Chapter Fifty-Two
The Silver Burglar
Conning the FBI. How hard could it be? She was a top-notch forger and intimately knew the Bureau's inner workings. She stopped in at the office to gather some materials and met Mozzie back at her apartment laden with a stack of FBI files.
"Peter said it's time to get back to business as usual," she said, flopping the pile of paperwork on the corner of the table, where Mozzie's Russian surplus recorder was still set up. "Following standard Peter protocol, that means he'll try to pull from the reserve of active case files. Which, I'm allowed to take home and peruse."
"Exhibits A, I presume?" he mused, gesturing toward the stack.
"Yes. They range from mortgage fraud to copyright infringement, back to mortgage fraud." So, so much mortgage fraud.
"Sorry, I just dozed off."
"I know," she agreed dryly. "But, Peter always tries to find the diamond in the rough." An interesting case was his Kryptonite.
Mozzie's eyes sparkled. "So, you want to create a diamond for him to find?"
"Exactly. If we can forge a case file linking the silver thefts, he won't be able to resist it."
He nodded slowly. "And then he'll think he found the case himself. It's brilliant."
Nora turned as the creak of the door opening pulled caught her attention. "Hello, hello," June called. She walked in, a leash in hand as her tiny pug, Bugsy, scampered in after her.
"June," Nora greeted, stooping down to pet Bugsy.
"Sorry to interrupt your project, but I will be leaving town for a few days." Bugsy yapped excitedly, lapping at Nora's hands. "So, as per our agreement..."
"Oh, you want me to walk Bugsy."
"Please. He loves your company."
Nora smiled up at her. "You got it."
"Thank you." She led Bugsy away, and Nora rose to her feet.
Mozzie looked at her, incredulous. "So she has you dog whispering?"
"Small price to pay," she dismissed. "Besides, I love animals."
He shook his head, but let it go. "Where were we?" he asked, taking a seat and pulling the files over. She leaned behind him, looking over his shoulder.
"Hale told us when the silver pieces coming in, we know Alex's m.o., and I created this." She handed him the file off the top of the stack that she'd put together.
He glanced it over. "You named Alex the Silver Burglar?" he asked dryly.
She rolled her eyes. "Alright, I admit, it lacks a certain flair, but it makes the point." He thumbed through as she continued her explanation. "It includes the police reports for the stolen items. And I've added just enough FBI research to connect the dots."
He compared her fake file to the others in the stack she'd brought home. "Your file's a tad too nice to have been floating around the Bureau."
"So we age it," she said simply. "Just like a painting."
"Get in the mind of the file." She arched an eyebrow. "Live the life of the file. Hear the pulse of the file."
"Can we do this?" she snapped.
"Please."
She pulled the second file off the stack. "Step one: the case file is assembled by our clerk, Janice. She merges all the various reports."
"Oh, probably over lunch," Mozzie noted, grabbing a pickle left-over from the lunch he'd apparently stopped to grab while he waited for her to get back from the office.
"Mm-hmm." He smeared the pickle on one of the pages. "She logs the police reports and staples them together."
She passed him the stapler and he got to work. "Oh, looks like she forgot a page," he muttered, using the staple remover to pull out the first staple and tried again.
"Nice. Now, our probie usually brings her coffee. It's an excuse to flirt." He grabbed a cup of coffee and moved to set it on the cover. "Oh, he's left-handed." With a nod, he corrected himself, and left a nice, wet ring on their forgery. "Then it goes to Susan, who highlights the pertinents."
"Oh, she's the eau de parfum?"
"She is." Mozzie started highlight, and Nora gave a little spritz of the same perfume Susan used, a light, pleasant, and inexpensive brand. As Mozzie highlighted, he started humming to himself. The Batman theme, of all things. She stared at him dryly. "What are you doing?"
"Oh, this is the first burglary victim," he explained. "Susan sees the name and then starts humming."
She read over his shoulder. "Mr. Gordon."
"He was the county commissioner," he offered.
Nora blinked. "Commissioner Gordon."
"Batman!" he sang softly.
"No one will know what song you hummed when you did this."
He shrugged, undeterred. "Live the file. Next."
She let it go. "Then it gets approved by Hughes. Now, his signature is tricky. He has his assistant sign for him, so..." She snatched up a pen, flipped their file upside-down, and studied the signature on the file they were referencing. All said and done, it was a pretty good match.
