A/N: Well, it's a long, dark winter, so I say let's enjoy ourselves with a little vintage jackass Castle! :)
Thank you for all the fun reviews to this story so far.
Chapter 2: The Desk Sergeant
The ride to precinct house is quite possibly the weirdest Officer Kate Beckett has had to endure in her entire career as a cop thus far.
Sure she's had hookers of all sizes, dress codes and sexual proclivities in the back of her cruiser, their potty mouths as toxic as their coochies; she's had twelve year old, drug mulling, baby-faced gang-bangers with their pants belted so low around their thighs that their CK boxer shorts are on display, these kids giving her all the attitude of 1950's male chauvinists four times their age; and once, she even transported a bipolar man from Bellevue to Central Booking dressed up as Big Bird who refused to let her put his giant, fluffy yellow head in the trunk of her squad car on account it might suffocate back there. But somehow, even a fully clothed and completely silent, Richard Castle is a step beyond all of these past oddities.
She feels like she's in a movie – trapped somewhere between Moonstruck and Nightmare on Elm Street. If Michael Jackson were to bound out of an alley surrounded by a hoard of ragged zombies all dancing their way through Thriller right now… Well, nothing would surprise her tonight.
She casts darting, furtive glances at their charge via the rearview mirror as she drives, observing him from the legal side of the Crown Vic's old dented security grill, much as she would a rare specimen at the zoo. Come to think of it, Page 6 did refer to him as the "White Whale" once or twice, she remembers reading, allowing herself a secretive internal grin. Who'd have thought she'd be the one to "land him", so to speak. Right now, she just wants to make it back to the precinct and get through writing up his charge sheet before he lawyers up, and she has to throw him back like the rare, protected species he undoubtedly is.
Now that they're on the move, he seems more subdued. In fact, a couple of times, when she glances behind her at his reflection, she suspects he might even have fallen asleep. Visit to a city precinct at night is not the best hangover cure in the world, but it sure does sober them up. Imagining the headache he's got coming, along with the noise and the uncompromising artificial lights, and she actually begins to feel a little sorry for him.
But once they're parked up in front of the Twelfth and she cuts the engine, all bets are off: naptime is over and jackass Castle comes back out to play.
"Mind your head," instructs Kate, offering what is standard care and practice for any prisoner under transport. Not special treatment for her favorite author. Oh, no. Nor will he hear that information from her lips, she's already determined.
"I'd rather mind your—"
"Think very carefully before you say another word," warns Kate, taking his arm and preparing to haul him indoors.
"Yeah, buddy. Officer Beckett and I missed dinner tonight on account of your little "jockey for a day" stunt. Officer Beckett's blood sugar is bound to be low by now." Jurkowski purses his lips and slowly shakes his head. "And you do not want to mess with that, believe me. No siree," the Polish cop whistles.
Kate gives her partner a glare, and then proceeds to escort Mr. Castle inside the precinct via the front door. She almost hopes a few paps are hanging around outside. In fact, if she'd had a minute to think about it, she'd have called the mutts herself. As it is, the sidewalk is disappointingly quiet out front. Not the best night for a perp walk when you've got the ultimate New York trophy - a famous author on your arm.
A real shame.
"So, what do we have here?" asks the desk sergeant, giving Kate and her disheveled looking charge the once over as they approach the scarred wooden counter. "Did you get dressed in the dark, guy? Your sweater's on backwards."
"She said she didn't recognize me with my clothes on," Castle tells the desk sergeant, leaning in to speak to him with body language that screams buddy conspiracy, rather than fear of being locked up. "Which seemed a little forward, considering we haven't even been on a first date yet."
'Date?' screams Kate's horrified inner voice. But then their charge is motor-mouthing on, to the obvious amusement of the sergeant, and she has to let that first insult go to keep up with the slew of nonsense coming out of his mouth.
"She made me get dressed in the back of her filthy squad car. Just how often do you people clean out those things? I'm pretty sure I found a fossilized stick of gum from 1982 wedged back in there."
"Get him to sit down and shut up while I go write the report," Kate instructs her partner.
Jurkowski opens his mouth to protest, as he does at least twenty times a shift, until Kate gives him the evil eye and asks, "Unless you fancy doing the paperwork for a change?"
Her partner's nod of acquiescence as he presses down on Mr. Castle's shoulder, forcing him to take a seat on the uncomfortable bench is the hallway, is all the response Kate needs before she's bounding up a flight of stairs to find a desk with a free computer, the words, "Thought not," muttered under her breath.
When she comes back a short time later, Unusual Occurrence Report PD370-152 in hand, all three men are sitting around chewing the fat over lukewarm cups of precinct coffee. The scene has trouble written all over it. A big buddy bonding session has evidently taken place while she was away grafting, and now her perp, her partner and her boss look like they're auditioning for parts in some debauched, bachelor party road movie.*
Kate Beckett also realizes pretty quickly, from the bawdy laughter and a quick scan of the flushed, grinning faces in front of her, that their prisoner is not the only one in trouble here tonight.
