Heat Storm (Castle)

by Richard Castle

  Yet even Heat felt this strange gravitational pull toward what she was about to do next, like all the stars in the universe had arranged themselves to tug her in this direction.

  She drew out her cell phone and was soon ringing a certain 202 area code.

  “John Null,” she heard.

  “John, it’s Nikki Heat.”

  “Captain Heat, do you believe in ESP?” he asked.

  Heat, now thoroughly spooked, said, “Uh, n-no, why?”

  “Because I was just about to call you again,” he said. “Lindsy had a cancellation in her schedule for lunch and I wanted to see if we could fit you in. Could you be over here at noon?”

  “Sure. Where are you?”

  “Campaign headquarters. We’re in The Marlowe.”

  The Marlowe was in the Financial District.

  “Yeah, I think I can still make it in time,” Heat said.

  “Terrific. We’ll see you shortly.”

  Heat ended the call, then hurried out of her office, making noises to Roach about how she had a lunch date—without saying who it was with—and how she’d be back in a few hours. She rattled off a quick text to Storm about the classified fingerprint results. She typed an even briefer text to Rook about where she was heading, spending most of her 160 characters on reminding him he couldn’t tell any of his reporter buddies about it.

  Then she took the subway downtown. The Marlowe was one of the sparkling gems of lower Manhattan, a ninety-two-story testament to the success of the American experiment.

  Certain members of the liberal press had given candidate Gardner a hard time about her choice for campaign headquarters. The Marlowe was home to some of the more vital cogs in the nation’s financial machinery—the kinds of banks, venture capitalist firms, and hedge funds that made capitalism such a ruthless creature.

  They were the very beasts Gardner was trying to tame in her efforts to diffuse the intense concentration of wealth among a very select few. Yet Gardner argued if she was ever going to reform the zoo, she needed help from the animals. Hence her selection of The Marlowe.

  As Heat walked toward the building, it was three minutes before noon. She was pleased to see there were no members of the press camped outside. She pushed through the brass revolving doors, then confronted a security desk, which had been told to document all visitors to Gardner campaign headquarters and then send them on to the eightieth floor. Nikki flashed her NYPD tin, then made the ride up.

  When she got off the elevator, John Null was waiting for her in the vestibule. He was wearing a different tailored suit than the day before, but if anything it draped across his long body even more nicely.

  “Thanks so much for coming, Captain,” he said, giving her a sincere smile and a sloppy salute. “Lindsy is ready for you. If you can just submit yourself to these gentlemen for a moment, we can be on our way. Sorry, not even decorated NYPD captains get to bypass the Secret Service.”

  He nodded toward a trio of men in dark suits who were clustered near a metal detector. Each of the men was certainly armed, though their weapons were not visible. They wore earpieces connected to tightly coiled wires that disappeared down their backs. With a minimum of fuss, the Secret Service collected her phone, explaining they had to keep it because it could be used to set off explosives, and her gun, a threat that was a little more obvious.

  Heat couldn’t believe she was giving up her service weapon for a third time in one day. It didn’t make her feel any less naked than she had the previous two.

  But there was no time to dwell on it. She and Null passed through the metal detector. Then Null escorted Heat through a thick set of double doors. They were immediately confronted by a divider behind which a receptionist could have sat if there had been one. Half the floor space was off to the right, the other half to the left.

  Null went left into a vast open area that had been furnished with a maze of desks, all of them jammed up against one another in haphazard clumps of varying sizes. Some of the desk pods were empty, while others were filled with cadres of idealistic-looking young adults whose wide-eyed zeal reminded Heat of cult videos she had seen.

  “We occupy three floors of the building,” Null narrated. “We have phone banks upstairs and direct mail downstairs. This is in the middle. A few of the folks we’re seeing are staff people, but most are volunteers. Lindsy gets them from all over. They’re split into two groups: the true believers, who want to be part of something bigger than themselves, and the opportunists, who want a job in her administration when this is over.”

