A/N: Because I have nothing better to do whilst sitting in my T.A. hour waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. Good times! Thank you all for the reviews and continued support! Reading what you have to say is awesome. I look forward to it and check obsessively. I need a hobby. :) I am also largely entertained by Google Ads putting White Collar ads on the fanfiction page. Kudos!
Chapter 3: Smoke and Mirrors
"He blew the place up?" Mozzie half-laughed.
"No, Salazar didn't, his partner did," Neal said, although he couldn't suppress his own smile. "I'm guessing that, from the looks of it, Salazar just got double-crossed. The FBI are taking him in for interrogation."
"How did he know this was a sting operation?"
"I dunno. Maybe he was planning to do this no matter who showed up. The fact that the FBI were the buyers just happened to be a coincidence."
"Maybe. I assume you want me to find the partner?"
"Am I really that predictable?"
"Yes."
Neal narrowed his eyes in a glare, even though Mozzie wouldn't be able to see him doing so over the phone.
"Alright, I'm predictable, but you are very good at what you do. Nicholas Kerrington. Know anything about him?"
"Not off the top of my head, but I'll do some digging and see what comes up. You'll let me know if Salazar spills anything that might help me?"
"Si, señor," Neal said teasingly.
"Shut up."
There was a brief pause.
"So the FBI really brought a case of a million dollars and didn't think to booby trap it in some way?"
"I was thinking the same thing. Doesn't seem like the smartest idea, and I have a hard time believing they could be that stupid."
"There's no way they'd trust you around one million unprotected dollars."
"Thanks, Moz."
"Oh, lighten up. I'll get to work on finding this Kerrington guy. You go do things for The Man."
"Are you planning on--"
The line went dead.
"Letting that go," Neal finished, removing his phone from his ear.
xxx
"Nicholas Kerrington," Salazar sputtered, handcuffed in the White Collar Crime Unit conference room and sweating despite the chilly air temperature.
"Who is he?" Peter asked, leaning over the other side of the table, supporting himself on his knuckles. He had taken his jacket off and his shoulder holster was showing, adding an extra bit of intimidation to the proceedings.
"He is thief," Salazar said. "He stole your money. Stole my pretty pinturas. Destroyed my warehouse."
"Right. We want to find him and bring him to justice. If you help us, it'll be better for you. So tell me – where can I find Kerrington?"
"Don't know. He probably flee. Don't know where he has gone."
"No ideas at all?"
"He probably stay in city. Muchas pinturas aqui. He want some of them. To steal. Sell for high price. He is very clever."
"What's your relationship with him?"
"He was friend," Salazar said, eyes narrowing. "He promised me money. Said he would get money if I helped him. Wanted my skills."
"How did he find you?"
"No se, señor."
Peter pulled out a chair and sat down, leaning forward and folding his hands on the tabletop.
"What was the plan – from your end – for today? Walk me through what was supposed to happen."
"Pintura was delivered to me yesterday," Salazar said, struggling with the English. "Said it worth lots of money. I ask Kerrington, how soon can we sell? He said wait a day. I said I want two million. He said he do his best. Next day, says Señor Tory Shepherd interested in la pintura. Negotiations arranged. I was very happy. Then, Kerrington betray me. Steal pintura. Steal your money. Don't know where he got explosives or when he set them up."
"Are you telling me the truth?"
Salazar nodded.
"Es la verdad, Señor Burke."
Peter felt, in his gut, that he could trust Salazar's responses. He signaled to Jones, who was waiting outside, that he had finished with the Spaniard.
"We're going to keep you in custody for the time being. I'm not going to forget your cooperation. We'll catch Kerrington and see what we can do with you.
"Lo que sea," he said as Jones cuffed him. "You police types are all the same."
He was trying to be calm and collected, but Peter saw suppressed despair and panic in his eyes. Peter returned to his office, paged Lauren, and logged in to his computer. Moments later, when Lauren poked her head into the office, he looked up.
"Nicholas Kerrington. Find anything and everything we have on him and get it to the conference rom. Jones'll help you when he's done with Salazar. Let me know when you're finished and I'll call Caffrey."
Lauren nodded and left to get started on her task. Peter stared at his dust-covered reflection in the glass walls of his office. He had gone home to change and inform El that he was safe. He hadn't had time for a shower, so his hair was looking a little prematurely grey, although he had washed his face of the gunk. He couldn't wait to go home and take a long, hot shower.
He prayed that Neal would have better luck than he did.
xxx
Neal was enjoying the benefits of a hot shower, digging his fingernails into his scalp to be sure that he got all the dust out.
He looked at the tips of his fingers, studying the swirling ridges that biologically identified him as Neal Caffrey. Fingerprints were the bane of any criminal's existence, white collar or not. Leave a few prints at a scene and your ass was grass.
He thought of Firefingers, the only man he'd ever known to overcome that particular setback. Sure, the man was certifiably insane, but he knew what he was doing, and paranoid schizophrenia only made him better at it.
Neal leaned his head against the shower wall. Think like Firefingers. He constantly said this in his mind – even before he had started working for the FBI – and for the most part, it had worked.
Neal's downfall, in comparison, was that he was perfectly sane and thus not compulsed to take extreme measures to cover his tracks. His guard wasn't always up, either.
He smiled to himself. His old mentor would be ashamed. Or whack him on the back of the head and tell him he had too much trust. It depended on the day.
Firefingers had always disapproved of Neal using his real name in any case. Neal had known his mentor for years but knew only his first name. He had too many aliases to count.
Neal looked at his fingers again.
Had Kerrington been wearing gloves?
Neal struggled to remember. They had shaken hands at the start of the meeting. He remembered feeling skin. No, he hadn't been wearing gloves. Had he touched anything besides Neal's hand?
