"Everybody Comes to Marlowe's" - the beginning

  A storm of biblical proportions raged the night that I stared down my imminent demise, in the form of a gun pointed directly at my head, in a ramshackle structure in the middle of nowhere.  A desperate last-ditch ploy to stave off catching a bullet in my eye didn't exactly work as planned, and as I saw the trigger being depressed, I tried thinking of something to say or do in the split second before a loud crack ended the futile thought and my entire body convulsed with the impact.  In the same moment, a flash of lightning briefly illuminated the scene, and my last vision was that of another shape, inhuman and twisted, looming over my murderer from behind.
A jumble of images filled my mind - a golden ring with a twisted serpent symbol; a shadowy figure stepping out of the fog off a lake; a paper crane sitting on a desk; a sundial covered in blood; the smile of a beautiful woman with her head cradled in velvet-gloved hands; and the bar.  Marlowe's.  But I was getting ahead of myself.  The story truly begins at the opposite of where it was apparently ending - in the middle of the city, during daytime, with a clear blue sky on one of the hottest days of the year.