The Punisher Read online

  Saint acknowledged the applause with a wave of his hand and sat down himself.

  “Twenty years ago these people wouldn’t let me in their homes. Now they’ll elect me governor.”

  “They know a good thing when they see it,” Livia said.

  A photographer stepped forward. The Times’s photographer—Saint scanned the crowd for Palmer but didn’t see him. Just as well—he’d had enough of the man for the evening already.

  “Mr. Saint,” the photographer said, “could you . . .”

  Saint nodded, turned as the man wanted, and posed. Standing beside his chair, Glass shifted uncomfortably.

  “Smile for the newspaper, Quentin. It’s the only thing in Tampa I don’t own.”

  “Yet,” Glass said under his breath as the flash went off.

  Livia was waving to someone in the crowd as well, but her eyes were darting here and there around the club, searching.

  “What is it?” Saint asked.

  “Where are the twins?”

  “Upstairs, I’m sure,” Glass said.

  Saint frowned. He’d hoped the boys would make an appearance with him for the papers tonight—though he understood they were both their own men now, maybe a little concerned about seeming too much their father’s creatures, Bobby in particular. Still . . .

  He was about to tell Quentin to ask them to come down when he caught sight of a tall, white-haired man at the bar, engaged in conversation with two striking-looking young women.

  Seeing him, Howard Saint smiled, and felt his heart beat just a little bit faster.

  The girls he didn’t know—he assumed they were among those who had been hired for this evening—social lubricants, as it were. But the man . . .

  The man was Robert Chadwick.

  Twice the state’s lieutenant governor, in his prime widely considered the most effective politician in Florida, old Tampa money, old Tampa society, his presence here was the closest thing to a benediction from the powers that were as Howard Saint was likely to get.

  Saint caught the man’s eye and smiled. Chadwick raised his glass and held it up in salute.

  “Bring him here, would you,” Saint said to Quentin.

  Glass, who’d been engaged in quiet conversation with Livia, turned, saw Chadwick, and without uttering a word rose from his chair and went to the bar. He spoke briefly to Chadwick, who smiled regretfully at the two young women and followed Glass back to the table.

  “Howard?” Livia asked as they approached.

  “Your best smile,” Saint whispered, rising to shake Chadwick’s hand.

  “Good to see you, Howard.” Chadwick’s grip was strong, his eyes sharp and piercing. Saint held his hand a second, and let it go.

  “Join us?” he asked.

  “My pleasure.”

  Livia gave Chadwick a dazzling smile—her best smile indeed—as he sat.

  And right then, despite what had happened earlier with Reston, and then Palmer, despite the FBI investigation and the boys’ absence . . .

  Howard Saint had a feeling, a certainty deep down in his gut: luck was with him tonight.

  His conversation with Chadwick was going to go very, very well indeed.

  TWO

  It had to be some kind of sign.

  Ace-king in the hole, ace-king on the flop, and now a third ace on the drop . . .

  Full house, and the river still to go.

  Tonight was the night his luck changed for good. Bobby Saint was certain of it.

  “Hey. Just ’cause the game’s called ‘hold ’em’ doesn’t give you call to sit on your ass all night long. Bet’s ten to you, Bobby. You in or what?”

  Bobby looked up. Sitting in the booth across from him, face barely visible in the dim lighting of Saints and Sinners’ upstairs club, T.J.—T. J. Archeletta, the man his father had hired to bodyguard (read: baby-sit) him—fanned his own two hole cards impatiently.

  “Come on, boy. I ain’t gettin’ any younger, you know?”

  Which was for damn sure the truth. T.J. was fifty if he was a day. An old cracker his father had brought down from Alachua six months ago just to keep watch over him, the thinking being that anyone closer to Bobby’s own age might be tempted to look the other way now and then. Not T.J.

  For a crook, he was as straight-arrow as they came.

  “Just hold on a minute, old man. I’m thinking.”

  Thinking about whether or not he should bet heavy now, try to force T.J. out, or play possum for the last card, milk the man for all he was worth. Which wasn’t much. Made him wish that Lincoln and Cutter hadn’t gotten called away. Those two didn’t mind laying out the serious cash.

