Water gurgled in a fountain, people walked by, kids played and made happy sounds.
A chalk 'X' at his feet.
"Not this again." Peter snorted and sat down on the bench.
Mozzie walked towards him panicked, "That's not my X, walk with me. Come on, hurry, that's not my X."
As they walked away Mozzie looked at the chalked letter and then around the crowd.
"Did you put that there?" Mozzie asked.
"No!" Peter spat, "I know where the bench in the park by the fountain where we met before is."
"Turn here", Mozzie directed.
"Where are you..."
"OK, no one is following us." Mozzie seemed to relax a little.
"Can you tell me anything about the cards?" Peter asked.
"Electronic Access Control Cards." He was correcting him but the suit didn't look to happy about it.
Mozzie thought better and then continued, "being there is nothing printed on them, we can only look at the encoded access information."
"Right, go on." Nothing new to Peter.
"All six 'cards' have full access, but without having access to the system they're to be used on, I can't tell you much. They're for a Secura system." Mozzie handed over an envelope with the cards.
"How do you know they have full access?" Peter questioned him.
"I have my ways."
"Do I have to wring it out of you?", Peter was getting tired of the games.
"I will tell you suit, that each is listed to the name of 'Administrator', and as such they would have full access." Mozzie explained with as much disgust as he felt he could get away with.
"Isn't that the same 'X' that you had put there before?", Peter asked.
"No, I washed it away." Mozzie replied obviously returning to his paranoid state. "Which way are you going?"
Peter pointed to his right and Mozzie immediately took off in the opposite direction.
The elevator door opened and Peter walked out towards the glass doors of the office.
He could see Neal was just coming down from his office.
"What's going on?" Peter asked.
"Those electronic access cards were made to bypass security, so I looked at possible targets and found twelve that I would hit if it were up to me."
Peter gave Neal a look.
"I'm just saying." Neal replied.
"These match the Secura card key system." Peter added.
Neal bent over and started flipping pages of his report. "There are two companies using the Secura card system from my list."
"OK, get your jacket, let's go." Peter instructed.
Peter's car pulled out of the parking garage and up to the sidewalk.
"So which one is closest?" Peter asked.
Neal looked at the two pages, "This one for the Hyland-Gleason gallery."
Peter punched in the address into his GPS and ten minutes later they were walking into the front door.
Neal immediately walked over to a painting, "Monet did such wonderful work in his monochrome period"
"That's a lot of blue" Peter remarked.
A beautiful brunette walked up to Neal, "I see you know your artists."
Peter pulled out his badge, "Peter Burke, FBI, this is Neal Caffrey. We believe you may be a target."
The shock disappeared quickly from her face, "I'm Lindsey Leigh, you mean the gallery and not me, don't you?"
Neal touched her arm and smiled, "We mean the gallery, I see you are wearing a card key."
"Yes" Lindsey pointed to a doorway, "It'll get me out the back of the break room and into the storage area."
"Where you are currently keeping the Picasso sculptures?" Neal asked.
Both Lindsey and Peter looked surprised.
Lindsey wondered out loud, "How did you know about those?" as she grabbed Neal's arm.
Peter thought this looked too cozy.
"Can I talk to your security manager?" Peter asked.
"Oh you'll have to ask Ms. Hyland or Ms. Gleason I don't know what that is and they're not in yet."
Neal asked, "Mind if we take a look at the storage room door?"
"No, not at all, it's right this way." Lindsey hooked her arm into Neal's and walked towards the door.
Peter walked up and slid a card from the envelope and the light turned red along with a barely audible beep.
"Thank you for your time Ms. Leigh." Peter grabbed Neal's Arm and walked him towards the door.
Twenty minutes later they were in an elevator in a large building.
"Tell me about this place." Peter said as he looked at Neal straightening his tie.
"This is a large accounting firm, with the right access I could copy all their clients personal information. Then in no time I could be taking money from their accounts as well as make thousands of fake ID's."
The elevator doors opened to a bland corporate office elevator lobby. Doors at each end required a card key to enter.
Neal had the envelope, and pulled out a card. "You said that the cards are listed as Administrators, that's not something you can easily copy."
Neal swiped the card and a light turned green and the door lock clicked open. The door said IT.
Neal went up to a short heavy set guy with thick glasses sitting next to an opened PC.
"I'm new here, and I'm running a little late, can you tell me where I can find the Chief Technology Officer?" as he looked at the envelope as if he was reading from it.
"Go out this door and pass the elevators, in the other side, Renzo is on the left just past the double doors." The guy responded.
Renzo appears to be a ex-jock who fell into the job and was trying to keep his head above water.
The bags beneath his eyes had bags, his hair was graying. He had a bad tie and bad breath. Papers all over his desk, on top of and under books about IT.
