Disclaimer: no legal rights to NCIS, no money being made.
Beta: Mike91848. So all mistakes are mine.
Warnings: same as Chapter one
DETERMINED TO HOLD
Chapter Two, Double wink, wink
Previously on NCIS
The chorus of voices followed by scurrying back to desks and computers was immediate and Gibbs sat down with a satisfied grunt, recess was over.
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About an hour later, Director Vance and FBI Agent Tobias Fornell came down the stairs from the Director's office and approached Tony's desk.
"Agent DiNozzo." Vance started without preliminary.
Tony stood up with an inquiring look on his face. "Yes, sir?"
"Agent DiNozzo, Fornell here has a personal message from Hank and Miriam."
Fornell cleared his throat with a smirk. "The Director and his wife thank you for your invaluable help with the grandnephews and would like to again extend the standing invitation to you to have dinner or several dinners at their residence or restaurant of your choice as their guest."
"Right, thank you, Agent Fornell," said Tony uncomfortably aware of his audience.
"Good, message delivered. Now if you'll excuse us. Gibbs?" Vance nodded to Gibbs then turned abruptly to head back to his office. Gibbs got the message, rose from his desk and he and Fornell followed Vance back up the stairs.
Tony watched them go with a frown and grim thoughts of what might be going on now to have the FBI involved. He glanced over at Tim who was also watching them go and had the ever curious expression on his face.
"Do you know what's going on, Tony?" McGee had a feeling by the way Tony lowered his eyes that Tony knew something but was being closed-mouthed and not sharing.
"Afraid not, McCurious," Tony answered halfheartedly, his thoughts elsewhere. "Probably nothing good, for us, that is."
"Hank and Miriam?" Ziva beat a dead horse to a second death.
"You are on a first name basis with the FBI DIRECTOR and his wife, Tony?"
Ziva was suspiciously jealous, which sometimes reduced her to making scathing and bitter comments especially to Tony if she thought she could get away with it when she felt left out. But now even McGee was looking at him questionably.
Tony's phone rang and he hurriedly picked it up.
"Be right there, Gibbs."
"The boss summons, must respond," Tony joked as he hung up and trotted up the stairs.
"Why does Tony have intimate contact and knowledge of the Director of the FBI Something's going on, Tim." Ziva sat back in her seat frowning.
"Pardon me, Ziva, but of course something's going on," Tim replied irony evident in his voice. "When is there not? And we're not called junior agents or Probies for nothing in spite of our ambitions. We'll hear about it soon enough." Sometimes, McGee could be straightforwardly blunt in separating the mile-long chasm between aspiration and reality.
Tim was curious but Ziva's ready assumption that she should be first in the need to know line was irritating and it just served to heighten her already volatile temper by stirring the embers when it never happened.
Ziva turned her frown on him but he didn't flinch. And Ziva thought unkindly, and she knew most of the time her thoughts were unfair, but what was the point with him anyway? He was not on her side or afraid of her anymore and here at work, where before it had been she and Tim and even Abby a team, and Tony on the outside, now the dynamics had changed and she was fighting to not be on the outside.
So she could only contribute McGee's isolating attitude towards her to his having no ambition or drive, willing to be Tony's sidekick always trailing behind. Or maybe she was struggling against thinly disguised misogyny, a new word she had learned that had been thrown at her by a jealous female agent who had tried to be her phony friend.
In her ongoing efforts to improve her English she had looked the word up and it described a man who hated women but that could not be why Tim had stopped responding to her ambitious drive, and yes, sometime aggression. McGee obviously did not hate women and had never appeared a chauvinist to her.
Perhaps he was only one-dimensional about women who were strong and held a position of power and authority and that would explain why he was reluctant to engage word battles with her or even argue his point. She had noticed that in this country women unencumbered by the need for male authority were uniformly considered petty, shallow, adolescent fractions of full human beings as compared to every male, even the weak ones, like Tim. A dull, inactive and unchallenging man, content to settle in his chair and sit in front of his computer to sprout all day.
In the time it took for her to think those unsavory and untrue thoughts, Tim had not turned away or lowered his eyes and she got the uncomfortable impression that he knew exactly what she was thinking and she felt of all things...ashamed. Maybe she needed to reevaluate how she saw herself.
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In Vance's office Gibbs and Fornell were seated facing the Director at his desk when Tony entered. An empty chair was placed next to Fornell, which meant things weren't too bad if he was being offered a chair although glancing over at Gibbs and his non-expression, Tony didn't know about that.
Once Tony was seated, Vance tried providing the bare essentials. "It has been brought to my attention that you have been working a case with the FBI and..."
"Director Vance, if I may interrupt, I am not working a case with Fornell or for the FBI. There's been some misunderstanding..."
"I'll say, DiNozzo!" Gibbs did not hold back his displeasure. "I thought when you were hired at NCIS as my SFA, I could expect your..."
"EXCUSE ME!" Vance said coldly drawing everyone's attention to his frowning face. When things quieted down to his liking he continued.
