Disclaimer: no legal rights to NCIS, no money being made.
Beta: Mike91848. So all mistakes are mine. Thank you, Mike.
Warning: Same as chapter one
To guest reviewers I can not answer personally:
Guest Debbie R - I WILL finish, no worries. Moving and getting settled has taken up much of my time.
Guest Fred - Thank you for your consistency in reviewing this story.
CHAPTER 25
IT MATTERS NOT HOW STRAIT THE GATE, HOW CHARGED WITH PUNISHMENTS THE SCROLL
Previously on NCIS
"You two can witness in the observation room while Fornell and I interrogate your father, DiNozzo. Let's go!"
Ziva quickly closed up her desk and hurried to follow Gibbs' instruction. Tony was less enthusiastic to leave his desk. They weren't going to get anything of relevance out of Senior, why bother? But he got up anyway and made it to the room just as the interviewed started.
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Three hours later DiNozzo, Senior was released out of NCIS custody with no charges pending against him. A taxi carted him out of the navy yard to whereabouts unknown.
Before that, when Gibbs and Fornell had him sequestered in interrogation room one,Tony DiNozzo was able to observe Senior using every one of his familiar tricks from a smoothly charming gentleman to outright foul-mouthed hostility, and his best ever performance, an insulting snob looking down his nose on the peasants of NCIS who dared put their hands on him.
When it was over and Gibbs would get nothing further from the mealy-mouthed, sneering con man, he stood up from the table, closed the folder and tucked it under one arm and left the room with Fornell not far behind him. Tony and Ziva had come out of the observation room and waited for the two senior agents in the hallway. They were just in time to see the tall, stocky man who was Tony's father being escorted from the room by a two-man NCIS security detail.
Tony leaned against the wall in a blatant show of disrespect as Senior passed by and neither man verbally acknowledged the other though Senior's sneer remained in place and even widened at the bruises he saw on Tony's face. Senior brushed at his impeccable jacket sleeve at invisible dust, the superior man soiled just by being there.
But just as Senior passed by his estranged son he was greeted by the ultimate insult of all insults. Tony lifted his right hand and pointed his middle finger right at him. Senior caught the gesture aimed at him with such contempt, stumbled, but recovered quickly and kept walking, his body stiff with fury.
Ziva, standing beside Tony, had the audacity to whisper, "Really, Tony!" but her gaze was cool, calculating. Tony just looked at her, who was she to talk? At least he hadn't sucker punched the guy in the neck like she had just for mouthing off and forcing him to listen to his disrespectful crap in a confined space.
They all watched until Senior turned the corner and disappeared out of sight then Gibbs and Fornell turned and headed back to the bull pen. "Nice one, DiNozzo." Tony heard Fornell chuckle as they passed him.
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"Well?" Vance sat behind his desk waiting for an update.
Gibbs stiffly forced himself down in a chair to face Vance's hard stare from the other side of the desk. "And you think I'm a bastard, Leon?" Gibbs asked, trying to shake off the feeling that he'd just gone a round with a slimy, six foot, rotten weasel.
"That bad, huh?"
Gibbs just scowled in response. Vance, becoming serious again, sighed in frustration. "Well, did you get anything out of him, is he our man?"
Gibbs recalled the pretentious conversations with the self-important DiNozzo well. Not easy to forget the saccharinely synthetic smiles he wore most of the time nor the sheer bull of most of what he said.
"I'll tell you one thing, Leon. He's full of crap but I doubt he's the guy involved in this money scam or the one who had DiNozzo beaten up."
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"What's this all about, Agent?"
"Gibbs."
At Senior's questioning look, Gibbs filled him in.
"It's Agent Gibbs."
"Gibbs, smibbs, libbs, who cares! Why am I here?"
"Why were you running away?"
