He’s wearing a trench coat, causing time around him to go in slow motion whenever he steps through a door or turns a corner or grabs his gun and mows down fat Italians sporting shades, uzis, and taste for liquid hemoglobin mayhem.

You’ll never see Dex driving a car or riding in a cab, or on a train, or in a plane. You’ll never see Dex Boulder sitting down, or sleeping, or even walking very far. He don’t stroll. You only see Dex walking around a corner, into a room, out of a room. What the heck is he? Is he some kind of private eye, a police dick, a mob assassin, does he work for the CIA, the FBI, is he in Russian espionage, does he work for the Israelis, is he a terrorist, some kind of bastard-man for a rich middle-eastern potentate, a widower bent on revenge, a movie critic, a truant officer, an uncle, a fashion consultant for Niemen friggin Marcus? Yeah, Dex is a little bit of each of those, but he’s working on his own agenda, too. And you’ll never see him from a long way off, unless he stays a long way off.

Dex Boulder walks into a dark small stinky wasted dive of a bar. The bartender is fat, bald, looks like he lives on pretzels, peanuts, beer, mebbe a hot dog from Sal down on the corner. The trench coat Dex is wearing blows out behind him as he moves into the room, smoke from someone’s cigarette, not his, he never opens his mouth, swirls around him. He’s tall, thin, is Scandanavian, a little bit German, a little bit Scotch-Irish, a tiny tiny bit Russian, a very wee smidgen of a bit Romanian. He walks up to the bartender, who glares at him. The barkeep is too old and fat and muscular to be afraid of Dex Boulder. The innkeeper’s been in too many fights, rousted too many drunks, plugged too many would-be robbers with a sawed-off under the counter to be afraid of Dex. He glares, and Dex glares back from beneath his Stetson which shades his eyes which you can’t see but which burn into you anyway.

I’m looking for James, Dex says, without moving a muscle on his face.

Once, back in third grade, when the bartender was just getting into his fat, when he was turning into a little roly-poly boy in striped shirts and a crew cut, when he was getting up enough courage to knock down Susie Messlewhit so he could look up her dress for a brief instant, when he was learning to carry frogs around in his pocket and a sling shot like his older brother, who stole beer from liquor stores and beat up fags and niggers, when he was into peanut butter and liked to throw rocks at cats, when he was on the verge of being expelled for grabbing Susis Messlewhit with a meaty third grade hand, pulling her hair because she was a rich bitch and her dad bossed his dad around the factory all day, once, when he was in third grade and wanted to grow up to be an army sergeant or a navy sergeant or an air-force sergeant, when he wanted to kill the krauts and the japs and the wops, or maybe be a policeman, once, when he was in the third grade, he knew someone named James, a skinny kid in the fifth grade who ate with only one hand because the other he kept in his pocket all day. But he’s long forgotten about that James, long long forgotten about third grade, and he’s never met another James since.

I don’t know any James, he says.

Dex picks up a bottle, half full/half empty, that’s standing there on the bar like it was waiting for Dex, like it knew he was gonna be strip-searched at the door and his piece would be taken away and so it had itself arranged to be taped to the back of the cistern in the toilet. Dex spins it flat in his palm then smartly smashes it across the bridge of the bartender’s nose, splattering broken glass and beer all over himself and the fatso, then expertly grabs the bartender’s collar with that same hand, holding three hundred pounds up at arm’s length, while his other hand whips a colt .44 magnum .357 desert fox .55 caliber smith and wesson out of a shoulder holster and holds it the other way to lodge the barrel into the forehead of a large guy running up to the bartender’s aid, making him kneel.

The bartender blubbers, blood bubbling out of his nose and eyes. James, Dex says. Big guy, scar on his right cheek, tattoo of a battle ship on his bicep, likes to suck those mints, those thin mints...

Uh, uh, uh, Ande’s mints? The guy with the gun in his forehead says.

No, Dex Boulder says, without looking back at him, still glaring at the bartender who’s eyes are wide, still holding him up, cocking the gun, No, those orange mints, the ones that come in a box.

Jesus, you mean Fat Dave Gallami? the bartender says.

