Unexpected Appearance Chapter 10

A year later

Desolation hangs in the early-morning air over the warehouse district in the Bronx. Rick points to a taxi missing almost everything except its yellow paint. "Its condition was predictable, but what was a cab doing up here? Not exactly a lot of pedestrian traffic – not that can afford cab fare, anyway."

"A security guard wondered the same thing," Esposito replies. "That's when he came across the body."

"Who's our victim?" Kate inquires.

"Amir Alhabi, taxi driver," Esposito reports.

"All right. Contact auto theft. Have them look out for the stolen parts," Kate instructs.

Esposito rocks on the balls of his feet. "Already done." He leads Kate and Castle into the warehouse, where Lanie kneels over a body.

"Did he have any money on him?" Kate asks.

"Not on the body. Not in the cab. Everything points to him being popped for cash and car parts," Esposito says.

Lanie looks up. "Not everything."

"Did you find something unusual?" Kate queries.

"Not at first. Time of death fits a robbery. He was killed at 11:15."

"I'm impressed," Rick announces.

"His watch broke when he fell," Lanie admits.

"Less impressed," Rick says.

"Cause of death fits too," Lanie continues. "Looks like a 9 mm to the noggin."

"So what was unusual?" Kate presses.

"His fingers were broken one at a time."

Rick flashes back to the methods of torture Agent Turner outlined to him during his time at the CIA. He pushes the memory to the back of his mind. "Sometimes cabbies hide their money. Maybe he was tortured to force him to reveal his hiding place."

"Could be," Kate acknowledges. "Let's find out where he was driving and who he picked up before he wound up here."

At midmorning, Kate and Rick gather with Ryan and Esposito at the murder board. Ryan flips open a file. "Amir Alhabi, a real immigrant success story. Came over from Syria seven years ago, became a citizen last June. According to the taxi and limo commission, he owned his cab and a medallion with his cousin Jamal."

"A cab medallion can be worth a fortune, even with the car services cutting into the value," Rick notes. "It costs a lot more than a cab. He either worked his ass off or had other resources – or maybe both."

"Um, well, the TLC tracks cabs, don't they?" Kate asks. "They would know where he was driving."

Ryan shakes his head. "They only track while the meter is on. Amir shut his off at 10:02."

"So he shuts off his meter and ends up in a part of the city where he's unlikely to pick up a fare. Then, he gets tortured. He must have been up to something besides driving a cab," Rick speculates. "But there's no way to tell where he went before he died."

"Actually, there is." Ryan taps his file. "Amir subscribed to a GPS tracking service. It helps cabbies map out the best places to troll for fares, stuff like that. After Amir shut off his meter, he drove to Washington Heights. He parked in the 1600 block of St. Nicholas Avenue for six minutes. Then he drove to the warehouse."

"OK, that part of Washington Heights is a shady place that time of night, and if he turned off his meter, he wasn't looking for a fare," Kate figures.

"Maybe he was carjacked and forced to drive to the warehouse," Rick offers.

"Have unis canvass the area," Kate tells Ryan and Esposito. "See if anyone remembers seeing him. What was his last phone call?"

Ryan consults his file. "It was to his wife, Nazihah Alhabi, at 10:01 pm. But actually, there was one more thing on the phone. Amir opened a notebook application." Ryan grabs a marker. "He wrote down this."

"C4121652," Rick reads. "It's not a phone number and doesn't look like a license tag."

"You guys see if you can figure it out,' Kate says. "Castle and I will go see Nazihah Alhabi."

"These notifications are always tough," Rick says as they head for the elevator.

"You don't have to go, Castle," Kate points out. "No one's going to dock you for taking off."

"It is harder to go lower than zero dollars an hour," Rick agrees, "unless the NYPD wants me to pay them."

"You pay your other consultants," Kate asserts.

"Sometimes. But then the NYPD would have to pay me for all the free good PR. I think you'd end up on the wrong end of the stick, like whatever he was up to, Amir Alhabi did."

Kate pushes the call button. "Maybe Nazihah will have an idea what the wrong end was."

Grief etches itself on Nazihah's face as she sits on a small couch. "Mrs. Alhabi," Kate says gently, "we understand that Amir called you at ten. What did the two of you talk about?"

"Just that he'd be late," Nazihah replies. "The plays were getting out on Broadway, and he wanted to pick up a few fares."

"Actually, he didn't do that," Beckett tells the widow. "He turned his meter off and went up to Washington Heights, to an area known for drug dealing and prostitution."

"No!" Nazihah insists. "He would never do such things." Jamal Alhabi hands Nazihah a glass of water. She takes a shaky sip. "Thank you, Jamal."

Castle shows the Alhabis a page of his pocket notebook where he'd copied Amir's notation. "This was on Amir's phone. Do you have any idea what it is?"

"C4121642," Jamal reads. "No. I thought that this was a robbery, that he was robbed."

"It was," Kate quickly confirms. "It's just that any detail might be relevant. How did he seem lately?"

"Worried about money," Nazihah confides. "Mollica, our daughter, she needed surgery. It's been very hard. She'll never know her father." A baby's cries sound from another room. "I need to take care of her. Excuse me."

Kate watches Nazihah hurry away before turning her attention to Jamal. "You and Amir were business partners?"

Gazing towards the room where Nazihah disappeared, Jamal just nods.

"How was business doing?" Kate continues.

Jamal sighs. "You don't get rich driving a cab, but we made money. Amir drove, and we rented shifts to other drivers."

"And who were they?" Kate queries.

"Kevin McCann and Dmitri Voldov."

"So you didn't drive the cab?" Rick questions.

"No. For me, it was an investment. I just started a new business, a moving company."

"TLC doesn't issue a lot of medallions," Rick points out. "It should be worth a small fortune. Who's going to inherit Amir's share?"

Jamal looks grim. "Nazihah. She'll need it."

"Beckett," Rick says as he and Kate return to her unit, "it would have taken a lot of capital to buy that medallion. Amir, Jamal, and Nazihah couldn't have been like many refugees lucky just to have the clothes on their backs when they fled oppression. When they left Syria, they must have been allowed to take their assets with them. And Amir wouldn't have earned any bundles driving in Syria, either. He must have been doing something else, something that gave the Syrian government a reason for allowing him to depart in reasonable comfort."

"Castle, from the way Nazihah was talking about needing money for medical bills, it didn't sound like they were having that much comfort," Kate argues.

"No, it doesn't," Rick agrees. "But Amir wasn't bussing tables or doing laundry for slave wages, either. If he got that clear a path to citizenship, our government might have wanted to keep him here. That makes no sense if he was just a cab driver. But it might have something to do with why he was tortured."

"So, what does the spy-story writer think Amir's big secret was?" Kate asks.

"I have no idea, Beckett," Rick confesses. "But I'm going to try to find out."