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.
