Toros, was he.
Especially now that Chadwick had brought Constantine— that was a big thing; he’d see just how big in a few minutes, although the real cause for his good mood was the same as it had been before. The fact that he’d avenged their son; that Bobby, wherever he was, could rest in peace; that Frank Castle—as old man Trafficante used to be so fond of saying— swam with the fishes.
INTERLUDE ONE ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
Jimmy Weeks excused himself from the meeting and went to the men’s room, where he promptly threw up. He washed his face, brushed his teeth, thought about the pictures laid out on the conference room table again, and threw up a second time.
Praying to the porcelain god. He hadn’t done it in ten years, but he’d been doing it all night, every hour on the hour, ever since he’d heard the news.
Christ, he’d fucked up. He’d fucked up so bad there was no going back from it. He should resign from the bureau right now, go to some rinky-dink Mexican village, and drink himself unconscious. That’s just what he was going to do, in fact.
As soon as he stopped crying.
I’m sorry, Frank, he thought, twisting the Rolex around his wrist, the Rolex his friend had given him. So sorry. I swear to God, I didn’t know Saint was that crazy, I didn’t know he’d kill everybody. I wish I could—
He heard the door to the men’s room open and got quickly to his feet.
“Weeks?”
Shit. It was Sandoval. “In here, sir.”
“Let’s go. The director wants to finish this up now.”
“Be right out.”
He flushed the toilet, and stepped from the stall.
Sandoval—Franklin H. Sandoval, assistant deputy director in charge of domestic counterintelligence, which made him Weeks’s boss—moved to one side, making room for Weeks at the sink.
“Whoever did this, Jimmy—we’ll get them. We’ll get them, and I swear to God, no one will ever hear from them again. You can pull the trigger yourself.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Sandoval ripped a paper towel from the dispenser and handed it to him.
“Rough in there, huh?” Sandoval asked.
“I can handle it,” Weeks said, though in truth he was getting tired of being grilled about Ares; it wasn’t his fault the op had gone bad, that was all on Bobby Saint. But of course now, even more than before, he had to walk a tightwire on that one; he could hardly lead the bureau to the kid’s father, because sure as shit Howard Saint would turn right around and point the finger at him.
God.
“Before we go back in,” Sandoval said, his voice and manner suddenly hesitant, “there’s one more thing.”
“Sir?”
His boss sighed. “For obvious reasons, much as I would like to, I can’t give the eulogy, Jimmy. On the bureau’s behalf.”
Weeks’s stomach rose up in his throat. He knew what Sandoval was about to say, and he hoped the sudden panic he felt didn’t show on his face.
“Sir. I don’t know if that’s . . . I mean, I don’t know if I can . . .”
“You don’t have a choice, I’m afraid. The director wants this, Jimmy. I get the sense somebody even higher up might want it, in fact.” He put a hand on Weeks’s shoulder. “Besides . . . you two were best friends. It’s only right you speak. Frank would have wanted it.”
“Yes, sir. He would have.” Weeks forced himself to nod, though inside, he felt like throwing up all over again.
“Good man. Now let’s get back inside, finish this up. Christ, what a mess.”
Sandoval strode quickly to the door and through it.
Putting one foot in front of the other, Jimmy Weeks forced himself to follow.
INTERLUDE TWO BOQUERON POINT, PUERTO RICO
“So you’re sure you didn’t hear anything?” The young naval officer tapped his pencil against his pad, eyeing Candelaria warily.
“No, sir,” Manuel Candelaria said. “Didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything. Just like I told you. I was here all day.”
A fly buzzed around the man’s face. He swatted at it futilely and looked back down at his pad.
“We spoke to the Castle housekeeper. Mrs. Gutierrez. She said—”
“Cook.”
“Excuse me?”
“Mrs. Gutierrez. She’s the cook, not the housekeeper.”
“Right. She said she saw your boat out by the old fort that afternoon. Around dusk.”
“I go out, do some fishing. Yeah.”
“You just said you were here all day.”
“Except for the fishing.”
The officer sighed.
Candelaria smiled. “You want a drink?”
He held out the bottle he’d been nipping at during the interview. The officer shook his head.
“No, sir. Appreciated, but—can’t drink on duty. As I said.”
“Right. Okay.” Candelaria took a drink himself.
It was iced tea—not the rum he knew the officer thought it was—but he didn’t feel the need to correct the man’s misconceptions. Lot of people had misconceptions about him, thought he was this crazy old man who did voodoo or some other kind of nonsense, but the truth was, Manuel Candelaria just liked his privacy. Liked to do things by himself. Liked to keep things just the way he wanted them. He’d been married once, must be forty years ago now, back when he lived in San Juan, and that had been a disaster. Sure it had been nice having a woman around, but the way Olivia kept rearranging all his stuff . . . he couldn’t handle it.
So he’d moved as far away from civilization as he could get. Found this little island, built a hut—this was way before all the tourists started coming, he wouldn’t be able to do that kind of thing now. Now they had all sorts of records in Boqueron, who owned this little piece of land, who owned that one, but back then, no one cared about that sort of thing—and before he knew it, it was the year 2000 and people thought he was some sort of witch doctor.
“All right, Mr. Candelaria.” The officer put his pad back in his pocket, then slapped at another fly. “If you do see or hear anything at all about what happened, you can let the police in town know. They’ll get hold of us.”
“Okay. The police.” Candelaria smiled again. “You bet.”
The officer forced himself to return the smile, and left.
Candelaria watched the little launch sputter to life and pull away from his island. Then he went back inside.
He hoped that was the last of them, these people and their questions. They’d been coming here the last two days, every few hours it seemed. First the Puerto Rican Coast Guard; then Sergeant Castillo from the Boqueron police, who he liked; then two men in suits who he didn’t like at all, who, in fact, scared him worse than the sharks out past the point; then a reporter, a woman, very beautiful, but very stupid, she started off talking in Spanish to him, very bad Spanish, and never once thought to ask if he spoke English, which he did very well; then someone from the army; then this last one, this young, earnest officer from the U.S. Coast Guard.
He’d given them all the same story. Told them that he’d heard about the killings—how, they’d asked, at which point Candelaria took the little transistor radio out of his trunk and turned it on for them—and that he was horrified. Told them that he knew the Castle family personally—they came here every few years on these reunions. Very nice people, he said. All of which was the truth.