"Running away?" Dinozzo sneered. "Do I look like I'm ten years old." Then he laughed at a memory. "Go talk to Junior about running away. He works for you, doesn't he? He's the pro at running away like a scared little chicken." And DiNozzo laughed some more but Gibbs got the distinct impression that the laugh, just like the man, held more than what you saw on the surface; humor? malicious humor, yeah, there was that, deviousness under the smile, charm covering the craftiness. Glaring at Gibbs and Fornell, DiNozzo mocked, "What am I running from, anyway? You and your second rate agency Gibbs or your Mighty FBI sidekick over there? What am I supposed to be running away from?"
"Your name has come up as an associate of a suspect, an ex-Senator who is under investigation for kidnapping, child abuse, attempted murder and murder, among other things. There are many more charges pending. Know anything about that?"
Senior leaned back, clasped his hands together and lifted his eyes to the ceiling as though deep in thought. "I know the ex-Senator," he finally admitted. "We've done business together. We've made money and lost some. Our partnership, however, was dissolved several years ago," and he was quick to include, "by me for your information, make sure that's in your report. When I discovered and disagreed with some of his, shall we say, disgusting and certainly illegal practices, and before you ask, pornography and prostitution, I dropped him like a rotten egg. That's all I know about the man. End of story." DiNozzo gazed speculatively at the agents. "If you've got info that says otherwise then by all means arrest me, otherwise, there's still time for me to catch my friend's jet, so if you'll excuse me." And he made to get up.
"Why a plane, why not the bus?" Gibbs cold voice restrained the movement and Senior aborted his attempt to rise.
"Wouldn't you be cautious if someone was following you around watching your every move?"
"What are you talking about, DiNozzo? Someone following you?" Fornell questioned.
"One of your agencies put a tail on me and now that I think about it, had to be the FBI or NCIS. Although if that's the kind of incompetents you use for surveillance you need to come up with a pay hike and hire someone who doesn't stink of cheap booze so you can smell him coming a mile away.
Gibbs and Fornell shared a quick glance at each other, both men's brows furrowed. Someone was following DiNozzo around?
Fornell was the first to ask, "What makes you think that? If it were one of our agencies don't you think we would have picked you up?"
"Hmm, good point," DiNozzo agreed," but I bumped into him while he was stumbling down the street and picked his disgusting filthy pocket. He had a note, could barely read his scribbling." DiNozzo took out his wallet and removed a folded scrap of yellow notebook paper with two fingers.
The note read, 'Follow D only, don't engage' and under that, 'note to self, something fishy, word on street Fed involved'. "Pretty cryptic, wouldn't you say? Think your less than capable staff can figure out who's following me, protect me from the big boogeyman-man?" sneered DiNozzo.
DiNozzo's wide grin and eyes shining with humor had Gibbs bridling his angry response. A response the man sitting in front of him almost appeared to be anticipating as though they were playing some game and people's lives weren't involved. "I don't give a rats behind who's after you, DiNozzo, you're on your own." said Gibbs with a feral smile of his own.
DiNozzo's grin disappeared but not for long. With all the graciousness of a southern charmer, he bowed his head magnanimously to the two agents then rose to leave. "You will forgive me gentlemen but now that I've answered your esteemed organizations' questions," and he couldn't have sounded more disdainful, "I can carry on with my plans in the open as it should be and not crawling around like the low-caste poor of the earth..."
"We don't have anyone following you, DiNozzo, so you'd better still be afraid." Fornell warned gruffly with no sympathy. Relentlessly, he made it clear that DiNozzo was on his own. "Don't hide underground, keep crawling there like the rat that you are so that whoever's looking for you finds you and guts you like a stuck pig, keep out in the open, let your presence be known!" DiNozzo's hackles rose at the insult and a little fear as his own anger surfaced.
"Who the hell do you think you're talking to, it's your duty to protect me. I'll have your badge and your miserly pension for your slurs, Fed!"
But Fornell was sick of wasting time with this man and could not care less. His men were dead, his daughter was threatened as well as other children and here they sat wasting valuable time. Fornell had come to the conclusion pretty early on that DiNozzo, Senior may be the scum of the earth but he was not the one they were looking for. And Fornell could tell, after his long association with Gibbs, that the MCRT lead investigator had basically dismissed DiNozzo, Senior as well. He was not the main player, or any player in these horrendous crimes they were investigating.
