Very Castle Celebrations

Chapter 26

Sal Cardano twirls his linguine against the side of the bowl. "The death of a construction guy in 1994? Castle, there could be a hundred of them in the concrete around the city."

Castle reaches down to hand Jackson the toy he's hurled from the tray of his high chair for the sixth time. "That's just the point, Sal. John Dolan didn't become part of New York's architectural heritage. The police thought the killing looked like a mugging, except that the guy was beaten to a bloody pulp. What mugger wants to take the time to do that? He'd be begging to get caught. If he wanted to keep Dolan from following him or calling the cops, he could have just slugged him or shot him and run. Dolan must have really pissed someone off."

Sal closes his eyes as he savors the meat sauce on his pasta. He slams his palm on the table rattling the silverware, "Yeah, I remember there was a building going up in 1994. There wasn't much business there for us. It was old style, lots of stuff reclaimed from demolished buildings. Not a lot for our waste disposal guys to do. We sold the contractor the concrete for the foundation, but that was weird too. He paid a premium for the good stuff. But I think I remember a story about the place. Two of the soldiers from the family had to break up a fight because there was some crazy running around. He claimed that some of the materials came from a business his family had operated for generations. He accused the builder of bribing some bureaucrat to get the place condemned so he could get his hands on some vintage tile. Nuts! Back then even we had problems greasing palms. Rudy was making a big show of cleaning up the city. Pain in the butt! Come to think of it, John Dolan might have been the builder. As far as I know, that was the company's last project. Could have been because the owner was knocked off. Hey! Your kid's got quite an arm."

Castle walks three booths down to retrieve the toy a seventh time before sliding back into his leather upholstered seat opposite Sal. "I don't suppose you'd remember the name of the crazy?"

Sal dabs at the sauce on his mouth with a cloth napkin. "Nah. I don't know if I ever heard him called anything your bambino should hear. But the name of the building company was Rise Again. Catchy, huh? But it didn't rise again. Never laid another brick. Figures, if Dolan was the owner."

Castle nods as he reaches for a breadstick. "That, it would."


Kate waves her hand in front of her nose. "Castle you could have gone easy on the garlic."

Castle takes a couple of steps back. "I think Sal's chef puts it in everything. Maybe he's afraid of vampires. It was worth it. Sal agrees with you that it wasn't a mob hit. But he gave me a lead on who might have had it in for Dolan. I did some checking, and he could have been right about that too. Dolan had a construction company that went out of business after he was killed. Can you run a check on any incidents involving Rise Again? The way Sal described things, someone was making threats. The police might have been called."

Kate chews on her lip. "If someone made threats against Dolan, it should have made it into his file, but maybe the detectives didn't see it as connected to a random mugging. They might not even have checked, and it wouldn't have been cross-filed. A lot of that stuff still isn't. Ryan's said for years that there should be some sort of automated system, so that information from all the divisions gets consolidated. He's right. It would save a lot of time and probably raise the closure rate."

Castle can recall thinking the same thing more than once. "Why isn't there one? Oh, let me guess. Budget."

Kate closes her eyes and sighs. "The department's excuse for everything from outdated equipment to broken vending machines. Maybe next time the Commissioner shows up for a poker game, we could have a little tête à tête with him - after he demolishes some of the good scotch.

Castle can picture the scenario. If what Kate described is all it would take to get an upgrade of the department's database going, it would be worth a case of scotch. But he envisions an even more pleasurable scene. "Hon, suppose I take a shower and drown my mouth in concentrated minty freshness." He wiggles his eyebrows. "Then perhaps we can have a tête à tête of our own."

Kate sniffs the air. "After your shower, I'll see just how close I want your head to be."

Castle decides that next time he talks to Sal, he'll stick with a salad - no dressing.


Castle eagerly takes notes while Kate tells him about Detective Vinnie Scolino. "Vinnie was a beat cop in 1994. It wasn't his favorite time in his career. He wasn't a fan of the 'stop and frisk' policy. A lot of the guys he played football with in high school were black, and he didn't like seeing his old friends harassed. He spent as much time as he could interacting with the residents in the neighborhood he patrolled and trying to help out with any problems they had.

"Vinnie remembers John Dolan. Not only did the man pay a decent wage to some of the guys he knew growing up, but he also seemed at least as interested in his crew being safe on the job as he was in turning a buck. John was not the kind of man Vinnie thought anyone would have a beef with, but a Ben Cordwainer couldn't leave Dolan alone. He trespassed on Dolan's construction site a few times, then escalated to threatening John and his workforce. Vinnie filed several reports about it. On the books, threatening someone with physical harm is a crime. He could have arrested Cordwainer, but his watch commander back then insisted arrests like that were a waste of time because they were too small potatoes for the D.A. to bring charges.

"The most Vinnie could do was try to keep an eye on the construction site, especially if he spotted Cordwainer in the area. But the alley where Dolan was found dead, wasn't on Vinnie's beat. He went to Dick Graham, the detective in charge of Dolan's case, anyway, and suggested looking into Cordwainer's whereabouts at the time of death. From what Vinnie told me, since Dolan had visited an ATM not long before his death, Graham had already decided that the crime followed the pattern for muggings. He ignored Vinnie's suspicions."

Castle can see on Kate's face what she thinks of Graham. He's already heard her opinion on cops who put crimes into boxes - whether they fit or not. Cheeks flushed, and not in a good way, Kate continues to relate what Vinnie told her. "Once Dolan was dead, Cordwainer disappeared from Vinnie's radar, and he still had a neighborhood of New Yorkers to protect. He had had to hope that Graham's theory of the crime was right. I checked. Graham died of a heart attack, but there is a DMV record for Ben Cordwainer. I plan on paying him a visit."

Castle can't wait to hear what happens when she does.

A/N Guest, If I write The Rookie stories that doesn't mean I'll stop writing Castle stories. I never stopped writing Castle stories when I was writing Con Man stories. I can multitask.