…Lotte’s heart raced as she watched Karl raise his pistol at Teddy and fire. The smoke from the shot immediately cloaked the loose gravel of the dueling field in a haze; as it cleared, Lotte shrieked, as she knew his rival’s bullet had found it’s mark when she saw his yellow sash soaked crimson. As she rushed toward Teddy’s crumpling figure, Lotte was taken aback as she saw him enveloped in flame. As if a match alight, his clothing was consumed by an azure fire that seemed to be originating from within—rather than from without. She watched helplessly as he was reduced in a matter of mere moments into a faintly glowing pile of ash. Approaching cautiously, the breeze caught the pile suddenly; and tracing its disbursement into the path of the sun rising in the distance, with her one gray and tearless eye—the coming realization bathed her very soul in a horror of revulsion—her lover was nosferatu….

…There aren’t any second chances in this city. Mickey, crawling along 13th street nearing Paseo Drive, dying of thirst and blood loss, with a bullet an inch-and-one-half from his spine, knows that now. At twenty-three, he’s going to die three blocks from Jackson County Municipal Hospital, in the dark, alone, with Betty’s expressionless face—at the moment he pulled the trigger—the last vision before his eyes…”The Big Money is a motherfucker, kid”—Old Bill was right; and then some…

…Mara Spinoza slowly puts the phone down onto its receiver. Sitting up in her bed, she lights a Pall Mall, and getting up, tightens a chiffon gown around her slender waist. Without turning on a light in the apartment she’s rented for a year now since Roger’s death, she walks to the balcony in the rear. Still smoking, she disrobes, letting the March breeze take the garment from around her shoulders and into the darkened alley below. As she watches the green fabric float away, she wonders to herself if it’s dark everywhere in the city. Stooping to put out her cigarette at her feet, she puts up her red hair, and vaults the balustrade in one fluid motion…