Who Are You?
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: Remember me? I'm the guy who doesn't own Castle. Rating: M Time: Season Seven.
Chapter Two
"HoBo's looks exactly the same." The first young woman said.
Alexis Castle grinned. "Did you expect it would have changed?"
"So what's the big deal about this place, Alexis?" The other one said.
"When Buttons and I were in middle school, HoBo's was the place to go. Everybody came here. Jocks, nerds, Goths, good girls, everyone."
Buttons giggled. "Then we got to high school. Nobody went to HoBo's because…"
"Only middle school children went to HoBo's." Alexis finished for her. "We were far too cool to go to HoBo's."
"So, shall we relive the days of our youth?" Buttons asked, opening the door. The three walked in.
They walked to the back where an elderly Vietnamese man was working behind the counter. Alexis and Buttons noticed that he seemingly hadn't changed a bit.
"Hi, Mr. Ho. "Alexis called out. "How's it going?"
Mr. Ho looked up and smiled. "Alexis Castle? I haven't seen you in years." He looked over at Buttons. "And Buttons Dutton?" He shook his head. "Oh, I'm sorry. You're probably way too cool and sophisticated to be called Buttons any more.
Buttons laughed. "I'll always be Buttons in here, Mr. Ho."
Mr. Ho looked at the third woman. "I must be getting old. I'm afraid I don't recognize you, young lady."
"I've never been here before. I'm Carolyn Hoff. I'm a friend of Alexis' and Button's. We go to Columbia together."
"Columbia!" Mr. Ho, said, impressed. "A very good school, but what I'd expect of you two. What are you majoring in?"
"Buttons and I are pre-med." Alexis said, proudly.
"I'm studying journalism." Carolyn said. "So when these two get their Nobel Prize, I can get a scoop."
"Speaking of scoops, we need some ice cream." Alexis said.
Once they had their ice creams, they sat in the back so they could observe the crowd in HoBo's. "Looks like it's still all middle schoolers." Alexis said.
"Not everyone." Carolyn muttered. "Look at the guys at the other end of the aisle from us. I saw five motorcycles outside. Theirs, no doubt."
Five young men were sitting at the far end of the aisle, dressed much alike. Boots, tight jeans, either black or faded blue, leather jackets, sunglasses and very short haircuts. One man took his jacket off, displaying well-tattooed arms. All together a tough looking group. And not anyone the ladies wanted to have to deal with.
"They're equal opportunity outlaw bikers." Buttons observed. "An Asian, two Hispanics, an African American and a white guy." She jerked her head away. "Crap. They're looking at us. Don't look."
Alexis couldn't help it. She looked. The Asian said something and pointed to them. The rest laughed. The white guy said something and the black guy punched him lightly in the shoulder. Then they went back to their food. Cheeseburgers and fries from the look of it.
The three young women sat eating their ice cream and discussing the good old days for a while. Suddenly Buttons choked on her ice cream.
Alexis pounded on her friend's back. "You okay, Buttons?"
"The white guy over there. He took off his shades. We know him."
Alexis looked over at the bikers. "He looks familiar. But I'm not sure we really know him. Maybe we've just seen him around." She said uncertainly.
"No. That's Vince Peake. I'm sure of it." Buttons whispered.
"Who's Vince Peake?" Carolyn asked.
"We went to high school with him. We didn't exactly move in the same circles, but that's Vince, all right." Alexis stood up and headed for the other table.
"Alexis! Don't." Buttons whispered at her friends retreating back.
As Alexis walked up to the biker's table, she saw they were checking her out. And in a manner she didn't appreciate. It was too late, she had to keep walking.
She stopped by the table. "Vince Peake?"
Peake looked up at her. "Alexis Castle. Still hanging out at HoBo's, are you?"
"Who's the chica?" Said one Hispanic.
"Yeah. Who's La Rojita here?" Said the other.
"We graduated from high school together." Peake said, his eyes were invisible behind his mirrored shades, but Alexis was sure he was looking at her boobs.
"She graduated from high school?" Said the tall, wiry Hispanic. "Me too."
The Asian laughed. "You had to stick a fuckin' pistol in your principal's ear to get your diploma, Flaco."
The Hispanic took on an air of injured innocence. "Things are different in Juarez. Not like across the border." He looked back at Alexis. "Introduce us, dude."