  Though when it came to cash, as he was finding out, serious was a very relative term.

  “All right,” Bobby said, reaching for the stack of money in front of him. “I’m raising you—” His cell phone rang. Ignoring the glare from T.J., Bobby pulled it off his belt and answered. “Bobby Saint.”

  “Micky Duka.”

  Bobby smiled. “What’s the word?”

  “The word is go. Pick me up in fifteen.”

  “Done. See you then.”

  Bobby snapped the phone shut, and looked up to find T.J. staring at him. “What?”

  “What’s going on, Bobby?”

  “I’m raising you, that’s what’s going on.” Bobby pulled a hundred off the pile in front of him and tossed it into the pot. Time to end this quickly and get out of here.

  T.J. frowned and tossed his cards in.

  Ten bucks, Bobby calculated quickly. Not much of a pot at all.

  “That ain’t what I’m talkin’ about. Who was that on the phone?”

  “None of your concern,” Bobby said, raking in the pot as neatly as he could. Duka’s place was ten minutes away, so he didn’t have a lot of time.

  “Everythin’ you do is my concern, you know that,” T.J. said. Which was the gospel truth—Howard Saint had assigned T.J. to watch over Bobby, to stay close, and when Howard Saint said to stay close, he meant arm’s length.

  Trouble was, Bobby was tired of it. Tired of being treated like a baby, like the bad seed. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t like John didn’t get into just as many jams as he did, but somehow, his brother always managed to find a way out on his own. Not like Bobby, who’d been singularly unlucky in his brushes with the law. Caught with two underage girls in a motel. Caught buying pot off an undercover cop. Caught trying to put out a hit on that same cop, after the cop dressed him down in front of his father like he was a little kid. Only Howard Saint’s connections and a willingness to part with large amounts of cash had kept him out of jail that time.

  “So?” T.J. asked again. “You going to let me in on the secret? Or do I have to pull your phone records again?”

  Bobby glared at the man.

  He was about to tell him to go to hell when a shadow crossed in front of the light. He looked up and saw John staring down at him.

  Great. This was all he needed.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” his twin said, looking from Bobby over to T.J., who promptly shook his head.

  “I got no plans,” T.J. said. “Bobby, though . . . he seems to be in a bit of a hurry.”

  “Now why am I not surprised about that?” John folded his arms across his chest and smiled. “I heard some idle chitchat about you and a Russian boat.”

  Shit. How did he know about the boat?

  Bobby tried to recover.

  “Like you said. It’s just idle chitchat. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not worried. But I think Father would disapprove.”

  “Father doesn’t need to know.”

  John shook his head. “Do you even understand what’s happening tonight, Bobby? What’s going to happen over the next few months?”

  “Of course I understand. Father’s going to run for governor. I’m not stupid, you know.”

  The second those words were out of his mouth, he wanted them back.

  John smirked. That
same smirk that Bobby had hated ever since the two of them were boys. The smirk that said I forgot, you’re a little bit slow; let me try to explain it again.

  “No. You’re not. So you know that in order to run successfully, he needs our support. He needs us not to do stupid things that could reflect badly on him right now. He needs us—”

  “I get the picture,” Bobby said, standing. “Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  John sighed.

  “I suppose there’s no talking you out of this foolishness.” He looked over at T.J. “Go with him.”

  “Yeah,” T.J. said in a long-suffering tone, and struggled to his feet.

  Bobby pushed him back down in the booth.

  “No. This is my deal.”

  T.J. glared up at him.

  “Don’t be stupid, Bobby. This is dangerous,” John said.

  Bobby let his blazer fall open so his brother could see the 9mm tucked inside his belt.

  “Yeah? Well, so am I.”

  In the car, though, he suddenly didn’t feel that way.

  Suddenly, he felt nervous. John would go to his father— and then what? Would Bobby have to bow out of the deal? Would Howard Saint even let him get to the boat tonight? He wouldn’t put it past his father to send Dante after him, bring him back to the club.