  He laughed at his own joke as he continued through the room. None of the volunteers seemed to recognize Heat or acknowledged her presence.

  “We sometimes call this the hive,” he said as they continued their journey toward the back. “We talk about the buzz they create. We talk about the honey they make. We’re just one big happy colony here, and we refer to Lindsy as the queen bee. Speaking of which . . .”

  They had arrived at a corner office suite whose door was closed. Null opened it, stuck his head inside, then proceeded through an empty area with a desk holding a computer and a multi-split screen that showed various camera angles of the two main rooms. From there, the people toiling diligently in the hive really did look like worker bees.

  At the next door, he tapped lightly but did not wait for a reply before wedging it open.

  “She’s here,” was all he said.

  Then he turned toward Heat. “Okay,” he said. “Lindsy is ready for you.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  STORM

  It didn’t seem possible Al Gorithem could appear any crazier than he had upon their initial meeting, what with his shut-in pallor, his bedhead hair, and his security camera gargoyles.

  And yet, somehow, as he got closer to cracking the encryption on the compact disc, he grew even more manic.

  He began bouncing in his chair in an arrhythmic fashion, bobbing to the left and right like he was either trying to dodge punches thrown by a heavyweight fighter or he was riding out an 8.0-magnitude earthquake. Now and then he reached into his open button-down shirt to scratch at his white chest hair or pet the small doughy paunch of flab that puffed out just above his waistline.

  His eyes stayed glued to one of the several monitors on which he had programs working—except for when they made sojourns to the security camera footage, which they did frequently, even though the closest there came to an intruder was a wandering neighborhood squirrel.

  But that was downright ordinary behavior compared to when he began talking at the screen.

  Sometimes he would plead: “That’s right, little baby girl, come to Papa! Come here!”

  Other times he would chastise: “Bridget, you nasty whore, don’t do that to me!”

  Still other times he would taunt: “You think you can play that game, but I gotcha. You can’t play hide-and-seek with me. I’m the black mamba of hide-and-seek.”

  And on. And on. Derrick and Carl would exchange glances when his monologue got especially strange (“You think I’m going to stop and whistle in the churchyard, but I’m walking on past!”) or especially clichéd (“You’re the trash, but I’m the trash compactor, honey!”) or when he started repeating a name for no apparent reason (“Edilberto, Edilberto, Edilberto”).

  The only interruption was the visit from the mailman, which Gorithem saw coming on the cameras. He scrambled up to what he called his “panic room” on the second floor before Carl Storm was able to coax him back down to work.

  An hour passed. Then two. Noon was coming, but it was clear Gorithem was unaware of the passage of time, or the need for food, or anything other than the variety of screens facing him.

  They knew he was getting close when his self-talk grew increasingly exultant (“Yes, yes, yes!”). And then, finally, at five minutes after twelve, he announced, “Okay, I’ve got it.”

  Derrick, who had been sitting on the floor by the window, and Carl, who had been pacing back and forth because his butt was numb from th
e floor, rushed to the bank of computers.

  “You know, I have to tell you, there’s a good reason why WAP2 beat out B2. Bridget really does have some flaws,” Gorithem said. “If you’ll indulge me for a few moments, I’d like to guide you through the process by which I exploited them.”

  “No,” Derrick and Carl said in perfect unison.

  “Okay, okay. Sheesh,” Gorithem said, lifting up his arm to act as a shield. “Then what do you want?”

  “That depends. What’s on there?”

  “Just one file with a WAV extension—an audio file. It’s dated October 27, 1999.”

  Derrick thought about the timeline he had been establishing in his head for 1999. October twenty-seventh was three weeks before the announcement of the trade deal that made it profitable for the Shanghai Seven to go legitimate. And it was four weeks before Cynthia Heat made her exit. Whatever this was could have been a precipitating incident.

  “Terrific, if you can just e-mail it to me, we’ll be on our way,” Derrick said.

