Richard Castle: Heat Rises

They convoyed down Second until the lead car worked a right at Eighty-fifth that eventually fed them into a Central Park transverse much like the one in which Nikki got ambushed days before. Coming out the other side, Rook almost lost them at Columbus when the taxi he was following as a buffer stopped short to pick up a fare. He jacked the wheel and sped around the cab, managing to catch up with the Lincoln at a red light at Amsterdam. The light changed to green, but the car didn’t move. Instead Martinez and Guzman got out and entered a bar. Guzman had the black leather case with him. The town car left and Rook pulled into a loading zone around the corner from the pub.

He knew the Brass Harpoon for several reasons. First, it was one of those legendary writer’s bars of old Manhattan. Booze-infused geniuses from Hemingway to Cheever to O’Hara to Exley left their condensation rings on the bar and on tabletops at the Harpoon over the decades. It was also a mythical survivor of prohibition, with its secret doors and underground tunnels, long since condemned, where alcohol could be smuggled in and drunks smuggled out blocks away. Rook knew this spot for another reason. He could picture its name in Nikki’s neat block capitals on Murder Board South as the preferred hangout for Father Gerry Graf. He ruminated on the priest’s missing hour and a half between getting the video from Meuller and showing up drunk at the Justicia headquarters and the math wasn’t hard to do.

Rook was questioning what his next move should be. His bladder answered. On his way to the door he reasoned that neither Martinez nor Guzman had met him, so his chances of being recognized were slim. Unless he waited too long and walked in with wet khakis, he shouldn’t attract any notice. But then, this was the Brass Harpoon, so wet trousers were probably the norm. Safe either way then.

It was just after four and there were only six customers in the place. All six swung their heads to check him out when he stepped in. The two he had followed were not in sight. “What can I do you?” asked the barkeep.

“Jameson,” said Rook, eyeing the bottle of Cutty Sark on the top shelf under the small shrine that had been created in honor of Father Graf. His framed laughing photo was adorned in purple bunting, and a rocks tumbler with his name etched in the glass rested on a green velvet pillow underneath. Rook put some money down and said he’d be right back.

There were no feet under the stalls in the gents’. Rook hurried to his business, achieving blessed relief as he read the sampler hung above the urinal: “ ‘Write drunk; edit sober.’ -Ernest Hemingway.”

Then he heard the voice he had been listening to at brunch that morning. Alejandro Martinez was laughing and joking with someone. He zipped but didn’t flush, instead roamed the restroom to hear which wall the voices were coming through. But they weren’t coming through the wall.

They were coming through the floor.

Easing out the men’s room door, Rook scoped the bar and saw a Jameson at his place, but nobody seemed interested in his whereabouts. He backed his way into the hall, and past the manager’s office, coming to a brick wall. He had read the legends-what writer worth his or her hangover hadn’t? He squared himself to that wall, scanning it, his fingers fluttering before him like a safecracker’s. Sure enough, one of the bricks had a slight discoloration, a patina of finger grime on its edging.

He thought about calling Nikki, but someone was coming. Maybe to use the restroom, or perhaps the manager. Rook pinched the brick between his thumb and forefinger and pulled. The wall opened; its brickwork was just facing over a door. The air coming out was cool and smelled of must and stale beer. He slipped through the doorway and pushed the wall closed. In the murky light he could barely make out a flight of exposed wooden stairs. He tiptoed down, keeping his feet close to the side to minimize the chance of the steps creaking. At the bottom he paused to listen. Then his eyes were blinded by flashlights. He was grabbed by his jacket front and spun against a wall.

“You lost, buddy?” It was Martinez. And he could smell his mother’s Chloe on him.

“Totally.” Rook tried to laugh it off. “Were you looking for the men’s room, too?”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” came the voice of someone beside Martinez who Rook figured to be Guzman.

Rook squinted. “Think you could cool the high beams? They’re killing me.”

“Turn them off,” said a third voice. The flashlights lowered from his eyes. He heard a switch thrown and the overheads came on. Rook was still blinking to adjust when the third man came into view like an apparition. Rook recognized him from the news and from his books.

There before him, standing in the middle of a makeshift apartment in the secret basement, among old kegs and cartons, was the exiled Colombian author Faustino Velez Arango.

“You know who I am; I can tell by the way you look at me,” said Velez Arango.

“Nope, sorry. I’m just getting my vision back after your friends gave me the eye exam.” Then he started backing toward the stairs. “I’m obviously the buzz killer at your little party, so don’t let me intrude.”

Guzman braced him by the shoulders against an old refrigerator and frisked him. “No weapons,” he said.

Alejandro Martinez asked, “Who are you and why did you come here?”

“The truth? OK, at brunch this morning my mother gave you ten thousand dollars of my money in that black case over there and I want it back.”

“Alejandro, he followed you?” Pascual Guzman’s agitation manifested in scanning the basement as if their intruder had arrived with a platoon of ninjas.

It could have been a grave tactical error, but Rook gauged the author as the most powerful in the group and keyed off him for cues. He took a chance and said, “Relax. There’s nobody else, I came alone.”

Guzman took Rook’s wallet and opened it to his license. “Jameson A. Rook.”

“The A is for Alexander,” he said, eyeing Alejandro Martinez, hoping that would lend credibility to his story about following the money. “Nice name.” But Rook’s attention was drawn to Faustino Velez Arango, whose thick brow had lowered over a glare fixed on him. As he approached, working his jaw, Rook braced for a blow.

The exile stopped inches from him and said, “You are Jameson Rook, the writer?” Rook nodded tentatively. Faustino Velez Arango’s hands came up at him, both suddenly clutching his right hand and shaking it with delight. “I have read everything you ever wrote.” He turned to his companions and said, “This is one of the best living nonfiction writers in print today.” Then back to Rook, he said, “An honor.”

“Thanks. Coming from you, that’s-well, I especially like the part about ‘living’ because, I plan to do a bit more of it.”

There was an immediate sea change. Velez Arango gestured for Rook to sit in the easy chair, and he pulled up a wicker seat beside him. The other two were not yet aboard but seemed to relax a bit as they stood by. “I must say, Mr. Rook, that it takes courage not only to gain the access to a story as you do from all sides but then to overcome dangerous obstacles to get the hard truth into mainstream media.”

“You’re talking about my piece on Mick Jagger’s birthday, right?”

Velez Arango laughed and said, “I was thinking more of the ones on Chechnya and also the Appalachian coal miners, but yes, Mick in Portofino was brilliant. Excuse me one moment.” From the end table the novelist took a vial beside the white bag from the farmacia and shook out a pill. While he washed it back with some water, Rook noted the prescription label. Adefovir dipivoxil, the same drug unaccountably found in Father Graf’s medicine chest. So now it was accountable. Graf was bearding for Velez Arango’s meds. “Another bonus of being a guest of the government in prison,” he said as he screwed the cap back on the bottle. “An inmate cut me with a blade and I contracted hepatitis-B.”