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[shousetsubangbang]

Happy Friday the 13th! Celebrate by signing up to write and/or draw for our spooky, smutty October issue!

Signups are now open for the October 28 issue; the text deadline for the issue is Tuesday, October 15 and the art deadline is Saturday, October 26.

Please reply to this post if you plan to submit a story or artwork for this issue, indicating whether you are interested in contributing to the issue as an author and/or artist, and whether or not you are looking for a collaborative partner. As always, you don’t have to sign up to participate, and you’re not creating an unbreakable contract by signing up, but it’s always a good idea!

This issue’s theme is Hauntology: Join us for some spectral studies in our traditionally spooky October issue, where the past haunts the present (but, like, in a sexy way).

SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT THIS ISSUE: While the general SSBB vibe is always one of happy endings, we ease off that a little bit for our October issues. Of course, warm fuzzies and happily-ever-afters still absolutely have a place in this round! But if you feel like taking things to a slightly darker/more ambiguous place for a change, this is the issue to do that.

Quick Answers: Interested in participating but don’t know where to start? Bring your quick questions here!

Submission Guidelines for Fiction: All the specifics for text submissions. READ BEFORE SUBMITTING.

Submission Guidelines for Art: Whether you’re illustrating or submitting a standalone piece, here’s what you need to know.

Find the Shousetsu Bang*Bang community on Discord! Join us on our very own server for discussions, inspiration, shop talk, silliness, and other behind-the-scenes fun.

To make sure you don’t miss a single deadline, click here for our Google calendar with the dates pre-loaded.

[shousetsubangbang]

Signups are now open for the October 28 issue; the text deadline for the issue is Tuesday, October 15 and the art deadline is Saturday, October 26.

Please reply to this post if you plan to submit a story or artwork for this issue, indicating whether you are interested in contributing to the issue as an author and/or artist, and whether or not you are looking for a collaborative partner. As always, you don’t have to sign up to participate, and you’re not creating an unbreakable contract by signing up, but it’s always a good idea!

This issue’s theme is Hauntology: Join us for some spectral studies in our traditionally spooky October issue, where the past haunts the present (but, like, in a sexy way).

SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT THIS ISSUE: While the general SSBB vibe is always one of happy endings, we ease off that a little bit for our October issues. Of course, warm fuzzies and happily-ever-afters still absolutely have a place in this round! But if you feel like taking things to a slightly darker/more ambiguous place for a change, this is the issue to do that.

Quick Answers: Interested in participating but don’t know where to start? Bring your quick questions here!

Submission Guidelines for Fiction: All the specifics for text submissions. READ BEFORE SUBMITTING.

Submission Guidelines for Art: Whether you’re illustrating or submitting a standalone piece, here’s what you need to know.

Find the Shousetsu Bang*Bang community on Discord! Join us on our very own server for discussions, inspiration, shop talk, silliness, and other behind-the-scenes fun.

To make sure you don’t miss a single deadline, click here for our Google calendar with the dates pre-loaded.

[shousetsubangbang]

by shukyou (主教), illustrated by 2013, from Issue 110: Neon Lights

-

Well, thought Zero with a sigh as he hopped onto the streetcar, that had been nothing but disappointment.

There hadn’t even been any excitement, not a single lie sussed out or promising lead charmed from someone’s reluctant lips. Just a big nothing. Four potential leads, four pairs of eyes scrutinizing the photograph he’d shown them, four heads shaken without a hint of recognition. It was enough to make a man wish he’d never gotten into this line of work.

Not, of course, that the other lines of work he’d gotten into had ever been any better. Being one half of the Harbor Street Detective Agency wasn’t a walk in the park, but it sure was better than hawking the morning edition to uninterested passers-by or hauling shingles up ladders in the midday sun, to say nothing of rooting around in garbage cans for a meal. Ask Zero how he knew.

At least he’d caught the streetcar that would, in a meandering fashion but without any transfers, ferry him all the way back to the Agency office, a little third-floor walk-up on the eponymous Harbor Street. It was late already, and would be even later by the time he finally reached his stop, late enough that he could justify pushing aside the “respectable” furniture that made the place look like an office, hauling the Murphy bed down from the wall, pouring himself a nightcap, and calling it a day. He’d circle back up in the morning with the other half of the Harbor Street Detective Agency, the one who could afford an apartment that didn’t double as their place of business, on account of both family money and a persistent habit of making better decisions than Zero did.

