Saint Oswald, page 11
Alejandro squeezes the trigger.
Then falls out of the tree.
Oswald is ten, maybe fifteen feet away from the pimp when the shot rings out like a quick, dry clap in the air over his head. The slap-back echo in the high overcast sky barely has time to register in his ear before the invisible fist punches him in the lower right pectoral.
“AHHHHWG!”
He lets out a yawp, and his entire three hundred pounds are yanked off the ground and hurled backward, gasping and flailing, a sensation of a giant hook piercing his heart, the world suddenly imploding around him.
“UUHHH!”
He lands hard on his back, in the crab grass, and he can’t breathe anymore and finds himself staring at the gunmetal-gray sky.
His brain is screaming. His chest is on fire. He tries to get a breath but he can’t, and he feels a warm, tacky sensation spreading up his tailbone—his bowels have emptied themselves, along with his bladder.
The 7.62-millimeter fully-jacketed round has deformed on impact, and now the cold pain slams through Oswald like a battering ram. He opens his mouth and lets out a hiss and raises his hands and claws at the air. He gapes at the dirty sky. He’s a little surprised it feels like this—he didn’t expect this kind of pain.
A shadow looms over him, a man sporting a big mop of an Afro with twin revolvers in his hands.
“Shame it has to end like this,” the Candy Man says, gazing down at Oswald.
“They h-have th-the—” Oswald is trying desperately to get the words out, but all that comes out is a strangled, breathless whisper.
The Candy Man leans down closer. “Got some last words to lay on me?”
“Th-they h-hh-have these things,” Oswald tells him, wheezing and swallowing the pain. He takes a shallow breath and struggles to think straight.
The Candy Man is nodding sadly, as one might nod to a child with a skinned knee. “Go on, brother—what are these things you want me to know about?”
“Th-they h-have these things now, th-they’re c-called Kevlar vests.”
The Candy Man stares. He starts to say, “Kevin Who?” but his words are suddenly and abruptly short-circuited by a swift kick to his groin.
The impact, which drives the pimp’s testicles up into his abdomen, is not much by athletic standards—the inertia would hardly pop a baseball more than a few feet into the air—but the steel-toe of Oswald’s work boot hits the sweet spot perfectly. The Candy Man stiffens and drops both guns and doubles over all bug-eyed and stunned.
Oswald gasps for air, and then scrambles out from under the pimp.
The Candy Man staggers backward as Oswald struggles to his feet and shoves the pimp to the ground. The Candy Man folds like a sack of laundry. He lands on his back, holding his groin and moaning, “M-mother-ffffuck!” Blinking fitfully, he cups his genitals in his hands.
Oswald slams a boot down on the pimp’s sunken chest and holds him there. “I’m going to need you to shut up for a second.”
“Awright, awright!” The Candy Man cringes and holds himself and obeys.
Oswald tears at the front of his fatigue coat and finds the deformed bullet stuck to his vest like a bug smashed against a windshield. The hot metal slug has burrowed in, and it takes Oswald a moment to dig it out, catching his breath and getting his bearings. His ass-crack burns from the unexpected evacuation.
Swallowing back the shock and taking deep breaths, Oswald looks around the deserted picnic area for any sign of the sniper.
Half a football field away, the shooter lies on the ground, holding his elbow. The kid looks like a gangbanger, and his rifle lies in the grass about twenty feet away from the point at which he plummeted from the tree. Looks like Amateur Hour at the Okay Corral.
“Pretty fucking pathetic,” Oswald comments, as he goes around the pimp, leans down, and snatches up the twin .38 Police Specials.
The Candy Man is looking at him through raw, rheumy eyes. “Whaddya expect?”
Oswald cracks open the revolvers and dumps the rounds into the grass. Then he tosses the handguns into the spindly hedge-row bordering the picnic area. “I would expect better, Candy, to be quite honest. You coulda taken me out with a single head-shot.”
“The kid said he could make a head-shot at a hundred yards.”
“Obviously he was full of shit. C’mon.” Oswald reaches down, grabs a handful of the Candy Man’s silk jacket, and then yanks the skinny shylock to his feet with the force of a forklift pulling a weed.
“I got one request, Chief.” The pimp is weak-kneed and woozy with shock.
“No more requests, Candy.”
