20 Case 20 - Meeting Richard Castle

LA: <Events before The Rookie S1E12, Modern Family S9E13, SWAT S1E10>

NY: <Events 99 before Brooklyn S5E11, Suits S7E12, 1.5 years after Castle S8 finale>

The following day, Amy couldn't take it anymore as she met up with Ben at the 99th precinct.

"You've been spacing out ever since you got back from that law firm in Manhattan," Amy accused with an empathetic smile.

"Oh, sorry. I should get my head back in the game," Ben idly commented.

"That's not what I meant. What happened that got you so riled up?"

Ben focused his stare outside some more but still thought about the answer.

"Something from my time undercover caught up to me. The cousin of the White Front's leader. His lawyers got his trial more or less thrown out because of a technicality at the deposition yesterday. Or at least that's what I figured happened when they reached the judge a little later that day."

"And this cousin is a bad dude?" Amy asked with a small frown.

Ben thought about it and answered truthfully, "Yeah, well, that's what has me thinking so much. I don't know."

"That's a good thing then, no? If he's truly innocent, he doesn't deserve to be put on trial. If he's guilty, they'll find out eventually."

"Yeah, maybe. He's on their radar now... but he got away with it for decades before... if he is what I fear he is," Ben mumbled with a frown.

"Look on the bright side, man. You got tens of criminals in jail. One more or less is still amazing police work," Rosa offered in consolation but still looked outside.

-----

Building a case for a drug supplier was amazingly dry work. Until the 12th, all Ben did was hang out with Amy and Rosa. He got to know the two some more and hung out with Jake and Charles when they did supply runs for the three occasionally.

On the 12th, Ben found himself standing in front of the 12th precinct at around noon. The triple 12 in the date and location didn't escape Ben's notice, but he just hoped Richard Castle had a flair for the dramatic.

<1.5 years after Castle S8 finale>

"You lost, buddy?" A latin detective asked Ben as he stepped out of the elevator and looked around.

"Uh, hi. I'm Ben Weiss. Richard Castle asked me to come here?"

"Ah, the LAPD undercover hero! Follow me, he's with our captain," the detective ordered as he recognized Ben and held out his hand. "Esposito. Javier Esposito. Homicide."

"SWAT Liaison detective for the LAPD, Ben Weiss," Ben greeted, returning the handshake.

"How'd you know Castle?" Detective Esposito asked as he led Ben through the precinct's detective floor.

"Uh, I'm thinking I don't. But during the time my name was on national news, Mister Castle reached out several times, telling me he knew my parents. When I learned that I was coming to New York, I agreed to meet with him... he can be rather insistent," Ben explained with a small shake of his head.

"Don't I know it," Esposito mumbled.

They entered the office and saw a pretty brunette at the captain's desk together with a middle-aged man holding a small infant in his arms.

"Castle, got your guest," Esposito informed and gently pushed Ben through the door.

"Ahhh, Benjamin!" Castle excitedly... whispered, careful not to wake the baby in his arms. "Esposito, take her for a moment."

He handed over the kid to the 12th precinct detective and led Ben to the captain's desk.

"Beckett, meet Benjamin Weiss. Benjamin, meet my lovely wife Kate Beckett," Castle cheerfully introduced the two, and Ben shook the woman's hand with a confused smile.

"I'm not sure he knows what's happening here," Beckett noted with a small laugh.

"Uh, Mister Castle... I know you wrote that you knew my father up until his suicide... but I'm afraid I have no recollection of ever meeting you?" Ben admitted with an awkward smile. "Tell you what, you look remarkably like a good friend of mine in the LAPD. Officer John Nolan. Uh, he has a nicer haircut than you do, though..."

Castle looked at Ben with an over-the-top horrified look as Beckett laughed a little at her husband's expense.

"Nicer haircut???" Castle asked, completely offended.

"I'd rather focus on why he doesn't remember you, honey. You told me so many tales of you taking him to Disneyland with his mother yesterday," Beckett interjected with a raised eyebrow.

