When I wink at him, his eyebrows jump high.

“We should cut him up,” Camouflage One says. “Cut him into little pieces.”

I feign being startled and turn toward him. “Oh my, I didn’t see you there.”

“What?”

“In those camouflage pants. You really blend in. By the way, they are very fetching on you.”

“Are you some kind of wiseguy?”

“I’m many kinds of wiseguy.”

All the smiles, including mine, grow.

They start toward me. I can try to talk my way out of this, perhaps offer them money to leave us be, but I don’t think that will work, for three reasons. One, these thugs will want all my money and my watch and whatever else they can find upon my person. Money offers will not help. Two, they all have the scent of blood—easy, weak blood—and they like that scent. And three, most important, I like the scent of blood too.

It has been too long.

I try not to smile as they start to make their approach. Melon Shirt takes out a large bowie knife. That pleases me. I don’t have many moral qualms about hurting those whom I recognize as evil. But it is nice to know that for those who require such self-rationalizations to find me “likable,” I could claim that the thugs were the first to draw a weapon and thus I was acting strictly in self-defense.

Still, I give them one last out.

I look Melon Shirt straight in the eye and say, “You should leave now.”

Both overmuscled Camouflages laugh at that, but Melon Shirt’s smile starts to fade. He knows. I can see it. He looked in my eyes and he knows.

The rest happens in seconds.

Camouflage One comes right up to me, getting in my personal space. He is a large man. I am face-to-face with his waxed and toned pectorals. He smiles down at me as though I am a tasty treat he might devour in one bite.

There is no reason to delay the inevitable.

I slash his throat with the razor I’d kept hidden in my hand.

Blood sprays at me in a near perfect arc. Damn. This will require another visit to Savile Row.

“Terence!”

It’s Camouflage Two. There is a resemblance, and, now sliding toward him, I wonder whether they are brothers. The thug’s grief stuns him enough to make disposing of him very easy, though I don’t think it would have helped much had he been better prepared.

I am good with a straight razor.

Camouflage Two perishes in the same manner as dear Terence, his possible brother.

That leaves Melon Shirt, their beloved leader, who has probably attained that rank by being somewhat more brutish and cunning than his fallen comrades. Wisely, Melon Shirt has already started to make his move while I was dispensing with Camouflage Two. Using my peripheral vision, I can see the glint of his bowie blade heading toward me from above.

That is a mistake on his part.