Now What? Chapter 16
As Kate uses her cell phone to call in CSU, Esposito returns to the apartment. "Hey, I've got something weird. Burns' neighbor says she's been holding his mail for a week. He told her he was going to be out of the country for a while."
"Too bad that wasn't true," Rick says. "He wouldn't have ended up in Authentic Nick's pizza oven."
"It is the kind of thing you tell people when you don't want them looking for you," Kate considers.
Rick gazes around the trashed room. "If he's been holding up somewhere else, he would have had his notes with him. Maybe we can still find them. But he didn't take his daughter's picture with him. He must not have expected to stay away long. So, a hotel, maybe, or an SRO? Given what Shaw said Burns was scraping by on, it couldn't have been anywhere that would cost much."
"Maybe Shaw knows where he was," Kate speculates, pulling out her phone. She thumbs the speaker button.
"He never told me where he was staying, just that he was laying low, Detective Beckett," Shaw recalls. "But he called me from what he said was a payphone. It might have been nearby."
"There aren't many of those left," Castle says. "Shouldn't be hard to track."
Before Kate can put her phone away, she gets a text alert. "CSU found prints on the oven. They belonged to Nick."
"Of course, his fingerprints would be there. It's his oven. Not much help," Rick assumes.
"Not Nick, Ralph Carbone or Nick Junior, Terrific Authentic Nick, Sal Malavolta. I'll have the unis pull him in."
"Shouldn't we try to track down Burns' phone call?" Rick questions.
"Castle, our first job is to find the murderer," Kate reminds him. "If that's Sal Malavolta, Burn's activities become irrelevant."
"Not to me," Rick mutters, as Kate briskly leads the way back to her unit.
Kate pulls a picture of Gordon Burns from her leather folder and shoves it across the table. "Know this guy, Nick? Or should I say, Sal?"
"Yeah, I know him," Sal replies casually. "That's the reporter doing a story on us."
Kate circles the table to loom over the suspect. "And what did the two of you talk about?"
"He wanted to know who's the real Nick. So I told him about my grandpa Nick. He was an authentic Ellis Island immigrant who was flipping his dough on Mott Street the day he arrived."
"What else?" Rick queries.
"That's it," Sal insists. "Why?"
Rick's expression darkens as his hands curl into fists. "It just doesn't seem like much of a reason to kill him."
Sal lunges out of his chair. "Kill him? I didn't kill nobody!"
"Sit down!" Kate commands. "Your fingerprints were all over the oven where the killer put the body, Sal. How do you explain that?"
"I was there," Sal admits, "but a couple of days before. Ralph accused me of soaping his sauce, so he broke into my place and took all the breakers out of my electrical panel. I wanted to get him back. He kept bragging about his oven, so I thought I'd…."
"Put a body in it," Rick interrupts.
"No! I had nothing to do with a body. I wanted to steal the oven. I broke in to see what I'd need to get it out."
Kate rolls her eyes. "You're kidding me, right?"
"Look, I couldn't have put a body in Ralph's oven," Sal argues. "I was in O'Mary's on Staten Island last night until closing. It was dart night. I took third place. You can check. But you wanna look at somebody? Look at Ralph."
"Why Ralph?" Kate asks.
"You think he makes all that money with his crappy pizza? He's connected. All he cares about is laundering money for his wise guy pals."
"If that's true, it's the kind of story Burns would have loved to get his teeth into," Rick says. "Did you mention it to him?"
"As a matter of fact," Sal says triumphantly, "I did."
Ralph Carbone recoils under Kate's questioning. "Money laundering, whoa!"
Kate drums her fingertips against her folder. "We ran you through the federal database. We know about the FBI's investigation in the '90s and your connection to the Spolano Crime Family."
"My connection!" Ralph sputters. "A Spolano is my second cousin once removed. I see him sometimes at Thanksgiving and believe me; we don't talk business. And if you checked the records, you know the feds didn't find anything."
"The feds didn't, but it wouldn't be the first time Gordon Burns found something they missed. They had 100 agents looking in the wrong state for a bomber, but Gordon figured out where he actually was. He even interviewed him while the feds were on their way after he called them in," Rick adds. "Gordon Burns uncovered your dirty operation, and you killed him for it."
"Gordon Burns didn't find anything because there was nothing to find," Ralph insists. "I make money with my pizza. Sal put you two up to this, right? Sal's the one who brought in the feds to begin with. He's the one you should be looking at."
"I checked Sal's alibi for last night. It's solid. So the question, Mr. Carbone," Kate continues, "is where were you?"
"I was home in bed. You can ask my wife. And the only thing Gordon Burns ever asked me about," Ralph adds, "was my pizza."
Esposito struts off the elevator as Kate and Rick are crossing the bullpen. "I hit more paydirt on the canvass of Burns' neighbors. A neighbor who just came home said she saw Burns having a knockdown drag out with another guy, right before he left."
"About what?" Rick asks.
"Neighbor didn't know, but she remembered a Brooklyn accent." Esposito holds up his fingers in air quotes. "If you print that, I swear to God I'll kill you."
"Did you get a description?" Kate inquires.
Esposito grins. "He's authentic and terrific."
"Luca Sabalini," Rick and Kate exclaim simultaneously.
"Bring him in, Espo," Kate orders.
The Hispanic cop nods smugly. "Unis are doing that now."
Rick shakes his head as Kate fills in the murder board. "Beckett, if Sabalini argued with Burns at his apartment, he wouldn't have known where to find him at the time he was killed. And we still don't know where Burns was staying or what he uncovered."
"Castle, I know you're curious, but if we can get a confession out of Sabalini, we won't need to find Burns' notes or anything else."
"I'm more than curious. Burns shouldn't be remembered as a drunken has-been. That story would be a positive cap to Burns' legacy. It deserves to be told."
"And maybe after we nail Burns' murderer, you can figure out a way to tell it. But right now, we have to concentrate on our most likely suspect, and that's Luca Sabalini,"
"Right, but until we get him in the box, I have something to check out."
Rick retreats to the break room with his phone and types a query into Google: "Where are there still payphones in New York City?" The list is short, and one entry catches his eye: Seventh Avenue and 50th Street, the location of the Haft Hotel. Rick remembers a story that Burns wrote uncovering a real estate developer who was paying thugs to attack the hotel's patrons to drive it out of business so he could buy it cheap. The developer ended up in prison, and the hotel survived. Rick wouldn't be surprised if Burns could have had a room there gratis with no questions asked, anytime he needed a hidey hole. He'll find out. And if Luca Sabalini doesn't pan out, Beckett may find out, too.
A/N There is a hotel at Seventh Ave and 50th Street, but the Haft Hotel story is fictional. However, the last public payphone in New York City was removed from that corner years after Castle was canceled.