During the course of a normal evening, two security guards are usually stationed in the worn swivel-chairs in front of the monitors. Tonight one of the guards is out sick, so the job has fallen to an elderly African American guard named Theodore Baskin—T-Bone to his pals—who usually plays solitaire while he absently surveys the screens over the top of his greasy horn-rimmed glasses.

  This evening, however, T-Bone’s horn-rims lie on the console, folded up and forgotten amid the spray of playing cards and half-eaten Spam sandwich.

  The guard slumps, unconscious, his head resting on the intercom buttons.

  A tall Russian gentleman with an eye-patch stands behind the guard, putting a hypodermic needle back into its black leather case.

  Trim and gaunt in his black turtleneck and crisp black slacks, Bernard Ivan Wachowski—Ice Man to his clients and associates—estimates the duration of the Amobarbital to be about thirty minutes.

  Which is more than enough time to get a fix on the target down on the main floor and go finish the job before last call at the Paddle Wheel Show Lounge.

  Wachowski watches the grainy image on the monitor marked SLOTS—ROW FIFTEEN.

  On the tiny screen, Billy Elgart is clearly visible, sucking down another Rusty Nail, fidgeting restlessly behind the old lady hunkered at Machine Number 13. Billy has been waiting for the old bitty to leave for nearly forty-five minutes now, and has burned through six cocktails. At last he throws up his hands in an exaggerated gesture of exasperation, and starts weaving drunkenly down the aisle, making a spectacle of himself, moving toward the intersection of corridors at the north end of the main room.

  Wachowski smiles. Considering the amount of booze Elgart has been sloshing down, the Russian knows that the gambler will be heading to the toilet soon, which, according to the monitor marked MEN’S ROOM—MAIN FLOOR, will put him in the perfect kill zone.

  The Russian is about to pack up and head down to the casino floor when he notices something odd on the monitor marked SLOTS—ROW SIXTEEN.

  “Vaht is this, vaht is this?” Wachowski mutters, staring with his one good eye at the tiny screen in the upper right-hand corner of the matrix.

  On the monitor, a big, portly tourist in a spongy cowboy hat and ridiculous pink T-shirt is discreetly following Elgart. At first the fat man looks lost. He keeps pausing to gaze innocently around the casino, then hurries to keep up with the drunken gambler.

  Wachowski reaches down to the joystick next to the guard’s drooling mouth.

  “I vill be a son of the bitch,” Wachowski murmurs as he zooms the camera.

  The black-and-white image awkwardly pushes in to a close-up of the big-boned idiot in the cowboy hat and pink top, so close that the guy’s long black ponytail becomes visible, sticking out the back of his hat.

  “Vaht is that half-breed cunt doing here?” Wachowski whispers to himself.

  Then, after a long moment, he smiles a Cheshire cat kind of smile that deepens the lines around his cold blue eyes. “My lucky night now—two for one.”

  19.

  Down on the casino floor, Elgart is drawing stares. A couple of Japanese businessmen in shirtsleeves are looking up from their bandits, gaping at the crazy gambler as he bobs and weaves between the aisles, talking to himself, chewing his lip, slurping his Rusty Nail, and staggering from slot to slot. He drops single quarters at a time, yanking levers and then frowning at the results.

  Oswald keeps watch from behind a neighboring row of bandits. Something about this is bothering him. More customers are noticing Elgart’s erratic behavior. For example, right now, a skinny hick in a Caterpillar cap is grinning at the rampaging gambler, whispering something to his girlfriend, while a waitress in a low-cut blouse smirks knowingly as she passes, balancing a tray full of daiquiris.

  Attention is never a good thing. Attention to a hit man is like saltpeter—an instant deal-breaker—and right now Oswald senses Elgart is about to reach critical mass. Something has to be done.

  Several possibilities occur to Oswald over the space of an instant. He could go up to Elgart and pretend to be an old school chum and drag him off the floor, maybe drag him into a safe zone. But then what? Put him on a bus? Buy him a plane ticket?

  Would that be enough to save his life?

  Something troubling dawns on Oswald then. What is he supposed to do with the shooter? He knows very little about Bernard Wachowski—other than a vague memory of meeting him at a Ferri picnic once.

