"Never mind me," Rydell heard himself say, as he saw a man with a tattooed scalp, still holding his hand of cards, raise his other hand, with a gun in it, from beneath the table. And simultaneously he realized that he still had the black knife, open, in his hand. He felt a weird wash of cold down his spine as his feet just kept moving, past the table and the man and the deep and somehow limitlessly large black hole in the winking ring of stainless steel that was the pistol's muzzle.