Sweet Razor Cut (Harry Bauer Book 11), page 1
Sweet Razor Cut
A Harry Bauer Thriller
Blake Banner
Copyright © 2022 Right House
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this ebook are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this ebook may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
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One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Let Me Help
What'd You Think?
Excerpt of Next Book
One
Two
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One
I opened my eyes to the dark, aware that somebody was there. I remained very still, breathing steadily, like I was sleeping. The dark was too dense. I shifted my eyes to the window. The drapes over the window were closed. I had left them open. The air was still, close, immobile.
I slipped from the bed and hunkered down beside it, below the window. I listened. There was only the heavy stillness of the small hours. The darkness was thick, like a physical thing. I stayed low and moved to the end of the bed. I sensed a breath but could not locate it or gauge the distance. I peered around the end of the bed. Where the bedroom door was, the darkness was less dense and I could sense rather than see that the door was open and the presence was gone.
I stood and moved quickly to the door, flattened myself against the wall, waited to a count of three, listening to the silence, hunkered down and peered out onto the landing. There was nothing there.
I moved fast to my bedside drawer, pulled it open and took out my Sig. I stepped back out onto the landing. My eyes were getting accustomed to the dark and I moved on swift, silent feet to the top of the stairs. Light from the stained-glass window on the landing touched the stairwell with ghostly light. A slight shadow moved across it. I ran down three steps at a time, no longer trying to be silent, bellowing, “Freeze or I’ll shoot!”
I reached the second floor and in the dim half-light saw that the bedroom doors and my study were all open. One by one I checked the rooms, starting by the stairs and moving along the landing to the left. I saw nothing and heard nothing, but when I came to the last bedroom, farthest from the stairs, I heard the soft brush of fabric behind me. I dropped and swung round. A shadow, a ghost of a shadow, moved from the door and slipped silently down the stairs.
I sprang after it, bellowing, “Stop! Stop, goddammit!”
The figure was no more than eight feet ahead of me. In a single, fluid movement it vaulted the banisters and had suddenly gained a flight on me. I jumped down to the landing, hurled myself around to the next flight and saw the empty entrance hall touched by the dim, amber glow from the silent street outside. The front door was open and I could see the soft, yellow light of the streetlamps on the sidewalk, the black stencils of the autumn branches, the motionless, sleeping cars with their black windshields like dead eyes lost in dreams.
The presence was gone. I closed the door and checked the living room, the dining room, and the room I had set aside as a small library; and at the back of the house I checked the kitchen and the bathroom. But I found what I knew I would find: nothing.
A ninja? I smiled and shook my head. They don’t make ninjas like that anymore, if they ever did. Shaolin? Unlikely. There was more legend than fact surrounding both the ninjas and the Shaolin monks, and where the ninjas had been trained assassins, the Shaolin monks were firmly rooted in Buddhist and Taoist principles, and they didn’t go around killing people.
On the other hand, he hadn’t killed me, where he could have if he had wanted to.
I went to my living room, leaving the lights off, and poured myself a stiff Macallan. Then I sat in my armchair beside the cold fire, looking at the street outside and thinking. The person I had just chased had skills beyond mere fighting abilities. We had not exchanged a single blow, yet I knew he could have taken me out at any time. I probably wouldn’t even have known I was dead. He had a level of self-control that was well out of the ordinary, that you rarely found even in the Far East, let alone the West. That kind of control came from years of meditation, training mind and body to work together.
I could not think of anyone I knew of with that kind of training. Even my Jeet Kune Do instructor, Zamudio, didn’t have that kind of training.
So questions: Who was he? And, also, what was his purpose?
Then, outside, on the far sidewalk, I saw a figure. My skin went cold and prickled. It seemed to materialize out of the shadows, an ink-black silhouette. It took a few steps, stopped when it was directly opposite me and, after a fraction of a second, turned and stared right at me, as though the eyes could penetrate the darkened glass right into my darkened living room. I felt a hot jolt in my belly, a strange mix of rage and fear. I sprang to my feet and ran to the front door. I wrenched it open and went out onto the stoop. There was nobody across the street on the far sidewalk. There were the dark, shifting shadows of the plane trees and the sleeping cars. And the silence of the small hours.
I went back inside and closed the door. I checked every inch of the house from my bedroom down to the kitchen and the gym in the basement, but found nothing of any interest. By then it was half-past five, so I went for a run, keeping my eyes peeled, watching the pre-dawn traffic, and the headlamps through the grainy haze of gray-blue light.
