Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (motivational novels .txt) 📕

The chef gives them all a curt little bow and retreats out the door.

“Boss, tell me again why the location is so important,” Freddy Felson is saying, maneuvering his lanky body around the dessert cart as the others crowd in, descending on the sweets. “I mean, it doesn’t seem that complicated.”

The little old man at the whiteboard purses his lips, holding his temper in check. “For the third time, I don’t want to just set him up on the street or in a public place, as per usual. This Injun is foxy. Slippery. This project needs to be shooter-friendly, and it needs to be discreet, and it needs to be fast.”

“How’s about we just drop him here?” This suggestion from Jilly Morelli, who speaks with his mouth full of cannoli, a dusting of powdered sugar on his nose. “We can store him in the walk-in. Take him apart with one of the band saws the chef’s got back there for his rib roasts.”

Across the room, Jimmy Dalessandro, smart and cool in his Dino coif, shark skin, and thin lapels, looks away and tries not to smile.

Anthony Ferri blows an exasperated sigh out through his liver lips. “I need you gentlemen to pay attention now,” he says, turning to the whiteboard. “I don’t want to go through this again. There’s basically three aspects of this hit I want to insure.”

He writes on the board:

Privacy

Containment

Speed

The room gets quiet. The sound of drunken men inhaling desserts and thinking. There’s another sound—barely audible but present nonetheless—coming from the corner. Young Mark Ferri, the don’s misfit grandson, has passed out after one too many grappas. Slumped over his dinner plate, the side of his face in his marinara, he softly snores.

After a while, it becomes painfully clear—mostly by the way he is frowning at the whiteboard—that Freddy Felson is confused. “Boss, if I may,” Freddy speaks up, trying to sound as erudite as possible. “If I may inquire, um, what you mean, exactly, vis-à-vis ‘containment’?”

The old man blows out another exasperated sigh. “Vis-à-vis?”

Freddy licks his lips. “As per. Regarding. You know. In relation to... the concept of containment.”

“It’s one of the three prongs, Freddy. What’s your question?”

Freddy swallows hard. “I understand it’s one of the prongs, boss, I mean, I’m following the prongs concept. I get the prongs. I just don’t—”

“You don’t know what the word means, do ya?” The old man stands at the with his stringy arms crossed against his chest, an impatient headmaster about to slap a ruler across a boy’s knuckles. “Do ya?”

The room is so quiet now all you can hear is the sound of the building settling and the soft snoring of the Ferri kid and the clacking of the O-scale model train as it wends its way around the ceiling-mounted track, rattling through little plaster-of-Paris tunnels, over balsa wood-covered bridges, past little plastic billboards for Burma Shave and Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Chewing Gum.

“Boss, I know what the word containment means, I’m just having a little bit of an issue with the whole—”

“What’s it mean, Freddy?”

“Boss, come on.”

The old man glares. “You have no freakin’ idea what the word containment means, do ya?”

“Of course I know what it means.” Freddy Felson looks as though he wants to sink into his chair. “I know what the word containment means.”

“Okay, then tell me.”

Freddy seems to be trying to swallow his entire Adam’s apple. The ball of dough and fat in his stomach is starting to burn. “It means, well, actually, the word containment has more than one meaning, if you want to get technical—”

“Freddy, I swear to Christ, I swear on my mother’s grave.” From inside his silk vest the old man pulls a little Remington two-shot pistol with a mother-of-pearl grip. The room gets even quieter.

The little train keeps clacking softly around them like a taunting sprite.

“If you don’t give me the definition of the word containment in about three seconds flat, I will put your minimal amount of brains on that dessert cart.” The old man says this as he waddles over to Felson with the little double-barreled handgun raised.

Freddy Felson—trembling all over, armpits damp—fingers his St. Christopher medal. “Boss, c’mon, it’s a multi-definitional kind of word—”

The old man puts the barrel against Freddy Felson’s temple and presses it hard against his skull. The others stiffen. Jimmy Dalessandro, eyes wide and alert now, takes a step across the room, his big hand reaching behind his belt. Old Man Ferri thumbs the hammer and snarls: “You have exactly three seconds to tell me the definition of containment.”

Freddy closes his eyes. “Boss, please—”

“Three…”

Freddy flinches. “Boss, c’mon, please—”

“Two…”

Eyes slammed shut. “Can you please—okay can you—can you use the word in a sentence?!”

“One!”

Before the old man has a chance to pull the trigger, a baritone voice rings out across the room with enough volume to turn all the heads: “ACTION TAKEN TO RESTRICT THE SPREAD OF SOMETHING HOSTILE SUCH AS AN ENEMY OR SOMETHING UNDESIREABLE SUCH AS A DISEASE!”

Standing next to the dessert cart, Jack Morelli, the human bull, his booming voice waking everybody up, has his iPhone in his huge, calloused hands. He’s got a website called Definitions-Are-Us on his phone’s little screen.

Old Man Ferri nods wearily, letting up on the pressure of the little muzzle against Freddy Felson’s cranium. “That’s correct,” Ferri mutters. He turns and trundles back across the room to his whiteboard. “‘Action taken to restrict a disease.’”

Freddy Felson lets out a hoarse, pained, tortured sigh of relief and falls into the nearest chair.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” the old man says as he grabs the marker and underlines the word containment. “This mook is a disease that has to be eradicated. Jack, look up the word eradicated for the morons.”

Across the room Jack Morelli frantically thumbs the word into his smart phone. “‘To destroy or get rid of something completely, so that it can never recur or return.’”

“That’s right.” The old man taps the felt tip marker on the whiteboard. “That’s what