  Rumor has it that the Russian can be somewhat of a loose cannon. He whacked a guy with a car once—drove the thing right through a plate-glass window and squashed the poor guy while he sat in a barber chair getting a manicure. Another time, according to legend, Bernie Wachowski killed two men with a single bullet.

  Oswald is not a big believer in folklore, but tonight he would rather not test Wachowski’s limits. He would rather just pop the guy.

  But would that cancel the save? Would zapping the hitter result in a zero-sum game? Oswald isn’t sure what he is going to do when he finally meets up with the Russian—it’s a bridge he will cross when he comes to it—but one thing is certain: Wachowski isn’t going to like it.

  Across the row of slots, Billy Elgart flops down on another stool in front of another bandit. He slumps down in front of the machine and morosely drops another quarter. The lever comes down and Billy puts his face in his hands. He looks like he’s crying.

  The waitress appears behind him with another pair of Rusty Nails on her tray. Elgart gazes up at her through watery, bloodshot eyes. He says something to her, something that appears to be funny only to him, and then he snatches the drinks off the tray.

  He downs one of the cocktails—his seventh drink of the evening—in a single chug. A small crowd has gathered at the end of the aisle, about a dozen people, to watch this sad sack melt down before their very eyes.

  Oswald scans the crowd carefully for a glimpse of Wachowski. He sees a young, smart-looking black lady in a flight attendant’s uniform, and he sees a pair of Asian girls with big oversized Hello Kitty purses, and he sees a rotund gentleman in a chef’s coat, and he sees an elderly couple in Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirts.

  No sign of the Russian.

  More people are gathering, craning their necks to see what’s going on. People at casinos love to watch high-rollers hitting it big—both hope and greed spring eternal—but people also like to watch their fellow gamblers go down in flames. It’s more than mere schadenfreude. It’s the gambler’s brand of magical thinking.

  Better that poor bastard than me.

  The Russian waits behind a vending machine fifty feet away from the men’s room. He loves challenges, and this one presents a logistical conundrum the likes of which he has never encountered. Chances are, the Indian will follow the gambler into the men’s room, which will help with proximity, but the plugging order is critical. If Wachowski goes for the Indian first, he risks spooking the real target. But if he goes for Elgart first, he might risk a nasty shootout with the Indian. Which begs the question: What the fuck is the Indian doing here in the first place?

  Wachowski has no time to ponder the latter because Elgart is on the move again.

  On the other side of the corridor, Billy Elgart stumbles across deep pile carpet monogrammed with a big paddle wheel, looking as though he’s about to vomit. He holds his gut with one hand and his drink with the other, and he staggers toward the men’s room.

  Wachowski reaches down to the perfectly pressed cuffs at the bottom of his pant legs, and unsnaps the Velcro straps around his twin Walther PPKs. The silencers are snugged into his Ferrigamo hose, and it takes a little flick of the wrist to dislodge them.

  He straightens up with a courtly flourish, as though completing a genteellittle bow in some royal receiving line. No one notices him holding the weapons inside his palms, snug against his thighs, as he slides along the wall toward the men’s room.

  The décor inside the restroom is early whorehouse hotel, softly lit with Tiffany sconces and recessed fluorescent tubes behind a banquette of burnished stainless steel sinks. A row of lacquer-black stalls lines one wall. Wall Street Journal and Sporting News front-pages are encased in glass mounts above a row of gleaming porcelain urinals. Lemon-scented deodorizers aggressively mask the swampy air.

  Muzak drones.

  Billy Elgart bangs into the room and gets halfway to the stainless steel counter before dropping to his knees and roaring vomit.

  Seven and a half Rusty Nails come spewing out across the lovely checkerboard parquet in a mini-tsunami of Drambuie, Scotch, macerated cherries, and salmon-colored bile. The retching noises fill the empty restroom and bounce off the tile walls.

  The clamor drowns out another sound—far too faint to reach Billy’s ears: the restroom door softly swishing open behind him.

  A large figure in pink is slipping inside the men’s room, moving with as much stealth as a man the size of an NFL linebacker can muster.