Oswald unceremoniously drags the emaciated Candy Man across the threshold of picnic tables and fire pits. They make their way around the pavilion, and then hobble awkwardly toward the tree line.
In the middle distance, the sniper is painfully crawling across the ground toward his fallen rifle. It’s apparent the kid’s got a broken arm, and God knows what else from the fall. He’s got maybe fifteen feet between him and the weapon, and Oswald quickens his pace, dragging the pimp along quickly now across the scabrous ground.
Oswald and the Candy Man reach the fallen sniper at the precise moment the kid gets his hand on the stock.
A big muddy work boot smashes down on the kid between his shoulder blades. “Ouch!—Motherfucker!—Ouch!—That hurts, homes!”
“Shut up!” Oswald shoves the pimp to the ground, then reaches into his coat and pulls out his Army .45. He thumbs the magazine out, and then shows the business end to both men with the vigor of a drill instructor. “I want you both to take a look at the mag,” he announces in a flat, no-nonsense voice, giving each of them a good look. “You see the rounds? Eight rounds? You see ’em?”
Neither man replies.
“DO YOU SEE THE ROUNDS?!” Oswald is getting angrier by the second—his ass-crack burning, the load in his pants making him crazy. He increases the pressure of his boot on the sniper’s back.
“Yeah, yeah, I see ’em, I see ’em, homes,” the kid grunts in pain.
“One request, Chief, for old time’s sake?” The Candy Man is shaking now. “Will ya make it quick? That’s all I’m asking, brother—”
“Let me finish!” Oswald slams the clip back into the hilt and aims it at the kid’s head. “You expect me to pop this piece of shit right now?”
No reply from either man.
“IT’S A SIMPLE QUESTION!” Oswald jacks the hammer back, then presses the barrel against the back of the sniper’s skull. “ANSWER THE QUESTION!”
“Yes, yes—hell yes,” the pimp babbles, “I ’spect you’re gonna do us both.”
“Get up!” Oswald yanks the kid off the ground with a single grunt.
Alejandro Rodrigues springs to his feet like a puppet on a string. He closes his eyes with the anguish of a man in front of a firing squad.
“Get the fuck outta here,” Oswald commands in a strange voice.
The kid opens his eyes. “Huh?”
“I’m saving your life, asshole.”
“You’re what?”
Oswald stares at him. “Saving your life, numb-nuts. You tried to wax another shooter. What are the odds of you walking away? I’m giving you a second chance. Get outta the game, stop doing jobs.”
The kid is vexed. “I don’t—”
“Do you agree that I’m saving your life? By not putting cap in your ass?”
The kid nods furiously.
“Okay, so get the fuck outta my face!”
The kid starts limping away, not looking back, not saying a word, holding his injured arm. He hastens his pace, and soon he is running, an awkward sort of half-run/half-hobble, running for his life, making a beeline for the access road running along the east edge of the park.
Oswald and the Candy Man watch the kid vanish around a corner of dense foliage, returning to whatever fate the rest of Alejandro Rodrigues’s life holds for him. After a brief silence the pimp addresses his own fate.
“You ain’t gonna give me the same opportunity, are ya?” the Candy Man mumbles, still on the ground, staring down into his lap.
“There’s something else I need from you, Candy,” Oswald tells him, reaching down and grabbing hold of the pimp’s silk jacket. He pulls the man to his feet.
“Anything y’all want, y’all got it—bitches, ecstasy, AK-47s, weed, I got some great weed.” The Candy Man frowns. “What the fuck is that smell?”
“Never mind—c’mon.” Oswald drags the skinny pimp back across the leprous grass toward the pavilion.
Staggering along on watery legs, the Candy Man keeps babbling, “You want crystal, I got some great laboratory-grade shit, you want a new car? I got Cadillacs, I got SUVs. I got Humvees—you want a Hummer—?”
“No, I don’t want a Hummer.” Oswald drags the Candy Man toward the public restroom.
“And when I say Hummer I’m talking about the car, not the blow-job. Which I could get for you, too, by the way, no problema. Blow-jobs, hand-jobs, B&D-shit, around the world, pile-driver with two bitches, or a foursome, I could get you a foursome, with maybe one that pisses on you, or maybe all the bitches pissing on you at the same time—”
“Enough!”
