Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2) by Jack Lively (reading well TXT) 📕

Dave said. “I couldn’t see exactly. I think it was cash, yes.”

“That it?”

“Yeah.”

I hung up.

I looked up at Chapman. Our eyes locked and we were back in the bubble.

I said, “Shit happens.”

“Way of the world. But now here you are.” Chapman leaned in and kissed me quick. A dexterous and athletic movement. A light and delicate kiss. Which became less light, but even more delicate and complex, and eventually resulted in our bodies coming together again, like opposite poles of a magnet. Her hands went up to the nape of my neck once more, and mine went in different places. Then she pushed herself away, squeezed past me, and went out the door. Opening it just wide enough for her slender frame to pass through.

I locked the toilet door, counted off a long two minutes.

I considered two things. Hagen at the cruise ship, Chapman in here. One making an exchange with a drunk bum, the other stuffing something behind a toilet. Collecting, depositing. One deposits, the other collects. That’s how I saw it.

I squatted down and removed the folded paper from behind the toilet tank. It was a white cocktail napkin. Not a thick and fluffy napkin to wipe dirty hands on, but a thin and elegant serviette that belongs under a martini glass. I unfolded it. In the middle of the white square was an eight-pointed star drawn in blue ink by a felt tipped pen. I folded the paper and slid it back behind the tank. Then I left the toilet.

The symbol was a message. I didn’t have any idea what it meant, but I had a pretty good idea who it was for.

Out of the bathroom, I was facing the other hole in the wall. From which the smell of barbecue emanated. The other hole in the wall went back to a small outdoor area surrounded by cheap fencing. There was no grass, only dusty rock and a couple of picnic tables. The entrance fee had included barbecue, so I got barbecue and another beer. The big man at the grill handed me a plate of ribs on a slice of white bread. No fork, no napkin. I balanced the plate and the beer in two hands and went over to a picnic table. The other guy at the table grunted between fistfuls of pork and white bread.

I took a bite of mine. Spicy, which is what the white bread was for, in addition to being something you could wipe your fingers on. The food was good, great even. Barbecue ribs are not a complicated thing to eat, provided you don’t mind using your hands. These had been cooked slow and long, so there wasn’t much work to do. But patience would be important, and not easy under the circumstances. Barbecue ribs are not like burgers. You don’t need three bites to get to the heart of the matter.

But it was three bites before I came up for air.

Which is when I saw Deckart and Willets. They were sitting at the other picnic table. Willets was grinning with a beer in his hand. Deckart’s face was red, as if he was concentrating on something. He held a Bowie knife in his right hand. His left was splayed, palm down on the picnic table. His knife hand was stabbing the point into the wood, between his own fingers. Stabbing fast. Willets was counting the hits. While Willets counted, Deckart was softly speaking to himself.

Then Willets looked up, saw me, and stopped counting.

Forty-Three

When Willets stopped counting, Deckart lost concentration. Not a good thing if you’re playing the knife game.

And Deckart was good at it. The tip of that Bowie knife was flying fast and furiously from the number one position to the number six and back, not necessarily in that order. The first position is back of the thumb, off to the side of the hand. The six position is the other side of the pinkie. In between you’ve got the spaces separating each finger. The basic game is played in a 1-2-3-4-5-6-5-4-3-2 sequence. Start off back of the thumb, work your way up past the pinkie, then back again. But Deckart wasn’t doing the simple version. He was showing off with the Australian version, 1-2-1-3-1-4-1-5-1-6. Alternating between the first position and the others.

I had seen this game played quite a few times, in all kinds of weather and altitudes. Sometimes it ended well, sometimes it did not.

Deckart was moving fast, and he was singing. That didn’t surprise me. The best knife game players perform a chant, like a knife mantra. The words are chanted counterpoint to the hitting of pointy steel on wood. One syllable, one knife hit. Fast as you can.

I have all five fingers.

The blade goes chop chop chop

If I miss the spaces in-between my fingers will come off

And if I hit my fingers

The blood will soon come out

But all the same I play this game cause that's what it's all about

Oh, chop chop chop chop chop chop

I'm picking up the speed

And if I hit my fingers then my hand will start to bleed

Each time Deckart started the chant again, he got faster. The concentration was so intense that when Willets stopped counting the hits, Deckart didn’t notice at first and kept on working the knife. But then he noticed the missing link in his rhythm. The knife was flashing in the weak outdoor lighting. The movement of the blade through the fingers was complicated by the shadow cast from the bare bulb. All of this was mesmerizing. And then the Bowie knife stabbed straight through Deckart’s ring finger.

He grunted in surprise and looked up, saw me, then looked down. The top of his finger was separated from the rest of it. I was getting to the end of the barbecue plate. Mopping up the red sauce with the remaining white bread. Willets and Deckart huddled over the severed finger tip.

At that moment, a great roar