Chapter 9

They were not advancing in the talks with the Mayfields: Brian was again absent, closed off somewhere in his mind, his parents and sister not really able to help. They decided to continue as soon as any of them had any news.

When the Mayfields were leaving, Victoria took Neal's arm and pulled him away from the rest. They talked quietly for a minute or two, and Neal gave her a warm goodbye hug. She kissed his cheek with tears in her eyes. "Goodbye, Neal..." she whispered.

Peter and Neal stood side by side observing the Mayfields leaving.

Neal shifted from foot to foot. "Now what?" he asked.

"Now we go back to tracking mobsters and finding missing paintings."

"What about finding Tony?"

"You heard Ed: Brian may or may not say something else; he'll be home for three more days, they'll call us if something comes up. Besides, it's time to give the case back to Missing Persons Division."

"Even if they mightily screwed up?" Neal's eyes danced with humor when he recalled Peter's earlier words.

"Even then. You're not him, the family is informed, we are at a dead end, so the case is out of our hands. Again." Peter took a sip of his cold coffee and winced; he needed fresh coffee.

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Most FBI cases are solved in the same manner any other criminal case is. Not with lots of chasing the suspects around or on long and hopefully interesting stake-outs. Most of the cases are solved through the nightmare of every sane person - paperwork. Bureaucracy has its own set of rules that need to be followed, producing incredible amount of completely-useless paperwork - for you.

For the FBI your despised stacks of paper are a gold-mine of information, from the address of your favorite tailor - as if they don't have it already after years of surveillance - to the secret, coded books that you keep to run the underground business. Of course you could do without it and have no issue with evidence later, but the thing is, most people, even criminals, have the need for keeping paper instilled in them from a very young age. The school report cards, the various permission slips, even homework: it's all a way to get you used to creating a paper trail - as Mozzie would explain to you, as he's burning the check for your lunch. Mozzie was paranoid like that, but Neal had to admit - looking at the growing stack of government-issued boxes of papers seized from Tommasi's business and home - it was good theory. He silently swore to himself he'd take a look at his own growing paper stack.

The paper was good, but the little things - like a custom-made gun, a unique Mateba 6 Unica revolver with an ivory-encrusted handle, or a box of cigars on your desk was even better. The details that a con man used to gain the trust of a mark, or to crack what made them think, or to simply get their computer password. All of these little things told the story, and the gun told one by itself.

"Son-of-a... " was Ruiz's quiet exclamation. They'd spent the last two hours going over mountains of papers and waiting for lab results for the gun. As they found a receipt - and really, who holds onto a receipt for a 20-year-old gun, was Neal's internal comment - most of Organized Crime kept their fingers crossed on the ballistics. If that gave results for any, any cold case in their archives, the evidence would be unassailable and they could put Tommasi away for something more than tax evasion.

Seemed only Peter and Neal heard Ruiz; they looked at each other then back at the agent.

"What ya got, Ruiz?" Peter asked; Caffrey was still not Ruiz's favorite person.

The answer surprised them both. "Caffrey, you're the expert. Take a look at those." He handed Neal two documents.

"What did you see?" Neal was civil.

"Take a look at the signatures. Especially Tommasi's." He then moved other papers around and handled Neal another document.

The con man did as asked and quietly studied the received documentation - his eyes widened with surprise, and a smile broke on his face. "It's forged! Nice catch, Agent Ruiz!"

"What's forged?" Peter wasn't far behind.

Neal gave a little shrug and took a quick look at Ruiz, lifting the papers a little - as in asking 'will you do the honors?'. Ruiz snapped the documents out of his hands with an irritated growl.

"The signature on this invoice, it's not Tommasi's. Seems your guy from the gallery did a number on a mobster; you have to admit the guy had balls..."

"Oh, yeah, you have no idea," Jones interrupted; another FBI folder hit the table. "Just got back lab results..." That statement brought all the room's attention to their small circle. Jones quickly added, "Szczepanski's fingerprints."

"USCIS finally let you past the red tape?" Peter grinned; getting anything from USCIS when they needed help was never fast; mostly it was a bureaucratic nightmare.

"Better. They kindly answered they don't have prints in such old cases. But I found the old case file on the theft from the NYPD, and they took his prints for elimination; the card was still there. The lab made the comparison and the second and third sets matched his," Jones reported.

"Second and third? How come?" Neal asked, surprised.

"There were right and left hand prints; the lab marked them as separate sets in the first run."

"So that means Szczepanski conned the Mafia?" Neal's smile shone like a beacon. "You have to admit, it must have been a genius plan, the guy was still alive till a heart attack took him twenty years later. You don't con the Mafia and live to tell about it." The agents dismissed his ramblings. "Hmm, of course he never told so maybe that's why..." Neal murmured to himself.

"Okay team, let's get some of the facts together..." Peter grabbed the attention of the nearest agents.

"We have fake invoices that show the paintings in question being sold to the gallery. Then we have the insurance, and not even a month later the insurance claim and the theft. Ruiz, the invoices were in Tommasi's papers? That doesn't sound right..." he trailed off.

Ruiz started to nod but stopped when his fingers moved the paper out of the folder he was inspecting - on the label was clearly written, "Cybis theft". "Nope, seems we have mixed documentation. It was from the Cybis case."

Peter groaned, the nightmare of paperwork and new clerks! They were supposed to clean up all documents left unattended in the conference room and put them back in the correct boxes; someone was slacking.

"Dammit! Now we have to review all of the papers once again; who knows what else they put wrong and we missed in the last few days." They were in the middle of reorganization - Peter and Ruiz decided to split the cases by division and all Cybis files were supposed to be managed by White Collar people, and all Tommasi's by Organized Crime. People and boxes moved in chaos directed by the two agents to create the semi-order necessary to get everyone back to work.

