SIX

Families were funny, Howard Saint thought.

Consider, for instance, the Dukas. There was little Micky, cowering on the floor in front of him, and then there was Micky’s dad, Mike. Who had been Howard Saint’s in with the Trafficante family, way back when, when Saint first came down from Gainesville looking to make a name for himself. Who had gone on to become a big man in the Saint organization, until that day five years ago when he’d stepped in between Saint and Big Joe Galliano, stopping a bullet from Galliano’s .45 in the process.

Mike and Micky. That was a contrast.

And then there was his own family. Himself, Livia, and the boys. John and Bobby. Who themselves had been a study in contrasts. The key phrase there being “had been.”

Which brought him right back around to Micky Duka.

“Mr. Saint, I’m so sorry, I wanted you to know—”

Saint shook his head imperceptibly from side to side.

“No words, Micky. They don’t matter. What will bring me comfort is watching the slow death of the man who was supposed to be taking care of my son. Keeping him out of trouble.”

Saint saw Micky blink away tears. Quivering, sniveling idiot. Saint should kill him here and now, put the wretch out of his misery. Spare some other family the pain his was going through.

“What would your father say if he saw you here, Micky? He died for me. Your father was a man, and he died for me. What would he say about this?”

“I didn’t know it was going to happen like this, please.”

“Ignorance is no excuse.”

Saint sensed his own men gathering behind him, waiting for his next move. Quentin and John, at his back. Dante and Spoon, on his left, and T.J. on his right.

Saint held his hand out for a gun. His right hand.

T.J. obliged by pulling out his weapon and giving it to Saint, who in turned aimed the gun at Duka’s face.

The little man just froze.

“The person responsible has to die, Micky,” Saint said.

Whereupon he turned around and shot T.J. in the shoulder.

Someone—Duka probably—let out a gasp of surprise. Saint kept his eyes focused on T.J., though. The man was slow to get it. He looked from his shoulder, up at Saint, and then back down again at his wound before speaking.

“No.” He shook his head. “Mr. Saint . . . Bobby told me to stay! Ask John? John . . . tell him, come on.” T.J.’s eyes focused over Saint’s shoulder, looking to John for help. There was no reply. Not that it would have mattered. He’d brought Red Archeletta’s eldest boy—slow and unsophisticated as he was—down from Alachua for one specific purpose. Keep Bobby Saint out of trouble. The man had failed at that simple task. Therefore, the man had to die.

Howard Saint took aim again and shot him in the knee.

T.J. howled in agony and crumpled to the floor.

Howard Saint smiled thinly.

“It was Bobby’s idea,” T.J. gasped. “He wanted to do a deal on his own to . . . to impress you.”

“Thank you for that explanation,” Saint replied, and shot out T.J.’s other knee.

The man screamed. Saint was aware of Spoon, behind him, turning away from the sight. He made note of that. There was no room for weak stomachs in his organization. He’d made that clear on several occasions.

T.J. continued to moan, trying to drag himself away from Saint as he did so. All at once, despite the obvious pain the man was suffering, Saint had had enough.

He stood over T.J. and fired point-blank into his heart.

The man shuddered once, and stopped moaning.

“My son didn’t need to impress me,” Howard Saint said, and dropped the gun on the dead man’s chest.

An hour later, Saint was at the city morgue, having sent Quentin and John home to watch over Livia, who, despite the drugs coursing through her system, was still unable to sleep. Dr. Bernini was on his way to the house, with instructions to keep her calm.

Dante and Spoon were out in the car, waiting for him. Both men were still obviously on edge, shaken up by what had happened to T.J., nervous about what might happen to them. Dante in particular had been close to Archeletta—under normal circumstances Saint would have had a word with him, stress how T.J. had been a basically good man (which was the truth, after all) who had made a single, unfortunate mistake, for which he had paid dearly. End of story.

Howard Saint, though, was not in an explaining mood.

