him, right to the core of him.
Right to the truth.
“I hate the Saints,” he said then, in a cold, hard voice he barely recognized as his own. “All of ’em. For what they did to my old man.”
“Good.” Castle turned and walked to the far wall. He flicked a switch, and the room suddenly filled with light.
It was like a goddamn junkyard in here, Duka thought. There was scrap metal everywhere, all kinds of tools, that rusted old car back in the corner, and an old army footlocker. Castle now crossed over to the locker and opened it. He started pulling weapons out of the crate, more kinds even than Yuri Astrov had. More sophisticated ones, too, it looked like, some of them just tubes with little computer screens attached to them, real high-tech-looking things that Duka would bet you could fire off twenty miles away from your target and hit square on.
He was wondering if there was any way in the world he could get a few of those out of here and down to Ybor City to sell to Ordito, who was still plenty pissed that the original deal had fallen through, when all at once Castle spun and pointed something straight at him.
Micky almost pissed his pants until he realized it was a camera.
“Tell me about them,” Castle said then. “The Saints. What they do. For fun and leisure. When. Where.”
“Fun. Well . . .” He thought a moment. “Livia—Mrs. Saint—all she does is shop, far as I could tell. That, and go to the gym. Then there’s John, who definitely likes to have fun. Usually, there’s a blonde involved in that equation, although lately—”
“Micky.” Castle did not look happy, so Duka shut up immediately.
“Yeah?”
“Saint first.”
“Yeah, sure. Howard’s a man of strict habits.”
“Example.” Castle set down the camera and picked up something else off a long table by the window. A little book of some kind.
“Well, he has first tee time—never fails—every Wednesday at the Tampa Country Club.”
“Go on.”
Micky did, talking about Howard Saint’s schedule and his strict habits for several minutes, Castle peppering him with questions throughout. Then they moved on to Livia, and then to John, and then to Quentin Glass, with whom Micky had to admit he wasn’t too familiar, as he made a point of staying well out of that psycho’s way.
The whole time they talked, Castle took notes in his little book.
The intensity on his face as he wrote was frightening to behold.
23 September 0340 Hours
Dog bark woke me. Pit bull next door-Colossus. Belongs to drug dealer known locally as the Jamaican, real name Peter Nichols. Violent, worthless animal-the man, not the dog. Will terminate soonest possible opportunity.
Checking notes, slept for one hour twenty minutes. Optimal. Refreshed, refocused. Will now review Duka’s information and plan surveillance routine. Several opportunities immediately suggest themselves; reconnaissance will narrow options until a course of action emerges.
Decision to salvage journal from compound was, in retrospect, a correct one, provides as before a place to organize thoughts. Looking over previous entries, realize nature of this book has changed however-no longer a document of my life, a recording of my thought processes, a place to reflect on events.
Now more of a repository for necessary information, a sketchpad on which attack scenarios may be envisioned, fleshed out, and finalized.
A war journal, in short.
TWENTY-THREE
Why, oh why, did she have such horrendous taste in men?
Starting right with her first boyfriend in junior high, George Spain, who set fire to her locker when she broke up with him, continuing with Pete “Pistol Pete” Madigan in her first and only year of junior college, who broke her arm during what he termed “horseplay,” and right on up to husband number one, Earl Van Dyke, who’d done the worst thing of all, the thing she couldn’t even bear to think about. . . .
The point was, Joan had a knack for finding losers and making them her own. She couldn’t seem to learn her lesson—after leaving Earl, she took up with another piano player, Joe Hunter, who went out on the road two days after they got married and never came back; and then there were various other sleazebags here and there, as she worked her way up from Fort Lauderdale to Daytona and on up to Tampa, which brought her right around to the sleazebag at hand. . . .
Mike Tremont, whom Joan had been stupid enough to sleep with a half-dozen times when she first came to the city, before realizing what a dirt ball he was. She’d broken it off clean, she thought, thought he was out of her life forever, heard that he’d moved down to Orlando and gotten a job with Disney, but last Tuesday morning, during the breakfast rush, she’d come down the counter taking orders and whose skeevy little face did she find leering up at her but Mike Tremont’s. She’d pretended to be happy to see him, but when it became clear that he thought he could pick right up where they’d left off, that he for some reason thought she owed him something (sex, for one, money probably, for another), things had turned ugly.
A little scary, even. Mike had pulled a knife.
Luckily, one of the other customers on the counter had been Ben Kubiak, Officer Ben Kubiak, who, even though he was off duty and not packing, had easily disarmed Mike and gotten him hauled away in a black-and- white.
But last night—early this morning, actually, four A.M. or so, no one in the place but her and Willie, the cook —Mike Tremont had wandered right back into the diner.
She threw down her order pad, put her hands on her hips, and got down to it, right away, because that was who she was.
“Don’t make me call the cops, Mike.”
Tremont sat down at the counter and smiled.
“Coffee,” he said.
She glared at him.
He took out a dollar bill and put it on the counter.
“Please.”
She poured a cup and slid it over to him.
He sipped at it for the next half hour, staring at her the whole time. Creep. He kept staring as the diner started filling up with early-morning customers.
Finally, ten minutes before six, just as her shift was about to end, he stood up and pushed his cup toward her.
“Thanks, Joan.”
She didn’t say anything, just reached out to clear the cup away—
And he grabbed her hand.
“You’re lookin’ good. Very, very good.”
Before she could swing at him, he let go.
He put another dollar down on the counter—“Tip.”
—and walked out the door.
Even then, though, he didn’t leave. He stared at her through the front window for the next ten minutes, till Mr. Schurr showed up with Gina. Then when she turned to the window to point him out, he was gone.
Still, Joan had played it safe. She got Willie to drive her home. To wait while she entered the building and shut the door—slammed it so the lock would catch, even though she knew she’d have to fiddle with it to get back out later that afternoon—and made her way down the hall to her apartment, thinking about Mike every step of the way. Bastard. Come back here, try to fuck up my life? She had mace in her apron. She always carried it; she’d even used it a couple times, and she wouldn’t mind spraying it a third. She pictured Mike screaming and clawing at his
