Mozzie's Story

An additional scene to chapter 7 in Zach's perspective. (Some details may be a bit sketchy as sources varied the information). The truth about Mozzie finally comes out.

Recently, he received a message from Mr. Jeffries. There have been people poking around and asking him about Mozzie. They have a story about a baby boy, of Mozzie's description, going missing a long time ago. New evidence had surfaced in the last few years allowing the trail to finally be connected from DC to Detroit, and the trail had gone cold again in the area. The theory was that the abductors had decided to abandon the baby and maybe he was left at the orphanage. Nothing was confirmed yet, but for Mozzie the idea that he wasn't abandoned was new. He now had hope that his parents were out there looking for him, and had been all along only to be stymied by his abductors skills of disappearing.

Mozzie's story began in the year 1967 with details initially unknown. Some months later Mr. Jeffries discovered the baby abandoned and took him in at the group home where he raised him amongst the other homeless children. Being head master, it was up to Mr. Jeffries to ensure that the children were all taken care of, but there was something special about the bespectacled little boy he had found.

As Mozzie grew Mr. Jeffries took a shine to the kid and became his mentor as well as a surrogate father figure. He taught the boy to read and learn the wisdom of those who had gone before him in order to fight the battles he would inevitably face.

The first battle was the bullies on the playground who tended to attempt to take advantage of Mozzie due to his small stature and thick glasses. Learning from books, Mozzie conned and out smarted the bullies into leaving him alone while turning them onto each other as combatants.

Wishing for Mozzie to have a home, Mr. Jeffries worked long and hard to find a suitable place for his young protégé. Eventually, he found it, and Mozzie was transferred to his new family. Although the new parents were happy to have a second son, the son was not happy to have a brother. Things came to an end when the son set Mozzie up for a crime that he didn't commit and fearing his new parents' reactions Mozzie ran away and began life on the streets.

There, Mozzie discovered his second battle, survival. As a twelve year old living on the streets of Detroit he had to be creative. After one job fell through Mozzie moved on to create his own business. Deciding to use an adult as a patsy, he set up a con using an alias called the "Dentist of Detroit." For a time, Mozzie was successful and created quite the name for the Dentist. Then he pulled a five hundred thousand dollar scam on the Deluca family of the Detroit mob and his business fell apart.

Fleeing the mob's wrath, Mozzie moved to New York and recreated himself as a street con named Mozzie, but he did keep the connections to his past with his teddy bear, contact with Mr. Jeffries, and by occasionally funding the group home he grew up in.

After some years, Mozzie was working a Three Card Monte con in the park when he met my cousins playing Caffrey. Mozzie supposedly convinced Caffrey to be his front man and they teamed up to run a long con against Adler. When that fell apart they went on to have a global crime spree before Caffrey was arresting in New York. Once Caffrey was released to work for the FBI the partnership continued, only then they tended to work to catch other criminals while keeping any illicit activity hidden from the Feds.

Over the years Mozzie slowly opened up and revealed bits and pieces of his past. Those who played Caffrey kept a log of information to research and occasionally placed bets on details like where the name Mozzie came from.

Keeping an ear out for details, we hoped to eventually solve the mystery of who he was and where he came from, if only for the opportunity for him to know the truth. For us, family has always been a big part of our lives, and, since we created such a friendship (even under false pretenses), we wanted Mozzie to have a chance to connect to his biological family too.

My parents started to get particularly interested after we found out when Mozzie was abandoned. The day Mr. Jeffries found Mozzie was only a week after my parents' God-son went missing.

My parents had met the Wilsons when they were teamed up as a couples team for an NSA mission. The Wilsons were amazing at being inconspicuous in the field so they had the lead going in to retrieve some information from a large convention. My parents tended to stand out more so they created the distraction making sure that no one noticed when a drive of information was copied. Having pulled off a successful mission the two were teamed up several more times and became friends after a while.

When Noah Mozart Wilson was born his parents requested that my parents be his God-parents so that they could rest easy knowing that he would be taken care of if anything happened to them. Little did they know that even their precautions wouldn't be enough.

After a few months the Wilsons went on a mission and disappeared. It was assumed that their cover was blown so they were either killed or they went on the run and hid off grid unable to return without endangering Noah. When they didn't report in, a signal was sent to my parents that something had happened and they needed to get Noah.

My parents went to the daycare where Noah stayed when the Wilsons went on joint missions and my parents weren't able to take him. Upon arrival they checked in with the proprietor only to discover that he was already gone. A strange woman had shown up with papers detailing that it was alright for her to take legal custody of the baby. Taking him and his belonging she walked out to a vehicle and a man drove them away.

Based on the description of the woman, and what little a neighbor had seen of the man, it was assumed that they were the people that were the fixers for the organization the Wilsons were undercover in.

A man hunt was started and the two were caught trying sneak into Canada on the Montana border. Despite interrogations the fixers never admitted to having the baby or gave up the information as to what they had done with the baby. Over the years my parents continued to search for their lost God-son even as they watched over their lost son.

Combining the two stories of what had happened we were finally able to connect the dots. My parents were the people who visited Mr. Jeffries and compared information to try and gauge how likely it was that both boys were the same. With a promising outlook we managed to get a small hair sample from Mozzie after he fell asleep on the couch and did a test to compare it to the Wilson's genetics. We had a match.

Calling Mozzie, we set up a meeting at June's in the Caffrey apartment to provide a semi neutral, yet familiar, ground to have the discussion. (Neal had officially moved in but he vacated the premises for the evening). Nate was the face for the family as he was the one that Mozzie connected to best since he was the "honest one" who had actually grown up as Neal Bennett. Setting Mozzie down for this conversation was awkward at best, but Nate pushed on knowing that living a life in the dark was not something to enjoy (no matter how much Mozz might quote about not needing to know his biological heritage).

Getting started, Nate first introduced Mozzie to the pictures and information of his God-parents, Nicholas and Elizabeth Ryder. Then, he proceeded to fill him in on the details of the confirmation of his identity and worked his way back through history to the day of his birth. After completing the information on who Mozzie was, Nate gave him an envelope with his personal documents, his family information, and the information on our family as his God-family. Finally, as expected, Mozzie wished for time to verify and confirm the information he had been given. He headed home while Nate got together with the family to update us on how the meeting had gone.

The mystery of what had become of Noah Mozart Wilson was finally solved… he grew up to become Mozzie. As for his theory as to why he was abandoned, well it turned out to be right, except, his parents weren't from enemy organizations, they didn't abandon him, and they weren't from Detroit. However, they were spies. And what became of Mozzie?

Mozzie became rightful heir to his parent's safe houses, their savings/investments, and the family belongings. He settled in and began doing research into who his family was and began creating theories as to why they disappeared. After a meeting with Chuck, as the fellow son of spies who had abandoned him, he decided to look into the possibility of secret communication from his parents and spent several month going through everything in their belongings looking for coded information.

With scientific proof of his identity we gave our nameless asset a name, a history, and an "official position" as our asset. We kept his street identities separate and left him means of keeping his anonymity separate from official information, but we also gave him another official identity to open the door for a legit job connected (ironically enough) to the government.

All in all, Mozzie ended up with his real family links through heirlooms, his God-family who could share personal experiences with his parents, and the hope that maybe one day the mystery that surrounded his parents disappearance would be solved (perhaps in a similar method to the way Chuck's was?).