  “E-mail it, what . . . using the Internet?” Gorithem asked, suddenly even more ashen-faced than usual.

  “Well, yeah, what else do you—”

  “Are you mad?” he crowed. “This network I’ve created is like a pristine forest where every grass and tree has only been nurtured by the purest springwater. It has never been tended by any hand except my own. The Internet is . . . I mean, it’s a cesspool. It’s digital filth. It’s like if you took that forest, sprayed it with toxic waste, then had all of humanity defecate on it every day for—”

  “Okay, okay, take it easy,” Derrick said, holding up his hands traffic-cop style. “Why don’t you just play it for us and we’ll worry about the rest later.”

  “You got it,” Gorithem said, then pressed PLAY.

  It began with a foreign-sounding dial tone, not the familiar 350/440 hertz of a “Ma Bell” landline. Then there was a long series of buttons being pushed. Like a country code, followed by an area code, followed by an exchange, followed by a number.

  Then:

  “Hello?” A woman’s voice. American.

  “Hello.” A man’s voice. Chinese.

  Both voices could be heard clearly.

  “Is your line secure?” she asked.

  “Yes. It was swept earlier today,” he said.

  A pause. Then the man again. “Is it done?”

  “Well, that depends.”

  “Oh? On what?”

  “What it’s worth to you,” she said.

  “But you’re sure you have the votes?”

  “I’ve got the votes. Locked up the last one last night. The senior senator from Colorado said he’d swap his vote on WTO for my vote on an incredibly porky hydro-dam project.”

  “Pause it,” Derrick said, then looked at his father. “By WTO, I assume she means the bill that allowed China to enter into the World Trade Organization?”

  “That’d be my guess,” Carl said.

  Derrick nodded at Gorithem to continue the recording.

  “So that’s fifty-one votes?” the man asked. “We won’t need the vice president?”

  “That’s right. Fifty-one signed, sealed, and soon-to-be delivered.”

  “And what are you proposing as your fee?”

  “Fifty million dollars,” she said coolly. “A million for each vote. You get mine for free.”

  “That’s outrageous. Some of those people would vote for WTO anyway.”

  “Fifty million,” she said again. “Fifty million, or that senator from Colorado is going to have a change of heart. So will senators from Kentucky, Washington, Indiana, and at least three other states. I’m not playing around here.”

  “But we’ve never . . . we’ve never had to pay anything close to that.”

  “Because you’ve never stood to benefit so much. There’s about to be a line of American companies eager to throw money at you. If you’re smart about it, you and your Shanghai buddies will recover your investment within the first three months. I’m giving you a bargain.”

  There was a pause on the other end. Then the man said, “Very well. Fifty million.”

  “You can wire it to my account in the Caymans.”

  “No wire. Cash.”

  “Cash? Are you kidding?”

  “Our businesses in America are cash businesses. It’s cash or it’s nothing.”

  “Fine. Cash.”

  “It will take us a little time to get it together. We’ll deliver it to you in ten days.”

  “I can be patient. But you won’t get your vote until I get my money.”

  “I understand,” the man said.

  “You’d better,” the woman said.

  And then the call ended.

  For a moment, all three men in that strange Queens house—one sitting, two standing—just stared at the screen.

  They understood full well they had just heard the negotiation of a fifty-million-dollar bribe. The Chinese man was clearly a member of the Shanghai Seven. They could figure out which one later.

  It was the identity of the woman that had them a little stunned. There was no question about her voice. It was strong and authoritative, yet somehow still quiet. Even a man who hadn’t left his house since 1998 recognized who it belonged to:

  White House front-runner Lindsy Gardner.

  * * *

  Carl Storm was the first to break the silence.

  “I’d bet you anything she got that fifty million, and that it was all counterfeit,” he said. “They made the best fakes in the world back then.”

