Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (always you kirsty moseley .txt) 📗

room, which will help with proximity, but the plugging order is critical. If Wachowski goes for the Indian first, he risks spooking the real target. But if he goes for Elgart first, he might risk a nasty shootout with the Indian. Which begs the question: What the fuck is the Indian doing here in the first place?

Wachowski has no time to ponder the latter because Elgart is on the move again.

On the other side of the corridor, Billy Elgart stumbles across deep pile carpet monogrammed with a big paddle wheel, looking as though he’s about to vomit. He holds his gut with one hand and his drink with the other, and he staggers toward the men’s room.

Wachowski reaches down to the perfectly pressed cuffs at the bottom of his pant legs, and unsnaps the Velcro straps around his twin Walther PPKs. The silencers are snugged into his Ferrigamo hose, and it takes a little flick of the wrist to dislodge them.

He straightens up with a courtly flourish, as though completing a genteellittle bow in some royal receiving line. No one notices him holding the weapons inside his palms, snug against his thighs, as he slides along the wall toward the men’s room.

The décor inside the restroom is early whorehouse hotel, softly lit with Tiffany sconces and recessed fluorescent tubes behind a banquette of burnished stainless steel sinks. A row of lacquer-black stalls lines one wall. Wall Street Journal and Sporting News front-pages are encased in glass mounts above a row of gleaming porcelain urinals. Lemon-scented deodorizers aggressively mask the swampy air.

Muzak drones.

Billy Elgart bangs into the room and gets halfway to the stainless steel counter before dropping to his knees and roaring vomit.

Seven and a half Rusty Nails come spewing out across the lovely checkerboard parquet in a mini-tsunami of Drambuie, Scotch, macerated cherries, and salmon-colored bile. The retching noises fill the empty restroom and bounce off the tile walls.

The clamor drowns out another sound—far too faint to reach Billy’s ears: the restroom door softly swishing open behind him.

A large figure in pink is slipping inside the men’s room, moving with as much stealth as a man the size of an NFL linebacker can muster.

At the moment, Billy is far too distracted by his own violent convulsions to notice a newcomer to the bathroom. Down on his hands and knees, his shoulders hunched, he heaves and heaves until the only things coming out of him are frothy orange stringers of bile.

He gasps for breath, his head pounding unmercifully, the knees of his long parachute shorts soaking in the soupy contents of his stomach. The stench rises around him like a demonic entity.

Billy manages to rise halfway up. The room spins. He swallows the taste of bile and then hobbles on his hands and knees toward the corner of the room where the towel dispenser hangs next to the sink. “The Girl from Ipanema” plays faintly on recessed speakers.

In his head, Billy hears the scolding voice of his mother: worthless, worthless, worthless—

Oswald lets the door click softly behind him as he draws the nine-millimeter from his camo shorts. He sees Elgart across the restroom, on the floor, shivering and scraping under the paper towel dispenser. This is going to take some fancy talking. Oswald had expected to encounter the Russian at some point, which would at least clarify the situation, but now Oswald will have to resort to Plan B.

Digging the suppressor out of his pocket, he quickly screws it onto the Glock’s muzzle. He is not taking any chances. The gambler could very easily be packing heat tonight, and Oswald wants to maintain firearm superiority, even if it merely means intimidating the poor son of a bitch.

Muffled voices out in the hall momentarily draw Oswald’s attention over his shoulder.

He considers locking the door. Then he thinks better of it—he doesn’t want to draw any more attention than absolutely necessary. If he hurries, he can usher the gambler out of here before anybody else comes in to take a piss.

By now, Elgart has made it to the paper towel dispenser. He struggles to his feet, wiping his mouth and standing on wobbly knees.

Oswald makes his move.

* * *

In the time it takes the Indian to cross the length of tile floor between the door and the towel dispenser, the Russian, hiding in stall number one, manages to silently push open the stall door with one elbow while simultaneously raising both Walthers.

Normally the creak of the stall door would give him away—the hinges are not exactly well oiled—but tonight, the moaning, hiccupping, heaving gasps coming from the cretin bouncing around the tiled chamber in the backwards Raiders cap drowns most of the ambient noises.

Which is fortunate for the Russian. It has given him the luxury of surprise. And better yet, it has given him the luxury of contemplation.

He will sneak up on both men, and ultimately carry out his greatest achievement: a double execution at precisely the same moment.

To the best of Wachowski’s knowledge, no one in the field has ever attempted such a bold maneuver. No one—not Billy the Kid, not Ivan the Terrible, not the savviest KGB assassin, not even James Fucking Bond—has ever performed such a feat of deadly precision.

Wachowski carefully steps out of the stall, and then aims the twin PPKs at the men in the corner.

Now the big Indian is only inches away from the gambler, who is hunched over a sink, tearing paper towels from the dispenser, burying his face in the brown sheets, blowing his nose, coughing and hacking, both men completely oblivious to the nearness of Death.

Wachowski doesn’t notice his own erection underneath his Armani slacks.

Nor does he notice the sound—drowned by Elgart’s honking gasps—of a fourth individual coming through the restroom door behind him.

“Psssst!”

The sudden and unexpected sound of a voice makes Billy jump and flinch against the sink.

He looks up, and he sees in the mirror a figure standing directly behind him.

“Don’t move, asshole, don’t talk, don’t throw up, just listen.”

The