"It has been brought to my attention," he repeated firmly but continued in a softer tone when he looked around and there were no more interruptions.
"However, I don't necessarily believe everything the FBI tries to glom onto us. What's this about, DiNozzo? Some woman approaches you with a deadly secret and how does this involve the FBI Director's niece and his grandnephews, and more importantly, why am I just finding out abut it?
Tony sighed in frustration inwardly thinking how crazy this whole thing was turning out to be.
"It doesn't involve them, at all!"
"Okay than, who does it involve?" Vance was loosing sight of his hard learned lesson that Jackie was trying to instill in him that patience was a virtue. Not when you're dealing with Gibbs' less said is better attitude and the rest of his crew who it seemed had picked up the same bad habit.
Tony got up to pace. "Peggy Stratum and I were friends, good friends as children, our families ran in the same circles. We were in the same boat...let's just say our mother's were dead and our father's were...should never have become parents.
"We lost touch when I was sent to military school and she was boarded overseas in an exclusive girls school but we never forgot each other. Eventually she found me again in Baltimore and we exchanged numbers and promised to keep in touch.
"We met up again by coincidence at a movie memorabilia auction. I had thought of starting a collection of films still on their original reels. After a while, I and this woman seemed to be the only ones interested and still bidding and she seemed almost desperate upping my bid each time.
"Finally, I conceded defeat and let her have the collection. The funny thing is she came over to thank me, said her husband was expecting her to bring the reels home. The closer look I got of her, I knew who she was and she recognized me."
Tony stopped pacing and talking and the other three men in the room looked at each other in various stages of impatience.
"That's a nice story, DiNozzo but what does it have to do with anything?" Fornell asked what they were all thinking.
Tony looked bemused. "That's just it, it was a nice story up to a point. I asked her to have a drink in the hotel where the auction was being held, talk over old times and she was reluctant at first but then she agreed and seemed happy enough to be there. That's all it was, just a drink with an old friend."
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Tony sat comfortably with the beautiful Peggy as they reminisced and laughed about old times. The next thing he knew, some well-dressed, not unattractive blond guy who reeked of money walks over to where they were sitting, sits down in their booth next to Peggy and throws his arm around her shoulder. Peggy grew pale, stiffened up and lost all animation and the man started to scold her in a gentle, unthreatening voice.
"Margaret, sweetheart, I thought I'd surprise you and dismiss the driver and come and pick you up myself. The auction has been over for half an hour and I have been waiting in the hot car out front for you all that time. Is there a reason you're inside sitting comfortably while I wait and can you explain it to me?"
That's all he said at first but the hairs on the back of Tony's neck stood up pretty quick and Peggy tried to hide it but she wasn't looking too good either so Tony thought he'd give the guy something else to fixate on.
"Hi, I'm Tony DiNozzo. Peggy, here, and I are old friends from school days and it's my fault she was delayed. I hadn't seen her in years and wanted to catch up."
Tony stuck his hand out but Mr Arrogant just looked at it like it was something loathsome, didn't say a word to Tony and turned back to Peggy.
"I'm waiting, Margaret."
Tony gave the creeper credit for not raising his voice but his tone held more than a hint of menace and Peggy seemed to shrink in her own skin. Seeing this, Tony got pretty pissed at this guy's attitude.
"Hey! I told you who I am now who the hell are you?"
That got Arrogant's attention. He dug into Peggy's arm a little too roughly before he removed his arm from around her shoulder and turned to peruse Tony, sizing him up. The guy's smile was ugly as he snapped his fingers twice looking to the left of DiNozzo before he deigned to address him. Tony recognized bodyguard thugs when he saw them so now he had to split his attention watching his own back from two sides, the goons sitting behind him at another small table and the creep in a four thousand dollar suit with the cold smile sitting in front of him.
"I am Shane Ringold, Margaret's husband."
The ass paused after he gave his name as though expecting Tony to bow down and kiss said ass. Tony knew who he was alright, one of those Ringold's, the old money Ringold rich but he wouldn't give the guy the satisfaction of kowtowing to money envy.
In the meantime, the minute her husband took his attention off of her, Mrs Margaret 'Peggy' Stratum Ringold, gave Tony such a pleading desperate look behind his back that he knew she wanted him to back off and go away and he could do nothing but oblige at her obvious distress.
"And you are again?" Ringold looked like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.
"Joe Blow."
Tony couldn't help it, this patronizing blowhard rubbed him the wrong way. Besides, antagonizing the bullies was Tony's middle name. Still, if it caused further threat to Peggy than he would back off, cut the smart ass talk for another time when he and Ringold were alone and leave for her sake.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, Mr Ringold, Mrs Ringold, I have important business I need to attend to. Peggy, great seeing you again."
Tony attempted to make his goodbye short and sweet and started to get up and darn it, wouldn't you know, Ringold was not going to make it easy for him to leave peaceably. Now that Ringold thought he had Tony on the run, he was going to flex a few muscles here and there enough to scare his poor wife some more and put Tony in his place for sharing a snack with someone he considered his property.