Gibbs kept up the momentum, though, firing questions at the now angry man, in hopes of throwing him off his arrogant guard and gaining some new intel. "Have you shared with anyone a secret about your son Tony that he could be blackmailed for?"
Was that a guilty gleam in DiNozzo's shifty eye as he denied that allegation? "Of course not!"
"Do you know anything about the threat of bombing schools and killing children if millions of dollars aren't turned over to designated bank accounts? We know you know about that money so don't bother to deny it. You have no information of several homicides recently committed and in the past on this same case?"
DiNozzo sat and might as well have been examining his fingernails for all the interest he showed. "Sorry, Gibbs, I have no answers to your questions."
"Your son was beaten up and put in the hospital for not revealing the whereabouts of said money, know anything about that?"
Gibbs was watching DiNozzo and finally, at the mention of his son Tony, Senior's body language changed becoming stiffer, more attentive - Gibbs would say even his ears perked up. DiNozzo's act of snobbish buffoonery hadn't fooled Gibbs. His exaggerated emphasis on his high social status and wealth were employed to distract and harbor dislike of him for his put-on airs. All to hide the real man, a shark with many masks to hide under to disguise his sharks teeth. Under all the acting, the clowning around as the obnoxious, socially superior man he pretended to be, was someone much more deadly than that.
When DiNozzo felt Gibbs' eyes on him, he expertly slipped on another mask, one of fatherly concern. "So, you say someone beat up on Junior? Is he alright?"
"Do you care?" Gibbs was sick of his play acting.
"Ah, you know me so well, Agent Gibbs, but humor me anyway."
"Yeah, he was hospitalized for a few days." Gibbs waited for more of a response from the man who was just told his son had been hurt.
"Typical. Junior could get on the most patient of saints nerves. Hyperactive and stubborn, a really unpleasant child. I've always said, Gibbs, that it matters not how straight the gate or how charged with..."
"Quoting Henley, DiNozzo?"
"What?"
"...how charged with punishments the scroll? The poem Invictus written by William Earnest Henley...you know, the one you're quoting from?" Gibbs cooly prompted.
DiNozzo somehow managed to not look embarrassed though his swarthy complexion darkened. He barely skipped a beat as he confronted Gibbs, "I don't expect you to understand greatness, Gibbs. Let's just say inspired words for discerning minds sometimes goes beyond a certain pay scale, no insult intended." Fornell snorted at the insult even though Gibbs did not respond.
"But as I was saying, some people can not be trained. They steer clear of the straight and narrow set out for them by their betters and never learn anything. And in Junior's case, he never learned, even charged with punishment he never learned..." Gibbs got the impression that for the first time during this whole interview DiNozzo, Senior spoke candidly about something personal that was not a lie.
"On the contrary, Mr DiNozzo, some people refuse to be dictated to by the oppressive, hypocritical laws doled out by tyrants and instead would suffer any punishment even to death to walk that straight path within themselves." Gibbs' sage response seemed to disconcert DiNozzo and anger him even more, an honest reaction for a change. He glared at Gibbs with hostile eyes and thinned lips but had no witty response to make.
In order to break what was to him an awkward moment, an angry DiNozzo straightened his tie then made a point of checking the time on his expensive watch before replying lamely, "Is that so? Your opinion has been duly noted. Now, if we are done, I would like to leave."
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"DiNozzo seems a cold-blooded bastard but you're convinced he's not involved in the money scheme or the murders, or even having his son beaten to a pulp?" Vance confirmed after hearing the rest of Gibbs' interview with Senior.
"As convinced as anyone could be from a person who chooses to lie rather than taking the easy way out by telling the truth. He's got alibis that need to be checked out and he's a shyster, no doubt about it and showed no interest in his son, but murder for hire, he doesn't fit the picture - too much of a coward's mentality to get involved."
"Must have been agony for you questioning him if you were reduced to quoting poetry and spouting philosophy," Director Vance observed with a twinkle in his eye. "Don't look so surprised. I dropped in the observation room for a minute and heard the tail end of DiNozzo hurling insults...poetry above your pay scale, was it?"