  Except that wouldn’t happen, Bobby realized. John wouldn’t, couldn’t rat on him right away—his father was too busy. His brother might indeed tell where Bobby was going, but not till later. Not till after the deal. And after the deal . . .

  Bobby would feel a whole lot differently about getting yelled at. For one thing, he’d have the weapons to show his father, to prove he wasn’t just blowing smoke about the whole thing. And he’d have the down payment from their first customer—Manuel Ordito’s group, right over in Ybor City, whom he and Micky were going to see as soon as they had the weapons stashed. Cuban exiles with an ax to grind and money to burn. As far as Bobby was concerned, they were unbelievably naive—thinking they could smuggle RPGs into Cuba to use on Castro. But hey, as long as they had the money . . .

  He relaxed a little, switched on the radio. Queens of the Stone Age—“Go with the Flow.” Bobby smiled. Another omen. He felt it again.

  Luck was with him tonight.

  He cranked up the volume, pulled a roach out of the ashtray, and lit up.

  Pot was how he’d met Micky Duka in the first place. Hanging out with him one night in the Cobalt Lounge, after the upstairs at Saints and Sinners had closed, they found out they had a mutual affinity for herb. Before too long, Bobby was buying all his pot from Micky. They started hanging out more and more.

  And then Micky told him about this opportunity he’d come across. A chance to make some real money. Thing was, Micky explained, he needed some backing. Some serious cash, as he put it, to lay out up front.

  One thing led to another, and before he knew it . . .

  Well. Here he was.

  And there, on the seat next to him, was the briefcase with the $60,000 in cash he and Micky needed to make this deal.

  And there, standing at the intersection of Guy Verger and Maritime, just where he said he’d be, was Micky Duka himself.

  Bobby brought the BMW to a stop and opened the passenger door. Micky climbed in.

  “Bobby. My man.”

  The two shook. Micky was a slightly built, short man with slicked-back hair and small, beady eyes. He looked shifty—like the con artist he was. Looked nothing like his father, Mike Duka, a tank of a man who’d been a longtime fixture on the Tampa crime scene, an enforcer whom Bobby had seen in old pictures with his dad, back in the day.

  Micky patted the briefcase on the seat between them.

  “This is it, right? The sixty large?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Beautiful. We are making history tonight, Bobby. A whole new chapter in the book about the Dukas and Saints, right? I mean our families, we go way back together, but this is—”

  “Enough,” Bobby interrupted. “Let’s stay focused.”

  “Right.” Micky drummed his hands on his thighs. “Focused. We’ll take it easy. Let me get a hit off that, Bobby?”

  “Yeah.” He passed Micky the roach. He wished the man would calm down, would shut up already about their family’s shared history. One thing Micky always neglected to mention when he talked about that history: the elder Duka had died in Howard Saint’s service.

  That was not something Bobby liked to dwell on.

  “Easy man. Here it is,” Micky said. “Slow down.”

  Bobby looked up, saw the sign—TAMPA BAY TRANS-NATIONAL TERMINAL—and turned into the drive. Micky gave the guard at the gate a thumbs-up—they’d already bought him off, another grand out of his pocket, but that was small change compared to what they were expecting to clear on this deal—then they parked the BMW by the dockmaster’s shack, and climbed out.

  “There it is,” Micky said. “What’d I tell you? There it is.”

  He was pointing toward a huge, rusted hulk of a cargo ship berthed at the pier closest to them. Russian letters were stenciled in barely visible gray along the side of the ship.

  “Better let me take that,” Micky said, holding his hand out for the briefcase.

  After a second’s hesitation—they’d talked about this already, Micky knew these people, he’d set up the deal, so he had to make the exchange—Bobby passed it over.

  They started walking toward the ship.

  “Just hang back and let me do the talking, right?” Micky said.

  “You got it. I’m just here to watch, don’t worry.” They’d talked about this, too—Micky had even suggested Bobby let him make the exchange on his own, but no way that was happening. Howard Saint hadn’t raised any fools in his household.

  “So this Astrov guy,” Bobby began. “He’s promising a three-to-one return on the money?”