Tony DiNozzo. Ringold stared at the man who had grown from the tall lanky boy he had hated with a serious passion to the tall self-assured man sitting across from him. God, how he had hated him, the athletic, good looking, popular SOB jock who had beat him at everything. Tony lived the charmed life on his family estate that had swimming pools, tennis courts, horses and vintage cars with a loving father who cared deeply for him.
He, on the other hand, had grown up at a time when his family was desperately poor and hiding their destitute secrets. His family who got on by handouts from better-off relatives and a few friends. His family struggling just to eat three meals a day, too proud to admit they were just poor trash and too dumb to figure things out. Living in two rooms of their decrepit, cold mansion, no servants, certainly no horses, a mosquito infested swimming pool and nothing else while Tony DiNozzo had satin sheets and downy covers. It was payback time for him having nothing while Anthony DiNozzo, Jr had had everything.
"Leaving so soon? I think not, Anthony DiNozzo, Jr, Joe Blow. Not before we have a little chat and an understanding, if you will. My two men over there will escort you out discretely and I will be with you shortly after I speak with my wife Margaret for a few minutes."
So. He remembers me, thought Tony, but I remember him also and his suggestion of me sticking around until he was satisfied I had learned my lesson wasn't going to work for me."
"Think again, Shannon Goldilocks," Tony taunted.
Yes, Tony knew who he was alright. Gossip was that Ringold's family had had big money owning several railroad lines since the late eighteen hundreds but automobiles were invented and the family was disenchanted by the loss of its huge revenue when the passenger list fell off. Their riches were lost and it was hand to mouth truths hidden behind the facade of great family wealth until oil was found on their properties and they were rich again.
Tony and Shane use to play on the youth opposing soccer teams at the same exclusive country club. Ringold had been a pretty good player but he could never make a score when Tony was up. Tony had lots of friends but everybody hated the rottenly spoiled, only-child brat, Shane Ringold, who the kids use to call Shannon because he was a bully but cried like a little girl and Goldilocks because of his curly blond hair. Tony knew his nickname had stuck in college even though he had finally cut off the blond locks. The crying had obviously stopped but Ringold's claim to courage no doubt was developed from a bottle labelled hired help; caliber of weapon not important.
Ringold flushed at the reminder of the repulsive nickname but before he could say or do anything else, he felt something hard pressed against his leg. Tony had his Sig, hidden nicely from public view under the small table, pressed firmly against Ringold's thigh.
Ringold's realization that there was no scenario whereby he would not get a bullet lodged in his groin unless he let this man walk away was like acid in his mouth. And the man facing him, with the gun, knew that he knew that.
"So, I think we've got our understanding." Tony jiggled the gun a little.
"If not, let me spell it out for you. My understanding is that if your hired help come any closer you're going to have a short but lifelong problem with your leg and a lot of gushing blood and gore. So tell them to back off and we'll both be satisfied, you with your leg intact and the ability to have children, and me, well, let's just say, I prefer walking out unassisted and unobstructed on my own."
Ringold still hesitated and Tony pressed the barrel harder into his leg, there'd be a bruise in the morning. Peggy, sitting next to her husband, remained silent and watchful while her husband and Tony played the waiting game. Tony could tell precisely when Ringold's desire to remain healthy swayed his decision to drop his strong-arm tactics and the man actually smiled genially at Tony as he casually signaled to his men and then leaned back in his chair and put his hands on the table.
Tony took that to mean he could leave and stood up. His gun had disappeared in its holster at his waist but his jacket flapped open and the badge and holstered gun on his belt were prominently displayed. Ringold's lips thinned at the sight, Tony wasn't just a Joe Blow nobody anymore. He knew what NCIS was, a government agency, the Federal government and so this intruder who dared to approach his wife with his smile and charm had ties and probably allies with an agency tasked with policing several branches of the military. Ringold knew when he had played and lost. He rose from his chair and thrust out his hand.
"No hard feelings, DiNozzo, perhaps we'll meet again."
"I doubt it, Ringold, but you never know."
Tony ignored the outstretched hand, nodded to Peggy, exited the booth and left without a backward glance. Ringold's ears pinked and his eyes narrowed as he watched Tony until the man went through the lobby doors and disappeared.
Tony could feel Ringold's eyes pinpointing the target on his back as he left. The two goons were nowhere in sight but he kept his eyes open anyway. There was something dangerous and malevolent about Ringold and his wife was deathly afraid of him or...there was something else going on, because she was deathly afraid of something.
Tony had slipped Peggy his card under the table and he smiled sardonically as he got in his car at all that had gone on under that table but none of the good stuff, and hoped that she'd call if she needed help.
During Tony's narration, Gibbs had gotten up for his second cup of coffee from the new pot, stronger than the first, Vance was staring out the window in an apparent trance and Fornell sat frowning with elbows on knees.
"And I ask again, what does all this have to do with a damn thing, DiNozzo?"
"It's a Gibbs', 'I don't believe in coincidences', coincidence, Fornell, and neither do I."
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