Sergeant Kuipers and a patrolman Saint didn’t know (Carillo, his name tag read) met him at the door of the morgue and offered heartfelt expressions of sympathy as they led Saint into the bowels of the building. He accepted their words as graciously as he could, and asked about their families in return: Kuipers, he knew, had just had a son, his first child. Saint had sent along a savings bond for the boy’s education.

“He’s fine, Mr. Saint. Thank you for asking.”

Saint nodded, put a hand on Kuipers’s shoulder. “You watch out for him, Sergeant. You watch out for your boy.”

“You know I will sir. Thank you.”

Kuipers’s voice caught in his throat; Saint looked over at the sergeant and saw him blink away a tear.

Good man, Kuipers, he thought. Most people were, if you treated them right. It was just like the Bible said, just like his aunt Dorothea had told him: You do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Good deeds were always rewarded. Bad ones, always punished. It was the maxim by which Saint lived his life.

They reached a set of double doors. Kuipers pushed them open and preceded him into a small, dimly lit room that smelled strongly of disinfectant. The viewing room. Saint had been in here a half-dozen times before to identify men who had died for him, men who had died on his orders. Those other times he’d been alone.

This time, there was a man waiting for him. Black man, in a black suit. A Fed. Saint glanced at him only briefly, before focusing his attention on the gurney behind him—and the body that lay on it.

He pushed past the man, who uttered something Saint didn’t catch, and pulled the sheet back.

His dead son—his dead, pale-skinned son, the boy whom Saint had sat on his knee, had taken trick-or-treating every Halloween, had helped with his homework, had talked about girls with, had bought cars and clothes and computers and everything he’d wanted, the boy who had somehow slipped away from him and become a young man whom Saint was only just getting to know again—that boy stared up at the ceiling, his face frozen in an expression of surprise, his eyes wide and unseeing.

“Look what they did to my boy,” Saint whispered, his voice barely audible. “Look what they did to my Bobby.”

His son had a massive chest wound, the size of a softball, dark, coagulated blood still sticking to its edges. A chunk of his left leg was missing, like someone had taken a bite out of it.

The Fed stepped forward.

“Mr. Saint, are you identifying this body as your son, Robert Saint?”

Saint managed a nod.

“Yes.”

Kuipers stepped up and put a hand on his arm.

“Mr. Saint. Let’s—”

“He was a special boy,” Howard Saint said, ignoring the gentle tug on his arm. “He deserved better.”

The Fed pulled the sheet back up over Bobby. An orderly had entered at some point—he took hold of the gurney now and wheeled it out of the room.

Saint turned to the Fed.

“I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” the man said.

But the man wasn’t. Those words were rote—some higher-up somewhere had probably told him to be nice to Howard Saint. He didn’t give a damn about Bobby— probably had written him off as a casualty of whatever operation had brought the Feds down to the waterfront in the first place.

Saint was going to see that his son stayed uppermost in this man’s mind, however.

“Someone lied to him,” he said. “Promised my boy one thing, gave him another.”

The Fed blinked. “Sir?”

“Who was Otto Krieg?” Saint said, taking a step closer to the man. “Who did he work with? Who were his friends? Who stood to make money on this deal?”

The Fed was putting on his official face again. “We can’t talk about the case, Mr. Saint. I understand your grief, but—”

“What’s your name?”

“Special Agent James Weeks,” the man replied.

“You in charge here, Mr. Weeks?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Then help me. I want to know what happened to my boy, Mr. Weeks. And why.”

Weeks shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss the case, sir. It’s policy.”

“Policy?”

“That’s right.”

“My son is dead,” Saint said, enunciating each word slowly and distinctly. “And you won’t tell me anything?”

“I can’t, Mr. Saint. For your own safety, leave this to the professionals.”

Saint looked into the man’s eyes, and saw that Weeks was indeed not going to tell him a thing. He nodded. “Professionals, right. That’s a good idea. I’ll do that. Thank you.”

He let Kuipers lead him away then, out of the viewing room and back down the hallway.

Weeks was right. Leaving it to the professionals was just what Saint intended to do. Just not the professionals the agent had in mind.

By the time Kuipers and Carillo dropped him at his car, he was already making phone calls.