“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