I ran a zigzag: west along 128th as far as Malcolm X Boulevard, then north a block, and east along 129th as far as Madison Avenue, then north a block to 130th, and so on until I came to the guys setting up the fruit and vegetable stall outside McDonald’s on 132nd. When I got there I turned east and started zigzagging my way back toward James Baldwin Place. I figured the track was a couple of miles and took it easy, shadowboxing, sprinting, changing pace and weaving, and ducking and diving as I went. In a little under fifteen minutes I got home. I went down to the gym and worked out for an hour on the weight machines and the sack, showered and went up for breakfast. All the while I was allowing my unconscious mind to work on the two questions I had, distracting my chattering intellect and waiting for the answers to come. But nothing happened and I came to no brilliant realizations. There was a bland normality to the day.
Except that somebody had come to visit me between three and four in the morning. He was exceptionally skilled, could have killed me at any moment if he had wanted to, but instead he had left, taking care to let me know he was watching me.
Who was he? What was his purpose?
I ate a breakfast of strong black coffee and wholegrain rye toast in the kitchen, watching the golden morning yawn and stretch across my green lawn as the starlings began to emerge in small, hesitant clouds, silenced by the bulletproof glass of my windows. They hovered around the trees, fluttering, and were suddenly sucked back in again, like the film of their short lives had been suddenly run in reverse. Then they erupted in a huge shimmering cloud and soared, circling the blue dome of the sky in wild, synchronized abandon.
That made me smile.
I picked up the phone and called the brigadier as I sipped the last of my coffee.
“Yes,” he said.
“Sir, it’s Harry.”
“I’m aware of that. I was just thinking about you. Synchronicity.”
“Yeah? I was wondering if you had decided to put me out to pasture. You didn’t like how I handled San Julian?[1]”
“Not at all, Harry. Don’t get sensitive on me, that’s all I need. I just thought you could use a rest, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing if the world saw a little bit less of you for a while.”
“Was that your idea or the colonel’s?”
“Fifty-fifty.”
“For how long?”
“Well, oddly enough, as I say, I was thinking of you this morning. I’ll come and pick you up about seven. We’ll have dinner and a chat.”
I nodded, though he couldn’t see me. “I had a visitor last night.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Do you need the cleaners?”
“No.”
Now he sounded surprised. There was a short pause while he took it in. “Really? What happened?”
“I woke up at about four. I could sense someone in the room. I always sleep with the drapes and the windows open, but they were closed. I went after whoever it was down the stairs. I saw their shadow a couple of times but that was all. They were very fast and very agile. When I got down to the front doo
“Could you make out any features?”
“No. He was a shadow. He was very silent, with extreme self-control and exceptional training.”
“What about your alarm system?”
“He didn’t trigger it. But it’s not all that sophisticated.”
“Why not, Harry? It should be.”
“Yeah, I know.” I looked into the bottom of my empty cup. “But then I’d be one of those guys with a cutting-edge security system.”
“Like me.”
“No, not like you, sir,” I said and sighed. “One of those other guys.”
“We’ll discuss it when I see you later.”
“Yes, sir.”
I stood and went to the entrance hall to check the alarm. I hadn’t checked it before because I knew what I was going to find. The circuits had all been fried, probably by an EMP. They were no great mystery. Given a little know-how and a decent ion lithium battery, anyone could put together a functional EMP device with a range of about six feet; enough to blow out most alarm systems. Some basic lock-picking skills and you’re inside.
The brigadier was right. My home security and my alarm system were not up to par. But I was right too. I didn’t want to be that guy who puts so much time and energy into protecting his life that in the end he has no life left to protect. Besides, I had always trusted a good iron deadbolt and a solid baseball bat a hundred percent more than an electronic circuit. You can’t fry a deadbolt with a homemade EMP. So I took a stroll down 5th Avenue to West 125th and, somewhat reluctantly, bought four big, iron deadbolts. I didn’t really need to keep anybody out, I told myself. What I really wanted was to hear them coming in.
I got home and fitted the deadbolts to the kitchen door and the front door, one at the top and one at the bottom. After that I took a drive to Zamudio’s place in the Bronx. He had a house at the corner of Screvin Avenue and Barret, right by Pugsley Creek. It was a three-storey redbrick and he’d knocked his ground floor into the garage and converted it into a large gym. From age thirteen he’d travelled the world studying everything from boxing and shotokan to ITF Tae Kwon Do and Wing Chun. But after he befriended Dan Inosanto in California, and started studying Jeet Kune Do with him, he decided he had found what he called the ideal synthesis.
“Be like water, my frwend,” he used to say, mimicking Lee’s accent, “and honestly expwess yourself.”
I had never quite grasped how beating seven bales of shit out of somebody was honestly expressing yourself, but Lee had understood it, and apparently so had Zamudio. I had not got there yet.
