You can kill a man with a playing card

Greg stood motionless in the shadows, well-concealed between a utility pole and a large bush. No passing motorist would spot him. He was invisible, even to someone passing by on foot.

As he waited, a small neighbourhood dog arrived, yipped at him, then sniffed around his feet. Greg reached into his pocket to retrieve a couple of the doggie treats he always carried when out on a job. The dog snapped them up and sat patiently waiting for more. Greg stuck the toe of his shoe under the dog’s belly, as if to scratch it. The dog quivered in anticipation. But Greg didn’t scratch. Instead, he lifted the dog on his toe and lofted it 10 feet through the air. No harm done. Just a surprise encounter with teleportation. The dog yipped again and scurried off.

“Stupid fuckin’ doggie,” Greg muttered to himself.

Greg enjoyed this part of his work. Watching and waiting. He could stand nearly motionless like this for up to three hours. He could also daydream with one part of his mind, while another part remained alert and ready. Waiting never bored Greg.

He wore a braille watch, which he checked now. He could see perfectly well, but the watch let him tell time, even in pitch blackness, without showing a light It was one in the morning. He thought about his dinner in the diner six hours earlier.

It was a typical, small-town diner, open 24/7. It had a L-shaped counter with swivel stools facing the kitchen and a row of booths running along the windows. It specialized in cheeseburgers and fries, chili-dogs, and pies – six kinds of pies. Greg was seated on the short side of the L by the door. Nobody could see his face as they walked in, and he could see everybody in the place. He was already well into his cheeseburger when Billy Webb walked in with his friend, a skinny man with crooked, prominent incisor teeth. He looked like a rat. But Greg was more interested in the lumbering, six-foot four-inch turd he knew as Billy. Billy, who thought he knew everything but really didn’t know half of anything. Even so, Billy still knew too much and talked too much.

“So, my dojo says when you go beyond the black belt, they teach you all the secret ways,” Billy says to Ratface. “How to walk on water… how to be invisible… how to fuckin' kill a man with a playing card.”

The rat-faced doofus he sat with in the booth lapped it up as though he was listening to the gospel, straight from the mouth of Jesus: “A playing card? No shit?!”

Greg watched from his seat at the counter, only half enjoying his cheeseburger. “Stupid fuck,” he thought. “It’s sensei, not dojo…. Kill a man with a playing card!” He snorted quietly, half amused, half pissed off.

“Yah, my dojo says this is the most vulnerable part of your body.” Billy traced a line with his finger, down from Ratface’s right ear, just behind his jawline, to a point about three inches forward of the jaw’s hinge. “Ya feel how soft it is. Dojo says you can cut it with the edge of a playing card, cut through the artery and bleed a man out in two minutes.”

“Asshole!” thought Greg. “You can cut a guy with a card all right. A paper cut. Maybe kill him with a flesh-eating bacteria infection. But no way a playing card can cut deep enough to reach the artery. No way it’s sharp enough to cut through it. Arteries are tough. He’s right about the time, though. Cut through the carotid and in less than a minute you lose enough blood to pass out. Another minute and you’ve lost enough to kill you.”

Ratface laughed. He mimed dealing from a deck of cards then reached over and made a quick slash at Billy’s throat with his imaginary card. Quick as a cat, Billy caught Ratface’s hand and squeezed it hard. Ratface winced.

“Don’t even play at that. My doj’d kick me out just for telling ya.”

“So, we still goin’ to the Miners game?” Now Ratface was like a kid out with his dad.

At that exact moment, Billy looked over at the counter. Greg’s face was partly obscured by his ball cap – a Miners team cap he’d bought that very day at a small variety store. Billy looked at the hockey team’s logo, then at the face beneath it. He saw Greg’s eyes and got quiet. There was something about those eyes. Billy scratched at a vague memory, came up with nothing and turned back to Ratface.

“Fuckin’ yah! Wouldn’t miss them doing a whack job on the Rattlers. We’ll hit Ray’s and pound a few beers after.” Billy glanced back over at Greg and grew thoughtful again.

“Yeah, he knows,” thought Greg, finishing his burger and pushing away the fries. He patted his lean belly, got up, pinned a two dollar tip under his coffee cup, paid at the till and, without looking over at Billy, walked out into the smokey, scratchy mill town air.

