“Okay. We got chocolate, cinammon, jelly—”
“Gimme the jelly,” Dante said, holding out his hand. Jelly was his favorite, only . . . that was funny. He didn’t recall Nicky sayin’ anything about jelly.
Oh, yeah. The fat broad packed the box.
The cars inched forward again.
Dante took a bite of the doughnut. Strawberry jelly. Only somethin’ tasted funny—
A second later his mouth was on fire.
“Ahhh!” He spit out the doughnut in his mouth.
“What the fuck—?” Spoon said.
Dante was still spitting. “Tabasco sauce,” he said, trying to get the taste out of his mouth. “Fuckin’ bitch put Tabasco sauce on the doughnut. Goddamn! I am gonna—”
Spoon was laughing.
Dante glared at him, already making plans in his head, plans to go back to that doughnut shop after the drop off today and teach that woman a lesson she would never forget. Like Mr. Saint always told him—
The car behind them honked. Dante was about to lose it when he looked up and saw the little guy in the hard hat waving—it was his turn to go. Finally.
As they drove past, turning onto Kennedy, he got a quick glimpse of the worker’s face. Funny. He looked just like Micky Duka.
Dante turned to try to get another look, but the guy had his back to him now, and traffic was moving on Kennedy, so . . .
It couldn’t have been Duka, he decided. No way that little shit would work a second job.
Mr. Saint would kill him.
Eight twenty-one.
The accountants pushed a cash bin, full to overflowing, out of the office and into the hallway.
“You cannot possibly think,” one said, “that you’ll be able to—”
Castle slammed him in the chest with the Halliburton case.
“Shut up,” he said. “Fill that.”
The man seemed about to speak again. Castle shook his head in warning.
The man lowered his eyes, knelt on the floor, and began to do as he’d been told.
Castle turned his attention to the window.
From his pocket he took out two large suction cups. He stuck them to the glass, two feet apart, then pulled out a diamond cutter and began cutting.
The second accountant, a small, pencil-necked man with glasses, spoke for the first time.
“Do you know whose money this is? Do you know whose building this is?”
“Howard Saint’s.”
“You know.” Out of the corner of his eye, Castle saw the little man shake his head. “Then you know—he’s going to fuck your life up.”
Castle nodded. “He already fucked my life up.”
He finished cutting, put away the blade, grabbed hold of the suction cups, and yanked.
A perfect oval of glass came away from the window. A light drizzle of rain blew in through the hole it left.
Castle set the oval of glass down on the floor and pointed to the bin.
“Out the window,” he said to the accountant.
“What? That’s—” The little man’s eyes went even wider. “—that’s fifty million dollars, you can’t—”
Castle pumped the shotgun. “Out the window,” he repeated. “Now.”
TWENTY-SIX
Dante settled into his chair behind the long marble security desk in the Saint Tower lobby. He put the coffee and bagel he’d gotten from the street vendor down in front of him and checked the monitors. Everything looked copacetic. The second truck was in the garage, and the elevators were clear. Best of all, the message light on the security line wasn’t blinking, which meant the Cubans hadn’t called to raise a fuss, so he and Spoon probably weren’t even gonna get called on the carpet for bein’ late.
“I’m gonna check the bullpen,” Spoon announced, picking up a phone. The bullpen was where the cash got counted.
“Yeah. Go on,” Dante said, taking a bite of the bagel, then a sip of the coffee. That helped. Finally, that Tabasco taste was going away. When he got hold of that woman tonight, he was gonna—
Somebody screamed.
Dante frowned and looked across the lobby to the court-yard outside the building.
A bunch of people were running around, waving their hands in the air like idiots. As he watched, a man in a suit ran right into a woman and knocked her flat on her ass. Weird.
“There’s no answer up there,” Spoon said.
Dante shrugged, took another bite. “You know those guys. They don’t wanna lose count.”
“I guess.” Spoon set the phone down and frowned. “What’s goin’ on outside?”
Dante shook his head. “Beats me.”
Maybe somebody famous was here, a movie star or something, a lot of them came to the tower to do their shopping. Though now that he looked again, he saw the people outside were paying more attention to the confetti that was swirling through the air than they were to the building. They were trying to catch it, he realized.
A huge crash sounded. A car had just smashed into one of the limos parked out front. The driver didn’t seem to be concerned about that at all; he pulled some of the confetti off his windshield and ran to join the others in front of the building.
It was green confetti, Dante saw that now. All green.
“I’m gonna see what’s goin’ on,” Spoon said, rising from his chair.
“Yeah,” Dante nodded. “I’ll come with you.”
They pushed their way out the door and into the crowd. The green confetti was everywhere.
Only it wasn’t confetti.
It was hundred-dollar bills.
Dante looked up. The bills filled the sky, like rain. They were coming from the tower—pouring out a window about halfway up the building. He counted floors, and his eyes widened.
“Shit,” he said to Spoon. “The bullpen.”
They ran back inside to the elevators. Dante hit the call button and began pacing.
“This is your fault,” Spoon said.
Dante stopped pacing and glared. “How do you figure that?”
“Because you made us late, and somethin’ screwed up while we weren’t here, genius.”
“Don’t call me genius.”
“I ain’t takin’ the blame for this, Dante. No way.”
“Shut up.”
“No. Mr. Saint is gonna kill us, and—”
“Shut up.” Dante hit the call button again, shaking his head.
Spoon shook his head, too.
“We’re dead men,” he said.
The elevator across from them dinged.
Dante turned, started for it—
And stopped in his tracks.
A dead man stepped out, and stared right at them.
Eight thirty-nine. On, in fact, slightly ahead of, schedule, even with the rain delay. The success of his intricately laid-out plan pleased him.
Intellectually.
On a more primal level, Frank Castle was still dissatisfied. Restless. The hunger within him burned.
