Who Are You?

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I still don't own Castle. Rating: M Time: The future.

Chapter Three

Richard Castle put down the file he had been reading and turned to Kate. "Is there some reason that NYPD detectives can't or won't use Spell Check? That's the third detective that spells perpetrator as P-E-R-P-E-R-A-T-O-R. Or is this some sort of police inside joke thing? The secret code of a secret society of police dedicated to hunting down zombies? Or, maybe…"

Kate's glare stopped him. "Babe, if this boring police work isn't for you, you know you could go home and come back when we have something more to your liking."

Castle thought that Kate almost sounded like she meant it. "No. Not going to happen. " He said quickly. "Human memories being what they are, this is our best chance to find anything. And that's not saying a lot."

"So what should we do, bro?" Esposito asked. "Just go through the motions?"

"Of course not. I wouldn't be sitting here with you guys if I thought we should just go through the motions. There just has to be an easier way to do this. I mean, look." Castle gestured to the Great Wall of Boxes that contained all of the files on the shooting, the dead officers, the one living ex-police witness, and files on every officer who might have been involved with the three dead and presumably dirty officers, and all of the gang members who may have had some knowledge of the crime. "Each one of us has to read every file. Couldn't we put everything on some giant government super computer and have it collate the information…"

"And provide the names of the killers and any other dirty cops, bro?" Espo shook his head. "That would put us out of a job."

"You too." Ryan added. "A computer that good would write your books for you."

"Heresy." Castle grumped. "You have no understanding of the creative process."

"As long as we have a break here," Kate broke in, "has anyone seen a pattern here? Anything out of the ordinary?"

"Yeah." Espo said quickly. "The pattern is that three cops walk into a building, there's more gunfire than there was at Fallujah, another cop walks two blocks to get an ice cream, and no one heard or saw a thing."

"I noticed something." Ryan spoke up. "There seems to have been a hell of a lot more effort put into trying to prove that that this McCarty guy was a coward than in finding the killers."

"You know what witnesses are like when a violent gang are concerned. They aren't going to say a word." Espo countered.

Kate thought for a second. "Maybe there was a method in their madness. They figured that people in that neighborhood would want to get a cop fired, so they concentrated on that. And if a witness started talking, they'd start asking him about other things until they got something on the shooters out of him."

"If that was their plan, "Castle said, holding up a file, "it didn't work. There's nothing about McCarty in anything I've seen so far. It's like he wasn't even there."

"I tell you, bro, it's hear no evil, see no evil and say no evil."

Castle began staring at the far wall. "Here's an idea. These cops were presumably stealing from different drug gangs. Maybe we should talk to the gang mambers."

"Sure." Kate said. "We'll just stroll by and say, "Hi, we're the NYPD, care to tell us about your drug dealing and any thefts by dirty cops?" That might not work out, Castle."

"Well, when you put it that way…"

"Speaking of dirty cops," Ryan looked over their heads towards the elevator. "Hey, Riley! You taken your annual bath yet?"

"Nah." Said the cop approaching Kate's team. "I'm waiting for your mom to come around to wash me off." He smiled at Kate and held out his hand. "Detective Jim Riley, Narcotics. I see you got stuck with the Irish Plague when we finally got him out of Narcotics. Get any work out of him?"

"More than you did, I guess." Kate replied, but with a smile.

"Riley here was famous as the dirtiest cop in all of New York. Maybe in all of the US."

Riley leaned on Kate's desk. "Yeah. Go undercover as a homeless bum, the sergeant said. It'll only be for three, four hours max. Yeah! I was undercover for five freakin' days. Some drunk barfed all over me and some stoned college kid peed all over me."

"His cover was perfect." Ryan said, laughing.

"Yeah, when we finally collared our perp, I sat right next to him in interrogation. He confessed like that. I had to take four showers before my wife would let me sit at the dinner table with her."

"And no one in Narcotics has ever let him forget any of it." Ryan added, still laughing.

