LITMIR.BIZ

      Prologue

      Near Chartres Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1:35 a.m.

      His feet were wet.

      Shit, why hadn’t he kept his mouth shut back there? Why had he asked for money?

      He could still hear it, the jazz in that place, music as old as this town, older, the rhythm thumping, but not as fast or hard as the blood at his temples.

      The goons they’d sent after him were too slow to have seen for sure where he’d taken a right off Chartres Street. Deep in a doorway, neon lights laying bright stripes on the soaked street, Pip Sedge couldn’t hold the breaths that burned his lungs, hurt his heart, so he pulled up one side of his suit jacket and plastered it over his face, hoping to muffle any noise.

      The rain had all but cleared the late stragglers away.

      Maybe he’d lost those two guys. He didn’t hear anyone running, but two hundred and fifty pounds or so of muscle—and fat—apiece had to make the going tough.

      Shut the hell up. Shut up! His brain wouldn’t be quiet, it yammered at him, slid into a screaming chorus that went on and on. I’m a dead man. I’m a dead man. I’m a dead man. They would put a bullet in him. Chase him closer to the river, farther and farther from any help, shoot him in the back and leave him facedown in stinking mud and garbage.

      Help? What help?

      Quiet. Hush. Just keep cool.

      Moving from the doorway could be suicidal. For all he knew there were eyes watching for his first step into the open.

      He felt the air change, the spaces around him contract, and he strained to separate sounds. I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy. It was a horn player’s riff somewhere inside an old Dixieland number that could have been the soundtrack from a black-and-white movie. A shutter creaked back and forth, a little slam in between. The rain subsided to a patter.

      Shadows gathered before his eyes. He blinked. Shadows shifted on the walls that faced him across the narrow road. Bars on windows shimmered wet. He took in air and held it, and his guts turned to water.

      He could stand and wait to die, or he could try to outrun two lumbering punks with guns. And he could hope, just a little, that they wouldn’t see him until he was out of range, or that they didn’t see him at all.

      If he got out of this, he already had a new plan. It had

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