And speaking of–

It was the dazzling marquee of the Castle Theater that caught his attention, the flashing bulbs around its name hooking his attention from the corner of his eye. The streetcar pulled up to its stop right at the head of Central Avenue, the appropriately named heart of the city’s night life. That was where Sol had been headed — not the Castle, specifically, but one of the other, smaller establishments in its vicinity. He’d been a little insistent about it, in fact, saying that divide-and-conquer was the best way to do this investigation. Zero would take the uptown leads, and Sol would find out what he could from the dead man’s favorite bar.

And yeah, at the time, splitting up had seemed like the best way to cover a lot of ground. But that had been when they’d thought flashing a photo around might get them somewhere. Maybe Sol was having better luck than Zero was. Maybe Sol could use his help. Maybe two heads would be better than one.

[shousetsubangbang]

Signups are now open for the October 28 issue; the text deadline for the issue is Tuesday, October 15 and the art deadline is Saturday, October 26.

Please reply to this post if you plan to submit a story or artwork for this issue, indicating whether you are interested in contributing to the issue as an author and/or artist, and whether or not you are looking for a collaborative partner. As always, you don’t have to sign up to participate, and you’re not creating an unbreakable contract by signing up, but it’s always a good idea!

This issue’s theme is Hauntology: Join us for some spectral studies in our traditionally spooky October issue, where the past haunts the present (but, like, in a sexy way).

SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT THIS ISSUE: While the general SSBB vibe is always one of happy endings, we ease off that a little bit for our October issues. Of course, warm fuzzies and happily-ever-afters still absolutely have a place in this round! But if you feel like taking things to a slightly darker/more ambiguous place for a change, this is the issue to do that.

Quick Answers: Interested in participating but don’t know where to start? Bring your quick questions here!

Submission Guidelines for Fiction: All the specifics for text submissions. READ BEFORE SUBMITTING.

Submission Guidelines for Art: Whether you’re illustrating or submitting a standalone piece, here’s what you need to know.

Find the Shousetsu Bang*Bang community on Discord! Join us on our very own server for discussions, inspiration, shop talk, silliness, and other behind-the-scenes fun.

To make sure you don’t miss a single deadline, click here for our Google calendar with the dates pre-loaded.

[shousetsubangbang]

by Domashita Romero (地下ロメロ), from Issue 110: Neon Lights

-

It’d been three years and Alexander’s stomach still turned when he got in one of the elevators of the Carlyle-Matsunaga Building. It wasn’t that he was afraid that it would malfunction (much), or of heights (much), or even how you barely felt them move while they were zipping so fast between hundreds of floors (okay, a little). What got him was the persistent feeling that he was not supposed to be in one. He could keep the feeling that he wasn’t supposed to be in Carlyle-Matsunaga at all buried down through most of the day, but in those moments between floors, all he could think was, this isn’t for you. Guys like you don’t belong in places like this.

What did he know, though? Maybe everyone in the building thought that and just wasn’t admitting it. The price for a three-minute commute. 

Some Carlyle-Matsunaga engineer had calculated it was actually more efficient to directly ferry a single person to their destination express than making stops to pick up more, or at least this was what Alexander assumed, since he was almost always alone while he felt this bit of existential nausea. He was accompanied only by the seemingly infinite library of soft music that played in the building’s many, many elevators, and the shifting advertisements and announcements on the wall displays. The doors opened and let him inside to leave work, and opened again a hundred or so floors later to let him out to go home, and he would do the same thing in reverse tomorrow. 

It was routine, and that’s what he’d wanted by making his way here, by doing the climb. Alexander’s little spasms of self-doubt while looking at an ad for freeze-dried shrimp while he was rocketing through the levels of one of the tallest buildings in the city were part of that routine, too. Predictable as sunrise and sunset. 

What was not an expected part of the routine was for the elevator to stop somewhere before his requested floor. Alexander could count on two hands the number of times that’d happened in his past three years. Engineers had to be wrong sometimes, even Carlyle-Matsunaga ones. Alexander stopped emotionally peering up his own asshole and remembered basic social etiquette, stepping back from the door to make space for whoever was getting on next. The doors opened, and Alexander’s stomach and in fact his entire insides felt like they’d been dropped to the ground floor. 

