They eyes shot open. What he saw wasn't the ceiling of his apartment, like it had been some dream, but a dream that ended. And he wasn't face up in a moving, but safe ambulance, like it was bad but over. Harry woke up in an alley in a lot of pain, wet, bleeding, bruised, and staring down the muzzle of his own Smith & Wesson. He could see the five hollowpoint .38s he'd loaded before he set out that night. Except of course for the one under the barrel.
It was snake that clutched the gun, his fingers so long you could swear they'd wrap around the grips of that little snub twice.
"Not a good idea to kill a cop, ya know. You guys are slick, but not that slick. Don't care how good your lawyers are or your connections. They can't keep you outta prison if you put me down." Said Harry, keeping the terror out of his voice.
He fumbled around until he could pull out his pack of Nails. He never quite lost eye contact with snake, but he stuck a finger into the pack to find that most of them had been smashed. Didn't take much fishing around.
"Look, it's nothing personal..." Said Ace, with that perpetual smirk.
"...It's just I can't have a cop runnin' around after we give him a concussion. Especially cops prone to ask questions. With what's going down lately we just can't take any chances."
That was it. The one thing that put Harry at peace in his final moments. He was right. Like any asshole, Harry was most happy when he was right and other people were wrong. He saw Snake start to take up the trigger, and the cylinder began to rotate.
"Mind if I have one last smoke?"
"Not at all" Said Ace, not sparing the smug tone. He gestured to snake, and he relented on the trigger.
Harry looked down to the cigarette. He jammed his hands into various pockets, acting like he was looking for his zippo. During this process he punched the record button on the tape recorder he held on to. Finally he brought the zippo to the end of the cigarette, and hit the flint. Again. Again. Finally the sparks ignited the wick. The tall, bright flame darkened everything around it to harry. The cigarette had taken a serious hit from the rain. For a second, the whole world was just the flame and the cigarette.
At last, it got some embers going. As harry looked up, he shouted over the rain "So what's 'going down late'..." Harry stopped when he saw an empty alley and his snub nosed revolver in a solid block of ice. He gradually picked himself up, cigarette dangling off his lip. As he stumbled towards the exit to the alley he could hear something over the now deafening rain. He peeked around the corner to see that local trio just laying into the green bastards.
Harry thought about his situation as he leaned on the building, burning down the Nail. He probably overestimated the phrase Ace used 'What's going down lately' he realized. So basically the only real outcome was he got the shit kicked out of him and he got his gun frozen, which can't be good for it, and he didn't get a piece of information, other than that the gangreen gang doesn't take kindly to dickbags with bad lines that flick cigarettes at them.
But hey, at least he wasn't dead yet.