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When you ordered fish, the waiter took away your ordinary table knife and gave you an oddly shaped fish knife No one ever seeured any piece of fish he couldn’t cut with the side of his fork was one he didn’t much want to eat

When you ordered steak, they brought you a steak knife

At one thirty, Keller scanned the Sun Deck All was quiet, and he couldn’t see anyone around At dinner they’d requested that all bags be placed out in the corridor by three am, so that crew members could collect them prior to departure, and the occupants of all four Sun Deck cabins had already complied

Keller positioned himself in front of the door to staterooht There was h the heavy door, and the DO NOT DISTURB sign was suspended from the knob

He had the key in his pocket, the one Julia had picked up for him, but he left it there and knocked Carina opened it at once, wearing a pale yellow nightgown to which he supposed the word diaphanous ot a whiff of her perfume and a sense of her body heat as she reached to embrace him, then stopped herself when she realized that wasn’t in the script any the obvious: "You’re here"

He was, and so was Carmody, stretched out on the bed on his back, naked to the world but for a pair of boxer shorts and an arresting a open and he was breathing slowly and heavily through it The h the door was still low in volu but couldn’t put a nahtcap," she said "He drank it"

No kidding, Keller thought

"He wanted to fuck me," she said, "but he passed out instead You knohere I can get some more of that powder?"

Keller had obtained it by crushing two capsules, collecting the powder in a folded-up slip of paper As arranged, he’dwith instructions for its use If he’d given it to her earlier she s, and he hadn’t wanted that

"Out like a light," she said "Look at him, hairy like an ape You knohat I almost did?"

"What?"

"Put a pillow over his face I thought, what if he wakes up? But he wouldn’t wake up He’s dead to the world, and a few minutes with a pillow over his face and he’d stay that way forever Save you the trouble, huh?"

Satin Doll, Duke Ellington and his orchestra That’s as playing

He said, "It’s good you restrained yourself"

"Why? I would have paid you all the saic powder"

"You want it to look like death by natural causes"

"So? He stops breathing, his heart stops beating, he’s dead What’s more natural than that?"

"He’d have these pinpoint hees in his eyeballs"

"So his eyes bleed, what do I care? What’s it gonna hurt hies," he said patiently, "and they’d know immediately that he’d been smothered"

"Oh, fuck," she said "Like CSI?"

"Soht suspect of s him?"

"Fuck Good I didn’t do it"

"I’d say"

"So," she said "How you gonna make it look natural?"

He moved quickly to the side of the bed, drew the steak knife from his pocket, and sank it between two of Michael Carmody’s ribs and into his heart The body shook with a brief tremor, the hands raised up an inch or so from the bed, and then all was still

"Holy fuck!"

"Well," Keller said

"You just killed him Just like that"

"You’re a richThat’s what you wanted, isn’t it?"

"But you stabbed hi out of him!"

"Good point," Keller said, and removed the knife There was hardly any blood on it

"But won’t they see the wound? How’s that gonna look like natural causes?"

"Now, that’s a good question," he said, and reached for her

Thirty-One

The ship docked in Port Everglades before breakfast, and at nine o’clock passengers were allowed to dises in the cruise terminal, and a cab had theht home