At the corner, Evan peered around the hotel's wall. Halfway up Dumbastrasse, Dave leaned against the hotel, smoking a cigarette, nonchalant, confident, the only other human on the night street. Although Evan had imagined this moment over and over, the reality terrified him. Dave flicked ash onto the sidewalk. A snatch of music came into Evan's mind, something his mother had sung to him in German when he was a boy. She'd told him it came from "The Three Penny Opera," by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, and the dirge-like ballad told the story of a dangerous man, a shark of a killer. At Juilliard, he'd learned the jazzy American version of the song in English: "Mack the Knife."

Evan pulled the old bush hat down on his forehead and stooped as he wobbled like a drunk across the sidewalk under a streetlight. He sang in German about the shark with razor teeth. Dave noticed him, straightened with interest.

"Hey!" Dave called.

Evan swayed across the street, swinging the Scotch bottle, slurring the song louder, the part about a corpse on the street and a shadow flitting around a corner as he reached the opposite curb.

"Hey, you bum! You know what we'd do with you in America?"

Evan heard Dave's running footsteps behind him. He couldn't react, couldn't show his face. Dave shoved him to the ground. The click of his switchblade punctuated his gleeful laughter.

"I'll tattoo your heart with my little switchblade."

Evan hid his face, whimpered into hunched shoulders as Dave grabbed him. He'd wanted to escape to freedom. Well, death was a kind of escape.

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