“Pardon,” the man said in an unmistakable low rumble as he stepped into the elevator. He had a cap on, hiding some of his face, but Alexander didn’t need to see it. He would have known Lucky was Lucky if they were both in an entirely dark room, just from the sound of his breath and the way he filled the space. 

[shousetsubangbang]

by shukyou (主教), illustrated by 2013, from Issue 110: Neon Lights

-

Well, thought Zero with a sigh as he hopped onto the streetcar, that had been nothing but disappointment.

There hadn’t even been any excitement, not a single lie sussed out or promising lead charmed from someone’s reluctant lips. Just a big nothing. Four potential leads, four pairs of eyes scrutinizing the photograph he’d shown them, four heads shaken without a hint of recognition. It was enough to make a man wish he’d never gotten into this line of work.

Not, of course, that the other lines of work he’d gotten into had ever been any better. Being one half of the Harbor Street Detective Agency wasn’t a walk in the park, but it sure was better than hawking the morning edition to uninterested passers-by or hauling shingles up ladders in the midday sun, to say nothing of rooting around in garbage cans for a meal. Ask Zero how he knew.

At least he’d caught the streetcar that would, in a meandering fashion but without any transfers, ferry him all the way back to the Agency office, a little third-floor walk-up on the eponymous Harbor Street. It was late already, and would be even later by the time he finally reached his stop, late enough that he could justify pushing aside the “respectable” furniture that made the place look like an office, hauling the Murphy bed down from the wall, pouring himself a nightcap, and calling it a day. He’d circle back up in the morning with the other half of the Harbor Street Detective Agency, the one who could afford an apartment that didn’t double as their place of business, on account of both family money and a persistent habit of making better decisions than Zero did.

And speaking of–

It was the dazzling marquee of the Castle Theater that caught his attention, the flashing bulbs around its name hooking his attention from the corner of his eye. The streetcar pulled up to its stop right at the head of Central Avenue, the appropriately named heart of the city’s night life. That was where Sol had been headed — not the Castle, specifically, but one of the other, smaller establishments in its vicinity. He’d been a little insistent about it, in fact, saying that divide-and-conquer was the best way to do this investigation. Zero would take the uptown leads, and Sol would find out what he could from the dead man’s favorite bar.

And yeah, at the time, splitting up had seemed like the best way to cover a lot of ground. But that had been when they’d thought flashing a photo around might get them somewhere. Maybe Sol was having better luck than Zero was. Maybe Sol could use his help. Maybe two heads would be better than one.

[shousetsubangbang]

Shousetsu Bang*Bang Issue 110: Neon Lights

cover by juou no zan (女王のザン)

We’re all light, by Hyakunichisou 13 (百日草 十三)

Paint the Town Vermilion, by shukyou (主教) *

Going Up, by Domashita Romero

Eleven, Twelve, by Suzuran *

A Snapshot of Married Life, by Kit Miller

The Confidence of a Beast, by Ladz

Daughter of the Redsun, by ShrimpKing *

*illustrated

—

Heat Up, by TOFU+BEAST

~*~

This is the webzine. Shousetsu Bang*Bang. It’s a big webzine with a big heart, and it offers a lot. Whatever genre you want, it’s probably here. The sights, the bodies, what those bodies do with other bodies– Well, it’s queer tastes for queer folks, that’s for sure. There’s an internet of billions of people out there, like a city that never sleeps. And sometimes, late at night, those people find themselves awake, staring out their windows or at all their little open tabs, dreaming of a new life, a better life, one filled with love and lust and happy endings. A life packed with tales as steamy and seamy as a hot city night, all of them deliciously smutty and all of them absolutely free.

That’s where I come in.

My name’s Issue 110. I carry a batch (of new stories and art!).

—

(For summaries, creators’ notes, and more, we would usually tell you to see this issue’s entry on the Shousetsu Bang*Bang wiki. In the interim, however, please visit the relevant Google Doc of contributor commentary for similar content.)

[shousetsubangbang]

Prefer ebooks? Download copies of this issue for free at Draft2Digital and itch.io! Same content (see above), same price (free!), but now in a handy file you can take pretty much anywhere.

If you do download from either of these sites, please take a moment and leave us a starred review! Thanks so much!