Dex lets the bartender go, grabs another half full/half empty bottle, smashes it over the bartender’s bald skull, and grabs him by the collar again, all before gravity realizes it’s got a job to do, and somehow cocks the gun again also.

I said James, Dex says, in a voice kind of like a gruff whisper, a sort of cool but not guttural noise that comes deep out of the darkest part of his soul, the part where he could kill a child who came at him with a gun, or knife a nun who tried to genuflect him with the cross, or punch a grandma who tried to pawn off burnt cookies on him. It’s the kind of gruff whisper that shows you how Dex always talks that way, he always sounds like he’s whispering, you could even put him in that play by Tennessee Williams and when he has to shout “Stella” he’d do it in that whisper.

Oh yeah, yeah, James, sure, I know him, some folks call him Fat Dave Gallami, but sure, that’s James all right, yeah, he lives down at the Towertree Arms, that hotel on Fifth and Jackson, room 227, real nice room, it’s got wallpaper by Perriere and real satin sheets, kind of a liquid midnight blue that all the whores say makes it easy to slide around and keep him away for most of the night, and a safe, he’s got a safe full of cash and bonds and a picture of his dear old Aunt Agnes God rest her soul she died poor thing back in 57 of beri beri wasn’t her fault there wasn’t enough fresh fruit on that cruiser. He’s a bad one, mister, um, mister...

Dex lets go of the bartender, lets go of his gun, spins around with his arms out, grabs the bartender with his other hand, the gun with the other hand, all before anyone realizes it’s happening. Boulder, he says, and cocks the gun a third time. Dex Boulder.

Yeah, Mr. Boulder, a real bad egg, that Fat Dave, I mean James, deserves it, he sure deserves it, alright, say, do you want a drink, on the house, a toast to the extra two feet wide they’ll have to dig his grave, Mr. Boulder, a shot of Sunnybrook, on the house, please, Mr. Boulder, please, what do you say, Mr. Boulder...

Dex puts the bartender on his feet, holsters his weapon, and glides out of the bar. The door shuts behind him, and the bartender just gazes at it, while the guy on his knees stands up, and sits at the bar. He orders a shot of Old Welsanslaus whiskey, a triple, without saying a word, and the bartender says the single stupidest thing he will ever say in his life:

I’m going to get that guy,

Then he wipes the blood off his face, makes the drink, serves it up, and begins to clean some glasses.

Dex Boulder is across town, three blocks away from the Towertree Arms, leaning against a lamp post in the dark at three in the afternoon. A set of headlights washes across his chest where his arms are folded. He watches the doorman hop out to a car, open it --a pair of legs emerge, the kind of legs that make a grown man cry, no matter who he is, maybe he used to walk around jungles farting gasoline and eating three-thousand year old trees for breakfast, shot up a lion or two just because he was bored and could kill a bull-gorilla with nothing but a comb and a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels, but even he would weep when he looked at those legs, long, long as the Amazon river which works its way through virgin forests and splashes like a pregnant whale into the Pacific ocean, and slender, skinniest damn things you ever saw, so skinny it makes you wonder in those small quiet hours of the morning when you’re wide awake next to the alarm clock five minutes before it goes off to send you into another miserable day at your miserable job for miserable dollars to buy miserable beer how a woman with legs that skinny can walk over what must have been miles of men’s hearts and souls, and smooth too, smoother than glass, smoother than the skin on the freckled faced cheek of a twelve year old girl raised on buttermilk and the fat of her daddy’s the king’s one million working peasants, the kind of smooth that if you ever got to run your rough work-hardened calloused factory-made hands over them, the gods themselves would come down from the sky farting fire and pissing blood and rip your very soul to shreds and feed them to the birds of a thousand drooling cowardly men for the venial sin of even trying to touch those long, slender, smooth legs. Dex narrows his eyes, and the legs are followed by a body, and a head of hair, all swaddled in a fur coat. He’s not smoking but he throws a butt into the gutter anyway, and takes a few steps: he’s at the front door, shoving the doorman into the gutter, grabbing the woman by her arm, spinning her around.