Cruz marched into the chaos with another stack of papers in hand and a crypto guy in tow.

"Boss?" she lingered in the entrance taking in the chaos. Peter's handwave kept her in place till agents ended their place changes and most of the documents were removed from the table into boxes.

"What do you have?" he asked, from the corner of his eye observing the young man that followed her in talking to Ruiz.

"The footage from downstairs' shooting, you should see it." On his nod she put the disc in and clicked play. Peter poked Ruiz in the arm to get his attention to the screen; the young man he'd just talked to was directed to the agents at the table.

"The man in the trench coat was identified as Simone Tommasi, for whom we put out an APB a few hours ago," Cruz started with commentary on the footage.

"We know," was the simultaneous answer from Peter and Ruiz.

"What you probably don't know is that he spent at least five minutes in a car before the event, and he wasn't alone." That got their attention. The footage showed a Ford with three occupants, obviously in discussion; the quality wasn't the best, but you could recognize heads shaking and elaborate gestures. "What's even more interesting is that Tommasi wasn't the one that fired the shots..."

"What?" the chorus of voices interrupted her.

The footage was forwarded to the moment under discussion - a figure in a trench coat exited the car and started going towards the federal building; the two persons left in the car still seemed deep in discussion. Maybe a half minute later a second figure quickly left the car, crouched by the door and very obviously took out a gun, shouted something and fired. The muzzle flashed twice, the gun was tossed inside the car and the person ran to tackle the coat wearer down. After a brief struggle he was dragged back to the car and put in the back seat. The discussion with uniformed cops that came to investigate finished quickly and the car drove off.

"Amateurs..." Jones murmured, seeing the cops letting the car go.

"Do we have the plate?" Peter asked.

"Yup, it was a rental in the name of Margaret Walczak - an NYPD detective out of the 23rd precinct..."

"Right in the middle of Tommasi's turf..." Ruiz interrupted her.

"And partner to Detective Parker. We had the pleasure of meeting them, when we got called on the Cybis paintings," Peter finished the thought.

"If they were in the car with him and obviously letting him go free, they are dirty. But why the shooting?" The question asked by Cruz hung in the silence.

"Ahem..." was all that Ruiz answered, motioning to one of his agents to pass him another file. "The crypto guys cracked Tommasi's books. Parker and Walczak were on his payroll for the last two years, so you're right, they were dirty. Plus there's something on your gallery man." His finger moved over the copied page, down to the entry marked with orange highlighter. "Gallery debt paid - $250K - on May 7th, 1990."

Peter ran his hand over his hair, deep in thought, getting all of the facts together.

"Okay, let's do it this way..." he started quietly, before adding a little bit louder, "Ruiz..."

Before he could finish, the other agent finished for him. "My people will issue APBs for the detectives." With a flick of his hand one of the junior agents was pointed out and quickly left the room to carry out his order.

"Right. Neal, let's use your tree notes style and get the facts together..." Peter gestured to the whiteboard on the wall. Neal quickly cleaned it and put all of the facts they had till now; dashed lines and comments followed every connection. In the end they had a tree with lines crossing at a few points and three still-unanswered questions.

The agent Ruiz send to put APBs on the detectives came back with another file; he was grinning like an idiot. "Boss! Ballistics from the gun came back. They matched it to the Detlef murder, and another two in the next six months!" Neal added that info to the growing tree, replacing one of the question marks with a line between Detlef and Tommasi.

"Okay, so we know that Szczepanski forged Tommasi's signature on the invoice, got insurance claim money and used it to pay the mob off. I'll bet that he was the one that got Detlef to steal the paintings from Tommasi, who in return found Detlef, finished him off, but missed the gallery involvement. Question is how do we prove that?" Peter summarized.

"We already have proof." One of the Harvard crew agents pushed a handwritten note in his direction. The note stated quite clearly, 'pay second half to Detlef'. The young agent continued, "it's in Szczepanksi's handwriting; we compared it to the rest of the gallery papers."

"What a tangled web we've got. Question remains, where's the one painting from the collection? Do you think Tommasi got it? And what the hell is his angle in all of this?" Jones gave a summary of the last week of work in four simple sentences.

Sometimes you solve most of the case just using paperwork, sometimes you really need to catch some people. Peter groaned after looking at his watch: it was almost eight pm; Elizabeth would be expecting him for dinner in less than twenty minutes.

"Okay, let's wrap this up; without our three fugitives we won't get more answers tonight. Let's take a break and see what we can get tomorrow. Good work, people!" The conference room slowly emptied; Ruiz and his crew took their half of the boxes, Peter's Harvard crew cleaned up theirs.

Before Peter gathered together his things all agents managed to leave the office, apparently taking Neal with them, if you could believe an origami swan that made his way to his desk with a note, "Jones is playing taxi today". With a sigh he left the office, hoping that the traffic would let him be only five minutes late.

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The shrill ring of the phone woke him around two in the morning. His first terrified thought was 'Caffrey ran' before he woke up completely and answered the damn annoying piece of technology.

"Burke."

"Ruiz here. Sorry to wake you, but I thought you would like to know..."

"Get to the point, Ruiz, it's the middle of the night!" he spat quietly, careful to not wake El.

"Walczak, Parker and Tommasi's bodies were found by Pier 17. All three shot in Mafia execution style."

"Crap."

"Yeah... I'm taking the case out of your hair. If we find anything on your missing painting I'll let you know."

"Thanks, Ruiz. Good night."

Sometimes luck was not on their side was his last thought before falling asleep.