This is a chapter from my 127,000-word novel, Naked City. First written as a scene in my playwriting class, I later translated it into the climax of the novel’s first half. Set in 1992 Las Vegas, just hours before the Rodney King verdict is to be announced, an enforcer for the Kinfolk, a recently-formed black and Hispanic mafia, arrives at the apartment of a drug dealer for the Italian mafia with the intent to kill him, thus starting a war.