  “He says that’s the least we can expect. The market is volatile, that’s what he told me, but if we find the right customer, for the Kornets maybe—he says we can maybe do ten-to-one.”

  Bobby nodded. That jibed with the research he’d done, too. The RPGs—the grenade launchers they were selling to Ordito—they were getting three-to-one for them, but the Kornets—antitank weapons—those could turn a much heftier profit. More than enough to get him out on his own, make him a player—Bobby Saint, international arms dealer. Private jet, villa in the South of France, swimming pool stocked with the requisite babes . . .

  He stepped from the gangway onto the metal pier itself. The sound of his footsteps echoed into the distance, and disappeared. He smelled the ocean, heard the slap of the waves against the ship, the sound of traffic in the distance. The pier itself, though, was silent and dark. So was the ship. Bobby frowned.

  “So where is this guy?”

  “Don’t worry, he’s here, Bobby.” Micky turned and gave him what he no doubt intended to be a reassuring smile. “He’s the real deal. I met him in a hash bar in Amsterdam. Speaks Russian, German, Arabic . . . he’s got five Picassos. They’re all stolen, so he can’t show them, but that’s five more than I got.”

  Bobby shook his head. “Was that supposed to be funny?”

  Micky opened his mouth to respond—

  All at once a spotlight flicked on above them.

  The light, fixed high above on a huge smokestack, illuminated a stack of cargo containers—each the size of a small car—piled two and three high on the deck of the Russian ship.

  Hanging nonchalantly to the edge of one of those carts, a man peered down at them with what Bobby could only think of as disdain.

  “That’s Krieg,” Micky said. “Astrov’s right hand.” He waved and took a step forward. “Otto!”

  Machinery whirred to life. The crate Krieg was standing on rose off the deck—Bobby traced steel cables back from it to a crane near the pilot house—and lowered toward the pier.

  Bobby took a closer look at Krieg.

  He wore a tan sport coat, a blue open-neck shirt. A
cigarette dangled loosely from his mouth. Eurotrash, was Bobby’s first thought. He saw a hundred like this pass through Saints and Sinners every month—drugged-out, bored, looking for kicks anyway they could get them.

  And then he saw Krieg’s eyes.

  They were pitch black and focused on Bobby with needle-like precision. With obvious displeasure.

  And all at once, that feeling of nervousness was back.

  Krieg motioned to the pilothouse. The container stopped moving, a foot off the surface of the dock.

  “Mr. Astrov’s trust is not gained easily,” the man said in heavily accented English. “Two years, it took me. He doesn’t like new faces. So tell me, Micky—” Krieg raised a hand and pointed straight at Bobby. “—why am I looking at a new face?”

  Micky attempted a smile.

  “Otto Krieg, meet my friend Bobby. He’s helping me with the financing.”

  Krieg continued to glare.

  Bobby nodded at the man, tried to look relaxed, unconcerned, as if he did this sort of thing every day. “Yo,” he said.

  Krieg glared even harder. “Yo? Yo? Did they teach you to say ‘yo’ at the police academy? Bad vibe. Bye-bye.”

  Krieg turned to the pilothouse again.

  In a second, Bobby knew, the crate would start to rise once more, and everything he wanted—the jet, the villa, the girls, his freedom—would go with it.

  “You got it wrong. Mr. Krieg. I’m not a cop.” He turned to Micky. “Tell him.”

  “Mr. Krieg,” Micky began.

  “Ah.” Krieg raised a hand. “You understand the position you’ve put me in here, Micky? Don’t you?”

  Duka’s head bobbed up and down like a little doll’s. “Sure. Sure I do. Bobby—” Duka turned to face Bobby now.

  “—see things from his perspective. He didn’t expect you here. Otto . . . Mr. Krieg . . . this is my friend. Not a cop.”

  Krieg stared from one of them to the other, then climbed down onto the deck.

  “You say that, but I don’t know that.”

  He walked right up to Bobby, till they were practically nose to nose, inches apart, and just stared at him. His eyes cold, dispassionate, as if he couldn’t care less whether or not the deal went down.