Stephen Ross

"Whatever happened to Tupper?" I asked. We had been chatting idly over a bottle of claret.
"I murdered him," Coates answered, with all sincerity.

The small boy made his way up the sweep of steps to the apartment building. He was alone. He wore glasses. It was three hours past his bedtime and twelve blocks past his mother's idea of a safe place to be. He wore slippers and a buttoned-up brown overcoat -- dark blue pajamas with a Cowboy & Indian motif peeked out from underneath. It was a cold night, and his breath crystallized in the air...

I took a drink from the glass while my left hand vamped around low C. It was a slow, left-end of the piano vamp, with an alternating major-minor mood.