Shousetsu Bang*Bang Issue 110: Neon Lights

cover by juou no zan (女王のザン)

We’re all light, by Hyakunichisou 13 (百日草 十三)

Paint the Town Vermilion, by shukyou (主教) *

Going Up, by Domashita Romero

Eleven, Twelve, by Suzuran *

A Snapshot of Married Life, by Kit Miller

The Confidence of a Beast, by Ladz

Daughter of the Redsun, by ShrimpKing *

*illustrated

—

Heat Up, by TOFU+BEAST

~*~

This is the webzine. Shousetsu Bang*Bang. It’s a big webzine with a big heart, and it offers a lot. Whatever genre you want, it’s probably here. The sights, the bodies, what those bodies do with other bodies– Well, it’s queer tastes for queer folks, that’s for sure. There’s an internet of billions of people out there, like a city that never sleeps. And sometimes, late at night, those people find themselves awake, staring out their windows or at all their little open tabs, dreaming of a new life, a better life, one filled with love and lust and happy endings. A life packed with tales as steamy and seamy as a hot city night, all of them deliciously smutty and all of them absolutely free.

That’s where I come in.

My name’s Issue 110. I carry a batch (of new stories and art!).

—

(For summaries, creators’ notes, and more, we would usually tell you to see this issue’s entry on the Shousetsu Bang*Bang wiki. In the interim, however, please visit the relevant Google Doc of contributor commentary for similar content.)

[shousetsubangbang]

by juou no zan (女王のザン), from Issue 110: Neon Lights

[shousetsubangbang]

by TOFU+BEAST, from Issue 110: Neon Lights

[The full image simply cannot be shown on Tumblr without risking our account's termination again. But you can see it on our website!]

[shousetsubangbang]

from Issue 110: Neon Lights

-

Halfway through a cheerful and upbeat monologue about the benefits of extended warranties, a vile, violent cough seized Klaire. Despite her attempts to stop her body from reacting, she hacked and wheezed into the microphone strapped to her face. The awful noise bounced around the small room, a shrill banshee cry of feedback that screeched in her ears until Blake abruptly cut the feed. Reeling from the disruption, Klaire steadied herself and tried to avoid meeting his gaze. She swore she could taste his irritation alongside the bitterness of her own phlegm. Or, maybe, that was just the echinacea oil that she kept telling herself would fix her. The dark, green, vegetal ooze hadn’t done enough yet, and on top of that it tasted terrible, especially the second time around.

“Fuckin’ hell, Klaire,” her manager grunted into his own mic from behind the smudgy, cracked glass that separated them.  Blake’s voice filled her recording booth in the moments after her own sound left it. She dropped her chestnut brown eyes to her feet and felt her face flush hot. For a moment, they stood in mutual silence. Klaire was grateful for her hanging curtains of dark hair, the way they shielded her from view. Eventually, she sucked in a breath and lifted her face again, unfolding herself like one would press a worn-out origami crane back into shape with the pads of their fingers. She was still a little bit crumpled, but she was elegant and lovely all the same. A small sadness always seemed to sit within the folded core of Klaire, like something fragile tucked away for safekeeping. 

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “Start it again.”

[shousetsubangbang]

by Ladz, from Issue 110: Neon Lights

-

You find him this time, aloof against the wall, three vapes precariously gripped in his long fingers adorned with glittering rings. You don’t know if the stones are genuine, but they glimmer in the club’s sparkling lights with the same glass as his carmine eyes. They’re real enough to entrance you. The club’s shadowed lights obscure his face, harsh shadows casting over harsher angles. Creature or man, your heart rises to your throat, the excitement making you ill–perhaps it’s the smoke.

As the drums distort and vibrate, you sway towards him, the throng moving in a wiggling, bouncing wave. It carries you to the shore that is this incredibly attractive specimen. He dresses like he’s out of time. Both from now and later, from whatever hypnotism the music casts with its embrace of the electronic and the manufactured. A short, sleeveless top leaves little to the imagination, his flat chest peeking out from beneath the dark fabric and the layers upon layers of gold necklaces. You want to grab them, to tangle your fingers.

So, you make your approach, with the confidence of a beast.

“You’re not supposed to do that here,” you shout over the loud music. It sounds so stupid from your mouth–humans aren’t supposed to wander into the dens where vampires play. Too much potential for mess from a feeding gone wrong. But it won’t be messy with you, that much you’re sure of.

“Oh? Is that so? Are you jealous?” Loose-limbed, he shuffles the three vapes from his fingers to his palm. He presents them like an offering. “Perhaps, you should take them from me if they offend you so.”

