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

having his steak. And Oswald remembers thinking, What is the deal with the bib? Is that how they do it in St. Petersburg?

Oswald remembers breaking the silence that night after a few bites of his ribeye...

“Got a big appetite there, Bernie?”

The Russian smirked, his gaze never leaving his plate. “Not as big as you, apparently.”

Oswald grinned. “You got me.”

Oswald kept working at his steak, inhaling the succulent grilled meat in huge bites, thinking about how little he had in common with the Russian other than killing people—and maybe a love of good red meat.

The Ferris always had the best meat. They used a purveyor in the south Loop, a place that makes its own Mortadella and Capocolla, and they always pulled out all the stops for the picnic. “Guilty as charged, brother,” Oswald said around a mouthful of potato salad.

“Enjoy it now vile you are still able.” Wachowski’s gaze was still fixed on his plate. His smile had gone cold. His eyes were two blackened coins.

Oswald looked at him. “What’s that?”

The Russian blinked. “You are still young and eager like the colt in the field.”

“Huh?”

The Russian dabbed the corner of his mouth with the napkin-bib and then looked at Oswald. “Ven you have completed as many tasks in this field as have I, you vill know vhat it is of which I speak.”

Oswald washed the potato salad down with a big quaff of imported lager. “Not exactly tracking with ya there, Bernie, but I’ll take your word for it.”

The Russian looked back at his food. “You will know vhat it is of which I speak.”

Now, wrenched back to the present, pressing a ridiculous cowboy hat against the Russian’s face, Oswald realizes he cannot kill a man who wears a bib.

He doesn’t know why, but he lifts the Glock’s muzzle off the hat. “Can’t do it,” he murmurs to himself, his knee soaking in a puddle on the tile floor.

“The fuck’s the matter?” Gerbil’s voice is thin and reedy across the room. She’s not looking.

“Nothing, I’m just—”

Oswald starts to answer, starts to formulate a bullshit explanation, when a loud thud hooks his attention over his left shoulder.

He turns and sees Billy Elgart leaning over one of the sinks, slamming his head into one of the stainless steel soap dispensers.

“I’m not ready,” he mutters, banging his forehead into the steel housing, punctuating each phrase with a dull clunking noise. “I’m not ready…

“Hey! Jake LaMotta!” Oswald is in no mood for this shit right now. “Stop with the head-banging!”

“I’m not ready to die,” Elgart utters.

CLUNK!

“Stop it, Elgart!”

CLUNK!

“You’re not gonna die, moron, so stop with the fucking banging!”

Elgart pauses, breathing hard, staring down into the empty sink.

Oswald sighs, and then turns back to the flaccid body on the floor. He’s just started thinking about what to do with the Russian, when all at once a garbled, ear-piercing scream rings out across the tiled room.

“I’M NOT READY!”

What happens next happens so quickly that Oswald hardly has a chance to react.

In a lurching blur of motion Billy Elgart pushes himself away from the sinks, whirls, and lunges head-long across the room, slamming into Oswald, knocking the big man over, then bouncing sideways and slamming into Gerbil, who’s also caught off-guard.

Gerbil tumbles backward, losing her footing, slamming into a stall, then toppling to the floor.

“I’M NOT READY!” Elgart cries as he flails wildly toward the door.

“Grab him!” Oswald bellows from the floor. “Don’t let him out!”

Gerbil is struggling to her feet, but it’s too late, because Elgart is already clawing at the doorknob, clicking it open, letting in all the light and noise of the casino. He lurches out the door in one drunken heave.

“Damn it to hell!” Oswald climbs to his feet, blinking away the dizziness, slipping on the wet parquet. He scoops up his Glock. His pink T-shirt is soaked, clinging to him like a second skin, making him look like a gigantic fuchsia water balloon. “Goddamn it to fucking hell!”

Oswald reels toward the exit.

“Ozzy, wait!” Gerbil is pointing at the fallen assassin. “What do we do with this?”

“Wait here!”

“But what am I supposed to with—?”

“I’ll be right back!”

Gerbil stands there, appalled, as Oswald roars out of the men’s room.

21.

The main corridor is so crowded with milling gamblers and senior citizens crowding around all-you-can-eat buffets, that Elgart’s frantic flight—banging into people, bouncing off the roulette tables—barely raises an eyebrow. At the end of the corridor, Oswald makes one last desperate lunge, grabbing for Elgart’s collar, but it’s too little, too late.

Elgart finds a painted steel door marked FAMILY FUN ZONE, wrenches it open, and lurches through it.

Oswald rushes headlong after him, plunging through the ajar door.

He emerges into an alien world of echoing laughter and bright fluorescent light, and he immediately slams on the brakes, sliding on wet concrete. For one frenzied instant, Oswald is paralyzed with indecision, gazing around the bizarre, unlikely environment.

At this time of night, the water park is populated mostly with teenagers. A few families are also present with grade-school-aged kids, up past their bed times, sugar-buzzed from too many Gummy Bears. The air is thick with chlorine and urine, and oldies Muzak blasts Donna Summer disco tunes around the tile ramparts.

Oswald stands on the edge of the wet cement apron and quickly scans the immense confines for a sign of the hysterical gambler.

The park spreads out below him, one level down, about the size of an airplane hangar—a gigantic scale model of a stern-wheel paddler bisecting the center of its enormous wading pool. Water guns shoot streams upward and outward in high arcs down into chipped aqua-blue pools. Huge, imposing waterslides snake around the flanks, clogged with lines of hyperactive high-schoolers jockeying for position, screaming and howling like hyenas.

Elgart’s reedy scream draws Oswald’s attention over to the snack bar area along the south wall.

The drunken gambler is stumbling along a crowded row of concession counters, which are selling hot pretzels and cotton candy and bratwursts and beer. Screaming at