"So, I understand you need some background on drug dealers back in the day? Specifically, the Tonton Macoutes?"

"Pull up a chair and tell us all about them?" Kate invited.

Riley sat and put a thick file down on Kate's desk. "This is our file on them, but I'll hit the high spots for you. The leaders were the three d'Erlon brothers and two cousins, also named d'Erlon. Showed up here from Miami in about 1996 and set up shop in Little Haiti, selling drugs. There was a lot of competition back then and they proved to be as violent and dangerous as anyone else. But, they didn't have the money or the manpower to survive a full scale war. Both the M-19, a Central American gang, and the King George Street Boys, Jamaicans, decided to take them out. At Emile d'Erlon's birthday in 2003, a whole group of shooters broke into his party and opened fire. When the smoke cleared, everybody was dead. The only surviving D'Erlon was Julian, one of Emile's cousins who had been late to the party. He grabbed what money he could and went back to Haiti. Most of the rest of the gang left town or went to work with whoever would have them."

"What about the two other gangs?" Castle asked.

"Most of the New York M-19s were busted by the Feds a couple of years later. Those not still in jail were deported. And the Jamaicans were absorbed, so to speak, by Vulcan Simmons. When that fell apart, the ones still living, and out of jail, scattered."

"Vulcan Simmons?" Kate said softly. Castle reached over and took her hand, squeezing it lightly.

"Did anyone take over for Simmons after his death?" Castle asked.

Riley shook his head. "No. Existing gangs grabbed his territory. Most of the Jamaicans still in the life were, and still are, small timers."

"Any rumors of drug gangs being ripped off?" Ryan asked.

Riley smiled. "All the time. Why go out and sell drugs at the retail level when you can steal it wholesale?"

"Any real big, or long term, robberies like that?"

Riley looked at the ceiling and scratched his ear. "Not that I can recall. Any reason?"

"We have a dead money man, Napoleon Moncrief, a former Tonton Macoute. His body was found recently in the same building where three cops were killed back in 2001. It looks like he was ripped off and then killed."

"You think there's a connection? The cops walked in on something and got killed?"

Kate shrugged. "It's a theory. But, it's really hard to pinpoint time of death after all this time. Moncrief could have been dead for months before the shooting, or walking around six months after, our ME can't tell. We're looking, but it's hard to find anything."

"But you could have something on those cop killers?" Riley said, suddenly enthused.

"Hey, don't go overboard here." Ryan cautioned. "You know what the chances are of solving a murder that old are. All we have is two killings in the same building. Given what that area was like back in the day, I'm surprised we don't find old dead bodies all the time. We just need to look at the cop killings and see if we find anything. We don't need every cop in New York calling us up wanting to know what's what. We may never solve any of these."

"Can you give us anything about other gangs operating at that time?" Castle asked. "If we know who was getting ripped off and who wasn't maybe we can find a pattern."

Riley nodded. "I'll see what I can do. I know a couple of old retired Narcotics detectives who were really knowledgeable back in the day. I'll talk to them, too."

Riley left and Kate and her team looked at the new, thick file they would have to read. "Do you think that Narcotics cops used Spell Check?" Castle asked.

"If they're Narcotics cops, you'll probably find most of their reports are written in crayon, bro." That got Esposito a glare from Ryan.

They continued reading and eventually decided that it was time for lunch. They had just stood up to go to Remy's when Lieutenant Bergdahl got out of the elevator and stomped into Gates' office. "Stay where you are." She snarled at Kate and her team as she slammed the door.

The team watched as Bergdahl got seriously into Gates' face. They couldn't tell what was being said, but it was obvious that a serious argument was in progress.

"I'm betting that Gates knocks her out with one punch. "Castle said, fascinated. "Bergdahl's big and rangy, but my money's on Captain Crusher, the 12th Precinct Punisher, the Scourge of..."