As you reach for him, someone knocks into your back. Tripping forward, you land awkwardly atop his bosom. He jerked his hand at the right time, raising his clenched fist away from you. You don’t hear the half-hearted apology from the other clubgoer. All you know is his intense gaze convincing you that you’re safe, that he’s only playing with you, that there’s no offense in your clumsiness. The music hits a climax, and it makes words struggle to find their way to your mouth.

[shousetsubangbang]

by Kit Miller, from Issue 110: Neon Lights

-

Marcus’ right hand is fisted in Sebastian’s hair. His hips slap against Sebastian’s ass, snapping his cock in and out of him at an eye watering speed.

Sebastian is bent forwards over their sofa, the bones of his hips bruising against the edge of it, his arms pinned behind his back. The leather of the cuffs is soft and supple with long use, moulded to his wrists by this point. Marcus’ left hand encircles both of Sebastian’s wrists completely. His hands are large and he has those silly exercise devices which he absently squeezes whenever he reads or writes or does research or prepares his classes or grades student papers – so, all the time, basically. Sebastian sometimes teases him about it, but Marcus simply laughs it off; it’s made his grip stronger than steel, and he knows very well what it does to Sebastian that, with just one hand, his husband can immobilise him completely.

Sebastian is staring unseeing at the bottle of lube, carelessly discarded onto the seat. The cap’s not on properly, and there’s a drop sliding down the side of it. Thank God the sofa’s leather. It’d be a nightmare to clean otherwise.

His cock aches, it’s been so hard for so long, without any kind of relief. He keeps moaning out pleas for Marcus to make him come, but Marcus ignores them, intent on making this last as long as he pleases. They have a standing agreement that, when they fuck, Marcus is free to ignore anything Sebastian says. Aside from safewords, of course, but that really goes without saying.

‘God, I can’t believe you,’ Marcus gasps. For a moment, the hand in Sebastian’s hair slackens and he caresses his temple. ‘Look at you. You’re the most beautiful thing in existence, do you know that? Jesus, I’m so lucky. You’re so fucking beautiful, I love you so much.’

Sebastian just moans because as Marcus talks, he does not stop fucking hard and deep into him. In fact, he goes harder.

[shousetsubangbang]

by Suzuran, illustrated by Pastel, from Issue 110: Neon Lights

-

Kay never gets tired of the rain.

From her place by the stove, she can watch the misty raindrops congeal on the northeastern window and tiptoe down into the wide, square mouth of the raincatcher. The drizzle is light enough that it doesn’t make much sound as it runs down the pipe, through the first filter and the little electric turbine, and into the pump; but it’s still water, and every so often, the pump still kicks in, ferrying another spoonful up into the cistern in the corner. On the other side of the glass, the rain washes out all the brutal neon glow from the distant billboards far below and the city streets beneath, into muted, shifting shades of grey. The raindrops on the window break the square and leaden pillar of the building across the way into dull grey pebbles. Kay watches another raindrop grow fat and start its jerky way down the glass while the single electric burner whines in protest and the kettle tries valiantly to bubble. It’s been raining since she got up an hour or two ago, and will most likely be raining when she goes back to bed. It’s probably around sunrise, but even with two whole windows to look out of, between the clouds above and the lights of the city below, it’s impossible to tell.

The simmer in the kettle finally rises to a boil. Instantly, the hypervigilant off-switch flips to stop it.

The sound makes Kay twitch. She notes it without much interest, then turns, picks up the kettle, pulls the plug, and crosses the tiny apartment in two steps. In the middle of the floor sits the bathtub — not where Kay would have put it, but that’s where the plumbing hookup is. There used to be a wall of some kind around it, based on the staining on the concrete floor, to divide it and the toilet from the rest of the apartment, but that’s long gone. A tattered accordion-fold of stiff, cloudy acrylic stands in front of the toilet now, shielding it from view.

The tub is a little under half-full, which is about as much as it needs to be. Kay pours the kettle’s steaming contents into the heavy steel tub, and a cloud wafts up, soft and warm. It was hard to get a steel bathtub, but worth it, for both strength and sterility; the metal is dented and scratched, but still intact and mold-free, which is more than Kay can say for its predecessor. It doesn’t hold the heat well, but that’s a sacrifice worth making.

