CHAPTER 3
Although Tony had known Special Agent Dean Martin Balboa for years, he had never partnered with him in the field before. Balboa usually headed up his own team but, like Gibbs' team, they were on other assignments for a few days. Their investigative style was similar so they got along fine. Balboa was experienced – he'd been at NCIS just as long as Tony had – and he dressed well and had a good sense of humor. But what Tony liked about Balboa was that he loved it when Tony, joking around, called him Dino.
Balboa said, "My mom used to call me Dino. She had all the Dean Martin records and played them every Friday night. It was like a ritual. Drove Dad crazy. I always loved Just in Time."
Tony parked in front of the apartment building where Lieutenant Hannaford had lived. They went inside to find the super, taking their gear and the camera along with them. "You know the lyrics?" Tony asked.
"Oh yeah. 'Just in time, I found you just in time,'" Balboa sang as they entered the building. Back to business, he said to Tony, "Okay, so Mr. Kavechni has seen this guy whose description makes him sound like he's Chewbacca hanging around, and the Metro Police looked into the break-ins but they haven't located him yet. What does your gut tell you? Common thief? Crackhead looking to steal something to sell and keeps coming back because he knows the area? Or maybe Lieutenant Hannaford was murdered and Ducky missed the signs and this guy is breaking in to find top secret papers that were hidden there?"
Tony shook his head. "My gut says this is your normal, run-of-the-mill thief, a neighborhood kid who has nothing to do with our dead lieutenant. But then, I've been policing five thousand Navy men for the past few months, so I wouldn't be surprised if my normal-people radar is sorta skewed."
"One thing this job has taught me is that there are no normal people," Balboa said with a laugh.
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They talked to Mr. Kavechni down in his basement apartment. He had little to add to what he'd told Tony on the phone, so the two agents took the elevator up to the third floor to have a look at Lieutenant Hannaford's apartment.
The lieutenant rarely stayed in his DC apartment and his ship hadn't been in dock for three months, so it was unlikely that they'd find anything there to explain his death. There was always the chance that there had been foul play, but Ducky had said that Hannaford had committed suicide, and Ducky had never been wrong, at least to Tony's knowledge. Still, they had to cross the Ts and dot the Is.
Tony was listening with half an ear to Balboa talking about the Bette Davis movie he'd watched the night before, Dark Victory, and how she'd had a brain tumor and had worn this cute little beanie to cover where she'd been operated on. As they rounded the corner in the hallway and approached Hannaford's apartment, a man rushed towards the agents with a big cardboard box in his arms, apparently not seeing them until he'd literally bumped into Balboa. He was young and blond, and he was a big guy, and in a split second Tony knew this was the perp who'd been doing the break-ins.
Tony dropped his bag and pulled his sidearm in one smooth move. "NCIS! Federal Agents. Step back and raise your hands!" From the corner of his eye he could see Balboa doing the same thing.
Scruffy dropped the box he was carrying and it hit the ground with a crash. For a second he froze and raised his hands. Tony watched the eyes – he always watched the eyes – and he saw them widen and he was sure that the guy was going to run for it. Instead, Scruffy launched himself at Balboa, who was closest, apparently intent upon grabbing the agent's gun. No way was he going to get it, but there was a bit of a scuffle before Tony got hold of one of the man's arms, bent it behind him, and shoved him against the wall.
Balboa immediately went to snap his cuffs on Scruffy but the guy was a strong shit, and he must have been hopped up and desperate enough to attack a couple of armed Federal agents. He twisted and fought like a crazy dog, snarling and spitting, and for a moment he broke free and Tony saw the flash of a knife descending towards his partner. Where the fuck had that come from? Tony blocked it and kicked the guy's legs out from under him. Scruffy went down hard, and by the time he got his breath they'd securely cuffed him.
Tony stood up, panting, and bagged the knife. It had a four-inch blade, long enough to do some damage. "What the hell is the matter with you?" he demanded. "Don't you know what 'stop, federal agents' means?"
Scruffy twisted his head to look at Tony, his face contorted with hatred. "Fucking feds! Get your fucking hands off me! I didn't do nothing! Leave me alone!"
Balboa yanked the cuffed and struggling man to his feet and pointed out, "Don't worry, you're going be left alone, in a nice quiet cell upstate." Balboa turned to Tony and asked, "DiNozzo, do we hand him over to Metro or take him back with us?"
"Let me check if he broke into Hannaford's place first." Although there were scratch marks on Lieutenant Hannaford's door from Scruffy's break-in attempts, the door had held.
Tony pulled out the key that the super had given him but Balboa warned, "DiNozzo, let me secure this guy first."
They put in a call to Metro, and while they waited for the cops to respond, Mr. Kavechni joined them and identified the thief as the man who had been hanging around the building.
Although he had been read his rights, the thief told them his name was Phil Kramer. Balboa checked out the bag that Kramer had dropped and found it held a crowbar and other tools, as well as several small electronics and phones.
