Ripping Time by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

Well, Johnny my boy, he smiled to himself, you’ve made a good start. Now to finish this pathetic little cockerel. Dr. John Lachley was as pleased with the enshrouding yellow murk as he was with his swift handiwork and the drunken little fool he’d trailed all evening, who’d finally wandered so conveniently close to a place he could strike. He’d feared he might have to trail the boy all the way back to the filthy hole he’d been living in, on the first floor of a ramshackle, abandoned warehouse along the docks, so dilapidated and dangerous it was in the process of being torn down.

Quite a come-down, eh, pretty Morgan?

Dark-haired, dark-eyed, darker-souled, John Lachley moved deeper into the darkness of the alleyway, staggering slightly under his burden until he found his new center of balance. The alley was narrow, clotted with rubbish and stench. A rat’s eyes gleamed briefly in the foggy gloom. A street—little wider than the alley he followed—appeared through the murk. He turned to his right, moving toward the invisible docks a mere three blocks away, which were concealed from sight by grim warehouses and tumble-down shacks. Their bricks leaned drunkenly in the night, whole chunks of their walls missing in random patterns of darkness and swirling, jaundiced eddies.

John Lachley’s clothes, little cleaner than those of his victim, revealed very little about their current owner; neither did the dark cloth cap he wore pulled low over his eyes. During daylight, his was a face that might well be recognized, even here, where many years ago Johnny Anubis had once been a household name, sought out by the poorest fishwives in search of hope; but in the darkness, in such rough clothing, even a man of his . . . notoriety . . . might go unremarked.