"You can have the honor next time, Leon," Gibbs said, unamused.
Vance checked his own watch. "I've got a meeting to go to Gibbs, SECNAV wants to be updated. What about that piece of notepaper? 'Feds involved'? I don't like the sound of that. Fornell wouldn't be hiding something from us, would he? And who in their right mind would pay somebody to follow DiNozzo around? CIA?"
"I don't know, Leon," Gibbs said sounding exasperated, "but I intend to find out. Abby has the note checking for fingerprints. We got the BOLO out for the ex-senator..."
"...then there's this 'great secret' of DiNozzo's he claims not to know anything about," interrupted a very pissed-off Director, "and another dead end!" Gibbs didn't blame him for being disgusted at their lack of progress. It wasn't his ideal situation either, having less answers then questions. Vance snapped his briefcase shut and prepared to leave.
"We can finish this when I get back if you're still here. What time is the deadline for the transfer of money going to take place and is McGee ready?" Vance had locked up his desk and walked out of his office door with Gibbs not far behind.
"FBI will release the money at 1400 hours as ordered. McGee has been playing with this do-hickey thing for hours, he says he's as ready as he'll ever be. Knowing McGee, it'll work fine.
Back down in the bull pen, the agents sat at their desks waiting for the deadline hour and the word from the FBI for McGee to start his tracker. In spite of everything that was going on, Gibbs' gut feeling was that something else was going on. DiNozzo, Senior for example. Sure, he needed to be questioned but according to him, he hadn't been involved with the ex-Senator for years and there was no proof that he was lying, and yet, someone was following him around. Had Tony hired someone to not only find his father but to follow him around? Gibbs' instinct was telling him no; Tony had hopped on a plane just on the chance he had found Senior just so he could confront him one on one, and had gotten the bruised ribs and busted nose for his efforts. So, if it wasn't Tony, then who, and more important, why?
Gibbs sat at his desk observing his team then plunged in with the question stuck on his radar for an answer. "DiNozzo, Senior says someone's been following him around and not doing a very good job of it. For one thing, the guys a drunk and DiNozzo said he made the man immediately as his tail and even bumped into him on purpose."
They all looked over at him with curious expressions. McGee looked distracted and uncaring, he had other, bigger things to worry about, half a billion dollars bigger for one thing. Tim answered his ringing phone just then and started reeling off incomprehensible jargon about matrixes and variable programming construct that made Gibbs' head spin.
Tony seemed not to care either. "What difference does it make, Gibbs? He's not the guy we're looking for, let him run 'til he rots in hell," was his bitter, vindictive response before he went back to attacking his computer keys. DiNozzo looked pale and drawn and Gibbs would have made him go home to get some rest, or tried to anyway. It wasn't worth the effort though because the amount of arguing and fighting DiNozzo would have put up not to be sent home would have been counterproductive to the whole concept of 'getting some rest' in the first place.
Ziva glanced at Gibbs without expression as though wondering if there was a question there. A nonchalant shrug of her shoulder then she too went back to work and Gibbs' uneasy feeling took a notch up because there were sudden small beads of sweat on her brow and her face had paled momentarily. Puzzles bothered him and he'd be pondering on this one until his gut stopped churning or he found the answer.
In the meantime, Ziva David's hysterical moment of absolute terror surprised her so much that she almost didn't know what the feeling was or what to do about it. Never in all of her young, mostly violent life, had she had such a feeling that was so out of character for her that she felt weak-kneed and faint. She was always the one who caused those feelings in others, fear and terror, a lot of pain, but never the other way around.
But Gibbs' seemingly out of the blue statement, and he stared straight at her when he said it, that DiNozzo, Senior was being followed by a man hired by a Federal agent had stunned her. How? She had found DiNozzo and had him followed so that just at the right time when it would benefit her the most, she would produce him and show her competence as an investigator. She had been careful, professional, and used an operative she had used before. How had that oaf, Senior, figured it out.
