The Punisher

“It means I’ve come to a conclusion.”

“Which is . . .”

Castle, who’d been sitting on the hood of the Mustang, jumped off it. Then he walked up to his old friend, looked him square in the eye, and lied through his teeth. “I’ll never get over my grief by killing people.”

“Ah.” Weeks nodded. “If you’ve brought yourself to a place of closure . . . you’re a wise man.”

“If I want to find peace,” Castle went on, “I’m not going to find it in Tampa. So I’m going.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can tell me.”

“I’ll send a postcard.”

Weeks studied him a moment.

“Okay,” he said finally. “If that’s how it is—”

“That’s how it is, Jimmy. I just don’t want Morris following me all over the country.”

“Understood. Well, I guess this is good-bye, Frank.”

“That it is.”

“But you will stay in touch?”

“You know it.”

“All right then.”

The two shook hands. At that second, Castle got the oddest feeling, almost as if his friend was happy to see him go.

He was almost going to say something when Weeks’s eyes suddenly went wide.

“Shit. The task force meeting. If I’m late again . . .” He frowned. “You got the time, Frank?”

Castle looked down at his Rolex. “Almost seventeen hundred.”

“Yeah. I gotta go,” Weeks said, heading for his car. “You going somewhere? Let me give you a ride.”

Castle started to say no, he was fine, when he suddenly got it. Weeks had asked him for the time.

Weeks’s Rolex was gone.

Gone like the car and who knew what else, gone straight down the toilet to pay down his gambling debts. After Iraq, and Atlanta, after Gwen and Maria and all they’d shared . . .

“Frank? You want a ride or not?”

Castle snapped back to the here and now.

Fuck it, he thought. Not my concern. Not my problem. “Nah,” he replied. “I’m gonna smoke some cigarettes.”

“You don’t smoke.”

“I know.” Castle walked off, smile stuck on his face as he took the stairs down a level, then used the pedestrian walkway above the street to cross Kennedy.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Jimmy Weeks. Selling the Rolex . . .

Now a car was one thing. Weeks had loved that Porsche, but it was just a possession. The watch—Castle had sweated blood to buy that watch for his friend. Jimmy knew that, knew what that gift had meant. For Weeks to sell it was like a betrayal, as if—

All at once, Castle froze where he stood.

The world itself seemed to stop with him.

THIRTY-FOUR

John Saint could not believe this was happening.

Monday night, nine o’clock, Bucs/Patriots, and he was not in his seat. He was not even anywhere close to his seat, his third-row, fifty-yard-line, home-away-from-home seat, for what everyone agreed was not only going to be the best game of the season, early as it was, but was very likely a preview of Super Bowl XXXIX. Instead, his ass was bouncing up and down in an unmarked white delivery truck, along a barely lit stretch of coastal 679. On top of which, the fuckin’ radio didn’t even work, so he had no idea what the score was.

When his father had given him his marching orders this afternoon, John thought the old man was kidding.

“Pop, come on. You know what tonight is.”

He’d looked around the breakfast table at Glass and then at his mom, both of whom avoided his eyes. That was when he knew his dad was not, in fact, kidding at all.

“I need you tonight, Johnny. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. I want someone on the shipment who I can trust not to fuck up.”

John Saint was flattered to hear these words; sometimes he didn’t know what his dad thought of him. He just would rather have not heard them this afternoon, that was all.

But what could he do? Fight with the old man? That wasn’t his style. He never said a word against his father . . . well, not in public, at least. He wasn’t an unappreciative little prick like Bobby had been.

The truck slowed. Carl, who was driving, gestured to his right.

“Up there, John. You see ’em?”

A second later, he did. Three ATVs pulled off to the side of the road. Carl pulled up on the shoulder in front of them.

“You wait here,” Saint said, climbing out of the truck.

The guys in the ATVs were all illegals, mostly from Cuba, courtesy of the Toros. Older guys, with families, so they wouldn’t be tempted to try anything funny. They spoke no English. Saint had a very limited Spanish vocabulary to draw on.

He walked around the back of the truck and opened it.

The illegals surged forward, and started taking the cash off the truck and loading it onto the ATVs. Saint walked among them, clapping his hands from time to time.

“Hey, let’s go, let’s go. Rapido, mas rapido.”

The men smiled at him as they hurried back and forth. John checked his watch: nine oh-eight. Okay. Finish loading here, drive to the boats . . . say nine-thirty. Load the boats, drive back . . . ten o’clock. Back downtown . . . eleven o’clock. The stadium . . . eleven-fifteen.

His face brightened. The fourth quarter was possible.

“Mas rapido,” he called out again. “Mas rapido.”

They rapidoed pretty well. By nine-thirty, they were indeed all down on the beach, and the first few bags were being loaded into the hold of boat number one. Saint watched for a moment, making sure the illegals were stacking neatly, and then went to the cockpit.

They had to have a radio up here, he thought. All boats have radios. Maybe it wasn’t the right kind on which to pick up the game, but he would bet he could find somebody who could at least tell him the score.

He frowned at the instrument panel, which looked very confusing, and was wondering if any of the illegals knew how to work it when he heard a faint splash off the side of the boat.

They’re throwing cash off the side, was his first thought. One bag overboard, no one would miss it right away; maybe they have somebody waiting for the boats to leave who wades into the water and picks it up. . . .

Then he saw that all the illegals were over by the ATVs, getting ready to make their second trip back to the boats.

Shark?

Something landed on the deck next to him then, with a loud thunk. A piece of metal. What . . .

Saint bent down and picked it up. The moon was bright enough that he could see writing on one side, and an arrow underneath that writing. Only it wasn’t English writing; he couldn’t make heads or tails of it, though the shapes were kind of familiar.

He frowned. Heads or tails, he thought, and turned the disk a hundred and eighty degrees.

Ah. Now he could read the writing: POINT TOWARD ENEMY.

Saint blinked.

He dropped the mine and dove off the ship into the water. A second later, he heard an enormous roar behind him. Then another, and another, and another, so many he thought his eardrums would shatter.