Daisuke ran a hand over his hair irritably and took a cigarette from his inner coat pocket. He wore two coats, a very heavy overcoat that touched the floor from the stool he was perched on, and beneath it, a high-collared black jacket whose white delta was best left hidden in a Minowara gambling den.

        “Give me a light, Maggie, could you?”

        She lit his cigarette with her own, dropping ash onto him in the process. He batted the ash away, leaving a dark grey streak on his white overcoat.

        Maggie was young and her skin was a shade lighter than the other cocktail waitresses. She was a second-generation Ukrainian who’d had the misfortune of growing up in the Veins. Her father had so...

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