“I’m sorry, Fearless,” I said through the visitor’s grille at the county jailhouse. “But, man, I just can’t do it.”

Fearless’s lean, dark face didn’t show the disappointment I know he must have felt. He had put his life on the line saving mine eight years earlier, but over the years since then, I had risked my own skin many times for him — and I was no war hero the way he was.

Fearless was the kind of person who attracted trouble. He didn’t know how to look away or back down. He couldn’t even spell the word compromise. Whenever he called me, I didn’t know if we were going to get drunk at a party or get jumped down some dark alley.

To protect my interests as a businessman, I decided to cut my ties with probably the best friend that I ever had.

“Okay,” he said. “I understand. But you know them men did me wrong, Paris.”

I CHECKED to make sure the pistol was loaded and took off the safety. Then I climbed into the bed with the gun under the covers next to me. I didn’t fall into a deep sleep but instead drifted on the edge of a nervous doze.

WHEN I FELT a feathery touch against my forehead I feared that it was a rat, that I was dead and he came in from the alley to eat my flesh. The thought of food caused me to writhe from nausea, and when I moved I felt her flowery dress.

I knew it was her. That was my kind of luck. The kind of woman I wanted most, the kind of woman I should stay away from at all costs, that’s the woman who I will awaken to from a slumber that might have been death.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I could barely see her in the darkness.

“No.”

“Does it hurt much?”

“Like a toothache set in a broken jaw.”