A/N: I was totally about to apologize for not getting this out sooner, but I figure that A) this is your second chapter today, B) this is your fourth chapter this week, C) you can't fault me for wanting to work all the kinks out of it, and D) you get a giant heaping helping of answers on Monday - So, I refrain from apologizing.

You're all beautiful people! And guess what? We've hit 150 reviews! Wanna know what's never happened to me before? Hitting 150 reviews! You're all awesome, and I love you, and I hope your weekends are about to be as good as mine.

Warning: There's a racial slur or two in this chapter, and I'm sorry about that, but they serve their purpose. And FYI: A hakenkreuz is a the technical name for the tilted swastika used by the Nazi party. (Just in case you didn't want to wikipedia that).

"You seem miffed." Ziva asked.

"Miffed, Ninja Girl?"

"Yes, miffed. Closer to 'put out' than 'pissed', and not nearly enough to be 'irate'."

Tony stopped mid-knock on the apartment door they stood in front of to gawk at Ziva. "What?" she asked, "I used them properly."

"That, my dear Ziva, would be why I'm confused."

They just stood staring at one another for a moment before Ziva repeated, "Why are you miffed?"

"I dunno Ziva, maybe because we're knocking on the doors of people we've already to, or maybe 'cause half of them aren't at home because it's the middle of the day." Tony had been knocking while he ranted, and decided this was another apartment with no one home and moved on.

"Or maybe because it looks like the love of my baby cousin's life got nabbed by the Bureau because five years ago I didn't trust my gut and tell her father to get bent." Tony made his way down the hall, banging on the next door while Ziva patiently remained in front of the first door.

"Why don't you want to talk about it?"

"This here, this is me talking about it."

"No, this is you throwing a tantrum." Tony whirled and glared at Ziva from down the hall, the both of them in a standoff.

"Why don't you talk about what you did for Mossad?"

"I do!"

"Saying you can kill me with a paperclip isn't talking about it, Ziva. What about some of your missions?"

"Those are classified."

Tony sauntered back to her position, secure that he'd gotten control of the conversation again. "Alright then. Tell me about your father." Pain flickering across her eyes was Ziva's only response. "There are things we don't talk about, Ziva. Gibbs doesn't mention his family, McGee won't talk about high school, you ignore your father, and me, I get this. All of us have things better left buried."

Ziva tilted her head in acceptance as the elevator behind them dinged and dumped out two of the scraggliest looking men Tony had ever seen. They were both solidlybuilt, with broad shoulders and thick arms. The first reeked of cigarette smoke, and with his greasy mullet and acid washed wranglers he couldn't have looked more hillbilly if he tried. His arms and neck (and Tony could only assume his chest as well) were covered in tattoos, none of them particularly well done, but still inflammatory enough to get him stared at on the DC train, which was probably the real reason he got them in the first place. The second guy had far fewer tattoos, separated by enough space that Tony could actually count them, and with his buzz cut could've passed as not a skinhead out in polite society. Well, until he turned his head and you saw the hakenkreuz tattooed on the back of his skull.

Both men stepped off the elevator, giving Ziva appraising looks that made Tony's blood boil. In a not at all subtle move, Tony stepped forward, placing himself between Ziva and the men and asked, "Gentlemen, could we ask you a couple of questions?"

The one with the mullet chuckled like Tony had just done something stupid and said, "I dunno, can you?"

Tony bit his tongue to stop himself from replying and shot Ziva a look that said, 'Yup, that actually happened. A fully grown man made a grammar joke like a seven year old.' Tony just grinned like that was the cleverest thing he'd ever heard and said with a smile, "Point taken. So may we ask you a few questions?"

Buzz Cut put a hand on Mullet's elbow, stopping him from answering the question on his own, and said instead, "We don't know anything that would help you officer."

"Oh come on boys, you don't even know what we're here for." Buzz moved to head down the hall, but Tony stepped in his path, holding up his hands where they were clearly visible to Buzz. "A U.S. Marine was abducted from this apartment building two nights ago. I'm Agent DiNozzo, this is Agent Gibbs," Tony gestured to Ziva at that name, "and we're investigating his disappearance."

Now that Tony was standing so close to Buzz he got a proper look at all his tattoos, and Tony assumed that mentioning a missing marine to a guy with his own Corp tat on his inner left forearm would be enough to get their assistance. But, the guy looked like he wanted nothing more than to pound Tony's skull against the wall until he wasn't conscious anymore.

Buzz stepped further into Tony's space, trying to leer down at him despite his lesser height. He spoke slowly, over enunciating as though Tony was too stupid to understand him. "That Heeb isn't a real marine. And whoever took him did the Corp a service."

Buzz stepped around Tony, his shoulder sharply colliding with Tony's, and went down the hall. Mullet followed, looking less ruthless than his companion, but still intimidating in his role as the dumb muscle.

Tony and Ziva resumed knocking on a door they'd been at before, and already knew no one was home. Ziva hissed at Tony under her breath, "Why did you lie about my last name!"

Tony looked at her incredulously and asked, "You're kidding me, right? You saw them, Ziva! They didn't need to know you're Jewish."

"I'm not ashamed of who I am, Tony!"

Tony took a deep breath, stifling the urge to lash out and bury his fist into the drywall and replied, "This isn't about shame, Ziva. This is about two guys covered in swastikas and us already getting arresting last night. Now let's just do our job."

Ziva glared at the men down the hallway while Tony knocked again. Ziva lifted an eyebrow at him, but paused when Tony mouthed, 'wait'.