"Disneyland? I've only ever been there three times with my mother to my knowledge. Once with my dad, though, that was cut short because he was needed at the hospital for an emergency surgery. The other two times was with... Uncle Rodgers? But I was around 3 or 4?"

"Oh, so it was before you changed your name for the snappier author name, Mister Richard Alexander Rodgers?" Beckett inquired curiously as she looked at her husband with a lot of mirth.

Ben opened his eyes in recognition and looked Castle up and down for a moment as he asked, "Ohh, you're Uncle Rodgers?"

"Your mom made you call me that to hurt my pride. I was 19 and an aspiring writer," Castle admitted with a defeated look. "Not someone you call Uncle..."

"Alright, so I'll gladly admit you indeed knew my father," Ben proclaimed with a small shrug.

"Yes! For my second, sadly unpublished, Derrick Storm novel, I needed the expertise of the best surgeon in the world since I was pushing the limits of what was realistically, medically possible. Your father, Fred Weiss, he was the best there is, and your mom convinced him to sit down with me because she actually liked my first Storm novel," Castle explained in reminiscence. "She was sweet like that. My condolences, Benjamin. I couldn't make either funeral..."

"I didn't know that," Ben mumbled with a melancholic smile.

"Getting either of us all sad isn't why I asked to meet," Castle quickly interjected.

His wife looked at him and chortled, "What are you sad about?"

"He told me my hair's ugly," Castle gasped as he pointed at Ben. "But that's beside the point. Your story was all over the news, and it was a real blast from the past. I needed to know more. Not just as a friend of your parents, but more so as a writer for mystery novels and as someone who is intimately involved in police work. Your story has everything. From international spies to smuggling rings all the way to secret shadow organizations... I crave to know more."

"Weren't you and your wife involved in the takedown of a rogue CIA operative? How could you possibly need more mystery in your life?"

Beckett and Castle looked at each other until Castle asked, "How did you know about that? It never made the news."

Ben gained a wry smile and explained, "You were rather insistent you knew my father and I wondered if you forced a familial relation with me for some kind of gain, so I did a background check on you. Curiously, I never bothered to look up your original name since nothing ever indicated you had one... I found out about all the times you were shot at, kidnapped, or, well, abducted. Not to mention the frankly astonishing trail of corpses that followed this precint's recent history. No offense, ma'am. The tall tales all ended with a home invasion when a thought-to-be-dead public defender called Caleb Brown died with you nearly bleeding out in your kitchen. I'm no mystery writer, but that just screams CIA or any other lettered agency... you know, since it never made the news."

"Wow, you should be a detective or something," Beckett joked with an impressed smile.

"Yeah, well, I'm happy to say that the LAPD thought so, too."

"And isn't that just another tale for the ages. You working as a detective, same as your Uncle Rodgers," Castle gloatingly added.

"You're barely a PI now that Hayley and Alexis do all the work. The only thing 'detective' about you is the person sleeping next to you," Beckett corrected with a smirk as she led Ben to sit down on a couch in her office.

After Esposito brought the crying baby back to Castle with an annoyed look as they sat down, Ben pondered out loud, "Come to think of it. It isn't just Officer Nolan from Foxburg, PA. You also look remarkably identical to a local LA weatherman who also changed his name for his profession, Rainer Shine."

Intrigued, Beckett looked him up and gasped under the eager eyes of Castle, who couldn't take out his phone as he calmed down the baby.

"Your dad must have come around and he brought strong genes," Beckett quipped with a big grin as she held up her phone for Castle to see.

"Oh my god, Kate. That dude even has the same hairstyle! How come nobody ever pointed it out to me? We're like celebrity twins!"

"I mean, hardly. Like I said, local weatherman. Not CNN news anchor," Ben mumbled with a small shake of his head. The LAPD detective personally didn't like the man much on account of him having dated Haley the year before.

After Beckett looked up John Nolan and they had another laugh about Castle's 'LAPD brother', the three talked a little about Ben's undercover op until he reached the part where he freed or tried to free some of the trafficked girls.

"That's not how I would have written that," Castle mumbled as Beckett shot Ben a pitying look.

