it was on the way down from Baltimore, where he’d flown into from Port-au-Prince, had been a self-storage facility way off the beaten track, halfway to D.C. There, Castle had picked up the footlocker that now stood in the corner of the garage. It had been full of goodies from his Delta Force days. It was a little less full now (he’d unpacked some of those goodies and installed them around his new home over the last week), and Castle was counting on emptying it before too much more time had passed. How soon? Well, that depended somewhat on what he learned—or didn’t learn— from Micky Duka.
Which brought him right back around to the bad thing he was about to do.
“Okay Micky,” he said, rolling his chair across the room toward his helpless captive. “Let’s talk.”
I will not scream, Micky Duka told himself.
I will not beg, nor will I cry. I will reason with Castle, I will talk to him mano a mano, I will tell him what I know, which is not much, and I will subtly work in references to our previous association, the hash in Amsterdam, the young ladies in St. Pete (though he frowned at that, not being able to remember just that second if Otto—no Castle— had stuck around to enjoy those young ladies or not), the Fourth of July picnic on that yacht Loopy rented —and he will acknowledge my honest efforts to help him, and he will cut me down, and we will say good-bye.
Except the second Castle spoke, the second Micky heard that I-don’t-give-a-fuck tone in the man’s voice, he got a bad feeling in his stomach. An I-think-I’m-gonna-be-sick, oh-God-I-don’t-want-to-die kind of feeling.
“Stay away from me, Otto—Castle—whoever you are! I’ve got friends, you know!”
“Oh, I know.” Castle’s chair rolled even closer, then stopped. Metal hinges creaked, and Micky saw Castle was reaching inside something—a cabinet of some kind. For a brief second, light from within illuminated his face. Duka caught a glimpse of a long, nasty scar along one side of the man’s face before the cabinet shut and the darkness swallowed Castle again.
“That’s why you’re here. Let’s talk about your friends, Micky.”
“Make your own friends, buddy! You’re nuts, okay? Kidnapping me like this—I mean, that’s against the law, you know. Aren’t you the law?”
Castle ignored his question.
“Sorry you feel that way about me, Mick,” Castle said in that same creepy monotone. “But let’s talk about it, why don’t we?”
Castle’s chair rolled into the circle of light surrounding Micky then, and Duka saw the scar again.
It was really more of a burn, running all down one side of his face. The skin looked red, raw, and painful—he couldn’t imagine how it had looked, or felt, back when he’d first gotten it.
Then there was the hair—Frank Castle black, not the Otto Krieg brown. It was thinner, too, just like the man himself. Castle had lost a lot of weight—too much, Micky thought. He didn’t look healthy. Just skin and bones. And the look in his eyes . . .
“Come on, man. Just leave me alone, okay?”
His voice, Duka was ashamed to realize, was shaking.
Castle rose slowly from his chair, ignoring Micky again, and moved closer. He was holding something in his hands; Duka tried to twist his body so he could see what it was, but failed.
“Question.” Castle leaned into his face. “Who gave me up?”
“I don’t know, I swear.”
Castle grabbed him by the hair and yanked.
“Ow!”
“You don’t help me,” Castle said. “And I’ll kill you now.”
The man yanked even harder—tears came to Micky’s eyes as Castle pulled his head up higher, till the two of them were literally face-to-face.
“Who gave me up?”
“I swear,” Micky said. “On the Bible, on my father’s grave, I don’t know. The Saints tell me nothing.”
“Nothing.” Castle shook his head. “They pay your rent, your legal bills . . . you should know something.”
He let Micky go then. Duka swung like a pendulum for a second, then came to rest.
Then he saw what Castle had been holding in his hand.
An acetylene torch.
“Frank,” he said. “Otto. Remember when we were out on the boat? Didn’t we have a good time then? Buddy? So why the torch? What’s the torch for, hey?”
“What’s the torch for?” Castle turned a valve—with a little pop, the flame lit. “I said I was going to kill you— remember? Though that doesn’t mean you’re going to die right away.”
Duka let out a little squeak. “You’re not serious.”
Castle held the torch out in front of him and adjusted the flame.
“Two thousand degrees. Hot enough to turn steel into butter. It won’t hurt at first, Mick. It’s too hot.”
Micky’s eyes darted this way and that. He had to get the fuck out of here, get away from this lunatic before —
“See, the flame sears the nerve endings shut. It kills them. You go into shock, and all you feel is . . . cold. Not what you would expect, right? Isn’t science fun, Micky?” He shook his head and shrugged, as if he had a hard time believing it himself, the hot/cold thing. “Isn’t science fun?”
“Yeah. Okay. Science is fun. You know what else is fun, Otto? Good friends, you know, good times— remember when I gave you the last hit off Reggie’s spliff, in Amsterdam? And I bought you—”
“You’ll smell burning meat, Micky and then . . . then, it’ll hurt.”
“I swear,” Duka said. “I’m telling the truth. I don’t know anything. Please, for God’s sake—”
“Ah.” Castle held up a hand and shook his head.
God.
He didn’t want to hear about God. Candelaria had talked about God, too, when Castle was leaving for the mainland. What was it he’d said then?
Right.
Castle told Duka now what he’d told Candelaria then.
“Sorry, Mick,” he said. “God is gonna sit this one out.”
He brought the thing in his hand forward then, and touched it—ever so lightly—to Duka’s back.
Micky screamed like a woman giving birth.
TWENTY-ONE
Dave and Bumpo came out into the hall at the exact same second.
“Did you hear that?” Bumpo asked.
“How could you not hear it?” Dave—Spacker Dave to his friends, of which he had about six, about because he wasn’t sure exactly where Bumpo or Joan fell on the friend spectrum, so he was counting each of them as a half friend for the moment—looked at his neighbor and frowned.
“You think he’s okay?”
Bumpo frowned back. “I don’t think that was him.”
Dave nodded grimly. Actually, he didn’t think it was him—him being their new neighbor, Mr. Badass, as Joan liked to call him—either.
Another scream sounded. Even louder than the first, if that was possible.
The two men looked at each other again and turned as one toward the little window at the end of the hallway.
“Go see,” Bumpo said.
“You go see.”
“I don’t want to.”
Dave nodded. Neither did he.
Bumpo’s face suddenly brightened.
“Could it be a game?”
“A game?”
“You know—like a war game or something. I saw one of those on TV, this reality show? They had a guy on it who looked a little like him. Mean. Dangerous. He had—”
“Bumpo.” Dave shook his head. Sometimes he wondered if the reason why his neighbor had never been able
