Emergence

Chapter 21

Castle jumped up applauding wildly as Alexis made her final touch to win the competition. "This calls for a celebration," he declared after she'd changed out of her fencing gear. "Super-sized burgers? Pizza? Impossibly large banana splits?"

"Dad, can I take a rain check?" Alexis requested. "I have a paper due tomorrow."

Castle's eyebrows rose. "I'm the one who procrastinates. Usually you have your papers written way ahead of when they're due. What's up, Pumpkin?"

"I did have it written ahead," Alexis replied, "but I ran it through the plagiarism checker before school this morning. I didn't copy from anything. You know I didn't, Dad. But there was almost identical wording on a website, so I have to rewrite it."

"Occasionally great minds do think alike," Castle comforted. "I've had readers accuse me of stealing from books that even with my prodigious devouring of the written word, I'd never even read. You know what they say about monkeys and typewriters." Castle gazed at the look on his daughter's face. "Bad analogy. But seriously, let me know if there's anything I can do to help."

Alexis' shoulders slumped. "I don't think there will be. But thanks, Dad."

"You don't think Alexis got hacked, do you?" Kate asked, when Alexis had settled in her room. "Someone could have read her paper and posted it as their own."

"Not here in the loft. Kate. Our firewall records every ping," Castle informed her. "Hackers try to break in all the time, but so far no one's made it through. That's why we can work here. But if Alexis took her laptop somewhere with public Wi-Fi, it's a possibility. I'll talk to her about getting stronger protection for her laptop for when it's not behind the parapets of the Castle network."

Kate plopped down on the couch. "Castle, it looks like everywhere we turn, we spend at least half our time trying to keep someone from knowing what we're doing. I know you trust Myron, but I still changed my passwords to the data bases he was using."

"It was a reasonable precaution," Castle allowed. "You never know when the man might go crazy on a Twizzler high. You're right Kate, but unless you want to go back to dead tree mode, we just have to stay smart. And speaking of that, how are you going to explain having Sasha Borisov as a suspect to the boys, and how are we going to check him out without tipping the Russian mob to your investigation?"

"I don't know, Castle," Kate confessed. "I'll figure something out. I'll sleep on it."

"Just don't take any naps in the precinct when you might be mumbling in Russian," Castle cautioned.

Kate wrapped her arms around his neck. "Castle, it is definitely more fun to take my naps here."

"Yo," Esposito called as Kate and Castle entered the bullpen. "We got Palmer's financials. Something's not right."

"How?" Kate queried.

"The man had too much money," Ryan said. "It's nothing obvious. He's not living in a mansion or driving a Mercedes."

"I resemble that remark," Castle objected.

"You're not a cop, Bro," Esposito reminded him.

"The man had investments," Ryan went on. "He made steady deposits into a brokerage account. He's a silent partner in a cop bar. No competition to The Old Haunt, but not a bad place. If you put it all together, it adds up to a nest egg no cop could afford, at least not an honest cop."

"If he was on the take, maybe whoever was paying him off decided to take him out," Esposito suggested.

"Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing," Kate said. "I reached out to one of my CIs. He gave me an idea where Palmer's supplementary funding might have been coming from. You guys keep doing what you're doing, checking into Palmer's background and contacts. Castle and I are going to follow up my lead."

"That was very neatly done," Castle complimented Kate, as she turned the key in the ignition of her unit. "A CI is an excuse that covers a lot of territory."

"It wasn't an excuse, Castle," Kate insisted. "Myron is a confidential informant; about as confidential as an informant can get. The fact that's you're feeding his sugar habit instead of me slipping him a few bucks, is irrelevant."

Castle shrugged. "If you say so. Are we going to stake out Borisov?'

"In a way," Kate confirmed. "I want to find out where he goes and who he talks to, especially if it's another cop."

Castle put a hand on Kate's arm. "What if he tries to do more than talk?"

Kate's shoulders stiffened. "Then we do our best to stop him."

"Looks like you've got the route memorized," Castle observed as Kate smoothly turned onto Shore Parkway, on their way to Brighton Beach.

"I told you I spend time in Little Odessa," Kate reminded him. "It's been a while since my semester in Russia, so I go to Brighton to keep up my language skills. I'm hoping they'll come in handy now. Borisov has an apartment in the Oceana. A lot of the better fixed of the Russian community live there. There's a tea shop, the Samovar, not too far away. I used to like to sit there. A lot of the tenants from the Oceana drop in. I thought we'd get a table, sip some tea, nibble some halva, and I'll listen to the neighborhood chatter. Then if we don't get anything from that, we could try the backgammon tables at the Second Street Park. If we don't pick up anything there, we can try staking out the Oceana, but we'd be noticed after a while. The kleptocrats like their privacy."

"Like the Russian mobster who you kept from shooting me at the poker game in Chinatown." Castle recalled."

Kate nodded and laughed. "But with fewer tattoos and more discretion."

"I notice you didn't say fewer guns," Castle observed.

"I don't know, Castle," Kate replied. "It only takes one. Just be a lot more careful than you were in Chinatown."

Castle sighed contentedly. "I never have quite understood drinking hot tea from a glass, but if there's a heaven, someone there definitely makes halvah."

"It is incredible," Kate agreed, "but some of the conversation I've been picking up on is better."

"Why, what do you hear?" Castle queried.

"They're talking about vysokiy muzhchina, that's tall man, taking care of business."

"And you think they're talking about Sasha Borisov?" Castle asked.

"There's a good chance of it," Kate said. "They sound nervous. A lot of the people here immigrated to the United States for safety. I can understand why having someone like him in residence would bring back old fears."

"Anything specific?" Castle asked.

Kate shook her head. "No. But it looks like we might be on to the right guy, Castle. We'll just have to keep at it."

"If keeping at it involves eating more halvah, I'm all for that," Castle declared.

"There's another place you might like more than the park I mentioned before," Kate suggested. "A Russian bookstore. I once saw one of your novels translated into Russian there. Residents of the neighborhood hang around there to talk, too. And the Tula gingerbread isn't bad either."

"Kate, I'm not sure if we came here for a stake out or because you had a yen for Russian cuisine," Castle teased. "Either way, I'm going to have to spend a lot of time at the gym, or at least fencing with Alexis, when we're finished tracking down Borisov."

"Oh, don't worry, Castle," Kate purred. "I'll make sure you get enough exercise."

A/N There is a big Russian community in Brighton Beach. There is an Oceana. There is a Russian Bookstore in Brighten Beach and there is a Second Street Park where Backgammon has been played. The Samovar is made up and I have no idea if the Russian bookstore serves anything to eat.