Oswald pulls the pimp over to a knotty little pine shack about the size of a toolshed, adjacent to the pavilion, embedded with two doors marked MEN and WOMEN. The doors are scarred with graffiti, and the structure reeks of a miasma of urine and grit and methane. Oswald kicks open the door and yanks his hostage inside.
The airless interior of concrete slab flooring and cheap timber stalls is bright with dirty fluorescent light. The stench of human waste is so thick it hangs in the flickering glow like a penumbra.
Oswald kicks open a stall and slams the Candy Man against the wall. “I need some information.” Oswald thrusts the barrel of the .45 into the spongy mass of the pimp’s Afro. “That’s all I need.”
The Candy Man closes his eyes. “Anything, brother, anything.”
“I need to know who’s on the Ferris’ to-do list.”
The pimp opens his eyes. “Say what?”
“Who’s on the books to get bagged?”
The pimp licks his lips. “Brother, I don’t got that kinda intel.”
The hammer clicks back. “Think hard, Candy, or I’ll put your limited amount of brains all over that wall right there.”
“Awright, awright, awright, awright—be cool—I seem to remember the Ferri crew farmin’ out a job like—lemme think—it was last week, like Monday, Tuesday.”
Oswald shoves the gun harder against the pimp’s skull. “Gimme a name.”
“C’mon, Chief, chill on down now, I’m thinkin’—yeah—it was this motherfucker from Hammond, this stupid-ass gambler, got his ass in too deep with the casino down there.”
“Name?”
“El-something, Elkhart—no!—Elgart, Billy Elgart—that’s it.”
“Who’d you give it to?”
The pimp looks at him. “C’mon, now, Chief—you know I’m a dead man, I tell you who’s on it.”
“YOU’LL BE DEADER IF YOU DON’T!!”
The sudden bark of Oswald’s voice makes the pimp flinch against the wall and slam his eyes shut. “I got the Ice Man, I got the Ice Man to do it!”
Oswald sighs. “Wachowski? You’re shitting me. You got Bernie Wachowski to do it? That asshole couldn’t hit an old lady in a barrel.”
“C’mon now, Chief, ease up on that gat now,” the Candy Man pleads, trembling against the wall.
“What else you got?”
“That’s it, Chief, I swear on my mama, that’s all I got right now, I swear, but lookit, lookit, I’ll feed ya whatever comes in, I swear to Christ I will.”
Oswald thumbs off the hammer, easing the muzzle back just a tad. “Okay, I got one more thing, one more thing I need you to do for me.”
“Anything, Chief.”
Unsnapping his denims with his free hand, holding the gun on the pimp, Oswald lowers his pants.
The pimp stares. With great effort Oswald is peeling the seat of his boxer shorts away from his rear-end, which is sticky and sodden with shit. He displays his soiled nether-regions to the pimp.
“Candy, I’m gonna need you to go grab some of that toilet paper over there, and then I’m gonna need you to come back here and wipe my ass.”
16.
The next forty-eight hours of Oswald’s life come to a crashing halt like a film that has jammed in a projector. He spends most of this time pacing the shopworn hardwood of Gerbil’s apartment in his underwear, tending to his injuries, eating junk food, trying to stay sober, trying to heal, trying to figure things out, and watching with great dread the moon rise a little fuller each night.
He attempts to track down “the Ice Man,” aka Bernie Wachowski, through various contacts with mobbed-up attorneys and crooked private investigators, but nobody’s seen hide nor pubic hair of the Russian in ages. Oswald calls the Candy Man back at least a dozen times, trying to glean when and where the Elgart hit is scheduled to go down, but the pimp just keeps pleading ignorance, which is not surprising from someone as ignorant as the Candy Man.
Throughout those two shapeless days, Oswald tries every trick in the book, and some that aren’t even published. He tries to get clever online with Gerbil’s laptop—maneuvering through back doors, hacking away at the website run by the mob’s law firm—but he soon discovers how hard it is to crack the firewall of the Ferri network. Homeland Security could not claim such rigorous privacy.
Oswald tries to track down the gambler, Billy Elgart, but Oswald is told by Mrs. Elgart that she hasn’t been married to that worthless son of a bitch for over a decade, and thank God for that.