"Uh oh." Beckett spoke. Gates and Bergdahl both turned, glared at the team and beckoned them to come in.

"Did you speak to anyone about this investigation, in spite of my specific orders to keep it quiet?" Bergdahl fumed.

Everyone quickly said they had not.

Bergdahl turned on Gates. "I knew it was a bad idea to bring an untrained civilian into this."

Gates bristled at the criticism. "I have every confidence that none of my people leaked anything and considering who you heard it from, there may be no leak in the NYPD at all."

Bergdahl just glared at one and all.

"What happened, sir?" Kate asked.

Bergdahl answered. "I got a call from the US Attorney's Office in Manhattan. They want to see us about our request to the FBI concerning Mr. McCarty. They specifically asked me to bring Captain Gates, Detectives Beckett, Esposito and Ryan and Mr. Richard Castle to the meeting. They know about the investigation."

"Do you think they've bugged the precinct?" Castle asked.

Bergdahl gave Castle an especially severe glare and headed for the elevator. "We have an appointment at One St. Andrew's Plaza at two PM, people."

Rick and Kate drove to the US Attorney's office in her car.

"Any idea why the US Attorney's office is involved in this?" he asked.

"Yes. And it's probably not good. He may be the subject of a criminal investigation. He wouldn't be the first ex-cop to use his law enforcement training for his own financial gain. And considering how he must feel about the NYPD and police in general, he may well have gone rogue. Or, he may be a confidential informant. Arrested and giving the choice of testifying and going into witsec or going to jail. In either case, the US Attorney is likely to tell us to leave him alone."

"Can they do that?"

Kate nodded. "They could charge us with obstruction of justice. They'd probably drop the charges eventually. They don't want to piss off the NYPD that badly, but we could spend a couple of months fighting the charges and by the time we were able to get back to Moncrief's murder and the rest, who knows what we'd find. If anything."

"Do we really need McCarty that badly?"

Kate thought about that for a while. "We don't know. He may know nothing. Or, he may be the key to the whole thing."

Castle frowned. "I just had a terrible idea you won't like."

Kate sighed. "Tell me."

"We've been assuming that McCarty wasn't involved in this. That he was sent away by the dirty cops. Suppose he was dirty, too. Somehow he missed the killing of the other three cops, and knowing where the rest of the five and a half million was, he hung around long enough to make it look good, then took off with his ill- gotten gains. That might explain his disappearance and why the US Attorney is interested in him."

"Why would three dirty cops trust a kid just out of the academy that they didn't know?"

"Maybe he was like that cop that Ryan knew. He hated being a cop, but family pressure pushed him into it. He walks in on the three cops with a bag of cash and a dead drug dealer and says he wants in. The three dirty cops can either take him in, or kill him. Taking him in is easier."

"You're right. I hate that idea."

The officers arrived at the US Attorney's office and were directed to the office of the US Attorney himself.

"The US Attorney wants to see us?" Gates said to Bergdahl. "This is not good."

Bergdahl said nothing.

They were ushered into an office on the top floor. A short, blocky, but very well dressed Hispanic man rose from behind his desk. He gave them a professional smile and invited them to sit. "I'm Carlos Cruz-Reynoso, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York." The smile faded. "I've been asked to talk to you personally about your request for some information from the Federal Government."

"About Henry McCarty?" Bergdahl said.

"Yes. Had it been up to us, this meeting would never have taken place and you would have been told nothing. However, for some reason, the mayor has taken and interest in this case, and has called in some favors in Washington. In particular, the new junior senator from New York was particularly interested when told that Detective Beckett and her husband was involved. Quite understandable, as he owes his election to former Senator Bracken's downfall."

Bergdahl and Gates looked sharply at Castle. Ryan and Esposito looked away and Kate took his hand. "I never talked to the mayor about this." Castle said in his defense.