I pulled up in the quiet, leafy street beside the park and left the TVR in the shade of the trees. He had his garage door open and I could see him inside doing two-finger push-ups. He was in his mid-fifties, but he was still the fastest, strongest, most explosive fighter I had ever encountered.
He jumped to his feet and smiled at me.
“What happened?”
I made a question with my face and he pointed at it.
“You look worried. Something’s eating you. What is it?”
I smiled and went to sit on the bench below the coat rack, but he was shaking his finger at me. “Don’t sit down. Take off your leather and start warming up. You can work and talk.”
“I had a visitor last night,” I said as I shrugged out of my jacket.
“Did you talk to him?”
I laughed and shook my head, then started stretching my neck. “In fact, the thing that most struck me about him was his silence.”
“Yeah? Silence?”
“He moved like his feet weren’t touching the ground.”
“That’s a lot of leg muscle control.”
“Yeah.” I thought about it while rolling my shoulders. “He was like a Hollywood ninja. Like a shadow.”
Zamudio laughed. “He really impressed you, huh?”
“Yup. He could have killed me any time he wanted to. He came into my room and closed the window and the drapes without waking me.”
“So how come he didn’t kill you while you were sleeping?”
“I don’t know. I awoke when he was leaving the room. I can’t figure what he wanted.”
I bent and pressed my head against my knees. Zamudio said, “You said he was silent. So your instinct woke you up. But what I am asking you is, how come he didn’t kill you? Focus on that.”
I stood erect and let myself slide down into the splits.
“I’ve been turning it over in my head all morning. The only thing I can come up with is that he was more interested in telling me something, letting me know he was there,” I paused, lingering on the thought, “and he could return anytime he wanted to.”
He snorted. “Truly powerful generals hide their strength. Weak generals make a big display. What makes him want to show you his strength? Why does he warn you in advance?”
I looked up at him and nodded. “That’s exactly what I was wondering. And I can only think of one answer.”
He jerked his head toward the rack of dumbbells. “Weights. You work, biceps, sixty seconds fast as you can. I’ll tell you what I think.”
I started hammering with twenty-two pounds in each hand while he spoke.
“Some time in the past you hurt this man, you broke him and humiliated him, or somebody he cared about. Now he wants to kill you, but first he wants you to know he is better than you, stronger, better trained, more dangerous. Killing you is not enough, he needs to humiliate you first.”
I relaxed my arms. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
“OK, shoulders, sixty seconds, fast as you can.”
I began to lift, two lifts a second, arms outstretched to the side. Zamudio kept talking.
“So his weaknesses are first of all that he is emotionally compromised and sees only what he wants to see, and second he sees himself as more powerful than he is. In fact he is weak, and his weakness is that he needs you. He needs your admiration.” I let out a noise born of pain and let my arms drop. He jerked his head at the weights machine. “OK, triceps and legs, then we spar for a while.”
We worked out for another couple of hours, during which he kept telling me to think with my belly. I kept telling him that was bullshit. “You think with your brain, Zamudio. You digest with your belly.”
He danced, ducked and dived. “Who is bruised and hurting?”
“Me,” I said, trying to follow his movements.
He feinted with a backhand to my head and as I weaved away he kicked my feet from under me and I landed with a whoosh! on my back. He leaned over me and wagged a finger.
“The brain is too slow. You have to think with your belly. Your belly is the center of your universe. If you think, ‘What is he going to do now? He has his right foot forward so maybe he will strike with a straight right…,’ by the time you have finished thinking I have destroyed you twenty times over. You have to feel with your belly, and respond, without words in your head.” I reached up and he pulled me to my feet. “What have you done about this intruder?”
“I bought big, iron deadbolts for the doors.”
He nodded. “Good.”
Bruised, stiff and with strained leg muscles I made my way back to Manhattan, trying to think with my belly.
Two
At seven o’clock the brigadier turned up in a dark Bentley Flying Spur V12. I trotted down the steps of the stoop, the chauffeur opened the door for me and I climbed in beside the brigadier. He was in a black evening suit with satin lapels and a bowtie. He eyed my business suit with an arched eyebrow and sighed softly, but he didn’t say anything.
As we pulled away he asked, “Have you reviewed your security system?”
“Yup.”
“A good attack is the best defense, we all know that, Harry. But the basis of a good attack is a solid defense.”
“I know. Believe me, if anyone tries to get in again, I’ll know all about it, and so will they.”
He regarded me a moment. “You’ve set up tripwires attached to bottles and tin cans, haven’t you?”
“No, sir.” As I settled back I asked, “Is the colonel not joining us?”