"Hmmm, I hired a guy about a month ago to run the Secura cards system, here it is David, David Dubois. He just called in to have his hard drive replaced."
Peter pulled out his cell and called Jones, "Can you look up David Dubois for any priors."
Neal was playing with a magnetic toy sitting on the edge of Renzo's desk.
Peter raised his eyebrows and made a face.
Neal knew Peter wanted him to stop, but he had made an ocean wave with fish out of the magnetic shavings.
Renzo said, "Hey that's pretty good, I usually am happy with a tower." making a gesture with his hand moving straight up.
Jones came back on line, David Alvin Dubois is wanted in Chicago for identity theft.
Peter asked Renzo, "Where can we find him?"
He's a round little sloth of a man with bottle bottom glasses on the other side..."
Peter jumped up, "We just saw him."
Neal followed Peter as he ran across the building in search of the guy they happened on first.
Peter opened the door, and asked a skinny young man that looked to be twelve, "Where's David Dubois?"
"Oh he left right after you guys came the first time, said he'd be right back, but that's been at least twenty minutes."
"Did he say where he was going?" Peter asked.
"No, but I think he was going to his car."
Both Peter and Neal gave a questioning look to the the skinny IT child man.
"He always has his keys on his desk and he was spinning them in his hand as he went out."
"Do you know what kind of car he has?", Neal asked.
"The key had four circles in a row...", he trailed off
"Audi" Neal claimed.
"Oh yeah, it was a nice car, silver gray Audi S5", Renzo had walked over and caught the last of the conversation.
"We have the license info on file to track who is allowed to park here."
Neal called Mozzie, "Could use your help."
"OK, what's up... doc?"
"Need to get info on someone moving large quantities of fake ID's, with access to bank accounts, identity theft."
Mozzie had no questions, he just said "I'm on it."
Peter walked out of his office and pointed two fingers in Neal's direction and then ducked back into his office.
"I had Jones and Diana search the Dubois residence as well as ask neighbors for any info." Peter didn't look happy, "They had no luck, the apartment had never been occupied by him so none of the neighbors knew who he was."
"Mozzie did find that a guy is pushing fake IDs, says he can get you any number of good active credit cards and credit history."
Peter smiled, "Hope this leads somewhere."
"He said you'd never guess how this guy meets his clients." Neal said as if Peter might know.
Peter looked like Neal was speaking another language, "I have no idea what he's talking about."
Peter and Neal opened Neal's apartment door to find Mozzie sitting at the small dining table.
Board game pieces and small toys were being setup on the table.
"Don't touch anything" Mozzie instructed.
Peter and Neal stood next to the table and looked at the work Mozzie had done.
Mozzie sat the last piece in place, "I called a certain David Allen about getting some high quality ID's with all the associated accouterments, credit cards, social security numbers and the like."
He raised his eyebrows and looks at Neal and then Peter. "My sources tell me David came into these details just yesterday."
"Who are your sources?" Peter asked.
"Nice try suit." Mozzie moved to the table setup.
"OK, This is the fountain." He said fountain very slowly, "and this is the bench." Again he said bench slowly.
Peter recognized it as Mozzie's meeting place in the park.
"So you setup a meet in the park?"
"Not so fast suit, I didn't setup a meet, David did."
Mozzie smiled. Peter was waiting, but Mozzie thought he should have gotten it already.
"David sets up a meet in the park and he says,'Look for a marked spot to sit and wait for my contact.' nothing else." Mozzie drew an X with his finger. "I told you it wasn't my X!"
"I don't believe it."Peter was surprised and maybe even shocked that there could be two crooks as paranoid as this.
"So when is the meet?" Neal asked.
"Tomorrow at 11:30" Mozzie looked smug then added, "AM"
Mozzie arrived right at 11:30, walked up too the bench and sat down so that the X was right at his toes.
He opened his newspaper to the business section and started reading.
A short overweight man stood in the trees where Mozzie had hidden before.
As David started walking towards Mozzie, Mozzie lowered his paper and David stopped.
"It's not your X, it's not your X." he gasped as he pointed to Mozzie. David realized he was busted but tried to run for the first time in twenty years.
His weight slowed him so much that Jones only had to walk to catch him. "FBI, freeze."
Peter and Neal appeared out of the crowds and walked towards the bench.
Nearly every other person in the crowd was FBI, they stopped acting and turned and walked over to Jones.
"Good catch."
"That was close."
"You guys are funny", Jones said as he handcuffed David Dubois and led him to a waiting car.
Neal said to Peter, "Did you think you'd ever run across another Mozzie? Hey where is Mozzie?"
Peter spun around and didn't see the short guy anywhere, "He's like a ghost, he's vanished, gone."
"Yeah this many agents makes him nervous."
~END~