Peake shrugged. "Alexis Castle, this is Cowboy." He said, pointing to the Asian, who smiled at her. "That's Tuco." Tuco was a short, blocky Hispanic with an acne scarred face. "Next is Flaco." Flaco was the wiry Hispanic. "Last and least is J Boy." The African American nodded to her.
"So what do you do?" Asked Cowboy.
"Pre-med at Columbia." She said.
"About what I'd expect from you." Peake stood up, said "Out of here.", and started to head for the door. His friends began following him.
"What are you doing?" Alexis asked.
Peake turned around and smirked at her. "Living the dream, girl. I'm living the dream."
And they were gone.
Alexis walked back to her friends.
"It was Vince, wasn't it?" Buttons asked breathlessly.
"Yeah. And his friends."
"What did he say?" Carolyn asked.
Alexis shrugged. "Not much. He introduced me to his friends, but they just used nicknames."
Buttons nodded. "That way it'll be harder to identify them."
Alexis frowned at Buttons. "Really? Buttons, most bikers are lawyers, or accountants, or cops like my mom. It takes money to buy a Harley, so they have to be…"
"Drug dealers. Or gunrunners." Buttons replied. "Did those guys look like lawyers? They look like those guys on that TV show."
Alexis heard the roar of motorcycle engines and saw the five men drive away.
"Vince Peake, an outlaw biker. Probably the first from Marlowe Prep." Alexis said softly.
"Just be glad he's gone. Him and his friends are trouble." Buttons said.
…
Kate and her team surreptitiously watched Captain Gates and her guest. Lieutenant Bergdahl seemed to do most of the talking. Gates appeared to be none too happy with whatever it was she was hearing. Finally Gates got up and opened her door. "Detective Beckett? Bring your team in please."
When they were all inside, Castle noticed Bergdahl was glaring at him. Not that being glared at in that office was so unusual.
"Gates."Bergdahl snapped. "I'm not happy about bringing some civilian into this."
Gates smiled, which surprised the entire team. "Mr. Castle has been a part of Detective Beckett's team for years. If he's suddenly kicked off, people will notice and talk. And I had understood that we wanted to keep this quiet for as long as possible."
Bergdahl frowned. "Mr. Castle, none of this will ever go into one of your books, understand? None of it!"
"Of course not." Castle said, wondering how he could get something a bit like this into a Nikki Heat book without getting exactly this into the book.
Bergdahl glared at the team. They would find out that the glare was her default expression. "You now work for me and no one but me. Understand?"
They all nodded and mumbled affirmative noises, while silently noting that understanding was not the same as agreeing. Kate had trained her team well.
"You've undoubtedly noticed that you haven't been getting anything back on the Moncrief murder. That's because everything has been going to Internal Affairs. But now we need to investigate the killing and One PP has decided that homicide, under the control of IA will do the job."
She looked around as if expecting a comment, but no one did. "Did anyone recognize the building where your found Moncrief?"
The team looked at each other, then solemnly shook their heads.
"Do you recall the Borden Court shootings years ago?"
"Crap!" Espo said. "It was there. In that building."
Kate nodded. "I remember hearing about it over the radio in my unit when I was still a uniform."
Castle raised his hand. "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."
Bergdahl glared at Castle, then at Gates. Castle caught a subtext of "I told you so." in the look. "Mr. Castle, on May 16, 2001, three police officers went to that building after a concerned citizen reported a man carrying a baby and a gun entering the building. When they got the lobby, they were ambushed. At least six shooters from the shell cases and slugs recovered. One AK 47, two .45 caliber MAC 10s, two shotguns and an Israeli Galil assault rifle were found three days later in a dumpster a dozen blocks away and ballisticly matched as the murder weapons."
"The dead officers were Sergeant James Dunn, Officer Neal Borelli, and Officer David Grenzler."
"There was an exhaustive investigation, but no evidence IDing the shooters ever surfaced. Word on the street was that the shooters were the Tonton Macoutes."
"The bogeymen?" Castle said, surprised.
"Castle!" Beckett said sharply. "This is no time for your…"
"Actually, Mr. Castle is correct." Bergdahl broke in.
Castle smiled and just barely avoided sticking his tongue out at Kate. "Tonton Macoute is, literally translated from the Haitian Creole French, Uncle Gunnysack. Like the bogeyman, Uncle Gunnysack grabs naughty children and eats them. However, Tonton Macoute was also the nickname of the Haitian secret police under the Duvalier family who ran Haiti from the 1950s to the 1980s. Some of them are still active in Haiti, although they're no longer the secret police, just thugs."
