EIGHT

“I called New York,” Glass said. “Who called Las Vegas, who called Europe and Hong Kong. We even got the Sicilians on it, for old time’s sake.”

“Hold on.” Howard Saint stepped back from the bunker and watched the shot he’d just hit rim out of the hole. Damn. Fifteenth time in a row he’d missed from this particular practice tee, his favorite practice tee, on his favorite golf course, the Tampa Country Club golf course, which he knew like the back of his own hand, hell, better than the back of his own hand, and he never missed any shot here fifteen times in a row. Not under normal circumstances, at least.

These were far from normal circumstances, however.

Tomorrow afternoon, they were burying his son.

Saint prided himself in that he had managed to keep up at least a semblance of normalcy these past few days. He’d met with Chadwick again, had managed a condolence call to Reston’s wife and another to Red Archeletta, and had even put in a half day at the office yesterday. Livia, though . . .

She was coming apart at the seams. Behaving like a madwoman.

He’d come home early yesterday afternoon to find that she’d ordered all of Bobby’s things taken out of his room and moved into storage. And last night she’d excused herself from dinner early, pleading exhaustion, but when he walked into their bedroom a few hours later, he found her wide awake, sitting in front of the fireplace, a photo album filled with pictures of Bobby in her lap, pictures she was taking from the book one by one and tossing onto the fire. Burning, as if by erasing what remained of his physical presence from her life she could erase the pain she was feeling as well.

“Pop.”

His son John stepped forward and handed him another ball from the bucket. Saint set it down and swung.

Miss number sixteen.

John held out another. Saint shook his head.

“All right, Quentin. What do we know?”

“This Krieg guy, who brokered the deal—he’s a mystery man. Can’t find anything on him.”

“Nothing?”

“Nada. We got his picture off Dutch immigration, and we’re circulating it now. Something’s bound to come up.”

“Okay. What about Krieg’s boss—Astrov?”

“Ah.” Glass smiled. “Everybody knew Astrov. Biggest arms trafficker in the world up until the other night. His organization sold to everybody. Governments, rebels, terrorist groups—you had the cash, he had weapons for you. He was top ten on everyone’s most-wanted list.”

“A legitimate target.”

“That’s right.”

“Looks like Bobby just got in the way, Pop,” John Saint added.

Howard nodded. That was how it looked, all right. Astrov had been set up and then taken down by the FBI. Bobby had fallen with him.

One thing bothered Saint, though.

“How’d they know?”

“Pop?”

“How did the Feds know the deal was going down that night?” he asked. “A man like Astrov, he has to be very careful about who buys from him. Who’s involved in the transaction. Anything at all smells fishy . . . he’s out of there, in a hurry.”

John frowned. “What are you saying?”

Glass knew. “You think somebody tipped them off? Duka, maybe?”

Saint shook his head. “No. The way he was whimpering the other night . . . if he’d had anything on his conscience, he would have told us.”

“So . . . ?” Glass asked.

“I’m not sure.” He thought a moment. “The Feds. Can we get a look at their files—see what they knew, how they knew it . . . ?”

“Doubtful. Not for a while, at least,” Quentin said. They had sources inside the bureau, but not high enough up to warrant a look at an active op without raising suspicions.

“Okay. Not the files.” Saint thought a minute. “What about the people? Tell me about Weeks.”

“FBI Special Agent James Weeks. Age thirty-seven. Former Green Beret. Recruited by the FBI eight years ago, recently assigned to the bureau’s Florida Division. Divorced. Pays his taxes, avoids hookers. No drug problems . . .”

Saint shook his head. “So, a typical tight-assed Fed.” Damn. Nothing there. He held his hand out. John put another ball in it.

His son was smiling. So was Quentin.

“What?”

“A note of interest: Weeks frequents an establishment in Ybor City. Owned by two of our clients. The Toro brothers.”

Saint blinked. That was a surprise.

“He gambles?”

John nodded. “Roulette when he’s up, blackjack when he’s down.”

All at once, Howard Saint found he was smiling, too.

“I thought that might interest you,” Quentin said.

“More than interest.” For the first time in a while, in fact, Saint felt as if he’d caught a lucky break.

He set the ball his son had given him down on the tee, and lined up his shot.

“See, I was born in the Alachua swamps. Alachua County folk believe everything’s fated. So they read tea leaves, cut open fish guts, cast sticks on the ground, all to get a glimpse of their future. Now me . . . I’m educated. I don’t believe a stitch of it. But this?” He shook his head. “This is something we can use. This smells like fate.”