"Failing to get them out must have weighed heavily on you..."

"If you ever meet her, don't tell her, but it's the whole reason I even considered adopting Zofia in the first place. I've come to see her as family now, but more than that I wanted to do good for one of the many girls and protect her as best I could forever," Ben admitted with a forced smile.

"Tell us more about how you got out. Kate told me the police report included incendiary bombs?"

Ben nodded and answered, "Yeah. Martin Kraft dealt in all manner of weapons. Antiques, machine guns, golden AKs... some called him the merchant of death, and it wasn't far off. But one thing he rarely got his hands on outside of the occasional C4, old grenades, or a lone RPG was high casualty explosives. Fragmentation grenades, landmines, claymores... most countries in the world are thankfully a little more alert when it comes to storage and disposal of these types of things. Sure, here in the US especially there's plenty of veterans who got away with taking a cache of grenades home, but they rarely sold them. And, cross-Antlantic travel with such volatile, old explosives was suicide waiting to happen. So, a high volume seller like Kraft didn't sell much of those. But that changed when Kraft managed to intercept a delivery in Belarus. Incendiary grenades with white phosphorus payloads. They are notoriously impossible to extinguish once burning, get up to devastating temperatures for short moments, and generally are pretty inhuman to use."

"And, well, he found a buyer in LA. A Mexican drug lord who wanted to take out another Mexican drug lord. For a racist like Kraft, the perfect buyer. And since I was 'stationed' in Southern California most of the time, I got wind of it. Same with the LAPD, thankfully. From there, everything happened like you probably heard in the news or read in the report. We freed four hostages, SWAT found five of the six caches with the phosphorus grenades, Kraft died during the meetup with the drug lord when the sirens were heard during their deal since the drug lord thought he was sold out... nineteen people died in the shootout," Ben finished his explanation solemnly but perked up when his phone rang through the silence that hung over the room.

"Yes, Ben Weiss?"

"*Ben. We just intercepted a delivery driver who brought up several boxes to Hector Fisher. We thought it might have been a drug delivery, but it was too high-profile to begin with. No, Hector's gearing up for something. He received assault rifles and enough ammo for a small war. Thought you should know,*" Amy explained curtly.

"No way... do we have any idea what he needs the weapons for?"

"*Nobody knows. Fisher wasn't on anybody's radar, and all his runners are independents. You should know that,*" Rosa chimed in, likely sitting next to Amy.

"Well, then he either caught wind of our attempts of trying to build a case against him and wants to shoot it out, or, which I think is more likely, he wants to take over a territory. Do we know who sold him weapons in such volume?"

"*Not yet, the delivery driver only knows about the contents because Hector opened the crate in front of him. He bolted immediately after, and Hector let him go.*"

"That suggests he isn't planning on staying... or he actually has a conscience that tells him not to kill the innocent. Why do all that in your registered address, though? I could forgive him giving the drugs to his dealers if he has a smart distribution method like the drugs coming from an abandoned sewer entrance at the hands of a third, unwitting party instead of his apartment that would give Hector plausible deniability. But why take a delivery for illegal weapons to your doorstep?"

"*We don't know, but we're assembling SWAT. Breach is due in 40 minutes, barring any unforseen developments. DEA is on the move as well. You should come, which is why I called,*" Amy offered.

"Got it. Thanks for the heads-up," Ben said and hung up.

He looked back up to Castle and Beckett, who overheard most of it, gained a sheepish grin, and excused, "Sorry, guess I'll have to cut this meeting short?"

"Heh, you won't get away from me so easily. I have a bullet-proof vest in my car, which is much faster than any cab you could take. I'm coming with you," Castle proudly declared.

Ben thought his wife would stop him from going into a potentially dangerous situation, but she simply took her own daughter from his arm, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and wished, "Stay safe, Rick."

"I have three more reasons to do so," Castle countered with a love-struck gaze as he gently placed his hands on Beckett's belly.

"Come back safely and bring Ben over for dinner when you're done playing cop again."