Gerbil has to work for most of those agonizing forty-eight hours—putting in two late shifts down at the coffee shop—so Oswald finds himself alone most of that time, going out of his mind with cabin fever and the horrible feeling that he’s made a huge mistake. He cannot stop thinking about the forlorn hooker, Alberta Goldstein, and what would have been, what could have been, what should have been. He cannot stop thinking about that pathetic little Lucy Arnez wig bouncing off the windshield in flames.
Finally, late in the afternoon on that second day of waiting, fate deals Oswald a royal flush. He remembers a retired old enforcer from the Daley Machine days named Philly “the Gnat” Massamore. The Gnat has long been a paisan of the Russian and also hates Old Man Ferri with unbridled passion. Oswald locates the old cocker through one of the Candy Man’s girls, who regularly pays visits to the old geezer in a retirement village up in Wisconsin for a blow-job and bingo.
“What the flying fuck d’ya want with the Russian?” the old man’s voice wheezes over the line, only minutes after being rousted off the shuffle-board court. “I just talked to him last week. You thinkin’ of joining forces, startin’ a union?”
Oswald just laughs and then tells Massamore a lie about Elgart getting tipped off to the hit, and how Oswald is worried about Wachowski getting hurt.
“Well, you better hurry,” the old codger warns. “He’s doing the thing tonight in fucking Hammond, at some place called the Riverside, but you didn’t hear nothin’ from me.”
17.
The toxic atmosphere over northern Indiana—the tainted spoor of steel mills and machine shops—makes for exquisite sunsets. The hazy particulate matter hangs like a pall across the Bishop Ford Freeway to the west, and paints the horizon in Monet-like swaths of magenta, gold, and pink as the sun sinks behind derelict machine shops and fossilized factories clinging to the skyway. Tonight, en route to Hammond, hunched behind the wheel of his rattle-trap S-10, garbed like an orthodox Hassidim in his black peacoat, wrung-out and numb from all the painkillers, Oswald Means does not notice the gorgeous, deadly oil painting spreading across the western sky. He does not notice the ubiquitous burnt-metal smell wafting through the open wing of the pickup. In fact, he barely even notices the pale ghost of a moon rising to the south, a waxing gibbous wraith on its relentless journey toward fullness.
Only six days remain.
If Oswald’s math is correct, he has accrued three lives so far—Kornblum the bridge-jumper, the snot-nosed sniper, and the Candy Man (although the latter is open for interpretation)—but now Oswald is too jittery to even think about cosmic tallies and tasks and time ticking away. He’s too edgy, too preoccupied by peculiar feelings brewing inside him—feelings beyond his ability to articulate.
“I gotta ask you to do me a favor tonight,” he says, scanning the road ahead for Exit Thirteen, the turn-off for the Riverside Casino and Resort. His vision is slightly bleary tonight. His ears are ringing, and his skull is pounding, and he has a weird taste in his mouth—like he just bit down on a galvanized nail. The fact is, he has not felt a hundred percent since the incident in the park the day before yesterday, and he’s starting to think that maybe he should see a doctor. The shock to the bullet-proof vest was enough to send a shard of pain up through his spinal column and into his cranium, where it has settled, and now he feels as though the base of his neck is filled with ground glass.
“This thing is an amazing invention,” Gerbil Goldstein is muttering on the passenger side, staring down at the Kevlar vest, now folded into a dirty sandwich of thick, nubby fabric in her lap. Oswald purchased the vest off the black market years ago, during a time when he was paranoid about rival contractors taking him out of the game, but had never given it the acid test... until the day before yesterday.
For the last hour or so, Gerbil has been marveling at the charred dimple in the weave, prodding it with her finger, awed by this miracle of modern engineering. The sniper had fired a seven-six-two-millimeter, soft-point, copper-jacketed slug at the thing from a mere fifty yards, and the round had barely pushed through the outer shell. “Fucking amazing.”
“Did you hear what I said?” Oswald presses.
“About what?” She looks up at him with her trademark blank stare. Dressed in a black cardigan, black stirrup pants, and black Doc Martens, she looks like a refugee from a Charles Addams cartoon. About twenty miles back, she gobbled a half a burrito, and now the remnants of her repast lay like an abortion on top of the Kevlar vest, wadded in a nest of wax paper.