Bergdahl nodded. "The d'Erlon family were never part of the Tonton Macoutes in Haiti, but took the name to terrify the local Haitian community in Miami when they came to the US. However, the gang was run out of Miami by larger, richer and better established Cuban and African American drug gangs. They then located to New York in the mid 90's."
"You suspect the d'Erlons were involved in the four murders?" Kate asked.
"We know they're connected. Moncrief was the Tonton Macoute's money man. He was responsible for laundering the gang's money for them."
"What's the connection with the police killings?" Castle asked.
"The .38 slugs that we recovered from Moncrief's body were in the system. They came from Sergeant Dunn's issued weapon. The blood found on the switch blade knife and the money was DNA matched to Officer Borelli. The handwriting on the notebook was from Officer Grenzler. We developed the film in the camera that was found in the bag." Bergdahl took some photos from a file and spread them on the desk. They were shots of the three police officers and four young women. Present in several of the photos were lines of a white powder on a mirror.
Ryan was unable to suppress a long, low whistle. "I'm betting that none of those women are the cop's wives."
Bergdahl nodded. "We're running them through facial recognition. We may or not get anything."
"This is going to be…" Espo began.
"It is, Detective Esposito. Those three officers were buried with full honors. The mayor spoke at the funeral, as did the police commissioner and the chief of police. Those three are official NYPD heroes and now we have to investigate them as suspects. Murder suspects."
"How much latitude do we have in the investigation?" Kate asked, picking her words carefully.
Bergdahl glared at her. "If you're asking if One PP would rather this be swept under the rug and forgotten about, the answer is no. If One PP wanted this buried, you'd have never heard of this."
Castle asked the obvious question. "Is there any real chance of finding anything about this after all this time?"
Bergdahl nodded. "We have two things. The notebook that Officer Grenzler wrote indicates they stole five and a half million dollars from drug gangs. None of the money ever showed up. The families never found a few million hidden in anybody's attic, or in a hidden bank account. Also, these were street cops. We can't see any way that they could have had good enough intel to know when and where that amount of drug money was to be able to steal it. We suspect someone gave them the tips and now has the money. And they're smart enough to have sat on it all these years."
Kate shook her ahead and was about to say something when Bergdahl cut her off.
"We also have a witness that was with Sergeant Dunn right up to the minute of the shootings."
"A witness?" Kate said. "I never heard there was a witness. Why didn't he testify?"
"He did. But at the time, no one believed him." Bergdahl took out an NYPD personnel file. "Officer Henry McCarty. Right out of the academy back in May, 2001. He was assigned to ride with an experienced officer, Sergeant Dunn, to break him in."
"Why didn't they believe him?" Castle asked.
"Because he said that Dunn told him to go to a bodega two blocks away and get Dunn an ice cream sandwich. He was two blocks away when the shooting occurred. At the time, everyone assumed that McCarty either had refused to go in, or that he had run away. That he was a coward."
Kate nodded. "If Dunn and his friends were going back to pick up the cash they'd left behind after killing Moncrief, they wouldn't want some rookie that they didn't know right there with them."
"So, all we need to do is call McCarty in and get his story." Kate stopped and thought. "But why didn't someone check his story at the time? Surely someone must have seen him."
Bergdahl shook her head. "No one saw anything, anything at all. Not the cops going in the building or McCarty going to the bodega. The clerk at the bodega wasn't sure if he had seen McCarty."
"Standard back then." Ryan said. "A drug gang killing some cops? No one would have seen a thing."
"So when can we get McCarty in and get his statement?"
"We're not sure, Detective Beckett. The NYPD has ways of unofficially handling people who they feel don't measure up to their standards. Nobody in the 12th wanted to work with McCarty because they thought he was a coward. So, he was transferred to personnel at One PP."
Kate looked over to Castle. "There are lot of jobs at One PP that, by law, need to be done by police officers. So, officers who are in some way suspect, can get transferred there and away from real police work. It's regarded as a career killer."
"McCarty was told that he'd never get out of personnel." Bergdahl added. "He stuck it out for a little more than a year. He put in requests for transfers for SWAT, K-9 unit, bomb disposal, and god knows what else, but was turned down by everyone. As far as anyone in the NYPD was concerned he was a coward and not wanted. Finally, he sent in his resignation. We have no idea where he is."
"How about his family?" Ryan asked.