Saint set the head of his club against the ball, and planted his feet. He looked up at the hole, and realized what he’d been doing wrong this entire time. Guiding the ball, not hitting it firmly. Not being decisive. Which wasn’t like him at all.

“Not to burst your bubble, Pop,” John began, “but what if the guy’s clean?”

“Clean? John.” Saint shook his head, and positioned his feet slightly farther away from the ball. There. “There’s one thing about this Weeks I can guarantee: he’s not clean. No, a man who gambles, especially a man who gambles with the Toros, excuse me a minute—” Saint smiled, and swung. The ball flew straight, bounced once, and landed in the cup. “—is a man with a history,” he finished.

It was only later, after he’d spoken at some length with his clients, that Howard Saint realized just how extensive— and how potentially useful—that history was.

Saint had a meeting—cocktails and an early supper— scheduled with Chadwick and a group of potential campaign donors: he begged off. He told Livia he might not be home until very late: he heard disappointment in her voice at first, but when he told her where he was headed and why, steel replaced the sadness.

“You find out why our son is dead, Howard,” she told him. “And don’t take any crap off those Cuban cocksuckers.”

He hung up, smiling at her choice of words. Livia was as Cuban as the Toros, born and bred in the Ybor City barrios, just a few blocks from the nightclub Joe and Mike Toro ran. Not a fact she always advertised, and he understood why. His wife had barely made it out of that neighborhood alive—she did not like being reminded of her time there, and what she’d had to do to escape.

She did not even like the fact that he did business with the brothers Toro, though he could hardly afford not to. From a dollars-and-cents perspective, they were very, very important customers. His most important, if you looked at the bottom line.

Which Howard Saint tried to keep in mind later, as he and Quentin Glass sat with Mike and Joe inside their office, discussing business in general, and tonight’s business in particular, while waiting for the man of the hour, as it were, to show.

Saint swirled a swizzle stick through his drink. Glass looked at his fingernails.

Mike Toro sat at a desk in front of a set of drawn, dirty blinds. His brother Joe stood behind him.

“You all right, Howard?” Joe asked. “You want me to freshen your drink?”

“I’m fine.”

Joe nodded. “What about you, Quentin? You sure you don’t want something?”

“No.”

“Okay. Quentin,” Joe said.

For some reason, he and his brother seemed to find the name “Quentin” funny. Under normal circumstances, Howard Saint would have demanded that they show his employee—his friend—proper respect. But again . . .

These were not normal circumstances.

“So, Howard.” Mike Toro leaned forward on his desk. “For ten years we’ve done business, ten years you’ve handled our money, and this is the first time you’ve come to my office and seen where the money comes from!”

“That’s right.” Saint managed a polite nod. “This is the first time.”

“Exactly. You never invite me to your house, and I know you’re not a silver spooner any more than me, so why not be social? Get together once in a while? We have a lot in common. Your wife, I understand, is Cuban. Born over on Eighth Street—am I right, Joe?”

“Yeah.” Joe Toro smiled. “Eighth Street. Maybe we knew her, when we were growing up.”

“Maybe. That would be funny, wouldn’t it, Howard?” Saint had had about enough.

“Joe. Mike. I can’t think about funny right now. My son is dead.”

“We didn’t kill him,” Joe said.

“I didn’t say that.”

Mike spoke up now. “And I can’t bring him back, Howard, so if you think I’m Jesus Christ, you’re in the wrong church.”

The two men locked eyes then, and Howard Saint realized something.

He’d been misjudging Mike Toro all these years. He thought him a buffoon—a two-bit gangster who’d gotten where he was by breaking legs and cutting corners. But now Saint saw that was a mask, that the real Mike Toro was both smarter and scarier than he’d realized. A smart, scary, powerful man. An interesting, potentially very useful combination of traits. Considering.

“So, Mike,” Saint said. “Maybe you’ve heard I’ve been thinking about politics lately.”

“Yeah. I heard some talk.”

“Thing is, this part of town . . .”

“Ybor City.”

“Ybor City, exactly. This part of town, I’m not as familiar with as maybe I should be.”

“Maybe I can help you out.”

“I’d like that,” Saint nodded. “If we could find a few minutes—”

A red light flashed on Mike Toro’s desk.

“Ah,” Mike said, turning to his brother.

Joe Toro nodded, and smiled.

