TWENTY-FIVE

Eight oh-two.

Corner of Jackson and Willette.

Raining harder now. Most people weren’t prepared: wet newspapers and suit coats pulled up over their heads. Weathermen being cursed; forgotten umbrellas being cursed. Castle didn’t have an umbrella, either, but he didn’t care.

All he needed, he had underneath his jacket.

The WALK sign flashed.

People crossed quickly, heading for the entrance to Saint Tower. Castle watched them hurry off to their jobs, thinking that, in about half an hour, they would all be wishing they’d stayed outside in the rain.

The second truck drove by, blinker flashing. Castle watched as it turned left, across traffic, down a little alley that ran parallel to the tower.

He checked his watch—eight oh-three—and followed.

He walked briskly, Halliburton case in hand, swinging at his side. A man with a purpose, a man on his way somewhere, taking a shortcut down the alley to the next street over, perhaps.

Ahead of him, a rumble sounded. The steel gates of the Saint Tower loading bay, lifting open. The truck’s left blinker flashed again, and it turned into the bay.

Castle walked past, eyes straight ahead, as the gates began to come down again.

At the last possible second, just as they were about to slam shut, he ducked left and rolled underneath them, kept rolling until he was underneath the truck itself, hidden from sight.

He pressed a button on the Rolex, and the dial lit up.

Eight oh-four.

He was in the building.

The truck doors opened. Footsteps sounded on either side of him.

“—sucks, man. We supposed to get help on this end, too, you know?”

“Tell me about it. I been on since two A.M., man. Had this college boy kept hangin’ round the two-dollar table, tryin’ to count cards. Wouldn’t take a polite hint, so I finally had to toss him.”

“So?”

Castle heard the rear doors of the truck opening. He rolled to his left, out from under the truck, and stood, his back against the driver’s-side door.

“So he shows up an hour later with these two jocks and tries to get back in. Ow!”

“What?”

“Lift, man. These things are heavy.”

Something slammed to the floor. Castle heard the sound of metal on concrete, then the squeak of wheels. He drew the shotgun out from under his jacket.

The front of what looked like a laundry hamper appeared around the corner of the truck, followed a second later by a short, stocky man in a muscle shirt.

“So these jocks,” the man was saying, his attention focused on who he was talking to, not on the hamper or on what was in front of him, “are just beggin’ for me to hit them, which I—”

He finally looked up, just as Castle stepped forward and whipped him across the face with the barrel of the shotgun.

He went down without a sound.

“Eddie? Somethin’ wrong?”

The other man came around the back of the truck, saw Castle, and had just enough time to curse before Castle hit him, too, and he fell next to his friend.

The first man had a plastic security badge clipped to a chain around his neck. Castle ripped it loose and stood.

The hamper in front of him was a cash bin, full of money from the Toro brothers’ casino. Blood money, about to be laundered clean by Howard Saint.

A shame, but the contents of this particular bin would probably end up on Saint’s cigarette boats later today. Envisioning this morning’s operation, Castle had originally thought to deactivate the bay’s sprinkler system and burn the money, but he found he didn’t have the necessary computer skills. A weakness, a chink in his armor: he would have to address it at some point. For now, he’d have to leave this cash behind—an unfortunate, but necessary, compromise.

Besides . . . the real prize awaited him upstairs.

He dragged the men under the truck, and put the hamper back in it.

Then he headed for the elevator.

“Well send someone out to find him.” Howard Saint strode down the fairway of the seventh hole, cell phone in hand, with Lincoln hurrying behind him, holding an umbrella over his boss’s head to keep the man dry. “Send two people then. I want him here in a half hour, or it’s your ass. Understand?”

Saint ended the call without another word and handed the phone back to Lincoln. His son John—goddamn, he loved that boy, but sometimes . . .

Here Rebecca had gone to all this trouble to set up a photo op for him—some shots of father and son playing golf together to go with a piece on Saints and Sinners; the photographer was scheduled to meet them on the last hole—and where was John? No one knew. Not Livia, not Alonzo, and most definitely not that monkey he’d just got off the phone with, Carl Worowski, whom he’d hired to be his son’s personal bodyguard. Goddamn. Was he going to have to kill another of his employees? That would be hell on morale.

“No sign of him, sir?”

Saint turned and saw Cutter, who was carrying his golf bag, looking up anxiously. He should have put Cutter with John—those two got along.

“No. Not yet.”

“If I might be permitted to say—he’ll show up, Mr. S. I know he will. John’s a good guy.”

“Yeah, I know.” Saint exhaled, shook his head again. “Kids, Cutter. Sometimes . . .”

“I know what you mean, sir. My sister’s little one—my nephew.” He smiled. “A blessing and a curse, she says.”

Saint nodded and stopped walking.

There was his ball, smack in the middle of the rough. Christ, what was with him today? He was going to take a bogey on this hole, too? It was John not being here, of course—he never missed this fairway.

He held out his hand for a club and took a moment to steady himself.

Cutter had it right, he thought. Children. A blessing and a curse. That was it exactly.

Eight oh-eight.

The elevator was on security override. Running express, heading right for the tenth floor and the offices of Saint Capital Holdings. A reputable capital management firm, with officers drawn from the cream of the New York financial world. The firm did indeed have a few Tampa-based clients, whose portfolios it managed with just enough expertise to pass SEC muster, but the vast majority of the capital Saint Capital Holdings managed came to them via the Toro brothers. Came to them as cash, in bins like the ones downstairs, which arrived like clockwork every day of the week. Every day of the week, those bins were brought to the tenth floor, the cash unloaded, then counted, recounted, and sorted into nice, neat piles.