There had been a friendly pat on the shoulder, but any prints left behind would have been obliterated by the dust.
Neal shut the water off and wrapped a towel around his waist. He sat on the edge of the bathtub, staring at his feet and thinking.
A surge of adrenaline hit him like a bull elephant. His head snapped up and he stared wide-eyed at his reflection in the foggy mirror.
The phone.
Salazar had gotten a phone call. Kerrington had answered it.
The FBI probably had confiscated it upon Salazar's arrest.
Neal bolted out of the bathroom to his own phone, misdialing Peter's number twice in his haste. He held his breath as it rang. Once, twice –
"Agent Burke."
"Peter," Neal blurted. "Salazar's mobile phone."
"What?"
"His phone. Kerrington answered a call on it and then Salazar put it back in his pocket. Do you guys have it?"
Peter went from baffled to business in no time flat.
"Yes, downstairs. I'm on it. You get yourself in as fast as possible. We've got a boatload of paperwork on Kerrington."
"Right," Neal said, hanging up the phone and tearing through the suite in a rush to get dressed. It took him three tries to get his shoes on the right feet and he realized halfway to the office that he had forgotten to remove the protective waterproof wrap from his tracking anklet.
He disregarded it as he power-walked through the streets. He called Mozzie.
"Anything on Kerrington?" he said, ignoring pleasantries.
"Hello to you too, Neal. Nothing so far. Still on the hunt. This one's a slippery fish."
Neal didn't wait for anything else Mozzie had to say.
xxx
"Nothing?" Neal said in despair, visibly deflating.
"No prints on the phone other than Salazar's. Kerrington must've wiped it off," said Jones.
Neal hung his head. He had secretly been a little proud that he'd gotten the fingerprint idea without Mozzie's help, but a dead end was no source for pride.
"And all of our information is useless," said Lauren in exasperation, tossing aside yet another file with Kerrington's name on it. "I've got a feeling that Nicholas Kerrington isn't even his real name. if it is, he's a barber-slash-CEO-slash-museum-owner-slash-high-school-teacher from Texas, New York, California, and New Jersey."
Peter massaged his temples with one hand, his eyes squinted shut.
"Forget two places at once, we're chasing smoke and mirrors."
Peter looked at Neal.
"Any ideas? Elusiveness is your specialty. What's Kerrington – if that's his name at all – up to?"
Everyone looked at Neal, who looked up. He met all of their eyes individually, coming to rest on Peter last of all.
"Even I'm not this good at getting away," he said in defeat.
The disappointment was almost tangible. They had gone from setting up a routine sting operation to completely lost and completely out of options.
There was nothing left to do but go home.
xxx
Peter sat back in his chair, feeling very full and very warm after practically licking his dinner plate clean. He sighed a happy sigh and smiled at his incandescent wife.
"The only thing I love more than food is the woman who is kind enough to cook it for me," he said, teasing.
Elizabeth smiled back at him, picking up both plates and pecking him on the lips as she walked to the kitchen. She deposited the dishes in the sink – she'd clean them after Peter went to bed so that she could spend more time with him – and returned to the dining room, putting her arms around him from behind where he sat.
"And I love the man who enjoys my food. I know you had a rough day."
"That's what happens when you lose twenty grand of your boss's money to a guy that you can't find."
"I thought it was a million."
"The rest were counterfeit. The twenty grand was just to make it look convincing."
"I was wondering why Hughes would be okay with having Neal close to that much money."
Peter chuckled, affectionately rubbing Elizabeth's forearms.
"Hughes didn't want any part in it. But yeah, few people trust Neal around any amount of money."
"Are you part of that few?" she asked teasingly.
"I'm in the extreme few that know that a million is a small chunk of change in his world."
It was Elizabeth's turn to laugh. She kissed her husband's cheek and let go of him.
"Come on, let's not talk about work. Work is at the office. I'm here. Let's watch some television and unwind a little."
"Words to live by," Peter said, happily following her to the living room.
xxx
Neal was alone in the dark, staring at the glowing screen of his cell phone, trying to rationalize his next move.
It was desperate and a last-ditch effort, but if it worked, it would solve everyone's problems faster than sitting around could. He wasn't sure how to find the man or even if he was still alive, but it was the last option he could think of. The situation was desperate. Hughes hadn't said it to his face, but Neal knew he was risking going back to prison if he did nothing at all. Hail-Mary passes were better than nothing.
He picked up his phone, dialed Information, and gave the operator the name of a nightclub and asked for its address and phone number. He hung his head when he realized the address was well outside his two-mile radius. The stupid place was always changing location, and now it was too far away.
He'd need Peter for this, as much as he'd prefer to do it alone.
He hung up on the pleasant hotline operator and, for the he-didn't-know-what time that day, dialed Peter's number. He knew he was probably interrupting time with Elizabeth, but he'd make it up to her. Somehow.
Predictably, Peter was grumpy at the disturbance.
"This had better be good, Caffrey."
Neal took a deep breath.
"I have an idea on how to catch Kerrington."
"What?"
There was a brief pause.
"Ever hear of a man called Firefingers?"
A/N: Things are getting interesting! I love you for reading. Seriously. It's turned me into quite the crack addict for reviews.
Also, clever readers will be able to figure out why I chose those particular states for Kerrington's mysterious place of origin. Digital high-five to the first person to figure out why. If no one figures it out, I'll put it in the concluding A/N for the next chapter.
Translations (I've studied Spanish for three years, but some things are a little foggy, so if you notice any errors please let me know):
Pintura = painting
Muchas pinturas aqui = many paintings here
No se, señor = I don't know, sir (or Mr.)
Es la verdad = That's the truth
Lo que sea = whatever