Ziva David needed her iron will to calm down. She needed to make a phone call but not here. And she couldn't leave at this crucial time; the money was to be released before the schools were declared safe. Then there was McGee's tracking of the money ...no she would have to wait.
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The team sat at their desks and waited as the critical hour approached. Not worried about the release of the money, that was a given but that McGee's programming and tracking system worked. The computer experts down in cybercrime were vigilant, ready to play their parts and other agents in the building were standing alert in case they were needed. Even Vance had been able to return from his meeting and now stood looking down from the balcony. Fornell was standing behind McGee ready to confirm from his agency that the money had been released.
"Now!" said Fornell. McGee's electronically adapted tracking system that he had euphemistically nicknamed HAG, worked excellently and did what it was designed to do, as the fictional character Sherlock Holmes deductive reasoning hypothesized, 'eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth'.
Whatever remained was a web address in Lancaster, New Hampshire. A silent cheer went up for a moment but their work wasn't done. Tim's fingers flew over the keyboard passing info to cybercrime as they worked together to find the person or persons now in control of...an awful lot of money. Even Abby had her part as she had excellent computer skills. Ten minutes later, they had a name. Henry Snead, and an address.
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Everyone involved had left for the sting except McGee and DiNozzo who was still hobbling around from his painful encounter with hostile fists' and feet. Tony sat at his desk and downed a couple more pain pills than he probably should have with a sip of bottled water on an empty stomach. He watched as McGee sat eating a Nutter Butter with a self-satisfied look on his face.
"So, McSkillful. You have that microchip, transistor, rectification, semiconducting, cyberspace stalker, and amazing product of your fertile mind patented yet?"
"I don't know what all you just said means, Tony, but if you're talking about HAG then yes I do. Have for about 18 months but never had a chance to use it. I was pretty confident that it would work though."
"HAG?" Tony laughed, "What kind of name is that?"
"It's need to know and you don't! But it's going to revolutionize the computer world." Tim continued to self-boast with great satisfaction.
"Oooh, McBraggart." Tony joked but that's all it took as though Tim was waiting to take offense.
"I knew you couldn't hold off for long without making the snide jokes and putdowns, Tony!" Said a red-faced, all of a sudden angry McGee, who reached over and threw his half-eaten candy bar into the trash.
"People like you can't let a person have one moment of glory without trying to rain on their parade, can you?"
DiNozzo by this time had both hands up looking a little pale. "Wait a minute, McGee. I was just going to say 'good job'. Don't get all prissy with me and what do you mean, people like me?"
"He means just what he said. If you can't hog all the fame and attention, DiNozzo, you sure as hell won't let anyone else have it!" The forensic technician had overheard the two getting into it as she came out of the staircase from her lab.
"Don't you have some music to blare or Bert to fart in your lab, Abby?" DiNozzo said sourly. "What are you doing here, what'd ya want?"
Tim swore he saw steam coming out of her head. "Why you...!"
Tony gave no warning as he suddenly leaned over his trash can cutting off the rest of her tirade and heaved, expelling his last round of pills and the little bit of bile that was in his stomach. After that he dry-heaved for a few seconds then when it was over, wiped his mouth on a paper napkin from his desk.
"Sorry, Ms Sciuto, but I and my stomach have no desire to stay around to hear the rest of your inappropriate verbal attack," Tony rasped as he got up from his desk and limped away to the men's bathroom.
A somewhat surprised Abby looked a little green herself. "Well, I didn't mean to...well...upset him?" She floundered for a better word and looked a little guiltily at McGee. "Did I upset him, Tim?"
Tim didn't know what to say. What had just happened? All he knew is that when Tony appeared to be putting him down, and yes, he admitted, he had been bragging ad nauseam, Tim had had his typical, knee-jerk reaction...to his father's insults and disparaging remarks. Tony was not his father. He should not attribute Tony's sometimes inappropriate jokes to his father's plain meanness.
"Timmy, did I upset him?"
