Kate Beckett, Investigator Chapter 1

"Did you hear?" Jim Beckett asks soberly as Kate drops her bag on the desk she maintains at his office.

She nods. "It was all over the radio while I drove up here."

Jim shakes his head. "Twenty-five shots. Twenty-five shots they fired into the guy for holding a damn wallet! Katie, you were a cop. How do you mistake a wallet for a gun?"

"Dad, it's not that simple. Sometimes cops get so focused on a suspect that they see what they expect to see. And with the increasing protests against 'Stop and Frisk," a lot of guys in the NYPD are scared of a backlash. That may be what those cops thought was facing them."

"I don't know if I buy that," Jim says. "But if it did go down that way, then there's a deeper root to the problem."

"Dad, if you mean racism, yeah some cops are racist, but I don't believe you can describe the whole force that way."

"I wasn't referring to racism, Katie, although God knows it's undeniable. I'm referring to turning the whole basis for our justice system on its head. People are supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. But we both know that 'Stop and Frisk' – or shooting a guy with a wallet in his hand – are just the opposite. They're evidence of an immediate assumption of guilt, and it's past time someone did something about it."

"I agree, Dad. But the new mayor's program is damn popular, even in some of the communities of color. They're at least as scared of crime as other New Yorkers. Maybe more. So they're willing to put up with the insult of getting stopped for nothing if they think it makes them safer."

"But they can't agree with getting shot for nothing. And the latest shooting isn't the only stop that's escalated. Katie, our new mayor isn't calming a climate of fear, he's creating one. And when people are terrified, they do things they would never conceive of doing otherwise. In all the years you were on the street, you must have seen that."

"I did – a lot," Kate admits. "But Dad, are you just blowing off steam until you can get to a meeting, or are you proposing some kind of action?"

"I'm not proposing anything – not yet anyway. But I've been doing some research on Mayor Salvatore Gambitto. He spent a lot of money getting elected. I'd like to know where that money came from."

"You think it's mob money?"

Jim strokes his jaw. "Unlikely. Gambitto made his reputation as a prosecutor by going after the mob. I doubt they'd want him wielding the power of the mayor of the country's biggest metropolis. From what I've uncovered so far, I suspect it's corporate money, very well disguised, but corporate money. There are a lot of wheels a mayor can grease for business."

"And you want me to start digging into the wheels getting greased?" Kate asks.

"That's exactly what I want you to do."


"So you think some corporation filled Gambitto's campaign coffers and is possibly stuffing his pockets as well?" Castle inquires, handing Kate an early evening glass of wine.

"My father does, and from what research I've done so far, it looks like he might be on to something."

"Beckett, corporations rarely act out of the goodness of their imaginary hearts. What would they get from dear old Mayor Sal?"

Scowling, Kate takes a sip of her wine. "That's one of the things I've been trying to figure out, Babe. To back a mayoral candidate, it would have to be something big."

"Well, there have been some big projects going on in the city. You know Max, my business manager. He keeps track of them as possible investments and sends me a report every month. The biggest one was a plan for development at the old Penn Central Railyards. It was huge – skyscrapers full of luxury condos, upscale stores, and television and movie space. It was even supposed to be called Television City. The Nesgadol Corporation was behind it. It bought up the land and submitted plans to the city. But under Mayor Weldon, it ran up against all sorts of bureaucratic blocks. It would have been a tremendous drain on city resources. There were organizations with social and environmental concerns as well. The project would have generated huge amounts of hazardous waste. And instead of the lower-cost housing the city needs, the soaring towers would have only housed those with soaring bank accounts. Still, according to the reports I've received since Sal's been in office, the phoenix may be rising from the ashes. Several regulatory hurdles have disappeared from the development track."

"Nesgadol," Kate repeats. "I did run across that name a couple of times. Some of its executives were at one of Sal's fundraising dinners – the kind where you pay $1000 a plate for what you could get at any decent grill for 30. It sounds like it's worth a look. So, did you ever think about investing in Television City?"

"To say that Max recommended against it would be a vast understatement. But I dreamed about it for a while. Imagine being able to live in a tower where you could look down on the filming of a lightsaber duel."

"Castle, you know those are filmed in a studio with the laser light and sound put in later by computer, right?"

Castle sighs. "I know. Actually, one of my readers does some of the special effects. We message each other sometimes. But a man can dream. Sometimes dreams come true. I married you, didn't I?"

Kate reaches for a handful of Castle derriere. "Yes, you did. So, what are you going to do about it?'

Castle takes the wineglass from her hand and sets it on the counter. "I'm sure I can think of something."


At the Law Offices of James Beckett, Kate squints at her terminal. While searching for official filings regarding Nesgadol Corporation, she found the motherlode – or more like an avalanche. If printed out, the paper would fill the Beckett office and probably several others in the building. She has to refine her search – a lot. If Nesgadol is pulling Mayor Sal's strings, the documents that matter should have his metaphorical fingerprints on them. That would make them all fairly recent. She restricts her dates to the period after Sal was sworn into office. There! Sal's appointee to the city planning office signed off on some of Nesgadol's plans that were rejected under the previous administration. Continuing to search, she locates similar sign-offs from the zoning commission. Unfortunately, none of that proves that any money is changing hands, just that Sal seems to approve of Nesgadol's plans.

She needs to check into the finances of Mayor Sal's campaign. Donations are supposed to be public, but what is in the public disclosures could be a long way from what he actually received – particularly if the donations were in the form of something other than cash. "So what are you driving, Sal?" she mutters to herself. "Better yet, what are your wife and daughter driving?" As a cop, it would have been easy to check the DMV records. And she can call Ryan or Esposito to ask for a favor. But they still work for Gates and the last thing Kate wants is for Iron Gates to have a reason to come down on them. Maybe being around Castle has rubbed off a little. She can get creative.