Atlantic City greeted him like an unwashed whore. Nothing good happened here after sunset, at least not until summer.

Lofty casinos lorded over paved grids of daytime traffic, while their parking towers never afforded free space before the first two levels.

Gregory Tangela wanted an anonymous cleaner to eliminate his foes, and the covert aspects of such a position lured Sash to a sit-down. The hulking crime lord looked fresh out of a Scorsese film with his designer pantsuit, narrow mustache, and moon-faced machismo. Tangela had survived sixty years without taking a bullet, and for this, he sacrificed his looks and hairline.

Sash wanted no part of the made-man culture native to this group. It was all macho orchestrated bullshit, like the crap currently on display by the two burly goons standing behind Tangela. Their cautious eyes roamed familiar territory, Sash’s marred face, the smooth black ball in his eye socket.

“Being behind the scenes,” Sash said. “Means different things for you and me,”

Tangela’s thick legs parted. “How so?”

“When you go down,” Sash stood, smoothing the wrinkles from his gray suit jacket. “The first person to get fucked, is me,”

Tangela was annoyed yet respectful. “No, dammit,”

“Explain it to me, then,” Sash said. “Like I’m a child,”

“Your name never gets spoken, Glass Eye,” Tangela assured, hands moving with each word. “No one takes responsibility for your hits except me. Trust me on this. Fall guys come cheap these days.”

Yes, a revolving door of desperate men willing to do jail time for debt forgiveness was a fact of life.

“Listen, I can pay you ten times more than Dr. Zhivago up there in New York,” Tangela added, referring to Sash’s current boss, Vladimir Kotwiki. “Down here, you get anonymity and a place to call home,”

“That is a situation that tempts me.” Sash slipped a hand into his jacket. “But first, I must do what I came here to do.” Pistol drawn, he fired.

The flesh between Tangela’s eyes split, weeping blood as the men behind him pulled their guns. Sash aimed again, firing two more rounds. Each took a bullet to the head, their thick legs folding and their bodies falling like stringless marionettes.

He strolled calmly from the garage and outside, inserted himself into a group of passing pedestrians while shouts rang out behind him.

Safe in the driver’s seat of his rental, he watched as five men stormed out of the garage’s large double doors. They rushed a gaggle of walkers, and finding no one resembling Sash, they jumped into their cars and fled the scene.

♪

Sash’s actual employer, Deandre Regal, spoke Polish, unusual for a black man in this country. Braided and lean, he carried out business with a calculating air. He also paid in conveniently small bills.

Regal’s panther-like eyes watched Sash count his cash.

The man wondered aloud if his father’s offer might be transferrable, reminding Sash that a modest community like Margate, full of old Jews living in brand-new condos, would make him invisible.

Sash considered his words over some bourbon and a damned good cigar.

Last was complicated things. The ballet had been canceled in midtown, so he hit a local club instead. That contemptible Boscov boy appeared on the dance floor, and with him was Andrej. When the pair began dancing like ballerinas, other dancers gave them room, some of them tugging at their own crotches.

Sash left after that, unable to take another moment in Manhattan.

He sped down the Garden State Parkway and, around sun-up, revisited the woods where he and Oleg viciously parted ways. Overgrown grass had swallowed up any evidence of their brutal altercation, and miles down the road, he found no sign of the abandoned car, though bits of crime scene tape clung to the nearby trees.

If the police had his gun, why didn’t they come for him? Andrej, the Boscov bitch, and everything with Oleg and Konni—he desperately needed a new life. That’s why Mister Regal got his answer before Sash returned to the motel room.

♪

A brochure on his nightstand advertised the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s residency at the Royce Casino.

Sash hadn’t seen his violin since Samil cleaned out Konni’s apartment. Nothing calmed him more than playing his wood, not even a shot of freezer-thick vodka. Samil spoke only to Radeki these days, and he never mentioned the Pilar—nor had he sold it since Sash checked every pawn shop in Brooklyn.

After a hot shower, the air-conditioned room felt frigid. He fell onto the bed and let the crisp sheets dry his skin. With a gentle thumb, he gouged the black ball from his orbital socket, easing the sinus pressure in his temple.

A lazy examination found a faint smear on its glass.

Tongue heavy with bourbon, he closed his eyes and heard the opening strings from a Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. His fingers strummed upon the sheet, pressing phantom cords while flutes, horn harps, crotales, and clarinets lulled him to sleep.

His gun falls, and blow after blow sends fire into his blood-stained knuckles.

Oleg rolls free and races into the woods. Sash gives chase as the trappings of a violin grow louder. Trees blind his charge while Oleg’s footfalls grow distant.

Branches nip at his arms, and a gunshot rings out beyond the trees. Broken branches guide him to a clearing where a group of young, lithe men dance to Debussy’s symphonic poem.

Sinewy bodies surround him, their long, dark locks tickling his eager hands. Youthful skin surrounds him, and it yearns for his ouch. Hungry sighs bring warmth, but he breaks free of their seductive embrace.

The symphony fades, leaving the wail of a lone violin.

He stands naked in the high grass, a blond within a circle of stones. His bare back glows milky against the darkened trees, and his narrow arm draws a feathered bow over the strings of a Pilar.

The sun dies along the treetops, and the sparse hair covering this angelic blonde’s legs and arms shimmers with its captured light. Crickets quiet when Sash’s trigger finger touches a nub in the blonde’s spine.

Silence as the blonde’s arm drops, he turns to reveal Andrej, who imprisons Sascha with his reproachful stare.

Sash stirred when the ejaculate touched his chin and chest.

He lay there, panting in the dark. Another shower would dry the scars on his back and make the drive home uncomfortable. He deciphered his strange dream, making connections he hadn’t considered when awake.

Madness. It was the only explanation for these new thoughts. The day was longer than it should have been, forcing his brain to conjure ridiculous notions. Notion given merit when he suddenly recalled that Andrej played the violin. His theory germinated quickly, unusual for a seed planted so deep.