Down in Castle's red sports car, easily spottable in the precinct's motor pool, Ben sat down after Castle took out the baby seat from the passenger side.

"Sorry. I'm looking to sell it, but I didn't yet come around to do it," Castle sheepishly explained as the seat barely fit into the small trunk that was already filled with several miscellaneous trinkets.

"You said three up there, may I ask if Captain Beckett is expecting again?" Ben inquired warmly.

"Yep, twins this time around. Can't wait!" Castle affirmed with a big grin.

"Oh my, congratulations, Uncle Rodgers," Ben quipped with a good-natured smile.

"Just for the sentiment, I'll let it slide. Also, I'm more comfortable with my age now, so go ahead and keep calling me uncle. Just as long as you know, I'm the cool uncle," Castle joked back and sat behind the wheel. "Okay, where to?"

Ben gave Castle the address, and the two sped towards the apartment building in Brooklyn. Along the way, Castle told some stories about what he lived through with Beckett and before they even reached the end of his first year as a tag-along in the 12th precinct, they reached the van where Rosa and Amy were waiting for Ben with a geared up SWAT team leader.

"Ben, that was quicker than I thought," Amy wondered as she looked at her watch.

Rosa, in the meantime, stepped forward and handed Ben an NYPD-tagged bullet-proof vest and a two-way radio.

"Oh, yeah. Mister Castle over here is an excellent driver," Ben joked - they had run at least three red lights to get here, but Castle excused that he was almost police so it didn't count... whatever that meant.

As the three NYPD officers introduced themselves to Castle, who had put on a vest reading 'Writer' instead of police or NYPD or something similar, a DEA agent joined their debrief. Nobody had the stones to tell Castle to sit this one out, but it was decided since Ben brought him, he was Ben's responsibility.

They planned the breach in three teams, but Ben was put on lookout duty since Castle came with him. It wasn't his town. He didn't like violence. And they had SWAT on scene, so Ben didn't argue.

That didn't stop Castle, however.

"They totally think you're some kind of wuss. No, they think WE are some kind of wuss!" Castle complained loudly as the two were on the backside of the building where Hector lived since it had a basement exit that they couldn't leave unsupervised.

"Are you so eager to get into a gunfight?" Ben asked as he kept one ear's worth of attention on the radio.

"I'm a man of action! I want to see what makes this budding drug kingpin tick! You said so yourself; using his own residence as a base is either incredibly stupid, OR he has an ace up his sleeve! You said he immediately called his lawyer when you picked him up for the baseball cards. So he isn't entirely brainless," Castle offered in explanation. "I want to know what makes him so confident! Mole in the NYPD to know when a raid is going down? Secret entrance? Contacts to the CIA to get him out of the prison he'll end up in?"

Before Ben could give his input, Castle continued, "No. Those tropes are all chewed up. It isn't original enough..."

"What if he has all three? The detectives working on building the case with me didn't sell out the badge but now that SWAT is involved, someone else in the NYPD picked up the chatter so Hector is now on the run having not known that we had an eye on his place."

"A red hering that isn't a red hering? That would make him a Bond villain level criminal..." Castle wondered out loud and began spinning tales of what this Hector Fisher's life was like.

Just then, sounds over the radio indicated that the DEA and SWAT were entering the building. A few minutes of intense shouting of orders and sit reps, silence hung over the radio.

"*Hector isn't here. The box with the weapons is missing, too. There's only a bag of ectasy pills here*" Amy described, and Ben immediately went on high alert as he took out his weapon. Sounds of something being moved came from the basement door, like a crate getting dragged over the floor.

"I fear you might be getting what you wanted," Ben solemnly stated as he pushed Castle behind a dumpster.

The LAPD detective pressed the talk button on his radio after turning the volume down and whispered, "Sounds coming from the back entrance where Castle and Detective Weiss are. Black van hurrying down the alley, no plates visible."

Ben had taken a flashbang from one of the SWAT officers before and handed it to Castle together with a flashlight.

"Throw it on my mark. Aim a few feet next to their feet. When I ask again, throw the flashlight."