"The mayor was informed by…people in the upper echelons at One Police Plaza. They find it…convenient to keep the mayor in the loop." Cruz-Reynoso said, somewhat distastefully. "There are leaks everywhere these days. However, to decide how to answer your request, I need to know why you need to speak to McCarty." Cruz-Reynoso sat down and stared at his visitors, waiting for them to speak.

Lieutenant Bergdahl explained the case to the US Attorney.

When she was done, he shook his head. "So, this is about nothing more than some corrupt cops and a dead man?"

"Senator Bracken's case started out with some crooked cops and a murder." Kate said acidly. She had the feeling that the Department of Justice was going to find some way to stonewall them. She had experience with that.

Cruz-Reynoso ignored her comment. "I'll discuss this with DC and get back to you." He took a file from his desk and started reading in, indicating he was done with them.

"This is an active case." Gates said, barely controlling her anger.

"There are many active cases." He replied, not looking up from his file.

Still angry, Kate led her team out of the building, followed by Gates and Bergdahl.

"Castle!" Bergdahl barked once they were outside. "Are you sure you didn't say anything to the mayor about this?"

"Positive. And as Cruz-Reynoso said, there are plenty of people at One PP who'd be happy to keep the mayor in the loop."

"Castle." Kate said softly. "You might want to share your idea about Mr. McCarty with everyone else."

Everyone looked at Castle expectantly, so he had no option but to tell them that there was a possibility that McCarty wasn't an innocent bystander in all of this, but a participant.

Bergdahl cursed under her breath. "I hate to say it, but that's a possibility that we hadn't considered before." Bergdahl stared at her feet for a few seconds, then spoke. "I'll talk to some people and see if I can get a handle on his feelings for the police. Maybe he only went to the academy because his family insisted. And, I have some friends who won't run to the US Attorney with everything. I'll see if any of them know anything about McCarty. If he has five million plus dollars, he might have made a splash somewhere and then needed more money."

"Or he might be smart." Castle said.

He got the expected glare from Bergdahl.

In spite of that, he went on. "Five million dollars will make a down payment on fifty million dollars' worth of commercial property. He can use the extra half million to live off of until his investments start to pay off. I mean, he could be a big property tycoon in Brazil by now."

Kate shook her head. "If the US Attorney has a handle on him. I'm sure he's in the US."

Bergdahl gave everyone her patented glare. "Get back to your precinct and get to work. I have a feeling that the DOJ isn't going to be a big help to us."

Once in the car, Castle spoke to Kate. "I have another idea that you'll probably like."

"If it involves a bottle of wine and a long, relaxing bath for two, I'll love it."

"Actually, that was my second idea. This one you'll only like."

"I'm holding out for the wine and bath, Writer Boy."

"Which you'll get. And maybe even a little something else."

"Not a big something else?" Kate said suggestively.

"Detective Beckett!" Castle said, faking shock. "I'll see what I can do. But, according to our first sweep through the neighborhood, the clerk at the bodega where McCarty was sent isn't there any more. We should go try to find him tomorrow. With armed drug gangs about back then, he wouldn't talk, but maybe now he will."

"This wouldn't have anything to do with your dislike of paper work, would it?" Kate smirked.

"Yes. And it's a good idea as well."

…...

Alexis Castle took the bus back to the loft. It was cheaper than a cab and she enjoyed people watching from the higher bus. The bus had stopped because the road had narrowed to one lane due to some construction. As the bus inched forward, Alexis looked out at a largely Hispanic neighborhood. Suddenly, she saw five familiar looking motorcycle riders turn across traffic and stop in front of a bar. As they took their helmets off, Alexis recognized Vince Peake and his friends. She pulled out her phone and took a several pictures of the bar so that she'd be sure to be able to find it again, also making note of the nearest cross street.

This wasn't the best of neighborhoods, but Alexis had decided that Vince Peake needed help in his life and she was just the person to help him. Even if Peake didn't want help. She remembered that Kate Beckett had never wanted her father's help, or anyone else's help on anything, but that she had changed. Vince would change, too.

She hoped.