He cocked his head over his shoulder, motioning for Ziva to keep watch on them. The men made their way down the long hall and Ziva pulled out her phone to nonchalantly snap a picture of them as she kept tabs on which apartment they entered. Once the men were inside, Ziva and Tony gave up the pretense of knocking on doors and checked on the apartment number.

"Didn't we interview everyone on this floor yesterday?" Ziva asked.

"Definitely. Mae's apartment is down at the other end of this hall and we made sure we covered everyone on this floor because of that."

"Well we definitely didn't talk to them." Ziva always got a little pissy when she wasn't allowed to beat people she thought were a disgrace to the human race. Usually Gibbs let her get away with a small amount of violence (just enough to not trigger brutality charges), since those people usually irritated Gibbs as well by being a disgrace to the Corp. However, on this occasion Tony thought it was better to let Ziva be extremely pissed instead of letting her kill the skinheads.

Tony went with a very calm response, ignoring her thirst to get into a yelling match. "Which begs the question, why do they have a key to an apartment they're not living in?" Tony noted the apartment number and pulled the list of tenants out of his pocket to compare. He scanned over the paper for a moment then with a sharp, "Shit!" started for the elevator.

"Tony?"

"The apartment belongs to Max Young. The chatty doctor who spends too much time with Mae."

XXXXXXX

Mae was sitting cross-legged on one end of an autopsy table with Jimmy Palmer on the end, and a vicious game of Speed going on in the space between them. Ziva and Tony had stopped off at the bullpen on their way down to Maeve, both to update Gibbs on the added factor of crazy neighbors, and to pick the other two men up for the necessary chat with Mae.

Jimmy knew exactly what the expressions of the approaching team meant, and he turned to Mae with a sigh and said, "I'm gonna go get you something to eat."

Jimmy fled autopsy, leaving Mae with the team and Ducky, and she asked, "I take it Jimmy being banished means you don't have good news."

"Nah, Jimmy gets banished all the time." Tony propped himself up on the table across from Mae and picked up Jimmy's discarded hand. He resumed play, but at a much more sedate pace than the game usually called for. "We wanted to ask you about your neighbor, Max Young."

"What about him?" Mae sounded genuinely confused at the question, unsure where Tony intended to go with this.

"You know – what he's like, how many times a week you see one another, what his boyfriend's like, that sort of thing."

"First off, Max has girlfriends, not boyfriends."

"Really? You sure?" Tony asked the question lightly to not spook Mae, but the rest of the team knew what he was doing. Tony had mentioned to them before coming down that in their initial interview Young had dropped a mention of his boyfriend, but a gay guy didn't seem the sort of fellow two skinheads would be socializing with. Especially not on the level where they had a key to his apartment.

"Of course I'm sure. He asked me out a month after I moved in, and since then I've seen just women coming and going from his place."

"Huh, I guess my gay-dar's off. He have a specific type of girl he goes for?"

Mae pulled a face at him and said, "Tonio, there's nothing off about Max. He's a nice guy. He helps me carry my groceries, doesn't make a lot of noise, and he even helped me fix my front door after someone tried to break into my place a few weeks ago."

The agents all stiffened at that, and Tony asked, "Mae, you didn't think a former break in was something you should tell us about?"

Mae grimaced at the oversight and replied, "I didn't think it was that important. They didn't get away with anything because one of the other neighbors caught them in the act. They just broke my lock trying to pick it." Abby had the photo from Ziva's phone in her lab, cleaning it up and about to run a trace on the men it captured, and Tony would bet good money that one of those men had 'picked the lock' to her place. Really, they'd probably just been trying to give Max the chance to get a key.

"And then Max went with you to buy a new lock. And I'll bet he even installed it for you." Since he bought the lock it would be easy to get a copy made before he installed it for Mae, giving him a perfect opportunity to break into her place whenever he chose.

"Tonio, don't say it in that tone." The team caught the slightest flinch by Tony at Mae speaking to him that way, and they recognized it as the same affect Tony had used when channeling Gio. Mae was using the same tactic on him that he'd used on Patrick, psychologically forcing him back into whatever box Gio told him he belonged in.

Tony drew a deep breath then met Mae's gaze, every inch the federal agent rather than the genial mask he'd adopted for the interview. "Miss Macaluso." She flinched, and he went on, still kind, but lacking the familiarity she was used to. "We're not here to protect your neighbor's reputation, we're here to find a missing lieutenant. Having the lock on your front door replaced recently is a piece of information we need because it goes to opportunity. We wasted time trying to figure out how the abductors got into your apartment, and this might explain that."

Mae dropped her gaze and sniffled slightly at the scolding. Tony stretched out his hand and tapped her on the bottom of the chin to reassure her. "We're just trying to find Eli, little one. Nothing else matters." She smiled slightly at him and he continued with a smirk, "Well, not nothing else. I'm sure Palmer's on his way to get a pizza that's pretty important."

He slid off the autopsy table and held out a hand to Mae, ushering her out of the room and off to join Palmer in his quest for pizza. She slipped off the table and dove straight into his arms, muttering about how sorry she was. "Tonio, I didn't mean to hold out on you. I swear!"

"I know, little one. I know."

Maeve leaned in all the closer and whispered in Tony's ear, "I couldn't have held out on you, or them. They love you, Tonio. So much better than we ever did." Tony pressed a kiss to her temple and tugged her out of autopsy, rambling about the benefits of the pizza from his favorite place down the street.

Tony met eyes with Gibbs for a brief moment as he was leaving, not even breaking his stride or changing his expression. But that was enough.

With that look, Tony gave Gibbs permission to tell the story.