THIRTY-THREE

Castle knew it would be only a matter of time before the police connected him to the GTO and the dead body. He didn’t want Morris coming after him with a whole lot of questions. It would get in the way of his plans.

So he decided to be proactive.

He went in search of Jimmy Weeks.

He found his friend’s Mustang right where he expected to: second-level assigned parking in the Federal Motor Pool Building.

An hour later, his friend came out of the garage’s elevator and found him.

“Frank?” Weeks stopped in his tracks. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.”

“You found me.” Weeks smiled, that same nervous smile that had troubled Castle before. Probably still worried I’m going to do an intervention on him or something. Have no fear on that score, Jimmy. You can piss your whole life down the toilet if you want, gamble away every last thing you own. I won’t raise a finger to interfere.

“So what’s up?” Weeks asked.

“I want you to tell Morris something for me.”

“Which would be . . .”

Castle filled him in, then, on the hit man and his car. Which, he told Weeks, was available on the top level of this very garage, should the police desire to come pick it up.

“I’ll tell him,” Weeks said. “But he still might come looking for you, Frank.”

“He won’t find me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’ve come to a conclusion.”

“Which is . . .”

Castle, who’d been sitting on the hood of the Mustang, jumped off it. Then he walked up to his old friend, looked him square in the eye, and lied through his teeth. “I’ll never get over my grief by killing people.”

“Ah.” Weeks nodded. “If you’ve brought yourself to a place of closure . . . you’re a wise man.”

“If I want to find peace,” Castle went on, “I’m not going to find it in Tampa. So I’m going.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can tell me.”

“I’ll send a postcard.”

Weeks studied him a moment.

“Okay,” he said finally. “If that’s how it is—”

“That’s how it is, Jimmy. I just don’t want Morris following me all over the country.”

“Understood. Well, I guess this is good-bye, Frank.”

“That it is.”

“But you will stay in touch?”

“You know it.”

“All right then.”

The two shook hands. At that second, Castle got the oddest feeling, almost as if his friend was happy to see him go.

He was almost going to say something when Weeks’s eyes suddenly went wide.

“Shit. The task force meeting. If I’m late again . . .” He frowned. “You got the time, Frank?”

Castle looked down at his Rolex. “Almost seventeen hundred.”

“Yeah. I gotta go,” Weeks said, heading for his car. “You going somewhere? Let me give you a ride.”

Castle started to say no, he was fine, when he suddenly got it. Weeks had asked him for the time.

Weeks’s Rolex was gone.

Gone like the car and who knew what else, gone straight down the toilet to pay down his gambling debts. After Iraq, and Atlanta, after Gwen and Maria and all they’d shared . . .

“Frank? You want a ride or not?”

Castle snapped back to the here and now.

Fuck it, he thought. Not my concern. Not my problem. “Nah,” he replied. “I’m gonna smoke some cigarettes.”

“You don’t smoke.”

“I know.” Castle walked off, smile stuck on his face as he took the stairs down a level, then used the pedestrian walkway above the street to cross Kennedy.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Jimmy Weeks. Selling the Rolex . . .

Now a car was one thing. Weeks had loved that Porsche, but it was just a possession. The watch—Castle had sweated blood to buy that watch for his friend. Jimmy knew that, knew what that gift had meant. For Weeks to sell it was like a betrayal, as if—

All at once, Castle froze where he stood.

The world itself seemed to stop with him.