Now it was two in the morning and he was still watching the house at 24 William Drive. His forefinger stroked the .22-calibre Ruger Mark II Standard in his pocket. Its subsonic, hollow-point rounds would bounce around inside Billy’s skull, making a mush of his brain and shutting up his know-it-all mouth for good. Even without a silencer, his gun wouldn’t make enough noise to wake a cat. He’d filed off the front sight so it wouldn’t snag coming out of his pocket.

And if Ratface turned up with Billy? Tough shit for Ratface, too. Greg drifted into reveries about past jobs and mentally rehearsed this one.

Three o’clock. More than three hours waiting. Give it another 15 minutes and Greg would postpone Billy’s date with Mr. Ruger. He was longing for a cigarette, even though he’d given them up a dozen years ago. He was edgy. His mental discipline was breaking down. Time to call it a night. Then Greg heard it. A pickup truck, a black Ford 150, turned the corner at the top of the block, its exhaust rumbling. It cruised slowly by him on the opposite side of the street and stopped.

Billy Webb got out on the passenger side, a little tipsy and happy with himself.

“Great night,” he said, half to himself, half to Ratface who was still in the truck. “Great night.” He slammed the door shut. Ratface eased away from the curb and drove off down the street, not realizing how lucky he was for not sticking around. Billy stood on the curb a moment, swaying ever so slightly, hands jammed into his jacket pockets. He was whistling tunelessly.

“Hey Greggie…” he finally spoke, “why don’tcha come out? I know you’re here somewhere. That was you in the diner wasn’t it? I ain’t as stupid as you always said I was.”

Greg stepped out of the shadows, hands in his coat pockets, right index finger resting on the trigger guard of his Ruger. He walked across the street to where Billy stood.

“So you’re still working for Johnny,” said Billy. It was a statement, not a question. Greg said nothing for a dozen hard heartbeats.

“So are you, Billy” Greg said flatly.

“No way. I walked away four years ago. Came all the way across the fuckin’ country to this hole. I quit and I fuckin’ know how to shut up and Johnny fuckin’ knows it.”

“For now,” said Greg, “but what about tomorrow or the next day, when you need a few bucks and think you got something to sell with your mouth?”

“Geez, I’d never… Ain’t you ever wanted to leave?”

“What would I do, work as a janitor?” Greg sneered the last four words, mocking Billy, letting him know he knew all about the job at the community centre, getting Billy too riled up to think about what was coming.

“What the fuck? You’re already a janitor, cleaning up messes for Johnny. So just fuck off!”

Greg sighed and relaxed his shoulders. Billy would take it like a man. He hated it when they whined and pleaded.

“You made me wait a long time tonight, Billy. What did you and Ratface do after the game?” He asked that now to get Billy to relax, get his mind on other things. Riled up first, then relaxed, creating confusion.

“Jerry’s gonna be pissed … calling him Ratface… yeah, we… uh… drank a few beers, skinned a couple of marks in a long poker game. Won a few hunnerd.”

Greg tensed slightly and edged closer to Billy. He slipped his fingertip inside the trigger guard of his still-pocketed pistol.

“A few hundred. That’ll pay my car rental…. Make this look like a mugging.”

“Aw, fuck, after four years you’re really gonna…. Shit! You can have my money. Here!”

Billy pulled his left hand from his pocket. But instead of holding out a wad of bills, he held a deck of cards, bent slightly like he was about to perform a fancy shuffle or a card trick. Greg’s right hand flashed out of his pocket, raising the .22 toward Billy’s head. But Billy suddenly flipped the whole deck of cards in Greg’s face and in that slice of a second while Greg was distracted, Billy jacked his big right hand into Greg’s throat, hitting him with the crook between his thumb and forefinger.

Greg felt and heard the gristle in his windpipe crackle and collapse, felt his breath cut off, fell to his knees. Heard himself gurgling. Struggled for breath that wouldn’t come. Tried to clear his throat with a finger that was just too short to reach the broken part. Toppled over and began to sink into the dirt, into blackness.

He had no time to think about playing cards.