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

evoking days of yore when old white men with belts and suspenders ran the show, and blacks and Mexicans and Indians all knew their places, and LaSalle Street attorneys could enjoy their greed and good drugs in peace.

The health club is slow that night. Harkness arrives at just past 6 and gets a machine right away and marches in place in front of Fox News until his thighs burn and his velour gets heavy with perspiration.

By the time Harkness gets back to the locker room, he’s shaking and drenched in flop-sweat. He showers quickly and packs his stuff. The little Smith & Wesson travel pouch is burning a hole at the bottom of his cowhide duffel. He dresses quickly in loose-fitting black jeans, Nikes, and a midnight-blue Versace tennis shirt. The trembling slows him down, making the buttoning difficult.

He makes his way out the Grand Avenue exit and finds his car at a meter. Then he drives the remaining six and a half blocks west to the Rusty Spoke in a sort of fugue state. The mist has lifted, and a dark, gleaming night has fallen like shrink wrap on the garbage-strewn alley adjacent to the bar. Dirty vapor lights shine down on the far end of a hundred-yard passageway, giving the narrow channel of wrought-iron fire escapes and reeking dumpsters the feel of a near-death experience.

Harkness parks at the west end of the alley—his customary spot under the streetlights—and gets out of the car. He checks his watch. It’s 9:53 p.m. Two hours to go. His gaze is everywhere all at once as he walks eastward toward Grand. He transfers the pistol to his right pocket and then hustles along, now with his hand clutched around the grip.

His scalp crawls as he reaches the end of the alley and hears a car alarm. He takes a deep breath, crosses the street, and goes inside the bar to wait.

5.

Oswald watches the dickhead enter the bar at five minutes to 10. Like clockwork, Oswald thinks as he sits behind the wheel of the S-10. He sucks down the remaining contents of his Red Bull. The energy drink is making him more logy and punchy than alert. He’s seeing the ghosts again, almost every hour on the hour. He gets this way sometimes. He sees the Head-Wound Kiddie-Porn Guy, or maybe the accountant dude again, the one with the broken eyeglass lens, or perhaps the Dreadlock-Wearing Drug Dealer. They nag him at the strangest times. Matilda’s condition has them riled up.

He tosses the empty into the disaster area of the back seats and then he fishes for his cheap walkie-talkie under a pile of racing forms on the passenger side. The device is sticky with unidentifiable gunk. Oswald thumbs the “SEND” button: “Gerbil, where you at?”

Static crackles. “What?”

“I said where are you?”

Through the static: “Let’s see... I’m at a currency exchange, corner of Grand and May.”

Oswald sighs. “The hell are you doing there?”

The crackling voice replies, “Well, for starters, I’m not cashing the checks you haven’t given me for the last three jobs.”

“Cut the comedy, Gerbil.”

“What do you want, Ozzy?”

“What I want is for you to get focused, and stop using my name.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. What are you now, Maxwell Smart?”

Oswald squeezes the thumb button: “How many times have we talked about this?”

Through static: “Okay, okay. Copy that, Eagle Feather, that’s a big 10-4. Got a visual on the dark forest. The caribou is still grazing.”

Oswald shakes his head. Why does he put up with this abuse? Lots of shooters work alone. It would be so much easier to conduct his business without this snot-nosed kid tagging along on every job. Why does he put himself through this shit? Is it guilt?

“All right, all right, very funny... just stay frosty and give me as much lead time as possible when he comes out.” Oswald tosses the two-way onto the seat, and then settles back to rub his throbbing temples. His .44 is pressing against his big belly, the silencer poking his ham-hock thigh. “Why did I open my big fat mouth?” he murmurs to himself in the silent reeking interior of the pickup.

He takes a deep, calming breath. Closes his eyes. Breathes in and out.

In the festering dark he tries to get himself back to that Indian place, that warrior-brave calm he likes to access before a hit. Once upon a time he used to get back to that shaman stillness so easily. He was Red Thunder, he was death on silent wheels, a pipeline to his noble Ho-Chunk ancestors: the Great and Deadly Guardians of a Nation.

Sometimes, before a job, Oswald thinks of his stepfather, Quentin, and the Tilt-A-Whirl. The hatred always puts Oswald in the right frame of mind. And then he casts his imagination further back, to old times—to that glorious era when the Algonquian Nation ruled the Great Lakes—and he sees himself in the reeds, in the myrtle, sneaking up on a party of plundering Jesuits, pouncing from the shadows, taking their filthy scalps one by one.

Nowadays, in the moments before a gig, it’s all Oswald can do to avoid upchucking on himself.

At around 11:30, Gerbil’s voice comes crackling through the walkie’s tinny little speaker: “Wake up, Kemosabe!”

“Yo.” Oswald jerks awake and wheezes into the cell. “Go ahead.”

“Caribou on the move.”

Oswald looks at his watch and frowns. “He’s breaking his pattern.”

Through the speaker: “Be that as it may, the douchebag’s heading west. Toward the corner.”

Oswald fumbles with the earplug. “I’m on my way around the other side. Stick with him until he dips into the alley, and let me know exactly when that happens.”

“Ten-four, Tonto.”

Oswald climbs out of the truck and plunges into the humid, clammy night air.

The rain has lifted, and the night has turned into one of those patented Chicago spring evenings where the sky is so heavy with stillborn precipitation it seems to press down on the steaming streets like a shroud, fogging windows, sliming banisters, and