CHAPTER 9 “I choose knives.”
Bowie slouched at a table on the walk before a bistro on the Rue Charteris. In his hand was a half empty tumbler of bourbon, and between his teeth a half-smoked cigar. He was not normally a smoker, nor was he overfond of hard spirits, but he knew men who swore by both as aids to thinking, and present circumstances called for extreme measures.
Thus far, the experiment had yielded naught but a warm stomach and a dry throat. The more liquor he consumed, the further he seemed from an idea, but the less he cared.
His fundraising skills left much to be desired. So far, he had succeeded only in spending five hundred dollars he did not have on a slave he did not want, while further sullying his already questionable reputation.
The unwanted slave sat against a lampp
