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

The third time’s a charm. He clutches the handrail, and then he swings the rest of his body across the gap in one awkward plunge. The heels of his boots bounce off the greasy metal risers, and he nearly falls, but somehow manages to keep a death grip on that handrail.

Meanwhile, eight feet behind Dalessandro, Jilly Morelli is pulling himself up the side of the iron beast with the vigor of a giant ape. Clutching at a handrail, fueled by Vick’s cough syrup and amphetamines, he grunts and pulls and lifts his enormous girth up onto the roof.

The wind is a monster up there on top of the speeding train car, and Jilly has to cling to the roof for a moment, hugging a vent stack for purchase.

He lets out a primal scream of victory, and then, with great effort, holding onto the top of the stack, squinting into the gale-force winds, he awkwardly rises to his feet.

Unfortunately, nobody has warned Jilly Morelli that you can’t stand up on the roof of a speeding train. Especially at night.

The signal bridge comes out of nowhere—a low-hanging iron housing stretching across the tracks—striking Jilly squarely across the solar plexus. The impact lifts him out of his Lagerfeld loafers and sends him catapulting backward through the air with the force of a cannon.

Subsequent crime scene investigations will likely be stymied by what’s left of Jilly Morelli. Jurisdictional issues will prove troublesome. Part of Jilly lands in the weeds on the Indiana side of the border.

The rest of him lands on the Michigan side.

Dalessandro pauses on the parapet between the two train-cars, his bloody hand clutching the hand-rail and the deafening roar ringing in his skull, as he watches the Navigator drift away down the steep grade into the woods. He can barely see Jack Morelli’s ashen face inside the SUV, struggling to steer the car from the passenger side, glancing over his shoulder for any sign of his brother.

A moment later, the Navigator has vanished into the night, and Dalessandro is working on the hatch.

He gets the door open and slips inside the flickering, deserted train-car.

Some of the windows are broken, and the aisle is littered with shattered glass. Dalessandro is breathing hard from his daredevil maneuvers, and he has to hold onto a seat back for a moment to get his bearings. “Three fucking years of this shit,” he murmurs to himself.

He pulls his pistol-grip Remington from inside the back of his belt.

For a moment he cannot decide whether to head toward the engine or toward the caboose.

He pumps a shell into the breach and decides on the caboose.

39.

The caboose on a Superliner is an observation car, lined with windows, flanked on either side with small benches. At night, the heavens are visible through massive skylights.

Tonight, the sky is clear, and the full moon glowers down upon the caboose, filling the car with alien light, reflecting off the mortified faces of the motley group of passengers huddling inside it.

The theatrical effect is not lost on Oswald, who stands precariously on the platform between the last car and the caboose, the shotgun clutched in his cold, numb hands. He can see the group staring back at him through the portal window, Gerbil Goldstein with her nose practically pressed against the glass.

“Whattya doing, Tonto?!” She has to yell above the noise, her voice strained to be heard through the glass. “Get your ass in here! The fuck are you doing?!”

“GET AWAY FROM THE DOOR!” Oswald jacks a shell into the chamber, and aims the muzzle at the floor above the massive coupler. He can smell Alberta Goldstein’s perfume hanging in the airless train-car behind him. Evening in Paris. He will never forget that cloying smell. It smells like the color maroon.

“What the fuck are you doing?!”

Oswald fires at the floor, making everybody in the caboose jerk in perfect sync.

The blast chews a divot out of the parapet, the noise incredible, like a depth charge going off in the fluid of Oswald’s inner ear, but the damage is negligible. The track is visible now through the jagged worm-hole, but the coupler underneath—a huge phalanx of iron—is barely scratched. Oswald has seen too many movies.

“What are you doing?!”

“I’m not coming!” he says, pumping another shell into the breach. “I’m running up the score!”

“What the fuck are you talking about, you’re not coming?! You fucking asshole!” Gerbil presses her face against the portal and fights the urge to cry, her voice cracking. “Get your ass in here, you stupid motherfucking asshole!”

“There’s something I have to tell you!” Oswald is not looking at her now. He’s ashamed. He aims the gun down at the coupler inside the jagged opening and ignores the heavy scent of perfume filling his nasal passages. “I knew your mom! Long before I whacked her.”

“What?!”

“Back when I was just a young punk on the west side! I knew your mom!”

The train shudders and sparks, the dissonant chorus of steel on steel rising off the scale. A puff of acrid fumes rises up from the coupler.

Gerbil presses her hands on the glass, the realization dawning on her sweat-glistening face, a strand of hair adhering to her quivering lips. She screams, “YOU FAT FUCKING ASSHOLE—I DON’T GIVE A SHIT!—NOW GET YOUR FAT FUCKING WINNEBAGO ASS ON THIS CABOOSE!!”

“Get away from the door, Gerbil.” He aims the muzzle at the hole in the platform and squeezes off another shot. The blue flame barks, and the blast gobbles another six inches from the corrugated metal.

The coupler holds. Modern Amtrak couplers are failsafe—reinforced with layers of iron—and cannot be blasted apart with dynamite.

Gerbil is pounding her fists on the glass. “Whatever it is, I don’t care!”

Oswald looks at her. “I fell hard for her, Gerbil, to be honest. I never forgave her for not telling me she was a working girl.”

“DID YOU HEAR WHAT I SAID—I DON’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS—!

Oswald jacks the slide, injecting