FOUR

Howard Saint held his sobbing wife gently in his arms, let her rest her head on his shoulder. With one hand, he gently stroked her hair. With the other, he held Livia tightly to him, to prevent her from collapsing a second time.

“Shhhh,” he whispered in her ear.

Behind her, his son John stood impassively, whatever grief he was feeling tucked away someplace deep inside him. In that respect, he was just like his father—Howard Saint had never let his boys see him weak, or scared, or full of self-doubt, and he was not about to start now. He’d learned his lesson young—in this world, only the strong survived. John had picked up that knowledge from him long ago.

Poor Bobby never had.

Behind John, Quentin Glass stood, his own face a mask set in stone, one foot on the rear veranda, one foot in the mansion proper. As always, the perfect soldier, waiting to execute Howard Saint’s orders, whatever they were. And behind him, Saint saw Dante and Lincoln, Cutter and Spoon, and T.J., all waiting for his commands as well.

How had tonight come to this?

Up until a minute ago, it had been the perfect evening. His talk with Chadwick at Saints and Sinners had been everything he could have wanted, and more. The party was prepared to throw its full weight behind him, to make him their candidate in the upcoming primary, and in the general election beyond that, in exchange for his support on a single issue. A promise to kill the Everglades Reclamation Project.

Saint had asked for a copy of their position to be faxed over to his downtown offices tomorrow morning so he could study the problem, but really, what was there to think about? What did he care about a bunch of fucking alligators? Chadwick knew it, and so did he. They talked in supposed hypotheticals for another half hour—when and where to announce, campaign personnel, basic issue strategy—but both men knew that this was the first of many meetings they would be having, en route to the governor’s mansion next January.

He and Livia had returned here, to his estate on the Tampa waterfront, to celebrate. Which they’d only just begun to do—a drink on the veranda, a passionate kiss, the promise of a more passionate evening to come—when Howard Saint had heard the front door open, and had looked up to see John and Quentin heading straight for them.

And with the news they’d brought, everything else seemed suddenly, and perhaps permanently, insignificant.

His son was dead.

And no matter how much of the fault for that death could rightfully be laid at Bobby Saint’s own feet, that was beside the point, for the moment. The only thing that mattered now was finding out what exactly had happened to queer this arms deal his boy had gone in on, and why.

Making sure that somebody paid for Bobby’s life in equal coin. Their blood, for his. John had supplied a lead. That was where they would start.

Howard Saint told his son—his sole remaining son— where to begin. He saw John relay his instructions to Quentin, and then the two left together.

He turned back to Livia then and, as gently as he could, helped her find her feet.

“Let’s get you upstairs,” he said.

She nodded wordlessly. He put an arm around her waist and guided her to their bedroom. She would need drugs to sleep, he knew that for a fact. She would need them more than once during the night.

He, however, would not. Howard Saint was not intending to sleep. Not that night, certainly. Perhaps not for some time yet to come.

There was work to be done.

It was what you might call puzzling, Micky thought. His current status. The fact that not much more than three hours after he’d been in the middle of a shoot-out between some international arms-dealing wackos and the Federales, Micky Duka was standing on the curb outside the downtown Tampa lockup, a free man.

He looked around and shook his head.

“Hey—who took care of the bail?”

There was, unsurprisingly, no response.

“Geez.” He smiled to himself and shook his head again. This was one helluva night.

He thought back to what had happened after the Feds— that was who Micky assumed they were; Christ, with those haircuts and those 1970s suits, who the hell else could they be?—had marched him right off the dock and into a waiting paddy wagon, jawing in his ear ninety miles an hour about how he was a threat to national security, and they were gonna lock him up for the rest of his natural-born days, unless of course he told them absolutely everything he knew about Astrov, Otto, and what had just gone down on the pier.

Morons. What did they think, he was born yesterday?

“I ain’t sayin’ squat,” Micky had promptly informed them. “Until whereupon such time as my lawyer is contacted and a deal is procured.”

Fed No. 1 had tried to tell him that there wasn’t going to be any deal, that they had no need to make any kind of deal, given that the target of their investigation—Astrov—was already taken care of, that Micky’s only chance at avoiding a long, long, long stretch in prison was to be 100 percent cooperative right now, this instant.

Micky knew he was bluffing, of course, so he’d just sat back on the bench in the rear of said paddy wagon and waited for Fed No. 1 to make his offer.

Somewhat to his surprise, that offer had not been forthcoming.

Instead, Fed No. 1 had simply shrugged and sat back in his own seat. Hadn’t even turned around when the paddy wagon stopped right in front of this very lockup, the back doors swung open, and two of Tampa’s finest began marching him toward the prison entrance.

“Hey!” Micky had called out, trying to get the Fed’s attention. “You know I know things. You want to know what I know, you know what you gotta do!”

Instead of responding, the man had simply motioned to the driver, and the paddy wagon had pulled away.

Fine, Micky had thought. So that was how they were gonna play it. Let him stew awhile. That was all right. He’d been in the system before; he knew how to do time.

So he wasn’t surprised when, after an hour or so of sitting in his dark cell, he’d heard footsteps. He’d looked up, expecting to see Fed No. 1 with the paperwork to get a deal started.

But instead, he saw a beer-bellied old prison guard standing at the control panel next to his cell.

“What’s goin’ on?” Micky had asked.

“Somebody posted your bail,” the guard responded, and opened his door.

The question, of course, was who.

One of his old man’s buddies? They liked to look after him, liked to pretend that Micky was still little Mikey Duka, tagging along after Daddy. Or maybe . . .

Could it have been his mom? That would not be good. She’d whip his ass seven ways to Sunday if she found out he was back walking the wrong side of the tracks. Except . . .