  At the moment, Billy is far too distracted by his own violent convulsions to notice a newcomer to the bathroom. Down on his hands and knees, his shoulders hunched, he heaves and heaves until the only things coming out of him are frothy orange stringers of bile.

  He gasps for breath, his head pounding unmercifully, the knees of his long parachute shorts soaking in the soupy contents of his stomach. The stench rises around him like a demonic entity.

  Billy manages to rise halfway up. The room spins. He swallows the taste of bile and then hobbles on his hands and knees toward the corner of the room where the towel dispenser hangs next to the sink. “The Girl from Ipanema” plays faintly on recessed speakers.

  In his head, Billy hears the scolding voice of his mother: worthless, worthless, worthless—

  Oswald lets the door click softly behind him as he draws the nine-millimeter from his camo shorts. He sees Elgart across the restroom, on the floor, shivering and scraping under the paper towel dispenser. This is going to take some fancy talking. Oswald had expected to encounter the Russian at some point, which would at least clarify the situation, but now Oswald will have to resort to Plan B.

  Digging the suppressor out of his pocket, he quickly screws it onto the Glock’s muzzle. He is not taking any chances. The gambler could very easily be packing heat tonight, and Oswald wants to maintain firearm superiority, even if it merely means intimidating the poor son of a bitch.

  Muffled voices out in the hall momentarily draw Oswald’s attention over his shoulder.

  He considers locking the door. Then he thinks better of it—he doesn’t want to draw any more attention than absolutely necessary. If he hurries, he can usher the gambler out of here before anybody else comes in to take a piss.

  By now, Elgart has made it to the paper towel dispenser. He struggles to his feet, wiping his mouth and standing on wobbly knees.

  Oswald makes his move.

  * * *

  In the time it takes the Indian to cross the length of tile floor between the door and the towel dispenser, the Russian, hiding in stall number one, manages to silently push open the stall door with one elbow while simultaneously raising both Walthers.

  Normally the creak of the stall door would give him away—the hinges are not exactly well oiled—but tonight, the moaning, hiccupping, heaving gasps coming from the cretin bouncing around the tiled chamber in the backwards Raiders cap drowns most of the ambient noises.

  Which is fortunate for the Russian. It has given him the luxury of surprise. And better yet, it has given him the luxury of contemplation.

  He will sneak up on both men, and ultimately carry out his greatest achievement: a double execution at precisely the same moment.

  To the best of Wachowski’s knowledge, no one in the field has ever attempted such a bold maneuver. No one—not Billy the Kid, not Ivan the Terrible, not the savviest KGB assassin, not even James Fucking Bond—has ever performed such a feat of deadly precision.

  Wachowski carefully steps out of the stall, and then aims the twin PPKs at the men in the corner.

  Now the big Indian is only inches away from the gambler, who is hunched over a sink, tearing paper towels from the dispenser, burying his face in the brown sheets, blowing his nose, coughing and hacking, both men completely oblivious to the nearness of Death.

  Wachowski doesn’t notice his own erection underneath his Armani slacks.

  Nor does he notice the sound—drowned by Elgart’s honking gasps—of a fourth individual coming through the restroom door behind him.

  “Psssst!”

  The sudden and unexpected sound of a voice makes Billy jump and flinch against the sink.

  He looks up, and he sees in the mirror a figure standing directly behind him.

  “Don’t move, asshole, don’t talk, don’t throw up, just listen.”

  The big goombah in the giant cowboy hat and the Baby-on-Board T-shirt in the reflection is enough to freeze Billy Elgart in place in front of the small oval mirror.

  Stranger yet: There is a second man, a dapper gentleman in a black turtleneck, standing directly behind the big tourist, aiming twin weapons—one in each hand—at Billy.

  But the strangest part, the part that has Billy thunderstruck, is the young girl creeping up behind the turtleneck guy. The tattooed waif with the raven-black dyed hair and Kurt Cobain cardigan holds an empty baby stroller like she’s about to chop down a tree with it.

  20.

  The stroller—a cheap rental, which Gerbil picked up out of desperation on her way across the casino—comes down hard on the Russian’s skull.

  It makes a flat, metallic crunching noise—the wheels making good contact with Wachowski’s cranium. The Russian stiffens as though electrocuted.

