fools underestimate me, all the better because of it. Fools, goons, gumshoes and broads. They all see what they expect to see in my face. The Buick passes. The sputtering neon of the dive-bar sign across the road spills rainbow morse code over the bitumen in front. Bitumen and neon. I can't read any of it. I've long stopped trying.<br/><br/>It was stupid to come. Not even a phone call. Just a note and a time and a place. It was the fat one hundred bills attached that brought me. I'm no fool. Might be a set-up. The grudges build like the grime. But god knows a hundred American dollars buys some forgetting.<br/><br/>I check my watch.<br/><br/>I'm about to call the whole thing a bust when I hear footsteps along the pavement beside me. . .