The trip to Rikers was short, but Beckett was thankful she had noone in her car as she called home. She needed the breather after the intense showdown in her captain's office.

'Castle house, this is RJ speaking.'

'Are you sure, you sound too grown up,' she teased her baby.

'Mumum! You want to talk to Daddy?'

Beckett let herself laugh a little. 'Yes, my little prince, I want to talk to Daddy.'

'Okay. Daddy! It's Mumum!'

As usual there was the scuffling sound of the phone being handed over and Castle's velvety voice came on the line. 'What are you up to that RJ is declaring awesome?'

'Going to Rikers to interview Roman Moore. Should be interesting to see how that goes, considering two twerps from IA came down to tell us all to back the hell off of our investigation, or that it might get messy.'

'Kate, be careful.' All good humour vanished from Castle's voice. 'You have too much at stake to go picking fights with people like that.'

'I know. I love you.'

'I love you too.'

Once parked Beckett went in and signed the visitor log's; she made a mental note to ask for a photocopy of her visit there when she was done, and was escorted to the public visiting area where non-violent tendancies were permitted their guests. She had a thirty-minute window and she was going to make the most of it.

While Beckett waited for Roman Moore she reread his file - long-time loser, forever being arrested for petty crimes until he got into the drugs and then he was arrested for moving product for Julio Robinson. Nothing major, the kind that usually went to the uptown suppliers and party fiends. And most tellingly, there was no history of violence, no records of him in altercations when he'd done two years in juvie and three as an adult; he didn't even own a weapon.

So how the hell could a man like that coolly pump three rounds with a nine-millimetre in rapid succession into a officer like Matthew Montrose?

The sound of leg-irons clinking had Beckett looking up and closing the folder. The man was pale as a ghost, she noted, and had the deep sunken eyes of a long-time addict gone clean too late. His eyes were jumpy and nervous but settled when he saw her, the light of recognition in them as he took a seat across from her at the hexagon-shaped table. Discreetly Beckett turned on the recorder.

'I know you,' he said. 'You're Johanna's daughter. Katie-Lou.'

'It's Detective Beckett now.'

'She thought you'd be a lawyer,' Roman commented, scratching his cheek. 'Slay the dragons, tilt the windmills. Save the world. But I don't figure you're here to check up on me, so let's make this quick.'

'I am going to record this conversation, Roman,' Beckett said to him. 'Do you object?'

'No, that's cool. Cops always want things on the record.'

'Did you see who really murdered Matthew Montrose?'

The bluntness of her question visibly rocked Roman. He blinked like an owl, then leaned forward. 'Who's paying you?'

'What?'

'Who got to you? Raglan? Spitzer? Or was it big dog Cowlan himself?'

'I'm investigating the death of John Raglan, and my investigation has led me to discovering there are dirty cops in the seven-two's narcotics bureau. My research led me back to my mother's case, which led me to you. I read your file, says you knew Montrose, knew he was a cop.'

'Yeah, I did, but I figured we all have our jobs to do in the world, and since I was the only one who figured he was a cop I played along.'

'That was the motive the ADA and the judge used at your trial.'

Roman nodded, his mouth pursed up like he'd been sucking on a lemon. 'It was total bullshit. I was a fall-guy, they needed Montrose out of the way.'

'Why?' Beckett leaned forward in anticipation of the answer. 'Why did they need Montrose out of the way?'

'Can I give you a little history first?' At the cop's nod, Roman sighed like a man going to confession in a church. 'Montrose always had this little book, I figured being in the underworld he was keeping tabs on us, but he wasn't. He was keeping tabs on the busts he saw, the deals he heard of going down, and he kept note of cars in the area. He came to me one day, said he noticed the same panda trolling in the area, and asked me if I could make a note of it, any time I saw it around.'

'Which you did?'

'Yeah. I knew Montrose - he was calling himself Drago, he looked like that guy from the Rocky movie - probably had a file on me so I figured if I did him a solid when the time came for him to can me, he'd make a case for me saying I was just a lowlife loser doing a lowlife loser's job.' Roman looked around, licked his lips. 'Can we get a drink? I mean, like, is there and water or soft drinks or something?'

'No, sorry, no change.' Beckett reached in her coat pocket and came up with, ironically enough, two Chupa-Chups lollipops. 'Want a lollipop?'

'Sure,' Roman laughed and for a moment the cop saw a sad little boy happy just to talk to someone who would actually listen to his own story, not the one they wanted to hear. He set the wrapper on the table, grinned around the hard candy. 'Taste like a Coke.'

'I got fruit-punch. Keep going about Montrose and the cars.'

'I asked him how long he wanted me to keep tabs on this, and he said two weeks should be good. So I did, presented him my findings just like I was his rookie or something. He thanked me, then disappeared for a few days. Don't know where, but I guessed he was doing his cop thing because the next time I saw him, he told me he was going to disappear for awhile, go off grid because he found something he didn't like the smell of and he wanted to clean house.'

'What did he find?'

'I don't know, but then about a week later, around nine at night or so, I got a call from him saying that he wanted to meet me, said he needed my help with something. I went to the address he gave, a warehouse on Avenue D near East Fourteenth Street. It was an old paper-mill so the place always smelled like wet wood. I went in, called out for Montrose; I said 'Drago, yo Drago, you here? It's your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man.'

Roman took a steadying breath and Beckett saw something else now - a man who'd befriended an undercover and was reliving the hell of finding that pseudo-friend dead. 'Think, Roman. What did you see, what did you hear?'

'Footsteps, but not Montrose's, these were heavier, like a big guy. I heard other footsteps come up behind me and the next thing I know I'm being koshed on the head.' Roman tapped the crown of his skull. 'When I come to, I see Montrose lying on the ground beside me, and there's two guys. One's a big beefy black guy, the other is in a uniform and wearing a ski mask, and he's got a gun in his gloved hands.'

'Was Montrose dead then?'

'No, only down. Trust me, I gag on blood, and there was no blood yet. The ski mask asks the black guy, is this the right one, and the black guy says yeah, he'll do. The mask says, take off Cowlan, then waits until the other guy leave and looks at me with these eyes. They were cold and dead and every time I go to bed, I see them.'

Beckett tried not to let her breath come in shaky streams. Every nerve under her skin was wound tight. 'What happened next?'

'He said that the man I knew as Drago was a disloyal little bastard and he needed to be dealt with. I heard Montrose mumble a little. The mask walked over, looked at him in the face and said 'this is what happens when bad puppies bark up the wrong tree' and he pulled the trigger three times. I passed out because I saw the blood and then...then the next thing I know, I'm coming to again, and there's the gun in my hand and I'm kneeling over his body, and then the place is full of cops, and I...I recognized the black guy, he was with the older white guy, and the younger white guy, though not by much, he's the one who arrested me.'

'I need names Roman. Even one.'

'Detective,' Roman snorted, 'those names I know like my own. The black guy said to the older white guy, what do you think, Spitzer, you want this tag, and he said it has to be Raglan, Detective Cowlan. He's our guy in Homicide and that's how it needs to go if we want things to smooth over.'