  “Just as they do now,” Derrick said. “So she gets the fifty million and doesn’t realize it’s fake. She knows she can’t really do anything with it right away. Maybe someday she’s going to find a way to tuck some in an offshore account. But even then she wouldn’t be able to use it. The financial disclosures required of a US senator would make it very difficult to bring the money back onshore. She can’t really touch it until she’s out of office. Long-term, it’s her retirement money. Short-term, it’s her walking-around money. It’s the luxury of not having to worry about what you spend on the day-to-day. She uses it for gas, groceries, clothes, the small stuff. It’s all purchases under ten thousand dollars, all cash so no one can—”

  Then Derrick snapped his fingers. “Of course,” he said. “Cynthia Heat used to teach piano lessons to Lindsy Gardner’s kids. The senator even talked about it during the press conference the other day. I bet she paid Cynthia with the bad bills. Cynthia recognized they were fakes and started making inquiries. After all, why would a US senator be passing around funny money? There’s no way Cynthia could have just let that go.”

  “This Cynthia Heat really sounds like a heck of a woman,” Carl said. And not for the first time.

  “She is. The problem is, according to one of the texts I got from Nikki earlier today, Cynthia showed the bills to Bart Callan, who was part of some kind of foreign-counterfeiting task force—”

  Derrick snapped his fingers again. “Of course. Nikki texted me about this, too. Callan told her that Cynthia came to him with the fake bills when he was on that task force. Callan realized he had just been handed a golden opportunity to blackmail a US senator. But only if he could silence Cynthia Heat. At that point, Gardner and Callan became partners of sorts, and they both needed Cynthia Heat dead: Gardner needed it so her secret stayed safe; Callan needed it so he could maintain leverage on Gardner and so Gardner remained valuable to him. That’s why Callan put the hit on Cynthia, and also why she needed to appear to stay dead. As long as Lindsy Gardner was alive and in public life, Cynthia was a huge threat. Meanwhile, Cynthia was caught between a rock and a hard place. She knew Lindsy Gardner was wrapped up in something fishy. But she couldn’t definitively prove Gardner had been passing around phony bills, because the fingerprint results were always classified at a level that was well above her pay grade.”

  “So you think Callan has been working for Gardner all this time?” Carl asked.

  “
Yeah,” Derrick said. “And I can prove it.”

  He pulled out the shiny new phone the quartermaster had given him and dialed Jedediah Jones’s direct line.

  “What is it, Storm?” Jones growled.

  “You still want the Shanghai Seven put away?”

  “I believe I’ve made that clear.”

  “Good. I’ll be able to deliver the evidence you want to the field office in New York within the hour. But I need one thing first.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “The truth about something,” Derrick said. “You said you ordered Callan’s transfer to a medium security facility as a favor to a friend, someone who was about to be an even better friend, yes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That friend was Senator Lindsy Gardner, wasn’t it.”

  There was dead silence on the other end of the line.

  Derrick pressed ahead: “Right now, you’re weighing whether you should burn her, because she’s about to be president. And it’s good to have the president feeling like she owes you some favors. But I’m telling you her candidacy is maybe two hours away from being dead. Because after I go to the field office, I’m going to the New York Ledger. I’ve got a recording of her asking the Shanghai Seven to pay her fifty million dollars to deliver a vote on a trade bill.”

  “You’re sure the recording is authentic?”

  “And good quality. All you’ll have to do is listen to it. There’s no question it’s her. You know no one can do a Lindsy Gardner voice except Lindsy Gardner.”

  Jones just chuckled. “Well, well. It seems I’ve been played by a librarian.”

  “So it was Gardner.”

  “She called me up not long ago, said Bart’s mother was a friend, said the mother was worried about poor little Bart having a rough time in prison,” Jones said. “Lindsy said she knew the request for a transfer couldn’t come from her. Not during an election. If it got out, she’d be crucified. So she asked me to do it.”

  “And you were all too happy to comply,” Storm said.

  “She was trailing in the polls to Legs Kline at that point. But even if she didn’t get elected, she was still going to have a lot of pull in the Senate.”