"It's Tim, Abby, just Tim. And yes, you probably did and so did I. Plus, I gather he's not feeling too well." Tim sighed, never smooth sailing for this group. "Look, why don't you go back to your lab or go home, Abby. It's pretty late."
"That's why I came up, Timm...Tim. It's late and I haven't eaten yet. Maybe we can grab something?" Abby sounded hopeful.
Oh, why not? "Sure, Abby. I'll meet you at Hanigan's in fifteen, okay." McGee walked with her to the elevator and waited for the door to close before he walked to the men's bathroom with a determined step.
Inside the bathroom, Tony had rinsed his mouth and splashed his face with cold water, and stared at himself in the mirror. Not only was he mortifiedly embarrassed by not being able to control his puking as a sign of weakness in front of Abby the brutal railer of her own personal opinions who thought she was the only perfect person on the planet besides Gibbs, but he needed to lay down. His body hurt like hell, his headache was atom bomb size on the Richter scale and he had just thrown up the last two of the pain killer tablets left over from some other 'use DiNozzo as a punching bag', episode. He needed to eat something but the thought of pizza or Chinese turned his stomach even more.
He hated to admit that besides feeling lousy from the beating, his father's re-appearance back in his life after years of staying as far away from each other as they possibly could was a nasty wake up call. The earth was getting smaller and it seemed they were now stuck on the same hemisphere.
The FBI was back on his pro list again because getting away from Senior, Ziva David, and the vampira Abby was starting to look pretty good again. And Mr High Hat Timothy McGee didn't even bear wasting his aching brain matter to think about. Maybe what he had said came off as mocking to Mr McSensitive over-reactor but he was truly impressed at McGee's genius and foresight. The haughty high opinion McGee had displayed of himself was hard for Tony or anyone to swallow and no one would blame him for taking the swelled-head braggart down a peg or two, but really, that had not been his intention.
Well, good riddance to all of them. Tony realized he was getting maudlin and laughed at himself. He'd gone through worse and survived. He straightened his shoulders, patted his hair and left the bathroom as quickly as he could under the circumstances. Only to startle into a painful lurch and reach for his absent weapon at the body leaning casually back against the wall to the right of the bathroom door. "Geez, McGee! What's wrong with you and where's your lady of the dead companion - sucking someone else' blood?"
"She's gone. You okay?" asked McGee, walking along side him.
"'People like me' are always okay, McGee. Or didn't you know that?"
"I didn't mean it like that, Tony. I realize how it might have sounded but I also realize that I was projecting...well, someone else onto you and he would have put me down in a flash."
"I'm guessing you mean your father so who's trying to 'hog all the fame' now, McGee, as Sciutto so aptly put it? Isn't one lousy parent enough on this team?" DiNozzo sat gingerly back in his chair trying to ease his back and closed his eyes. "And, believe it or not, I wasn't trying to put you down."
Obviously, Tony was not expecting an answer but Tim still felt unsettled. It felt that any headway the two of them had made as far as working together amicably may have been lost by a misunderstanding. Might as well try a peace offering. "I'm going to meet Abby for a bite to eat, want anything?"
"No thanks."
An hour later Tim returned to the Navy Yard. He left the elevator and walked to the quiet, darkened bull pen. Tony still sat at his desk not completely asleep just nodding off then jerking awake abruptly. His face was strained and when he turned to look at McGee his eyes were hooded. Tim placed a full container of hot beef and vegetable soup on Tony's desk along with a crust of bread wrapped in cellophane, utensils and a cup of herbal tea, bottle of water and a brownie.
Tony just raised his eyes at the feast on his desk and didn't move.
Tim pulled out a prescription bottle and threw it on the desk alongside the food. "I contacted Ducky. He called in a prescription to the all night pharmacy for pain meds, said to take two after you eat."
Tim walked to his desk and dropped his backpack behind his chair. Tony could eat, drink, take the pills and feel better or sit over there and rot for all he cared. It was obvious Tony was staying until they heard word from Gibbs, and so was he. If Tony wanted to hold a..."
"Thanks, McGee."
Tim heard the crinkle of food wrappers being unwrapped and hid a relieved smile.
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