[shousetsubangbang]

by Domashita Romero (地下ロメロ), from Issue 110: Neon Lights

-

It’d been three years and Alexander’s stomach still turned when he got in one of the elevators of the Carlyle-Matsunaga Building. It wasn’t that he was afraid that it would malfunction (much), or of heights (much), or even how you barely felt them move while they were zipping so fast between hundreds of floors (okay, a little). What got him was the persistent feeling that he was not supposed to be in one. He could keep the feeling that he wasn’t supposed to be in Carlyle-Matsunaga at all buried down through most of the day, but in those moments between floors, all he could think was, this isn’t for you. Guys like you don’t belong in places like this.

What did he know, though? Maybe everyone in the building thought that and just wasn’t admitting it. The price for a three-minute commute. 

Some Carlyle-Matsunaga engineer had calculated it was actually more efficient to directly ferry a single person to their destination express than making stops to pick up more, or at least this was what Alexander assumed, since he was almost always alone while he felt this bit of existential nausea. He was accompanied only by the seemingly infinite library of soft music that played in the building’s many, many elevators, and the shifting advertisements and announcements on the wall displays. The doors opened and let him inside to leave work, and opened again a hundred or so floors later to let him out to go home, and he would do the same thing in reverse tomorrow. 

It was routine, and that’s what he’d wanted by making his way here, by doing the climb. Alexander’s little spasms of self-doubt while looking at an ad for freeze-dried shrimp while he was rocketing through the levels of one of the tallest buildings in the city were part of that routine, too. Predictable as sunrise and sunset. 

What was not an expected part of the routine was for the elevator to stop somewhere before his requested floor. Alexander could count on two hands the number of times that’d happened in his past three years. Engineers had to be wrong sometimes, even Carlyle-Matsunaga ones. Alexander stopped emotionally peering up his own asshole and remembered basic social etiquette, stepping back from the door to make space for whoever was getting on next. The doors opened, and Alexander’s stomach and in fact his entire insides felt like they’d been dropped to the ground floor. 

“Pardon,” the man said in an unmistakable low rumble as he stepped into the elevator. He had a cap on, hiding some of his face, but Alexander didn’t need to see it. He would have known Lucky was Lucky if they were both in an entirely dark room, just from the sound of his breath and the way he filled the space. 

[shousetsubangbang]

by shukyou (主教), illustrated by 2013, from Issue 110: Neon Lights

-

Well, thought Zero with a sigh as he hopped onto the streetcar, that had been nothing but disappointment.

There hadn’t even been any excitement, not a single lie sussed out or promising lead charmed from someone’s reluctant lips. Just a big nothing. Four potential leads, four pairs of eyes scrutinizing the photograph he’d shown them, four heads shaken without a hint of recognition. It was enough to make a man wish he’d never gotten into this line of work.

Not, of course, that the other lines of work he’d gotten into had ever been any better. Being one half of the Harbor Street Detective Agency wasn’t a walk in the park, but it sure was better than hawking the morning edition to uninterested passers-by or hauling shingles up ladders in the midday sun, to say nothing of rooting around in garbage cans for a meal. Ask Zero how he knew.

At least he’d caught the streetcar that would, in a meandering fashion but without any transfers, ferry him all the way back to the Agency office, a little third-floor walk-up on the eponymous Harbor Street. It was late already, and would be even later by the time he finally reached his stop, late enough that he could justify pushing aside the “respectable” furniture that made the place look like an office, hauling the Murphy bed down from the wall, pouring himself a nightcap, and calling it a day. He’d circle back up in the morning with the other half of the Harbor Street Detective Agency, the one who could afford an apartment that didn’t double as their place of business, on account of both family money and a persistent habit of making better decisions than Zero did.

And speaking of–

It was the dazzling marquee of the Castle Theater that caught his attention, the flashing bulbs around its name hooking his attention from the corner of his eye. The streetcar pulled up to its stop right at the head of Central Avenue, the appropriately named heart of the city’s night life. That was where Sol had been headed — not the Castle, specifically, but one of the other, smaller establishments in its vicinity. He’d been a little insistent about it, in fact, saying that divide-and-conquer was the best way to do this investigation. Zero would take the uptown leads, and Sol would find out what he could from the dead man’s favorite bar.

And yeah, at the time, splitting up had seemed like the best way to cover a lot of ground. But that had been when they’d thought flashing a photo around might get them somewhere. Maybe Sol was having better luck than Zero was. Maybe Sol could use his help. Maybe two heads would be better than one.