"McCarty was from a police family. His granddad was a cop. His dad and his uncles were cops. His one aunt married a cop. His brothers and cousins were cops, NYPD, Port Authority, New York State Police, even one guy who's FDNY and works as an arson investigator. His wife was also from a cop family. Apparently the family disowned him and his wife dumped him. I talked to his oldest brother. They haven't heard from McCarty since he resigned."
"So?" Castle asked, frowning.
"We contacted the FBI, maybe they have some record of him."
"I'm betting he's as far from New York as he can get." Espo said.
"Yeah, and with a fourteen year plus head start, he'll be hard to find." Ryan added.
"Which doesn't mean we won't look." Bergdahl said coldly, as if she suspected the team was giving up before they started. She glanced at her watch. "I need to be somewhere else. I'm sending you everything we have on the case. It should be here shortly." She turned to Kate, ignoring Gates. "Remember you work for me and this is your only case. Be as closed mouth as you can be on this one. A lot of people won't be happy with where this investigation is going."
With that, Bergdahl left.
Gates stood up. "Well, get to it people."
Castle smiled at Gates, a smile that was not returned. "Sir, thank you for including me on this."
Now Gates did smile. "Oh, Mr. Castle, I wouldn't dream of depriving Lieutenant Bergdahl of the pleasure of your help on this case." Castle was pretty sure that what he was seeing was not Gates' happy smile.
The team gathered around Kate's desk. "What happened to McCarty sucks." She said.
"The NYPD decides he's a coward, which he wasn't, his family dumps him and so does his wife. What with the police grapevine, any kind of law enforcement job is not going to happen." Espo said.
"Maybe it's what he wanted." Ryan said. "I knew a guy in Narcotics who was from a cop family. Became a cop because that's what his family did. He hated it. Put up with it for five years and resigned. Last I heard he was running a deep sea fishing boat on the Texas Gulf coast."
"What did Bergdahl mean by people not liking where this was going?" Castle asked.
Kate looked around before answering. "A lot of cops will take the part of dirty cops. They just hate to think that their brothers in blue are really bad people. They blame everybody but the dirty cops. And remember, we're going after three heroes and trying to prove they were three crooks. A lot of people won't want to see that."
"Oh crap." Ryan said and pointed to the elevator. Three hand carts piled high with banker's boxes were being pushed out of the elevator.
"Detective Beckett?" Said a voice from behind the boxes. "Where do you want the first ones?"
"First ones?"
….
Rick and Kate were tired when they finally made it back to the loft. "We should order some Chinese, babe." Kate said. "I don't think either of us are in any mood to cook."
Rick nodded and pulled out his cell phone.
"Before you do anything, you might wish to talk to Alexis." Martha said, peeking out from Rick's office.
"Why should Alexis…And why are you in my office."
Martha smiled. "I just needed something. And Alexis was not in a good mood when she came home. She mumbled something about a guy she met."
Rick nodded tiredly. "I'll go talk to her."
"A woman's touch might be better, kiddo."
Rick turned to Kate. "You want to try this one?"
Kate didn't, but she nodded and went up the stairs to Alexis' room. The door was open so she stuck her head inside. "You okay, Alexis?"
"I guess."
Kate walked in and sat on the bed with Alexis. "You just guess you're okay? That doesn't sound okay."
Alexis looked at the floor for several minutes. "I saw a guy I went to Marlowe Prep with, Vince Peake."
"Old boyfriend?"
Alexis shook her head. "Just a guy I knew. We didn't run in the same circles. But he didn't show up at graduation and just disappeared. I know he was accepted at Rutgers, but never went there."
"Maybe he went somewhere else." Kate was having trouble figuring out the problem.
Alexis took a deep breath. "I saw him today. He was different." Alexis told Kate about her meeting with Vince Peake and his friends. "It was hard to tell since he was wearing sunglasses, but he was checking out my body. Like I was a piece of meat. The old Vince wasn't like that."
Kate guessed that if Vince was male and had a pulse, he was like that, but didn't say anything to Alexis. "People change, Alexis. If he wants to be some outlaw biker, you can't stop him. But, as a Harley rider myself, you may be blowing this all out of proportion. Vince and his friends may be like a lot of bikers. Perfectly respectable people who try to look like mean outlaw bikers on the weekend, or on vacation."
Alexis sighed. "I guess you're right."
"Want Chinese for dinner?"
Alexis smiled. "Sure."