FORTY-ONEFOUR PAIRS OF EYES turned my way, all of them confused. One of the men had cheeks full of cigarette smoke.
“You mind if I get one of those?” I said as I lifted my chin at the cigarettes the fourth man started to put away in a jacket pocket.
As expected, the Malaysian guy was the most vocal.
“Where are you coming from, man?” he said and used a cigarette pinched between his index finger and thumb to gesticulate.
None of these men knew what to make of me, they didn’t recognize me and only one of them might have thought of me as a threat up to then. These two seconds were enough to size them up.
I whipped open the baton, in the back of my mind enjoying the sound it made as it deployed—the sound a shotgun makes when c****d with attitude. Four sets of eyes followed the arc of my ha