"Ah, forging the forger," he mused. "Nicely done."
"It gets passed around the office a few times," she continued, bending it slightly against the edge of the table before passing it off to Mozzie. Inexplicably, he ran it over the top of his head before handing it back. "Nice work." She studied at their forgery. If she'd been handed the file in the office, she never would have suspected anything suspicious about it, and she was sure Peter wouldn't either. "Now I slip it in with the rest of the files."
Business as usual. That's what he'd told Nora, and that's what he planned to do. He made his way home for the evening with a box of files, hoping to find something good in the stack of active cases. "Oh, hey, honey," El greeted as he came through the door. She was setting the table for dinner.
"Hey, hon." He stopped to pet Satchmo. "Hey, buddy, how you doing?"
"He's in trouble," El told him.
"Uh-oh." Take-out boxes were spread out on the table, and it smelled wonderful. "Ooh, Chinese."
"Yeah," she huffed. "Satchmo got into the quiche I made."
He kissed her on top of the head, turning toward Satch. "Bad dog," he said, waggling his finger at him. Then, under his breath, added a relived, "thank you."
El sat down and started scooping food onto her plate, eyeing the box he'd sat in the empty chair across the table. "Oh, so the reserve box, huh? Looking for your next case?"
"Yeah, it's time for Nora and me to get back to basics." He hung his coat over the back of the chair and sat down next to El. "Wanna help?"
"No," she deadpanned, but broke out into a smile, pulling the first file off the stack. "Alright, what do we got? Antitrust lawsuit." She flipped the file open.
"Yeah, does that sound interesting?"
"No, actually, boring." He took the file and set it off to the side while she grabbed another. "Alright, let's see… Medicare scam." Peter sighed at the thought. "Well, you sighed, so pass on that one."
He pushed it away. "Ooh, look at this one," she mused. "Cat burglar. That's kinda sexy."
"Mm-hmm," he hummed through a mouthful of eggroll. Cat burglars were far more interesting than medicare scams, antitrust lawsuits, and mortgage fraud.
The scent of a light perfume wafted off the page as she flipped through it. "Someone smells good."
"That would be Susan." He wiped his fingers quickly. "Let me see that." He read over it, curiosity piqued. "Oh, yeah."
"Look good?"
He grinned. "This should do the trick." He sat the file off to the side and they enjoyed a quiet dinner together.
Peter had his nose buried in her forged file when he stepped off the elevator the next morning. She kept her face schooled as he came to a stop in front of her desk. "Oh, I know that look," she teased. "You got your eye on a new bad guy."
"I got our next case," he dismissed. "What do you know about stolen Spanish silver?"
She smirked up at him. "Do you even have to ask?"
"Oh, just once I wish I did." Without another word, he headed for the stairs, calling the team in as he went. Smug and pleased with herself, she followed after. Copies of her forgery were passed out and Nora and the agents leafed through them.
"A silver thief," she mused, leaning against the stand that sat under the monitor at the end of the room. "I've heard good things."
"I thought you might like this," Peter admitted. She grinned, rounding the table to take a seat by the window.
"Cat burglary," Diana muttered. "Love it."
As she passed Jones, she froze. He was humming. Incredulous, she stopped to listen. Somehow, for some God-unknown reason, he was humming the Batman theme song. "Why are you humming?" she whispered.
He shrugged. "Well, something in the file… Popped into my head." Unbelievable.
"Alright," Peter said, drawing their attention, "settle down, kids. NYPD's been investigating a series of silver heists. The thief breaks in through the window, then cleans out the place. But here's what NYPD missed." Nora glanced up at him, pleased with exactly how well her plan was working. "All the thefts included at least one piece from a 17th century shipwreck. The Almiranta."
"If we can figure out who else owns pieces from that shipwreck..." Diana said.
"We can predict who's gonna be hit next," Peter concluded. "Now, insurance policies are giving us three potential targets. We're gonna stake out all of them."
Nora had already taken this into consideration, and had a pretty good idea who Alex was going to hit next. "This couple called in a vacation with their alarm company," she noted. "They'll be gone for a week starting tomorrow. That's a lot of lonely silver."
Peter grinned at her, clearly already thinking the same thing. "Then that's the address we'll take." He rounded the table to head toward his office. "This should be fun."
Nora had the same thought, though for an entirely different reason. Flipping her file closed, she followed him, pausing only to lean in and mutter in Jones' ear, "Batman."