Her tits take a while to follow her but when they do they take a deep breath to scream, but before they can Dex leans in and plants a kiss on her that drains the five hundred thousand dollars of plastic surgery out of her face, a kiss that puts a plane ticket back to Hometown, Ohio, in her pocket, a kiss that wipes the memory of Fat Dave Gallami out of her brain forever --even if she were to meet Fat Dave again he would be invisible, and she would wonder how the heck that cigar and cornbeef sandwhich were just floating in the air like that. Dex snaps his fingers, a taxi appears, and she’s inside it and gone.

Four huge zoot suits jump out of the car like new petals budding on a time-lapsed daisy, with various revolvers and rifles and tommy guns and pistols and roscoes and gats and jimmies and shooters blazing, their barrels belching flames and sending a thousand million lead-hot messengers of the Angel of Pain and her sister, Bloody Death. Dex leaps to the side, allowing a shrapnel pepper to season the wall of the building, then he whips out his own bullet-flinger and begins to plugs some thugs. Blam: one catches it in the shoulder and spins around, losing his heat before he crumples behind the front of the car; whack: one takes it straight in the gut, doubling over to catch five more in the spine; pawheeng: one finds a five ounce weight gain in his forehead; kapow kapow kapow: another one has three tenths of a second to thank God he has two knees because one is gone now before his lifted by the force of a final burst that smashes him into the windshield.

And still they keep piling out of the limo, like clowns from a circus car. Dex Boulder switches hands, pulls out another roscoe, and, two fisted, erases fifteen years of mafia history. Jerry ‘Stitches’ Giudocci takes three in the face. Donny ‘The Fish’ Lambanete eats a few for dinner. Manni ‘The Force is With You’ Lucas winds up with nine in his chest. Dex spins the guns around his finger, tosses them to each the other hand, and keeps firing. Freddie Gazebo, Ken Giovanni, and Needles Marcona fall on top of each other before their guns are even out of their holsters. Leon from the East Side Five hits the pavement, crawls under the limo, and gets that brain surgery he needed at last, no HMO required. Don Atello and Don Ferrari leave behind estates that will land their wives and kids in tax court for years. Michael Corona manages to get a shot off that nicks the brim of the hat Dex is wearing, and receives his name in cursive shot into his ribs as a thank you.

Finally, Fat Dave Galami jumps out, a knife sharpened to slice a spider web strand lenghtwise in one hand and a gun the size of Montana in the other. He fires the weapon, nine loud bursts that fly directly at Dex’s heart , head, gut, feet, and other valuable parts of his body-- and they stop when they get there, sweep around in a tight curve to the right, and then keep going behind him, shattering a few windows and knocking a few bricks out of the wall.

Dex jumps, knocking Fat Dave to the ground, and kicks the knife away with a savage boot. Then he unloads the remaining rounds on either side of Fat Dave’s head, chipping asphalt, making the man’s cheeks bleed, until each gun emits three dry clicks.

You hear that, James? Dex says, placing the barrel of one gun against Fat Dave’s forehead. I’m sure you’ve heard it before. That sound of desperation. A man in your position doesn’t live this long without being a little bit lucky, without having once heard that sound of an empty gun when the barrel is staring him in the face. So what you have ask yourself, James, is not if you’re feeling lucky, since you know this is empty, but what is your fate, right now? Is there a God, and did He invent a world where a man like you can cower in the blood of his army and not get one right between the eyes from a man like me? Oh, I know what you’re thinking, James. Maybe there’s luck, but there’s no such things as Fate, as Karma, Kismet, Ka-- the only destiny a man has is the one he makes for himself. So when I pull this trigger, James, will it be destiny that makes the bullet appear in the chamber, and sends it through the back of your skull? That’s the question.

Please, listen to me, I’m Dave Galami, I don’t know no James, I’ll give you whatever you want--

Yeah? Anything? Like when I pull this trigger you’ll give me the bullet that sends you back to the shit hole you came from, hell?

C’mon now, I’m not just some schmuck, okay, you can’t do this, be reasonable--

Reasonable? Dex moves the barrel to one side of Fat Dave’s head, and points the other gun at the other side. You want reasonable?

Who the fuck are you anyway, huh, who the fuck are you, to just kill all my men, to just stand there and tell me--

This is where you shut up, James. This is where you shut up for a while.

And then destiny happens.