Kramer insisted they were his even after Tony picked up one of the phones, a pink one. Tony said dryly, "Wow, Kramer, I wouldn't have pegged you for the kind of guy who was into Hello Kitty."
When two police officers appeared, Tony explained the situation and gladly handed Kramer over to them. "He's all yours," Tony told the police and signed over the knife he'd taken off Kramer.
While the cops took their prisoner downstairs, the two NCIS agents unlocked Hannaford's door and entered his apartment, their gear in hand. Sparsely furnished, with hardly any personal belongings in sight, it didn't take long to check out. It was obvious that Lieutenant Hannaford had lived most of his life onboard ship, and this apartment was certainly not what Tony would call a home away from home. They took photos, collected some correspondence and a laptop whose battery had run down. Even if Kramer had broken in, there wasn't much to steal in the sparsely furnished apartment.
As they went out into the hallway, Tony wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He felt warm and a bit out of breath but he put it down to being tired. Balboa was eying him with concern. "What?" asked Tony.
"You okay? You look sort of pale."
"Yeah? I must be missing that brisk sea air. Hey, I'm fine," Tony said with his best DiNozzo smile.
They were in the elevator with the doors closing when Tony got a feeling that he hadn't locked the apartment door on his way out. "Damn," he said, hitting the stop button. "I have to go back and check I locked up."
"I'll wait."
"No, you'd better make sure those Metro cops didn't lose Kramer. And we need to get the super to sign the statement." Balboa seemed doubtful but Tony assured him, "I'll catch up in a minute, Dino." Tony could hear the elevator doors slipping closed behind him as he walked down the hallway.
He was right. The door hadn't been locked. Tony wondered where the hell his mind had been. Even at his worst, when he was beat and dragging his ass, he never made probie mistakes like that. Tony had the key in the lock when he noticed that there was blood smeared on his NCIS jacket. There were some spots of blood on his pants leg, too, and he wondered where they'd come from. "Damn, I just got these cleaned." Tony twisted to see if there was any other blood on him and it was then that he felt a sting along his ribs on the left side. He opened the jacket to discover that he had been knifed. "Shit."
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It was after six by the time Tony and Balboa returned to the Navy Yard and parked the car in the lot. Tony had allowed Balboa to drive. Even though he could handle the car one-handed, it would be pretty obvious that he was favoring his left side. If Balboa knew about his injury, he'd report it, and between Gibbs' attitude of late, and Vance watching him like he expected Tony to slip up any minute, Tony did not want to offer them any reason to come down on him. "I'll talk to Gibbs and bring him up to speed," said Tony, not relishing the task.
When Balboa had been busy dealing with the Metro cops, Tony had quickly slipped into Hannaford's apartment to use the bathroom. There, he had used a hand towel to wipe off the worst of the blood, and had pulled out the first-aid kit kept in his bag. He had slapped all the gauze he had over the cut without looking at it too closely, and taped it down with oversized band-aids. The towel and his trash were now stuffed in his bag awaiting the right opportunity for him to dispose of them.
His side was hurting like a bitch and he was going to have to make a side trip to the men's room before he went to the bullpen, to check that the improvised bandage was secure. It wasn't going to be easy to hide his injury from eagle-eyed Gibbs, but Tony planned to give it his best college try. So long as he didn't bend over or twist or…well, do anything except sit, he should be okay. At this point, just standing was making him break out in a sweat but he kept telling himself he could keep it together for as long as it took.
As the two agents headed up to the squad room in the elevator, Balboa said, "Thanks, by the way."
"What for?" Tony shifted his weight and stared at the floor numbers lighting up on the panel above the door.
"Look, Tony, we both know that Kramer was aiming to carve his initials in me except you got in the way."
For a second Tony was afraid that Balboa knew he'd been cut by that scruffy shit with the big knife, but when Tony looked him in the eye, he could tell his fellow agent didn't realize that he'd been hurt. Tony managed a smile and he shrugged that it was nothing. "I sort of fell on him, got lucky. You know me, tripping over my own feet. Guess I'm still not used to dry land," he said, swaying back and forth in simulation of a rocking boat. Unfortunately the movement caused a sharp pain in his side, making Tony wince, but Balboa chose that moment to look up at the floor numbers and didn't catch it.
The elevator door opened and Tony stepped out. Balboa didn't follow him. Instead he held the door open with one hand and said, "I'm going down to the coffee shop to get some coffee before I write up my report. You want anything? Coffee? Sandwich?"
"No, I'm okay, Dino, but you can bring back a coffee for Gibbs," Tony said casually, hoping the beads of sweat on his brow weren't too obvious.
Balboa smiled. "Sure thing. Uh, I'm going to write my report at my own desk and I'll send over a copy by email, if that's okay. I don't know how you can concentrate with Gibbs glaring at you," Balboa said with an apologetic shrug.
"It's not easy but somebody has to do the job."
"Good working with you, Tony. Maybe we can catch a ball game sometime."
"Or a Bette Davis movie? Maybe Special Agent with George Brent, " Tony teased.
"Sounds good." Balboa waved a hand at Tony as the elevator doors closed.
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