Never Play Another Man's Game (17 page)

“Honestly?”

Roland raised his eyebrows.

“The dogs are both on your right, so they'll come at me from that side. Shortest distance between two points is a straight line. One of them isn't going to take the long way for strategy. Strategy isn't in their
dna
. I'll put the chair in their way to slow them down an extra second and then I'll put a bullet in each of their big heads.”

“You are a hard man, aren't ya?”

I didn't say anything.

“Rich man, too.”

I still had nothing to say.

“Almost half a mil' is what D.B. figured. That's a lot of money. Couldn't fit all that in a duffel bag. Even if it is a big bag like that.”

“Wasn't that much,” I said.

“How much then?”

“Enough.”

“Split two ways, I bet it is.”

The dogs were still on the floor; both held me in the sights of their cold unblinking black eyes.

“Way I see it,” Roland said, “I should get a cut.”

“That so?”

“I've been in the job since the start. Guns for the job came from one of my contacts. So did the cars, I bet. More important, you used my guy, my best guy, and you got him hurt. I should be compensated for the help and the loss, not to mention for running off the slants.”

“Guns and cars were paid for. Nobody did anything for free. D.B. signed on for the job. He's a big boy, he knew the risks. That was on him, not me. As for running off Yang, it looked like D.B. did all the heavy lifting.”

Roland looked over at D.B. Everyone was patting him on the back and drinking shots with him. He looked back at me with a snarl on his face.

“I could make you cut me in.”

“This isn't like taking lunch money off a sixth-grader, Roland. I'm not going to hand you some cash to keep you from waiting for me after school. You want my lunch money, you have to reach across that table and take it. So if you're feeling froggy, jump. If not, walk away, because talk like that is going to lead somewhere.”

“You're in a room full of my boys, tough guy.”

“Doesn't change a thing,” I said. “If you're going to rip me off — you'll kill me. Same thing David tried, same thing we'll do to him.” David heard me from his booth and I heard him start to sob. “If that's the way it's going to be, I'm going to kill you first. I'll die next, probably, but you'll be holding my place in line to meet St. Peter.” I edged the pistol out of my pocket just enough for Roland to see my finger on the trigger. “That's the thing about fucking with people who have nothing to lose — they always manage to take something with them when they die.”

“Everything cool?” D.B. had rolled back to the table.

I looked at Roland. “Is it?”

He gave it some thought. A lot of the thinking was done while he stared at the hand holding the gun in my pocket.

“Let me get one of those shots!” Roland yelled. He got up, leaving me with D.B. and the dogs. Roland walked into the crowd of men at the bar and was welcomed with offered drinks and slaps on the back.

“Keep an eye on him,” I said. “He drinks enough, he might get a stupid idea in his head.”

“He has plenty of those already.” D.B. rolled away; the dogs silently watched him go. Their posture betrayed their eagerness to follow, but they stayed put — so did David.

I walked over to the booth on the wall. “Enjoy the party, David. We'll settle up later.”

David lifted his head off the table and looked at me with red eyes. His skin was pale and covered in sweat and he was shaking like there was an earthquake under his ass. Yang had gotten him enough medical attention to keep him alive, but he wouldn't stay that way past tomorrow unless he saw a doctor. Tomorrow was about twenty more hours than he would need. I tousled his hair and he cringed.

The party raged on until last call. Throughout the night, whenever Roland looked up from whatever he was drinking, he saw that I was watching him. Every time we made eye contact, he would give me a hard look. I watched each angy glare disintegrate as it collided with my grin. He would break the stare and find a new drink, downing some more high-proof courage so that he could try to work up enough nerve to do more than eyeball me. He never got further than looking, because even drunk he understood that no matter what happened he would go first.

David moved from the booth only once. He tried to sneak out the door when a fistfight broke out between two drunk bikers. Steve saw David move and nodded to D.B.

“Where the fuck are you going? You don't like our party?” D.B. yelled. His voice was loud enough to break up the fight. Everyone in the bar looked at the man halfway to the door. He was frozen in place like an old-time movie convict caught in the prison spotlights. David shuffled back towards the booth and three bikers met him there with a pitcher of beer. The three men held his mouth open and forced him to drink the whole thing at once. David ended up on the floor coughing the beer out of his lungs and holding his mangled guts.

A few hours later, the bikers all left at once, with D.B. as the last man out.

“How much is in the bag?”

“Hundred. Half the take.”

“Don't hardly seem worth it, does it?”

I shrugged. “It's what we do.”

“I suppose it is,” D.B. said.

D.B. rolled to the door and paused to say goodbye to David. David, sitting in a chair next to an overturned table, wouldn't look at the huge biker. Covered in sweat, beer, and vomit, the gut-shot thief was barely conscious. He gave the small spot of floor between his feet his full attention. I closed the door behind D.B., twisted the locks, and flicked off the neon sign. When I looked back at the bar, I saw Steve roll the rubber band off his wrist and use it to tie his hair up into a samurai topknot. The wiry muscles of his neck and chest were visible above the collar of the white V-neck T-shirt he was wearing. The muscles were taut like coiled springs ready to pop, and the veins were hard like firehoses.

David had noticed the silence and he looked up from the floor. He noticed Steve — it was hard not to. The quiet little unassuming bartender was gone; all that remained was a man of the same dimensions — only this man was anything but unassuming. Steve gave off a different aura now. He had changed the same way a family pet changes when it goes rabid.

“David, your mom ever tell you about Steve?”

David shook his head.

“I didn't think so. Because if she had, you would have never brought this to his doorstep.”

Steve vaulted the bar in one jump and moved across the floor to David like a shark through chum. Ruby's kid had brought men with guns to the bar. Sandra had been upstairs and had enough sense to stay there, but she could have been downstairs when the triad showed up. Sandra was the only thing that mattered to Steve. She was the only thing that kept him from becoming the kind of thing people like to think they had evolved past.

David got out of his chair and put a hand up; the other was holding his stomach, which had started to bleed through his shirt. He was grimacing and he managed to get out a “please,” but that was all. Steve's forehead connected with David's nose, shutting him up. I leaned an elbow on the bar and watched the little bartender beat David to death. Blood splashed the floor, then teeth, and finally brains. Steve kept on beating the corpse, turning what was left of its humanity into pulp. I knew each blow was payback for David bringing the triad to his bar, near his wife. Later, I would help him clean up and get rid of the body. It would be a long night, but that was the burden of the living — one I was happy to bear.

Mike Knowles studied writing at McMaster University before pursuing a career in education. Knowles became an elementary school teacher and currently teaches in Hamilton, Ontario, where he lives with his wife, two boys, and dog.

Copyright © Mike Knowles,
2012

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Knowles, Mike

Never play another man's game / Mike Knowles.

I. Title.

PS8621.N67N48 2012 C813'.6 C2011-906968-7

ISBN:
978-1-77090-209-1

also issued as: 978-1-77090-208-4 (PDF); 978-1-77041-097-8 (Print)

Cover Design: Tania Craan

Cover Image: © Estefania Abad / Getty Images

The publication of
Never Play Another Man's Game
has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, and by the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit. The marketing of this book was made possible with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation.