The Castle: A Ripped-From-The-Headlines Thriller

by Jason Pinter

  Though Liliana was a model married to a billionaire, she seemed to shy away from the spotlight. As Rawson’s empire grew, Liliana retreated to the relative privacy of their various homes, raising the young Alena, gardening, writing poetry that nobody else saw but that Rawson raved about in interviews. He said if she wanted to, she could have been the country’s poet laureate. People fell in love with the woman who grounded the high-flying Rawson Griggs, tethered him to earth with a loving wife and beautiful young daughter.

  And then at the age of forty-two, Liliana Griggs was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

  Rawson spent the next four years taking Liliana to the very best doctors and specialists around the world. The most famous photo ever taken of Liliana was on Fifth Avenue, in front of Griggs Tower, near the end of her life yet still carrying Alena in her arms, her head wrapped in a scarf to hide the effects of the radiation.

  Liliana Griggs succumbed to her cancer at age forty-six, leaving Rawson a widower and eleven-year-old Alena without a mother.

  Rawson never remarried. Not for a lack of suitors. He was the toast of New York: a doting father who could literally buy a woman the world. But work was Rawson’s second wife and his only mistress. He coated the pages of every tabloid and glossy magazine, appearing arm-in-arm with the world’s most stunning women: models, actresses, heiresses, ingénues, women all hoping to be the one Rawson kept around.

  But none of them lasted very long.

  Remy found an incredible New York magazine story from four years ago about Alena Griggs’s wedding. According to the writer, just one week before Alena’s wedding to Paul Bracewell, Rawson had torn both the ACL and MCL in his right knee playing tennis in East Hampton. There was grainy paparazzi footage of Griggs hitting a backhand, then planting his foot the wrong way and falling to one knee while his opponent, a well-known celebrity chef, rushed to his side.

  It was the kind of injury that would require surgery and months of rehabilitation. Everybody speculated as to whether Alena would be forced to postpone her wedding.

  But just one week later, the New York Post ran a cover story featuring Alena Grigg’s wedding to Paul Bracewell. The reception was at Cipriani and reportedly cost over two million dollars. And rather than print a photo of Alena and Paul at the altar, or the couple’s first kiss, the front page featured Alena and Rawson Griggs during the customary father-daughter dance set to You Look Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton.

  Rawson beamed, and the smile on Alena’s face was visible from Mars. Sharp-eyed observers pointed to a strange ripple in the tuxedo fabric by Rawson’s knee, which many assumed was a brace of some sort.

  Witnesses said Rawson danced the entire night. The writer found a source at New York Presbyterian Hospital who claimed Rawson Griggs had been admitted just one week before the wedding, and under great secrecy, to undergo a total knee reconstruction.

  One year later, Rawson published a book titled Never Show Weakness. It spent six months on the New York Times bestseller list. He embarked on a thirty city international tour to promote it. Nobody ever saw him limp.

  Once Remy was caught up on Rawson Griggs, he checked his work email. Odds and ends from McCarty which would have to be dealt with. One email from Andrew Pulaski, forty-eight hours after the attack, with the subject line Feel Better. The body of the email itself was empty.

  Then, on a whim, Remy checked his social media accounts. What he saw made his jaw drop.

  There were five hundred new friend requests waiting for him on Facebook, all from complete strangers. There were also about fifty unsolicited messages in his inbox. Most were from strangers, applauding his heroism. Some just wanted to confirm this was the real Jeremy Stanton, that guy all over the news. He’d also received half a dozen messages from various women—some of them quite attractive—who just couldn’t help but notice Remy was alone in his profile picture. And so with that in mind, not to be too forward, but how would he feel about grabbing a drink sometime?

  Reflecting on his recent barren dating life, Remy was amused by the sudden influx of prospects. Meeting someone would have been so much easier if he’d just gotten shot earlier. If he ever went through a dry spell again, he’d have to find another famous couple to rescue.

