Mozzie's Perspective

Mozzie tells what he saw while building a working relationship with Caffrey. This is from chapter 9.

Since I was twelve years old I have been living on my own and working cons to make a living. My first run was as the Dentist of Detroit where I pulled a five hundred thousand dollar scam on the Deluca family of the Detroit mob. After that fell apart, I moved on to New York and the mob made the Dentist of Detroit an uncatchable ghost of a criminal to hide the fact that they were taken for a spin by a twelve year old.

Years later, I was working a Three Card Monte con in the park and I met my future best friend. Neal did what most people find very difficult to impossible, he conned the con at his own con. That was impressive! Sending my young friend Cado to tale him, I wanted to check out this mystery man with the skill to beat me at my own game. He seemed young and was likely a rookie but it was possible that I had found the perfect front man.

When we first started, I was interested in taking his raw talent and making him my prodigy. I had plans for a long con against a local business man named Vincent Adler and now I had a front man to be on the inside. To fund our endeavor Neal was forging bonds for Atlantic Incorporated, but the funny thing was that I had never heard of them before. They were extremely new and not really on the market scene, it struck as a bit odd at the time, but I dismissed it having my eyes on the bigger prize.

As Neal worked his way closer to Adler, he became romantically interested in the assistant Kate Moreau. This was trouble from the beginning and eventually cost us the whole con. What puzzled me about the relationship though, was how he would change in his reaction to her from time to time. Usually he was flirty and romantic, but sometimes he seemed more like her brother pretending to be her boyfriend to keep someone from hitting on her. It was more than a little weird and made me wonder just how real their relationship was.

It turned out that Adler was a bigger con than the two of us combined as he pulled off his Ponzi scheme successfully and had completely disappeared leaving a shell shocked New York behind. With Adler out of the picture we lost everything we had invested into the con, still had our FBI shadow, and the only value we left with was Neal's relationship to Kate.

With almost nothing to lose Neal had decided to tell Kate who he really was and was pleasantly surprised when she accepted him and still wanted to be with him. She joined our crew and we got a functioning system put into place that was useful in pulling off a variety of cons. Everything was going well again until Neal tried to con Kate into going to Copenhagen with him to work with Alex on her plan to get the music box. Kate disappeared in a fury and Neal went alone to work with Alex.

Neal and I worked both separately and together for a couple of years. We traveled the world taking the FBI and other law enforcement on a merry old, wild goose chase while pulling off a myriad of heist and other crimes. When we worked together Neal always seemed to know what was going on locally on the official front while I had a really good link into the criminal side of things. It was the perfect team until we were back in New York and Kate came into the picture again.

A known snitch was spreading the word on the street where Kate was currently located. Feeling obligated to my friend, I told Neal what the word was and how unreliable the source. Still, like a love struck fool, he knowingly walked right into the trap and was arrested by the FBI suit known as Agent Burke. As I watched from the shadows Neal went through the process of the system and was eventually sentenced to four years in a maximum security prison.

This was a temporary end to our working partnership but I settled in close by and kept in touch. While I waited for his time to be up I ran some cons, caught up with old contacts in the area, and had several escape plans ready to put in motion.

In the last few months of his sentence Neal sent me a message to come and see him. I set up a meet as his lawyer with intentions of starting plans to get him back into society upon his release. Really, we were discussing his escape as Kate had suddenly broke up with him and left. Fearing something was wrong Neal wanted to get out and find Kate. There had always been questions on the validity of her emotions toward the relationship from my perspective, but as Neal had his heart set on her, I agreed to help.

After leaving the prison, I was seated in my taxi a crossed the street with a camera trying to get a feel for the comings and goings from the outside. That was when I saw a man, who looked a lot like Neal, leaving the prison and being picked up by a woman who looked a lot like Kate. Instinctually I took a series of pictures to study later and after their departure I returned to deciding which plan to go with for Neal's escape.

The plan was simple. Neal would grow out his hair and get the guards used to his scruffy appearance. We used credit card information that Neal had stolen from the wardens wife to buy a uniform to match the guards. The back of a toilet in a bathroom used by staff sufficed as a relatively safe stash for the shaving tools, uniform, and the fake ID that would be needed for the escape. When the time was right, and everything was ready, the plan was put into motion. First, Neal gained access to the bathroom again to clean up his appearance and change into the guard uniform. Then, he simply walked out the front door and stole a truck in the parking lot. Bouncing though a couple of looks and rides he made his way through the city to Kate's old apartment. There, he found nothing but a bottle which was the message of goodbye. Finally, the Suit had been alerted to Neal's escape so he showed up to arrest Neal again and we were right back to Neal being in prison with a four year sentence.

Since Kate was still missing, Neal called me in for another meeting. It turns out that he had made an arrangement to meet the Suit in a week so we had to get a plan in order quickly. Neal wanted to get out on a work release so that he would have a semblance of freedom to look for Kate. To do this, we had to have a plan that the Suit would be willing to go for, while not being too restrictive for our plans. The Suit made the meeting, heard the proposal, and left to think about it. For a while, I was unsure whether we had been successful or not as Neal continued to serve his time until after the first sentence was completed. Then Neal sent me word that Suit had agreed and he was out.

Within twelve hours of being out of prison Neal had met a charming woman named June Ellington. For her, Neal was a reminder of her late husband Byron, who had been a con as well, so she gave him all of her husband's old clothes and set up an arrangement for him to rent the rooftop apartment at her palatial home. This suited Neal and irked Agent Burke, which made the arrangement all the better.

My first visit was made when Neal was off working with the Suit. I found June to be a jewel. She welcomed me into her home as her friend and showed an interest in my life that very few had ever done. We hit it off immediately and she was a strong ally from the start.

After Neal had successfully helped to catch Curtis Hagen aka "The Dutchman" his partnership with the Fed was off to a shaky start. He worked cases from the office with Peter and we worked our own angles from his home on his personal time.

Since he was restrained to one location for four years I worked more closely with Neal than I ever had before, and there were more inconsistencies to be discovered. The discrepancies weren't generally all that big, but they puzzled me all the same.

First, I noticed that his routines would sometimes change. One day he would tie his tie using a particular technique, then the next he would do the same thing with a different flare, as if he changed his personality overnight. Usually, I would suspect that he was practicing his skills, using me like a perspective mark. When I asked about the possibility, he denied there being anything different to the way he always does things and claimed that he would never use me as a mark.

Then, his interests also changed from time to time. He would be quoting topics and literature one week, and the next he would have no interest in the very things he had a keen knowledge of the week prior.

Also, his learning curve was beyond normal. There was this case where Neal needed a history of computer engineering as well as extensive knowledge on art in order to create a complicated piece during an FBI undercover role. The night before he was to go in he left to see an old friend. He wouldn't tell me anything else, he just left. Then, I am told he walked into the place the next day like he owned it and went to work with the computer like they were his passion. How did he get advance computer engineering skills in one brief visit with an old friend?

To make matters worse, there were the times when he slipped. He would say something or get this look in his eye like he was a Fed himself. I thought this meant that he was spending way too much time working with the Feds, but how could I be sure when he had his mysteries even with me?

Finally, to top off all the things that made no sense it came out that he had a history with a bunch of spook suits from the CIA and the NSA. There was a gigantic portion of his life that he had never shared with any of us and I had a foreboding feeling that there was more to come.

Just to let you all know, my family is going on our last (known) vacation of the year and I will be gone for nearly two weeks. When I get back I will post a chapter for the missed Sunday and then resume posting as usual the following Sunday. Please let me know what you all are thinking about the story as it will give me something to read and I will respond to any messages when I can.