“Showtime,” he said, and drew the blinds.

They’d been covering up a window, Howard Saint saw. A window that looked out onto the main room of the Toro brothers’ nightclub. A room not much bigger than the upstairs bar at Saints and Sinners, but easily twice, maybe three times as crowded as that space ever got. There had to be two hundred people crammed into that space tonight, most of them here for one reason only. A little action, to be found at the gambling tables—roulette, blackjack, craps, poker—now visible outside the office.

James Weeks was at one of those tables. He stood not ten feet away from them, buying himself a big stack of chips.

Saint forgot all about the governor’s race.

“Two-way mirror?” he asked.

Joe nodded. “We got ’em all over. But this is the best view.”

“Good.” Howard settled back in his chair, then, and began to watch.

Weeks started at one of the blackjack tables. Started out winning, in fact—as near as Saint could make out, the man was up several hundred dollars in the first half hour.

Which did not make the Toro brothers happy.

“Look at him, Joe,” Mike Toro said, shaking his head. “Drinking our rum, and playing cards at our tables.”

“Fuckin’ Fed.” Joe turned around and spoke to Saint. “We can kill him right now, Howard. If that’s what you want.”

“No. As we discussed.”

“You got it.” Mike Toro leaned forward and picked up a phone.

In a very short span of time, then, Weeks’s luck began to change. Within an hour, he’d lost half his original stake. He moved over to the roulette wheel, then, and continued to lose. Saint watched him and shook his head. Weeks had obviously never heard the phrase “quit while you’re ahead.” On the contrary, this man was in the grip of a sickness—in the long run, it didn’t matter that the games were fixed against him; Weeks would have played until he lost everything anyway.

Which, several long hours later, was exactly what happened.

The Toros went out to talk to him. Saint hung back in the office, with Quentin, and watched.

“Guy’s lucky he’s still got a shirt,” Glass said, moving his chair up next to Saint’s.

Howard nodded. The club was completely deserted, save for a janitor, sweeping up by the roulette tables, and a very rumpled-looking Weeks, slumped in the same chair he’d been losing in for the last several hours.

The agent looked up as the Toro brothers approached.

“Lay one hand on me, and fifty federal agents will raid this place in the morning—with warrants.”

Saint shook his head. Pathetic. Not only was the man a gambler, he was a drunk, too.

Mike Toro shook his head and smiled.

“Go get your warrants. ‘Hey, Your Honor, we want to bust this illegal gambling joint where I lost two hundred grand.’ You’ll be a meter maid before breakfast.”

“I’ll get a month suspension. A slap on the wrist.”

“Really?” Mike Toro frowned. “Is that right, Joe? Is that what’ll happen?”

Joe had circled around the table. He stood next to Weeks and leaned right over the man so their faces were inches apart.

“Don’t think so, Mike. Think our federal friend here’s a little off the mark. Considering.”

“What do you mean?” Weeks asked.

“Slap on the wrist—that’s what you get the first time,” Joe said. “They send you to Gamblers Anonymous, clip a couple paychecks . . . everything’s hunky-dory. But twice? Not so hunky. Not so dory.”

The smile was gone from Weeks’s face now. Neither of the Toros looked amused either.

“This ain’t your first time, is it, Weeksie?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Weeksie.”

“Read the numbers, Joe,” Mike Toro said.

Joe produced a piece of paper from his pocket—the same one he’d showed Howard Saint when Saint and Quentin had arrived earlier this evening—and read from it.

“On May third you lost twenty-seven grand. On May seventeenth, forty-three. June twelfth . . . ouch.” A trace of a smile played across Joe’s face. “One hundred and thirty-four grand. You’ve already sold everything you own. So where’d you get the money?”

Weeks tried to get to his feet.

Joe pushed him back down.

“Seriously, my friend. How did you pay?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” the man said.

“You don’t need to.” Mike Toro spoke again. “A friend of ours downtown works in the federal evidence locker. Where all the seized cash and drugs go?”

Weeks paled.

“Ah.” Mike smiled. “I see by your expression you’re familiar with the place. I thought you might be.”

Watching from the Toros’ office, Saint smiled as well. The Toros were doing well, even if Mike had exaggerated somewhat, as it was actually a friend of Saint’s who worked in the federal evidence locker. No matter.

The important thing here was Weeks, who was going to crack, even more easily than Howard Saint had dreamed possible.