  He also checked his seldom-used Twitter account. He’d posted a total of forty-eight tweets in two and a half years, twenty-two of which were angry messages directed at the MTA and various airlines for scheduling delays and lost luggage. But he gasped when he saw his follower count: sometime over the past week, Remy had amassed over fifty thousand new followers. He couldn’t remember his last follower count exactly, but he was reasonably sure it was somewhere under a hundred, with a chunk of those being eggs and porn-bots. He scrolled through his list of new followers and was shocked to see they largely appeared to be real people.

  And his “at replies” were blowing up. He’d received hundreds of tweets from complete strangers. And not just from random people. There were messages from celebrities. Politicians. Musicians. People whose movies he’d seen, albums he owned.

  Then he saw why.

  Rawson Griggs had tweeted to the nearly ten million people who followed @RealRawsonGriggs:

  Just met American hero @RemyStanton. A great young man with a bright future. My family and I thank him for his selflessness and courage.

  Remy decided that he was, for better or worse, in the public eye. So he needed to play the part. He took a thumbs-up selfie and posted it with the tweet:

  Just seeing these messages. Overwhelmed and grateful. Glad to be home and recovering. BTW can anyone spare a left arm? (asking for a friend)

  He checked his personal email, which was attached to his public LinkedIn profile. There were dozens of requests from media outlets looking for comments, begging for interviews. Emails from CNN. The New York Times. Vanity Fair. The Guardian. The New York Gazette. Blogs and websites he’d never heard of. He had an email from a girl he’d dated briefly last year, who’d broken up with him after saying he traveled too much, wondering how he was doing. Another email was from a girl he’d had a drunken yet memorable one-night stand with last winter, who said she didn’t even know his name until she recognized his picture on BuzzFeed.

  Remy closed his inbox and leaned back in bed. The adulation made him forget, just for a moment, the pain that radiated through his body like a pulse.

  Once he was finished marveling at his newfound notoriety, Remy read up on the murder of Dastan Nogoyev. Nogoyev was unconscious when handcuffed and taken to Bellevue for medical observation. He was then transferred from Bellevue and arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court, then remanded to the Tombs detention center on White Street in downtown Manhattan.

  After his arraignment, Nogoyev was being led to a holding cell. There he would stay with several other prisoners who were also awaiting arraignments and grand juries. At around 2 p.m., a prisoner named Domingo Diaz, armed with a homemade shiv carved from the handle of a toothbrush, stabbed Nogoyev over thirty times, perforating his lungs, liver, kidneys, spleen, and both his femoral artery and jugular vein. He bled out in less than a minute, and paramedic attempts to resuscitate him failed.

  CNN had complied a profile of Nogoyev. Remy clicked on the link.

  Dastan Nogoyev was born in the capital city of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in 1990. He spent time as a migrant worker in Russia, earning a little over eight hundred and forty dollars a month as a security guard at a mall in Sirgut, Siberia, and seven hundred and twenty dollars a month stocking boxes at a printing warehouse in Moscow.

  Nogoyev had immigrated to the U.S. legally, working menial jobs: janitor at a community college, bar back at a dive in the East Village. Nogoyev had a wife and son who still lived in Bishkek, neither of whom had yet been located.

  The gunmen had presumably self-radicalized, and for some reason targeted the Griggs family. So far, no terrorist organizations had claimed responsibility for the attack, and their motive remained a mystery.

  The other gunman was still at large.
His identity died with Dastan Nogoyev. Grainy traffic camera footage revealed nothing, just the shape of a man running into the night and then vanishing. Other than the earlobe piercing, Remy hadn’t been much help.

  Police dragnets had canvassed the entire city. Problem was, they didn’t know who they were looking for. Nobody came forward. Jerry Kapinski, a Griggs spokesman, said that even though Mr. Griggs had the utmost respect for the men and women of the FBI and NYPD, he was willing to take matters into his own hands to find the suspect. The mayor condemned Rawson’s threat of vigilante justice, but the people seemed to back him up. If the bureaucrats couldn’t do it, Rawson would.

  Remy could understand Rawson’s anger. He’d taken a bullet for Alena and Paul, and the man who fired it could be sitting on a beach halfway around the world sipping a Mai Tai for all anyone knew. The more time the suspect spent in the wind, the smaller the chances were of ever finding him.

