"You realize you just had me hack into the file database of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, right?"
Somewhere over the dark notes of chocolate and burnt almond somewhere deep in his espresso, Moz's unctuous, nasal tones cut through Neal Caffrey's sense of personal well being with the day. Not that this was a terribly unusual experience with his best friend; Moz's first line response always seemed to land somewhere between fretful Jewish mother and raging paranoid. But first thing on a Saturday morning, and in a crowded, Manhattan coffee bar, the words "hack" and "Federal Bureau of Investigation" jarred the contentment out of his good mood.
"Hey, Moz, why don't you just announce that a little louder for the rest of the bar to hear, I'm not sure they caught on to your illegal activity yet," Neal smirked, stretching long legs out in front him as he leaned back comfortably. "Besides, weren't you the one who told me that the FBI security measures on their server were so bad you were surprised they even bothered with protection."
"Doesn't mean I'm not afraid one of your Fibbie friends won't show up at my door, or worse…NSA demanding national secrets!" Moz fretted as he pulled out several, thick manila folders from his briefcase, stacking them on the tiny table, and glaring at Neal through his thick glasses. "The FBI has files on everyone and everything. They know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried; they have a JFK file so big you could use it to stop traffic. And I can't even begin to tell you about Area 51."
"Area 51," Neal snorted softly, reaching for one of the files. "Taken to chasing aliens, Moz?"
"It was always a side interest of mine, my great-aunt Mildred swore her first husband was abducted one night while playing poker with his buddies. Of course, no one told Aunt Mildred that her husband really skipped town with his secretary, but the story always made me curious."
"Moz, you never cease to amaze me," Neal grinned quietly, flipping open the file of printed papers. His best friend and closest confidant, Mozzie had fingers in just about every sort of pie imaginable. Somehow, though, conspiracy hadn't been a flavor of pie Neal had thought of.
"Hey, you were the one having me troll through the Bureau looking for dirt on Fowler, you muck in the swamp, and you expect to get a little dirty." Moz nervously ran a hand across his bald head and settled in the seat across from Neal.
"I must say, I'm impressed, it looks like you pulled everything from Fowler's birth certificate to a speeding ticket he got in high school." Neal's fingers flipped through the stack of information, so thick he couldn't even read it all. "Where the hell did you find this stuff?"
"Ahhh, grasshopper, one learns the ways of the Fibbie when one must deal with the Fibbie. The Bureau's more anal about background checks than anyone, they have whole departments that do nothing but call people up and ask what flavor of toothpaste you use in the morning. They store that info in super, secret servers hidden somewhere in West Virginia or something, just in case someone like your suit friend ever needs to look it up.
"My suit? Since when did Peter become 'my suit'?"
"He's a suit, he's your friend, and he seems to be the only one in the Bureau who doesn't freak out when people say, 'Oh, this is Neal Caffrey, world-class art thief and our consultant.' I say that makes him yours."
It sounded so ridiculous Neal bit back the smile forming at the very idea. "You make him sound like a puppy, Moz. Besides, aren't you the one always coming to Elizabeth's beck and call when she needs your special expertise."
"Mrs. Suit and I have a unique relationship outside the bounds of the reach of federal law," Moz's heavy eyebrows rose loftily. "Which reminds me, we need to hurry this up, she needs some help with this neurologist convention she's working this week."
"Consulting on parties now, are we?"
"You know, I put a lot of work into getting these files," Moz turned on the Jewish mother voice again.
"Right," Neal grinned, sipping at his coffee and leafing through the pages. It would take weeks, months even to find anything, even a kernel of information in these files, and that was if there was anything to find. Fowler, despite his cocky arrogance, wasn't an idiot; he couldn't have managed to maneuver himself into his safe and powerful OPR position if he was. But there was more to Fowler than just FBI bad guy, a pit bull in a suit who struck fear into the hearts of the regular special agents from his seat with the Office of Professional Responsibility. Kate had told him there were others, people who were controlling other people, to trust no one.
How did one maneuver around a man who sat on one of the most powerful entities within the FBI? Especially when he had control of the one woman Neal trusted and loved implicitly.
"There is no way we are going to get through all of this, Moz," he sighed, closing the file and nudging it next to his now empty coffee cup and the piles of other records Moz had so meticulously printed out. "I need to know who is controlling Fowler, who the man is who wants the music box….who it is that has Kate."
