Chapter 4
Chuck was surprised when Bryce dropped into the seat across from him with a salad wrap in his hands. Bryce's lunch break was just about to end so where had he been?
"You know you can refuse service if you're on break," Chuck said. It was policy mostly because the employees would do it anyway. If they had policy to fall back on, sometimes the customers didn't get as angry. Sometimes.
"That's not what happened," Bryce said. Chuck was curious. Bryce commented, "the FBI was exciting at times but in a different way to this place. Who knew working at a Buy More could be this interesting?"
"Do I want to know?" Chuck questioned.
"It involves a turtle, a cowboy hat and a netbook," Bryce said. After a pause, he added, "and Large Mart."
"You know what. For legal reasons, I don't want to know," Chuck responded.
Bryce snorted a laugh.
Also four days after the arrest of one Daniel Shaw.
Peter turned up on the doorstep of the hotel room where Bruce Wayne was staying. It was Bruce's second youngest, Timothy, who opened the door. The young adult's eyes were red and sunken.
"Sorry to wake you," Peter said.
Tim looked confused. "I wasn't sleeping." Peter bit his tongue to keep from saying that maybe he should have been. "How did you get past the lobby?"
Peter held up his FBI ID. "But in all honesty, no one really asked what I was doing and I already knew which room Bruce was staying in."
"Why do you want to see Bruce?"
"It's about Neal."
"Figured it out, did you?" Tim opened the door to let him in. "He's in the study."
Peter didn't get rich people. What kind of hotel room had a study? Why would anyone need a space this big for a holiday or work trip? Sure, he had stayed in large hotel rooms but they weren't the size of a house and they made him feel more awkward than comfortable.
Bruce Wayne was typing on a laptop at a desk which looked 100 years old and yet shiny new.
"Neal Caffrey is your eldest, Dick Grayson, isn't he?" Peter said. "Or he pretended to be at some point but then, I'm not sure how you managed to be in the same room as him if that was the case."
"Oh, Neal is most certainly Dick," Bruce responded. "I'm surprised you figured that out." Why did they keep saying that? Neal wouldn't have been surprised.
Peter shrugged. All the hints were there. "Did you know he joined the CIA as Bryce Larkin?"
"Until recently I did not." Bruce's frown said he didn't approve of the decision. It was interesting, meeting Bruce Wayne like this. There was no sign of the stupid playboy the press not-so-affectionately referred to as 'Brucie'. Instead, Bruce had a fierce and hard blue gaze which seemed to look through Peter's every thought and movement, analysing and scrutinising.
No wonder Neal was so good at reading people.
Peter could tell that Jones and Diana were surprised when there was a knock at the door. Peter was surprised as well, but for a different reason. They were surprised because of who came in. Peter was just surprised that Bruce actually came. After all, the Burke's townhouse was a step down from the fancy hotel.
Spread out on the table was all the information on Bryce Larkin. Most of it was redacted or files covered in black rectangles hiding 'sensitive information'. There were, however, a couple of photos from Bryce's time at Stanford, information on his fake job at the bank and a news article detailing his death at the hands of bank robbers. Diana had commented that it was ironic. It wasn't one of Neal's top deaths. Peter had a soft spot for being mauled by sharks, possibly because it was a time when Peter knew Neal hadn't actually died from the moment he received the death certificate. Not even Bruce seemed shocked or impressed to see Bryce's death notice.
"He was actually shot," Bruce commented. "This aligns with a time Bryce Larkin was marked deceased within the CIA. I'm guessing this was the cover up."
"A legitimate reason for someone to die suddenly, because they couldn't say how it really happened?" Diana commented, thinking it sounded legit. "The CIA is involved, we can't discredit anything right now."
"We're all going to sound like Mozzie by the end of this," Peter pointed out with a heavy sigh.
"On that note, has anyone had any luck trying to find the little guy?" Jones asked.
"No."
"We'll find Neal long before we find Mozzie," Diana pointed out.
"Mozzie is much better at hiding," Peter pointed out. "Also," he added a file on Dick Grayson to the pile. "This is everything I could find on Dick Grayson, Neal's birth identity as far as we can tell."
Bruce reached for the file, flipping through it. He made a couple of impressed huffs as he read.
"It's fairly accurate," he said as he continued looking through the information. Peter was glad to hear it. It hadn't been easy to gather information about Dick Grayson. It was mostly information from the government, the internet and news reports. The easiest time to track had been the time when Bruce had suddenly left to travel the world or something. During that time, Dick Grayson had stepped up into Bruce's role in Wayne Industries. That included all the media roles as well.
"It seems that Neal didn't actually spend any of the four years of his prison sentence in prison."
"A CIA cover-up?" Diana suggested. Jones looked a little surprised at that suggestion.
"Possibly. I can't think of anyone else who would help Neal out of prison while also making it look like he was still there."
"I can think of people," Bruce mused. He pulled out his phone and sent a text to Clark. There was going to be a Justice League meeting about this one.
"Care to share?" Peter asked.
Bruce declined. Instead he looked over their information and supplied answers to some of their questions, like how he didn't notice that his son had become CIA and a infamous conman.
"All my children travel a lot. It's difficult to know what they do when they leave. Especially since they've gotten very good at hiding their activities from me." Bruce was glad that the FBI seemed to think that Neal's abilities in conning and thievery had more to do with his past in the CIA rather than anything he might have learnt while under his care.
"All your children?" Jones questioned.
Bruce nodded and started listing off where everyone was. Sure, Tim and Jason and Damian were currently in the city but that was because they had been free. Before that, Jason had been somewhere in Gotham's slums, Tim had been on the coast and Damian alternated between Metropolis and Gotham depending on whether he was hanging with his friends or staying at the manor that night.
Duke was still in Gotham, he didn't like to travel much. Cass was in Asia somewhere, last he had heard from her, she had been in China.
Bruce could see the information dump getting to the agents. They were trying to remember everything he said but, it was a lot of information which their personal opinions were getting in the way of memorising. It was difficult to recall who was where when they were offended by the very idea that Bruce didn't know where his children where or the idea that these teenagers and young adults could go wherever they wanted with little issue.
Peter however, tuned most of it out. Information about Bruce's sons could be located later on. While something Bruce mentioned here could become important later on, Peter doubted it since the businessman was obviously trying to overload them with more information than they could process. It would be better to ignore it for now and keep his wits about him. If something really did end up being important later, Diana or Jones could inform him.
Although, he wished Bruce would stop with the games and help them find Neal.