  Remy clenched his teeth, tensed up, then felt another bolt of pain shoot down his arm.

  Ease up. Let yourself heal.

  “You alright there, man?”

  Trevor was awake.

  “Yeah,” Remy said. “Couldn’t sleep. Between the meds and the pain, I’m a mess.”

  “Don’t push yourself,” Trevor said. He stretched, revealing a slab of ab muscles that looked carved from granite. Comparatively, Remy’s looked like smoothed-over Play-Doh. “Trust me, one thing I know is that the body needs time to recover. You push yourself too hard after an injury, let alone this kind of trauma, you’ll end up doing more damage.”

  “I know,” Remy said. “Just sort of feel helpless. Aimless. By the way, Cheeto-Man, either you went way overboard on the spray tan or you were recently exposed to nuclear radiation.”

  Trevor laughed. “When you’re from New Hampshire with Nordic bloodlines, you need a little artificial coloring.”

  “No judgments, Orangeade. So how’s married life treating you? Chris mind that you’re here?”

  “Oh, he’s thrilled. Seriously. He gets the whole bed to himself and doesn’t have to deal with my snoring.”

  “Go back to sleep,” Remy said. “I’m just farting around. Looking into Rawson and this Nogoyev guy. The last few days have been insane. Do you know that I have over fifty thousand Twitter followers? I don’t know what to do with that.”

  “Hey, you get a few more you can start charging for paid posts. You know, ‘I’m Jeremy Stanton and when I’m not saving lives, I spend my time in this amazing new breathable underwear.”

  “Always thinking,” Remy said. “Get some rest.”

  “Nah, I’m awake,” Trevor said. “I’m up at four thirty most mornings anyway. I teach six a.m. classes three days a week so I have to be up in time for breakfast and a triple espresso.”

  “Did I ever tell you you’re insane?”

  “Many times,” Trevor said, smiling through bleary eyes. “Still, I love what I do. Even if you still haven’t taken my class. So consider me a happy, functional, crazy person.”

  “I don’t know what that’s like,” Remy said.

  “Being a crazy person? What you did the other night I’m pretty sure could be defined as crazy on multiple levels.”

  Remy laughed. “No. Not that. Loving what you do. Can’t say I’ve ever felt that way.”

  “You thinking about leaving Pulaski?” Trevor asked.

  Remy shrugged. “I’ve thought about it. Just never really had a viable alternative.”

  “You think…Griggs? Is that why he wants to see you again?”

  “I don’t know,” Remy said. “Maybe.”

  “What would you say?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “But you’ve thought about it.”

  Remy nodded. “How could you not?”

  “He’s the kind of guy who changes lives,” Trevor said. “And not always in a good way.”

  “I know,” Remy said.

  Trevor stood up. “Hey, you got any coffee in this joint?”

  Remy pointed in the direction of the kitchenette. “Keurig pods are in the pantry next to the fridge.”

  Trevor stumbled over to the kitchen and peered inside. “Great. Swamp water in pod form,” he said. “Hazelnut. Who drinks hazelnut? Seriously, Remy, I have more food in my gym bag than you have in your whole apartment.”

  “You want more food options, you’re welcome to bring your own pods, you coffee elitist.”

  “Not an elitist, I just think hazelnut coffee tastes like the inside of a jock strap.”

  Remy slid off the bed and a bolt of pain shot through his chest. He wanted to stay away from the Oxy unless the pain was unbearable.

  “You alright?” Trevor said.

  “Yeah. You know, you should have seen Rawson’s face when he saw that Nogoyev had been killed. He looked like…I don’t know…like nothing. There was something scary about it. Like he was glad the man was dead.”

  “Can you blame the guy?” Trevor said. “That asshole tried to kill his daughter. You and I both know there’s someone out there whose death you in particular wouldn’t lose sleep over.”

  “Don’t go there,” Remy said.

  “Ever think about him?”

  “As little as possible.”