What he needed was an inside informant in the FBI. Strange, he worked as a consultant for the Bureau, and had been chained to it, literally, since he stepped out of prison nearly a year ago. He rubbed at the tracker on his ankle with one, well-shod toe. That anklet and his prison record meant that the notoriously closed ranks of the FBI would never open up for him, no one would, not even his handler, Peter Burke. If anything Peter would be the worst, believing he was saving Neal from himself by refusing him assistance in further provoking the likes of Garret Fowler.
All for the girl who left him behind…
"I used to know some guys who could have torn through this," Mozzie seemed to recognize the enormity of the task as well, staring forlornly at the pile. "Real characters, knew them for years from information hacking circles, we used to have a shared interest in the strange and the paranormal."
"Moz, you are unfolding right before my eyes," Neal grinned, unsurprised that even after years of knowing his fellow con-artist he still didn't know all there was to discover about Mozzie. And that was pretty much how Mozzie liked to play it, even with Neal, the less known about all of his secrets, the better it was.
"Well, I said 'used' to know, they aren't around anymore. Three of them ran an underground newspaper, filled to the gills with all sorts of government conspiracies and alien activities, the sort of stuff that no one talks about and everyone tries to cover up. My Aunt Mildred used to have a lifetime subscription, she'd pass me her old copies."
Mozzie, the most paranoid and practical person Neal knew, and he was seriously sitting here discussing alien conspiracies with him. "You don't really believe in that stuff…do you?"
"I'll say they made a persuasive argument," Moz hedged carefully. "They were legends in their time, amazingly good hackers, I wouldn't be surprised what they found. Besides, rumor has it they had an informant in the FBI who saw a lot of this stuff first hand."
An informant? Really? The wheels in Neal's head turned slightly. Informants to outside sources could be sympathetic ears...or easily blackmailed into helping a worthy cause. "Does anyone know who it was?"
"Nope, they kept it secret, though I have a few suspicions. There was one guy in particular with the Bureau, he worked almost exclusively with this stuff, but the thing is no one knows for certain. You and I both know in this business you start mouthing off about who your sources are, you don't get a source for very long."
Whether one was uncovering secret government plots or dealing in illegal, art forgeries, Neal understood that statement better than most. "Think any of that is true?"
Mozzie shrugged hunched shoulders skeptically, the sort of philosophy Moz took with everything he did in life. "Who am I to say if it is true or not. I do know one thing. The three of them ended up dead under mysterious circumstances. Some say the Feds ordered it, others the CIA. All I know is that there are three graves in Arlington with their name on it, and no one can say how it happened. You tell me, guys who die of normal circumstances get burials like that?"
"You know you really are disturbingly paranoid, don't you?"
"It's worked to your benefit on more than one occasion, hasn't it?" Moz snorted, gathering files. "This coming from a man who sees evil conspiracies around the girl who broke his heart."
"It's not a made up one, Moz, Kate wouldn't just lie to me on this." The argument was so old now between them that he hardly got irritated with Moz about it anymore.
"So what are we going to do with all this information on Fowler? There's a ton of it, what do you hope to find."
"Something…anything…leverage." Neal bit his lip as he studied the stacks, admittedly at a loss as to what to do with it. "I need to find out who is pulling Fowler's strings, and why, and what, if anything Kate has to do with it."
It was the first time he admit it out loud, that niggling doubt, the one he had been ignoring for months now, since the picture of Kate in the airport surfaced, the black and white surveillance of her with the man with the ring. Moz and Peter weren't the only ones to think that Kate was up to something more with this. They were just the only two to admit it out loud. And he had to know why, if it were true.
"Why don't you go to my place, get started. June can use some company." Neal waved absently at the piles, rising.
"Oh yeah, I owe her $50 after our last game of poker," Moz murmured absently, gathering his things. "I keep forgetting her husband ran with Frank Sinatra."
"Always had a soft spot for the ladies, Moz." Neal grinned, even as one particularly fine, brunette specimen of the female sex caught his eye with a slow, appraising smile.
"Look who's talking," Moz snorted. "Have fun with the suit."
"Yeah, let me know what you find," Neal murmured absently as the brunette's smile widened appreciatively.