New Orleans, 1888. A storm locks five strangers in a saloon on Tchoupitoulas Street. Cards get dealt. Whiskey gets poured. Nobody is who they claim to be.Joe Battle walks in looking for buried money. Freddy Lee sits at the table sweating through his shirt, running from a killing he can't outrun. Wayne Dickinson plays the Southern gentleman a little too well. And when Abraham Abernathy—war veteran, former slave, and brother to the man Freddy murdered—steps through the door, the card game becomes something else entirely.Then there's the bartender.A "e;must-read"e; locked-room Western noir from Jack Chase about debts, disguises, and the violence men bring with them when they think they've left it behind.