“We know the locker, too,” Mike Toro continued. “Because a lot of our product’s in there. Anyway, this guy says there’s two hundred g’s missing. Wait.” He looked up at his brother. “This is a coincidence.”

“Sure is, Mike.” Joe put a hand on Weeks’s shoulder. “Hey, Weeksie—you’re the supervisory agent down there, aren’t you? I think you’re going to jail.”

Weeks shrugged Toro’s hand off angrily.

“A lot of agents have access to that locker,” he said. “I’m not the only—”

“You don’t get a wrist slap in jail, Agent Weeks,” Mike Toro said, ignoring the man’s protests. “You get a bitch slap.”

Weeks shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “Listen, guys,” he said. “Maybe there’s a way—”

Mike Toro raised a hand. “Don’t say anything.”

Confusion crossed Weeks’s face. “What?”

Joe Toro leaned over him again and spoke slowly and distinctly.

“Shut up.”

Mike turned and looked up at the two-way mirror.

“We got someone who wants to talk to you, Agent Weeks,” he said. “You cooperate with him, we’ll talk about your debts and how you might be able to repay them.”

Howard Saint knew a cue when he heard it. He walked out of the office into the gambling room, Glass a step behind him.

Weeks saw him coming and rose, trembling, naked terror in his eyes.

“Sit down,” Saint told him. “If I wanted to kill you, it would be done. You’re worth more to me alive.”

Weeks sat.

“I want to know everything about what happened that night, Mr. Weeks. Starting from the moment you arrived on the pier to the instant my son was killed. Can you do that for me?”

Weeks nodded.

“Good. Go on then.”

Saint stood over the man, arms folded across his chest, and listened impassively as Weeks laid out the whole operation for him in painstaking detail. Names of agents, officers, arrival times, and specific orders each group of law enforcement personnel had been given. Saint listened, and he watched Weeks’s eyes, his body language, and decided that the explanation was too pat, too smooth. Almost as if it had been rehearsed.

Was Weeks lying to him? If so, why?

Howard Saint’s mind went back to earlier today, on the golf course, and the question he’d asked John and Quentin then.

“How did you know?” he said to Weeks, interrupting the man in midsentence.

“What?”

“How did you know?” Howard Saint repeated. “About the deal that night? Surveillance? A man on the inside?”

Something flickered in Weeks’s eyes.

“Surveillance,” the agent answered, a little too quickly.

“On the boat. We tracked it out from Belfast a week before.”

Saint shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think you had an informant. A turncoat, inside Astrov’s organization, feeding you information all along. Isn’t that true, Mr. Weeks?”

“No,” the man said reflexively. “That’s not how it was, sir. We had cooperation from Interpol; I can show you the paperwork. I can even put you in touch with . . .”

Weeks droned on, but Saint wasn’t listening. He was thinking. Comparing Weeks’s version of events with the one Micky Duka had given him. They were identical, no clues there about who the Feds’ mystery man might be. . . .

Mystery man.

That was just how Quentin had described Otto Krieg today.

“Agent Weeks,” Saint said abruptly, interrupting the man. “Two nights ago, I asked you about Otto Krieg. Could we open that inquiry again?”

Saint saw the look of terror that suddenly came into his eyes, and thought: Bingo.

“I don’t know what I can tell you about him, Mr. Saint. I mean, the guy’s dead, that’s the most relevant fact.”

“Humor me, if you would. Tell me what Krieg did before he got involved with Astrov. Where he’s from. A little of his personal history. Surely you know some details.”

Weeks shook his head.

“Not off the top of my head, but I could get them. We have a file; I could get the file. Be happy to, just—”

“Agent Weeks.” Howard Saint leaned over the man, and now he could smell his fear; he knew that whatever the reason his son had died, this Otto Krieg was at the heart of it. “I’m no fool. Don’t treat me like one. Otto Krieg.”

He put a hand on the man’s shoulder and felt him trembling.

“You got problems. Two hundred g’s worth of problems, Agent Weeks,” Mike Toro said. “Don’t make it worse.”

His brother nodded. “Don’t forget about the bitch slapping, Weeksie. You gotta consider that, too.”

Weeks swallowed hard.

“Otto Krieg,” Howard Saint said again.

Weeks took a deep breath then and looked up at Saint.

At that instant he looked utterly defeated, utterly miserable, as if he’d lost his last friend in the world.

“That’s not his real name.”

“Really?” Howard Saint pulled up a chair and sat down next to Weeks.

“That’s very interesting,” he said. “Tell me more.”