If it had been his mom, she’d have met him right outside the cell and let him have it then and there. So . . . not his mom. Then who?

Micky looked up and down the street again. Still no one.

Oh, well. He’d find out sooner or later when they came around looking for the bail money. In the meantime . . .

He had things to do. Number one on the list was to call Bobby’s family and let them know what had happened. The second thing was to get hold of his parole officer and put the right slant on the evening’s events. And the third . . .

He was hungry. Actually, maybe that should be first. There was a greasy spoon a couple blocks down that—

He heard the sound of an engine. Micky spun and saw a dark sedan round the corner, heading straight for him. Not good. A car like that, out this time of the morning . . .

He walked a little faster. That would be ironic, right? Survive a shoot-out with AK-47s and get mugged outside the police station? Why did these things seem to happen only to him?

The sedan pulled up right alongside him and slowed. Micky tensed. The glass was tinted—he couldn’t see in at all. His heart began to beat faster. He wished he was better with his fists—he was tired of getting hit on all the time, getting the crap pounded out of him. His cousin Joey was always on him to take karate, and that’s just what he was going to do, starting next week, only—

The sedan moved past him then, and Micky let out a long, slow breath of relief.

You got a hyperactive imagination, Duka, he told himself.

At which point, the sedan came to a sudden halt, and the doors opened.

Bobby Saint’s personal bodyguard, T.J., and two other men—bouncer types whom he’d seen at the club more than once—stepped out.

Micky took one look at their faces and suddenly realized who it was who’d bailed him out.

Howard Saint.

“T.J.,” he said, spreading his arms wide to show that he wasn’t packing, that he was no threat. “I was looking to call you, man. You heard what happened?”

T.J. nodded slowly. “Oh, yeah. We heard.”

“I can’t believe it,” Micky said. “I never thought—”

“No,” T.J. said. “You didn’t think at all, did you?”

Those were the last words that were exchanged for quite some time.

In between punches, Micky tried to reason with the three men. It wasn’t his fault; his ass had been on the line, too; they could see that, couldn’t they?

Unfortunately, no such admission was forthcoming.

T.J. and his buddies manhandled him into the car. They sat him in the back, then manhandled him a little more. They stopped manhandling him long enough to march him up to the second story of Saints and Sinners, at which point they began manhandling him again.

When the beating finally stopped, Micky looked up to find that at some point during his ordeal, another man had entered the room.

The lights were down low. He had to squint to make out features—not Howard Saint, not one of the Verducci brothers, though this guy had a goatee, too, and was—

The man took a step forward, into the light, and Micky’s blood ran cold.

The newcomer was Quentin Glass.

If Micky hadn’t realized before how much trouble he was in, he knew it now for a fact. Glass was Howard Saint’s right hand—his knife hand, some people said. He did the dirty work. He enjoyed the dirty work, according to those same people. Enjoyed it as in enjoyed seeing people suffer.

Glass knelt down next to Micky and shook his head.

“You sell homegrown pot by the ounce, Micky, not by the barrel. You sell badly forged fake passports to Haitians. What inspired you to become the Mr. Universe of International Arms Dealers?”

Duka tried to gather his thoughts. He found he had only one at the moment: I don’t want to die.

“Micky?”

“I was infected by the virus of greed, Mr. Glass, but I’m learning my lesson. I swear I am.”

“Micky? You should apologize for the death of Mr. Saint’s youngest child.”

“Yeah. Okay.” He tried to explain. “Okay, I know how it looks, but Bobby, he buys pot from me, and when he found out what I was doing, he insisted on coming in. He put up half the cash! Came of his own free will!”

Glass’s face remained a stone mask, his eyes unreadable.

Micky was starting to sweat.

“If you’re going to kill me, would you leave my face alone—for my mother?”

Glass shook his head and stood up then. He motioned T.J. and the other two men forward.

The beating began again, much worse this time. Micky realized that they must have been holding back before. Or maybe he’d just had enough.

“Please,” he croaked. “Please—”

Someone grabbed his hair and lifted his head up off the floor. Glass again.

“We just made your bail,” he said, his voice icy calm. “If I’d wanted to kill you, I would have left you in jail where we have friends, and in some way that I can only describe as deeply pornographic, you would have been killed. But you’re a small piece of shit, and I don’t want the karma of your murder on my soul.”

Glass let go of the hair. Micky’s head hit the ground again—hard—but he didn’t care about that. Had he just heard right? Glass wasn’t going to kill him?

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Glass,” he sputtered. “Thank you I—”

Glass held a cigarette in one hand. He raised the other to stop Micky from talking.

“Shhh,” he said.

Micky shhh’d.

Glass lit his cigarette. Took a long, slow drag off it, then frowned.

“On the other hand, maybe I don’t believe in karma. In which case . . .”

Glass turned back to T.J. The big man smiled thinly, and smacked his fist into his palm.

“Guys?”

The three men started forward again.

“No,” Micky blurted out. “I’ll tell you anything you want.”

“Then this’ll be quick. I want to know one thing only. Who brokered the deal?”

“His name was Otto Krieg. And if it’s any comfort to Mr. Saint, he’s dead, too.”

Glass nodded.

“Good. Thank you, Micky.”

Duka let out a sigh of relief . . . and then noticed, for the first time, the door on the far wall, opposite the one he’d been brought through. It stood slightly ajar. Through it, he glimpsed a window, and through that, the Tampa skyline.

Silhouetted in the door frame, he saw the shadow of a man. The shadow stepped forward and spoke.

“Yes, thank you. But I’m afraid that it’s no comfort, Micky. No comfort at all.”

Micky looked up and met Howard Saint’s eyes—and realized that his troubles, far from being over, were just beginning.