THE ALLEY, by Ann AptakerDeath wasn’t what Howard Vickers had in mind for his Saturday night. He’d planned to stop in at his favorite bar down the street from his apartment, enjoy a little drinking, a little dancing, a little conversation and laughter. He even figured he might get lucky and go home with a willing woman, maybe that curvy redhead who dropped by the bar now and then. But Howard never made it to the bar. A shadow waited for him in the street, a shadow that followed him, slithered near him, and finally cornered him. The shadow, when it dissolved in the glare of a streetlight, took the form of a wiry, cold-eyed man in a gray overcoat holding a .45 semi-auto. Howard knew the man with the gun, a man he figured would find him sooner or later. His name was Louie Sharp.
So instead o