  Both of the Walther PPK pistols discharge, their blasts like muffled corks popping, sending high-caliber rounds high and wide into the wall and the mirrors, chipping tile and plaster and glass.

  The Russian, stunned senseless, tumbles forward into Oswald.

  Oswald is caught off-balance, and goes lurching forward into Elgart.

  The domino effect sends Elgart reeling backward into the sinks.

  All three men land in a heap on the floor, a stream of water from a breached pipe spewing across the tiles, instantly soaking them.

  “What the fuck?—What the fuck!?” Oswald, on top of Elgart, claws blindly at the slippery floor for his Glock, which has clattered on impact under the sinks. His cowboy hat droops over his eyes.

  “Please get off me please please!” Elgart cries in a strangled voice, crushed by Oswald’s weight.

  Behind them, Gerbil tosses the stroller aside and reaches down to the Russian’s limp legs. She grabs the twitching assassin by the ankles and yanks him off the others, the Russian’s face scraping wet tile.

  Wachowski is not quite unconscious, so Gerbil scoops up the baby stroller and gives the Russian another healthy whack on the back of the head. And then another. And then another. And another.

  The assassin jerks and goes still.

  Under the sinks, Oswald rolls off Elgart and lies on his back for a moment, staring at the ceiling. “What did I do to deserve this?”

  Elgart lets out a gasp of relief and sits up, still woozy from the booze and shock, blinking like a man in the grips of a nightmare. “I knew it, I knew it…”

  Across the room, Gerbil is pulling the Russian’s limp body over by the garbage receptacle. Then she kicks his fallen weapons across the tile. “Jesus Christ, Ozzy,” she says, turning toward the sinks. “We’re supposed to be saving other people’s asses, not yours.”

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay in the truck?” Oswald sits up, wiping moisture from his face.

  Gerbil shakes her head. “You’d be dead right now if I’d stayed in the truck.”

  “Wachowski’s an amateur—I could have easily handled that puss-pocket.”

  Gerbil gestures at the body by the garbage can. “What do we do with him?”

  Oswald struggles to his feet. The fluorescent tubes flicker. The tender part of his skull is bleeding, the stitches popped. “Lock the door.”

  Elgart stares at them. “You’ve come to kill me, haven’t you?”

  “No, moron, we haven’t come to kill you. Have you listened to a word I’ve said?” Oswald turns to Gerbil. “Did you see where my Glock went to?”

  Gerbil goes over to the door and searches for a latch or a dead bolt. “There’s no lock. Oh, wait a minute.” She finds the button on the doorknob and punches it. “There we go. Now what?”

  Elgart is backing into the opposite corner, his Reeboks wading through an inch of water. “The Ferris sent you, didn’t they?”

  Oswald finds the Glock under the sink. It is soaked but still serviceable. He jacks a round into the breach, then blows the moisture off the slide. “Elgart, do you think you could shut your pie hole for one blessed minute?”

  Elgart shivers, his eyes shifting from the stalls to the door to the limp body of the fallen Russian. “Oh crap, crap, crap…”

  “What’s the plan, MacGyver?” Gerbil is waiting, hands on her hips.

  “First thing we’re gonna do,” Oswald says, thumbing the hammer back and tightening the suppressor, “is save a whole boat-load of people in one fell swoop.”

  Gerbil stares. “Wait a minute. You’re not talking about...? You’re talking about...? You’re gonna pop the Russian right here? Right now?”

  “If you want to leave, be my guest.” Oswald limps over to the unconscious assassin and kneels down as though he’s a paramedic about to provide emergency treatment. “This’ll only take a second.”

  Across the room, Elgart shudders and closes his eyes. “Oh crap crap crap crap crap…”

  Gerbil turns away. “Whatever you think, Tonto.”

  “Here we go.” Oswald takes off his ludicrous cowboy hat and covers the Russian’s face with it, then presses the muzzle against the spongy hat.

  He pauses.

  In real time, the moment lasts only a brief instant. But for Oswald it seems to stretch for hours, days—an eternity. The truth is, the kindergarten doctor warned him about moments such as these, how the fragment in his brain might trigger a stray synapse, sparking like a glitch in a digital tape.