later by a short, stocky man in a muscle shirt.
“So these jocks,” the man was saying, his attention focused on who he was talking to, not on the hamper or on what was in front of him, “are just beggin’ for me to hit them, which I—”
He finally looked up, just as Castle stepped forward and whipped him across the face with the barrel of the shotgun.
He went down without a sound.
“Eddie? Somethin’ wrong?”
The other man came around the back of the truck, saw Castle, and had just enough time to curse before Castle hit him, too, and he fell next to his friend.
The first man had a plastic security badge clipped to a chain around his neck. Castle ripped it loose and stood.
The hamper in front of him was a cash bin, full of money from the Toro brothers’ casino. Blood money, about to be laundered clean by Howard Saint.
A shame, but the contents of this particular bin would probably end up on Saint’s cigarette boats later today. Envisioning this morning’s operation, Castle had originally thought to deactivate the bay’s sprinkler system and burn the money, but he found he didn’t have the necessary computer skills. A weakness, a chink in his armor: he would have to address it at some point. For now, he’d have to leave this cash behind—an unfortunate, but necessary, compromise.
Besides . . . the real prize awaited him upstairs.
He dragged the men under the truck, and put the hamper back in it.
Then he headed for the elevator.
“Well send someone out to find him.” Howard Saint strode down the fairway of the seventh hole, cell phone in hand, with Lincoln hurrying behind him, holding an umbrella over his boss’s head to keep the man dry. “Send two people then. I want him here in a half hour, or it’s your ass. Understand?”
Saint ended the call without another word and handed the phone back to Lincoln. His son John—goddamn, he loved that boy, but sometimes . . .
Here Rebecca had gone to all this trouble to set up a photo op for him—some shots of father and son playing golf together to go with a piece on Saints and Sinners; the photographer was scheduled to meet them on the last hole—and where was John? No one knew. Not Livia, not Alonzo, and most definitely not that monkey he’d just got off the phone with, Carl Worowski, whom he’d hired to be his son’s personal bodyguard. Goddamn. Was he going to have to kill another of his employees? That would be hell on morale.
“No sign of him, sir?”
Saint turned and saw Cutter, who was carrying his golf bag, looking up anxiously. He should have put Cutter with John—those two got along.
“No. Not yet.”
“If I might be permitted to say—he’ll show up, Mr. S. I know he will. John’s a good guy.”
“Yeah, I know.” Saint exhaled, shook his head again. “Kids, Cutter. Sometimes . . .”
“I know what you mean, sir. My sister’s little one—my nephew.” He smiled. “A blessing and a curse, she says.”
Saint nodded and stopped walking.
There was his ball, smack in the middle of the rough. Christ, what was with him today? He was going to take a bogey on this hole, too? It was John not being here, of course—he never missed this fairway.
He held out his hand for a club and took a moment to steady himself.
Cutter had it right, he thought. Children. A blessing and a curse. That was it exactly.
Eight oh-eight.
The elevator was on security override. Running express, heading right for the tenth floor and the offices of Saint Capital Holdings. A reputable capital management firm, with officers drawn from the cream of the New York financial world. The firm did indeed have a few Tampa-based clients, whose portfolios it managed with just enough expertise to pass SEC muster, but the vast majority of the capital Saint Capital Holdings managed came to them via the Toro brothers. Came to them as cash, in bins like the ones downstairs, which arrived like clockwork every day of the week. Every day of the week, those bins were brought to the tenth floor, the cash unloaded, then counted, recounted, and sorted into nice, neat piles.
Wednesdays, those neat piles left the building in courier packaging, bound for Howard Saint’s cigarette boats.
And today was Wednesday.
Eight oh-nine.
The elevator doors opened.
Castle turned right. He walked to the end of a long corridor. In front of him was a door marked PRIVATE: NO ADMITTANCE. There was no knob. There was no lock. Only a magnetic pad to the right of the door, at waist height.
To his left was a wall of glass windows, looking out on the same street where only minutes before he’d watched the crowd cross. The rain had let up for a moment. A woman holding a plastic bag over her head paused, and then lowered her arms. She looked gratefully up to the sky.
Just wait, Castle thought.
He ran the security pass over the pad, and the door clicked open. Drawing the shotgun again, he stepped quickly inside.
In front of him was an empty desk. To his left, a file cabinet. To his right, a half-open door. Sounds came from behind it. Quiet sounds—paper shuffling, the muted tap-tap-tap of fingers on a keyboard, Muzak.
Castle peered through the opening. Three men, their backs to him, at a long metal table. Two in suits, sorting, counting, and baling stacks of bills. Hundred-dollar bills. Tens of millions of dollars worth of hundred-dollar bills, if his calculations were right. The third in sweatpants and a T-shirt, eating what looked like stew directly from a pot and watching a TV on the table in front of him, the sound turned all the way down.
He had a gun tucked into his waist.
Castle reached over him, tapped the shotgun on the table.
Beef stew guy went for his gun. Castle grabbed the stew off the table, threw it in his face, and clocked him with the pot.
The two accountants looked up at the same time.
“You’re not Eddie,” one said.
Castle cocked the shotgun. “Get up.”
This was unfuckin’-believable.
They’d been sitting in traffic for twenty minutes now, there was never traffic on Ticknor this time of the morning. That’s why Dante always went this way.
“We’re gonna be late,” Spoon said, shaking his head.
“I know we’re gonna be late, asshole. What am I, stupid?”
“For goin’ this way . . . yeah.”
“Shut up.”
“Fuck you.”
The car in front of them inched forward. Dante let his foot up off the brake, and they moved, too. All of a sudden, he saw the reason for the holdup: some guy in a hard hat, directing traffic. More like holding up traffic, really; he was standing by a manhole, forcing two lanes of traffic down to one. Very, very slowly.
“Come on!” Dante yelled, leaning on his horn.
The little guy paid no attention, but the driver of the car in front of him turned around and gave him a look.
Dante gave him one right back.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Come on, asshole. Make my day.”
The driver—a balding man in a suit and tie—took a closer look at him and turned right back around.
“Hey, I’m starvin’,” Spoon announced.
So was he, Dante realized.
“Yeah. Open those up, will you?” He nodded to the box of doughnuts. Spoon obliged.