  “Usually the most frightening things I have to deal with are torn yoga pants or brides who want to drop four dress sizes for their wedding in two weeks. This is on a whole different level. Rawson Griggs isn’t a normal man, Remy. He exists in a world that is completely unlike anything you or I have ever been in. I’ve read about him. He doesn’t play by anyone’s rules. If you’re his friend, you’re set for life. But if you’re his enemy, he’ll crush you.”

  “I know,” Remy said. “Thankfully, I’m on his good side. I don’t know what he wants from me. But I need to find out.”

  At eleven o’clock, Alena Griggs entered her father’s office. He was hunched over a mountainous pile of paper, a red pencil in his right hand, going through every sheet line by line, his face barely a foot from the page in front of him. The pencil moved slowly. Meticulously. If the devil was in the details, Rawson’s pen was his trident.

  Though Rawson heard Alena enter, he did not react. Alena stood there for a full three minutes before her father looked up.

  She gazed around his office, the way she’d done a thousand times, ever since she was a little girl and Rawson let her in to play while he discussed billion dollar deals. She sat on the floor behind his desk, babbling into a plastic phone, mimicking her dad the best she could. Alena never thought this was strange behavior. It wasn’t until she grew older than she learned Rawson got away with things nobody else could.

  He worked eighteen-hour days as a matter of routine, and there were times Alena would go weeks without seeing him. And because Rawson expected more from himself, he would push other people to keep up, often beyond their own limits. Often well beyond their breaking point.

  Rawson’s desk was a massive piece of furniture and the highlight of the office. Six feet long and three feet deep, made from a rich, Victorian mahogany. It had been built in the 1860s, and the wood was rumored to have been carved from the same tree as Abraham Lincoln’s desk. It had cost Rawson seventy-five thousand dollars, and he personally polished it weekly with natural beeswax.

  The office offered some of the most incredible views of Manhattan Alena had ever seen. The six-foot double-paned bulletproof glass along the back wall overlooked the grandeur of Central Park, its lush canopy of green resembling the top of a thick forest. They were high enough that you could make out the dark blue of the Central Park reservoir to the north. From this perch on the fifty-third floor of the Castle, the entirety of New York City stretched out beyond them, nestled between the towering spires of Central Park West and Fifth Avenue. It was a postcard view.

  Other than the mountains of papers and a desktop computer, the only other decor on Rawson’s desk was an ornate, handcrafted chess set. The pieces were made from soapstone and the board was a solid chunk
of marble. Rawson always challenged business partners to a game. If they didn’t know how to play, they declined and promised to learn. More often than not, they did. And they always lost.

  On the windowsill sat a bronze bust of Rawson himself. It was turned to face the view outside. Alena always thought the piece was a little odd. She’d asked him: “Who keeps a bust of himself in his office?” It was a gift from a Russian sculptor, he’d said. The bust faced outside so it could keep an eye on the world while he slept, which, given that Rawson slept about four hours a night, meant the bust did not have a very demanding job.

  Something about that seemed beautiful and poetic to Alena, and summed her father up perfectly. If Rawson could work twenty-four hours a day, he would.

  When she was young, Alena would stand atop the windowsill looking out over the majesty of the city. Rawson always kept one hand on her waist, as though he feared she might fall through the glass. And after Liliana died, Alena noticed Rawson held on to her a little tighter.

  She would tell her father, a dreamy look in her eye, that they were floating in heaven. If only the windows weren’t there, she could reach out and touch the clouds. Maybe, just maybe, she would find her mother floating among them.

  Though Rawson Griggs placated Alena’s desire for normalcy, she knew that deep down he didn’t want that for her. He wanted Alena to feel special. He wanted her to feel like she was destined for something greater. And once she fully embraced her potential, she would have every resource in the world behind her. Rawson only wanted her to feel normal to the extent that she was able sympathize with others.

  “You cannot gain peoples’ trust unless you understand them,” he’d told her. “How they think. What motivates them. Once you know peoples’ desires, necessities, fantasies, you can make them do anything you want. You must act like them. Talk like them. Understand them. Even if in your heart of hearts you know you’re not like them. Not in the slightest.”