Wednesdays, those neat piles left the building in courier packaging, bound for Howard Saint’s cigarette boats.

And today was Wednesday.

Eight oh-nine.

The elevator doors opened.

Castle turned right. He walked to the end of a long corridor. In front of him was a door marked PRIVATE: NO ADMITTANCE. There was no knob. There was no lock. Only a magnetic pad to the right of the door, at waist height.

To his left was a wall of glass windows, looking out on the same street where only minutes before he’d watched the crowd cross. The rain had let up for a moment. A woman holding a plastic bag over her head paused, and then lowered her arms. She looked gratefully up to the sky.

Just wait, Castle thought.

He ran the security pass over the pad, and the door clicked open. Drawing the shotgun again, he stepped quickly inside.

In front of him was an empty desk. To his left, a file cabinet. To his right, a half-open door. Sounds came from behind it. Quiet sounds—paper shuffling, the muted tap-tap-tap of fingers on a keyboard, Muzak.

Castle peered through the opening. Three men, their backs to him, at a long metal table. Two in suits, sorting, counting, and baling stacks of bills. Hundred-dollar bills. Tens of millions of dollars worth of hundred-dollar bills, if his calculations were right. The third in sweatpants and a T-shirt, eating what looked like stew directly from a pot and watching a TV on the table in front of him, the sound turned all the way down.

He had a gun tucked into his waist.

Castle reached over him, tapped the shotgun on the table.

Beef stew guy went for his gun. Castle grabbed the stew off the table, threw it in his face, and clocked him with the pot.

The two accountants looked up at the same time.

“You’re not Eddie,” one said.

Castle cocked the shotgun. “Get up.”

This was unfuckin’-believable.

They’d been sitting in traffic for twenty minutes now, there was never traffic on Ticknor this time of the morning. That’s why Dante always went this way.

“We’re gonna be late,” Spoon said, shaking his head.

“I know we’re gonna be late, asshole. What am I, stupid?”

“For goin’ this way . . . yeah.”

“Shut up.”

“Fuck you.”

The car in front of them inched forward. Dante let his foot up off the brake, and they moved, too. All of a sudden, he saw the reason for the holdup: some guy in a hard hat, directing traffic. More like holding up traffic, really; he was standing by a manhole, forcing two lanes of traffic down to one. Very, very slowly.

“Come on!” Dante yelled, leaning on his horn.

The little guy paid no attention, but the driver of the car in front of him turned around and gave him a look.

Dante gave him one right back.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Come on, asshole. Make my day.”

The driver—a balding man in a suit and tie—took a closer look at him and turned right back around.

“Hey, I’m starvin’,” Spoon announced.

So was he, Dante realized.

“Yeah. Open those up, will you?” He nodded to the box of doughnuts. Spoon obliged.

“Okay. We got chocolate, cinammon, jelly—”

“Gimme the jelly,” Dante said, holding out his hand. Jelly was his favorite, only . . . that was funny. He didn’t recall Nicky sayin’ anything about jelly.

Oh, yeah. The fat broad packed the box.

The cars inched forward again.

Dante took a bite of the doughnut. Strawberry jelly. Only somethin’ tasted funny—

A second later his mouth was on fire.

“Ahhh!” He spit out the doughnut in his mouth.

“What the fuck—?” Spoon said.

Dante was still spitting. “Tabasco sauce,” he said, trying to get the taste out of his mouth. “Fuckin’ bitch put Tabasco sauce on the doughnut. Goddamn! I am gonna—”

Spoon was laughing.

Dante glared at him, already making plans in his head, plans to go back to that doughnut shop after the drop off today and teach that woman a lesson she would never forget. Like Mr. Saint always told him—

The car behind them honked. Dante was about to lose it when he looked up and saw the little guy in the hard hat waving—it was his turn to go. Finally.

As they drove past, turning onto Kennedy, he got a quick glimpse of the worker’s face. Funny. He looked just like Micky Duka.

Dante turned to try to get another look, but the guy had his back to him now, and traffic was moving on Kennedy, so . . .

It couldn’t have been Duka, he decided. No way that little shit would work a second job.

Mr. Saint would kill him.

Eight twenty-one.

The accountants pushed a cash bin, full to overflowing, out of the office and into the hallway.

“You cannot possibly think,” one said, “that you’ll be able to—”

Castle slammed him in the chest with the Halliburton case.

“Shut up,” he said. “Fill that.”

The man seemed about to speak again. Castle shook his head in warning.

The man lowered his eyes, knelt on the floor, and began to do as he’d been told.

Castle turned his attention to the window.

From his pocket he took out two large suction cups. He stuck them to the glass, two feet apart, then pulled out a diamond cutter and began cutting.

The second accountant, a small, pencil-necked man with glasses, spoke for the first time.

“Do you know whose money this is? Do you know whose building this is?”

“Howard Saint’s.”

“You know.” Out of the corner of his eye, Castle saw the little man shake his head. “Then you know—he’s going to fuck your life up.”

Castle nodded. “He already fucked my life up.”

He finished cutting, put away the blade, grabbed hold of the suction cups, and yanked.

A perfect oval of glass came away from the window. A light drizzle of rain blew in through the hole it left.

Castle set the oval of glass down on the floor and pointed to the bin.

“Out the window,” he said to the accountant.

“What? That’s—” The little man’s eyes went even wider. “—that’s fifty million dollars, you can’t—”

Castle pumped the shotgun. “Out the window,” he repeated. “Now.”