"Here's the charge sheet, Sarge," says Kate, joining the duty Sergeant on his side of the front desk as she slaps down the completed paperwork with all the pep, zeal and vigor she can muster at this time of night and on an empty stomach.
The sergeant idly slides the typed report in front of him across the desk blotter without so much as glancing down at any of the detail Kate has just rushed to get down on paper at this ungodly hour. And why is that, you might ask? Because he's still engrossed in some (apparently hilarious) story Mr. Castle is recounting about a night he spent at an underground go-go bar in Atlantic City.
A go-go bar!
Richard Castle is telling tales of derring do that took place in an unlicensed lap dancing club to a duty Desk Sergeant in an NYPD Precinct House while in custody. A cop shop! A—
Kate bites her tongue and then takes a deep breath.
He's in the clink and he's still being a cocky son of a bitch.
"Eh, Sarge. The report," nudges Kate, once the three men have stopped laughing hard enough for their hearing to resume working.
She can feel Richard Castle's eyes upon her, so she determinedly ignores the man she's calling "the perp" inside her head. Not the skilled mystery writer whose words of fairness, strength and justice lulled her to sleep after her mother died. Not that man. Because looking at the hung-over specimen in front of her, that man doesn't even exist anymore, if he ever did.
"You really were butt naked? In the park?" guffaws the Sergeant once he gets just a few lines into Kate's incidence report.
"Yeah," nods Castle, giving the man a "boys will be boys" kind of a shrug and a smile. "That's why she didn't recognize me with my clothes on," he adds, tipping his head in Kate's direction.
"Excuse me?" snaps Kate, doubling back in horror when her Sergeant starts to chuckle at Castle's joke. She doesn't know which man to glare at first.
"As I said, that's what first dates are for. You know what I mean, Sarge."
Kate can't believe it. He just called him "Sarge", and Big Bill Bradford, terror of every beat cop in the Twelfth Precinct, is still smiling. This guy has to be some kind of magician, a Svengali or something, because Kate can't ever recall seeing Bradford smile, and certainly never for this long.
And then the author is talking again and Kate's jaw only drops further.
"Yeah, you know what I'm sayin'. You look like a man of the world, Bill. Can I call you Bill?"
The writer doesn't even wait for an answer, just plows right on.
"So, you get it. The whole first date "get to know you on a more intimate level, and hey do you like maple syrup on your pancakes in the morning" sort of thing," he says, addressing all of this to the bear of a man in the gut-busting uniform behind the desk. "And she looks like such a nice girl too," Castle adds, while the Sergeant continues to smile in amusement and steam begins to pour out of Kate Beckett's ears.
"Are you single?"
When Castle finally turns his attention on Kate, she feels - despite herself and her growing personal hatred for this individual, whom she would once have called talented, successful, someone who was actually on her Top 10 list of people she wanted to meet - well, she feels like a movie star on the red carpet being greeted by a phalanx of baying photographers with flashing cameras all calling out her name. She feels stupidly special and in demand. She no longer feels invisible, as she usually does when dressed in her unflattering, bulky, NYPD uniform. She feels pretty and young and how she used to feel when she was still in college, before her mother was murdered and her whole life was turned upside down by the dark underbelly this city fights to conceal from the flood of star-struck tourists who arrive by airplane, train, boat and bus every single day.
But this sudden fantasy is so wrong, and she catches herself just in time, coming to her senses with an almighty crash.
"Am I…what now?" splutters Kate, imagining she might actually be delirious from a lack of food, and possibly experiencing auditory hallucinations as a result, if she heard what she thinks she just heard.
"Single? Come on. I know it's late, but it's a simple enough question. Are. You. Single?"
Kate frowns, lowering her hands to her utility belt and broadening her stance as her natural obstinacy kicks in. "Why?"
"Why are you single? Well, that's something I was hoping to find out on our date. In my experience with women of your uh…caliber, it's usually one of two things. Either—"
Kate's eyes slowly widen. Her ears might actually be bleeding at this point. When he utters the word "either" she manages to raise her hands to stop him sharing anymore of his cockeyed little theory about why girls like her are usually single with her two male colleagues – one of which is her partner, who will never let her live this down, the other of which is her superior, who she might one day have to rely on to help her gain promotion. Either way, he needs to shut up right now before her entire hard-won reputation as one of the NYPD's toughest female cops goes down the tubes.
"Hold it right there. Are you asking me out on a date? Is he actually asking me out on a date?"
She turns to check this hypothesis with both Jurkowski and Sergeant Bradford, almost straining a muscle in her neck, her head whips back and forth so fast.
"Mm-hmm," she hears Mr. Castle confirm, while the other two just nod, slowly, like matching uniformed bobble heads on the dash of a slow-moving vehicle.
Kate glances at the desk Sergeant, who's leaning in with equal interest awaiting her answer. "Absolutely not," she says, hoping to shut this discussion down fast.
"Why?" persists the writer.
"Why? Because you're a felon. Who I just arrested. A…a—" she splutters, when he continues to pin her with his startling blue eyes, dark good looks and the sexiest, easiest smile she's been the recipient of in a really long time.
"And a helluva nice guy, if you'll give me a chance. Just ask around," he says expansively, seeming to forget that his current predicament does not make him the most reliable witness on matters of good character.
"You were drunk."
"Just a little."
"In the park. Late at night."
"Mm-hmm," he hums, with a faraway smile that tells her he's reliving his prank like a movie reel in his head right now and still finding it fun.
"And to top it all off, you were naked."
"It was a bet."
"To ride off on a stolen police horse in the middle of New York City? In my line of work we call that Grand Larceny in the Forth Degree. Not to mention extremely irresponsible. Oh, and there will be a public indecency charge thrown in for good measure. Don't think we won't."
"Public indecency?" smirks Castle, stretching his long legs out in front of him as if to prove some point Kate doesn't even want to think about right now. "Is that on account of me being…naked, Officer?"
Kate refuses to rise to his provocation. "Under section 245.01 of the New York Penal Code – Exposure of a Person is considered a criminal offense, punishable by up to 15 days in prison or a $250 fine."
Castle laughs in the face of this pat delivery of information, infuriating Kate even further. "I borrowed the horse. I was going to give it back. I gave it back."
"No, we took it back, Mr. Castle."
"Did you get his name by any chance?"
Kate shakes her head and shrugs. "Whose name?"
"My horsey? Is his name in your neat little report there?" he asks, standing so he can lean over the desk to look at the triplicate file report in front of her. "Can I see?"
"Please stay on your side of the counter, Sir. And just how do you know the horse was a he? Are you and this horse…personally acquainted by any chance?"
She's getting pissy, pedantic, slightly losing her cool with this arrogant jerk. But her challenge is an insanely stupid one, a rookie mistake if ever there was one to make with this guy for sure, and she knows it as soon as the words are out of her mouth.
Castle's eyebrows shoot upwards, but then he smirks, lazy, predatory and slow; as if she's some tasty piece of prey he's just spotted across the savannah and now he's preparing to go in for the kill.
Kate inwardly groans when she realizes what's coming next. "Never mind," she begins to say. "Forget I asked."
"Oh, no, Officer…" he leans over to read her badge. "Beckett. And what does the K stand for? No, lemme guess. Konnie? Kasandra? Kleo?"
Kate fights to maintain her cool. "Those names are traditionally spelled with a C not a K," she informs him calmly, some might say prissily.
"Ah, a literary scholar. I like that. Bet you won a lot of spelling bees back in middle school."
Kate rolls her eyes. "My name is of no concern to you. Officer Beckett will do just fine."
"Okey-dokey then. Officer Beckett it is. So…back to Mister Ed. Hey, that wasn't his name by any chance?"
Kate shakes her head tiredly. "Nope."
"Anyhoo, who needs a horse with a name. Let's return to matters of a more...sexual nature. Far more fun in my experience," he adds, giving her a wink.
A wink!
Kate's eyes widen and she looks to the desk sergeant for support. He merely grins and shrugs, with a "what can you do" kind of expression. It's been a slow night obviously. Kate assumes this is the most fun he'll have seen all shift, if not all month. But right now she hates her superior just a little for enjoying this so much, and for letting this moron run rings around them while he works off his hangover.
Before she can silence the writer, he's off again with his horse-sexing expertise.
"To determine if an equine is male or female, Officer Beckett, one must simply crouch down low to look beneath the horse where its underbelly rises up between its hind legs and check for a sheath. If—"
Kate's face suddenly feels hot, her cheeks on fire. "Okay, Mr. Castle. That's quite enough," she barks, cutting him dead.
The desk sergeant smirks, barely suppressing a chuckle. Kate feels a fury rise within her at this entirely avoidable humiliation when Jurkowski finally lets rip with an almighty snort at Castle's utterance of the word "sheath". Dirty little boys and their penises, thinks Kate. How utterly obsessed they are.
So she slaps her report back down on the desk, somewhat forgetting her rank, and says, "Sarge, get Mr. Castle arraigned, would you? Just….just please get him out of my sight," before stalking off to the locker room to change with peels of adolescent laughter still ringing in her ears.
TBC...
Note: *The Hangover movie franchise didn't exist back in 2003 or I would have referenced that.
Before anyone (male or female) complains about the Desk Sergeant's lack of support for his female officer, please remember that this is fiction and I'm aiming for humor. Also, I'm pretty sure this is not so far from the truth on occasion. Rick Castle can talk his way out of anything, as we know.