Neal knew what to look for, so he saw the snipers when they took their positions. Once they were in place, they would be almost invisible from where he would meet DeLuca.

He knew the FBI did this for him to be safe and that it meant that they kept their part of the deal. Something that people like Kimberly Rice had neglected. He had heard that Hughes made sure she did not easy recovery from using him as bait.

Still, guns and rifles did not make him feel safe, even if carried by government professionals there to save his life if needed. It was too easy to kill someone by shooting, and he knew all too well that not everyone in uniform did what they were supposed to do.

"All right, snipers are in position," Peter told him. "We have Jones standing by with S.W.A.T. You'll be transmitting through this." A watch. Of course. Neal took it and put it on. "Any problems, Mozzie's waiting by the phone."

"Got it. Don't worry, Peter." Black leather jacket and cool sunglasses. What could possibly go wrong? A lot, Neal guessed, but he was not prone to worry.

Peter could not heed that advice. Neal could not remember when he had seen his friend this nervous.

"I'll be watching from the car."

"All right."

Neal crossed the street and walked along the sidewalk to the meeting point. It did not take long until a Michigan-registered car passed him and parked by the sidewalk.

The door to the passenger seat opened. A man stepped out that opened the door to the backseat.

"Mr. de Luca," Neal said.

The bulky goon he had seen before joined from the other side of the car. De Luca took off his shades and studied Neal.

"You. I remember you from the warehouse. You're too young to be the Dentist."

So, no chance of presuming to be the Dentist himself. Neal pulled his shades off.

"I'm not the Dentist. I'm his lip man."

"Oh, you're his lip man." He grinned and nodded, turned to his goon: "He's his lip man." De Luca turned back to Neal. "Well, I do my own talking. And my message goes directly to the Dentist, not to some flunky, so no Dentist, no deal, all right? He's a no-show. Jeffries will be mortified."

De Luca turned and walked back to his car.

"Hey, hey," Neal called after him. "All right, all right, all right. Hey. The Dentist is here."

Peter did not know it, but he had just got to play the part of the Dentist. If needed. Neal hoped to keep him where he was.

"Where?"

"Black sedan, north side of the street."

De Luca glanced over Neal's shoulder at the car.

"Well, that could be anybody. I'll need some proof."

"Okay." Neal went for his pocket, and the voluminous bodyguard moved for his pocket. Neal gestured for him to take it easy and pulled out his cell phone and showed it to the goon and De Luca. "Ask him a question."

Neal speed-dialed Peter's number. Peter would be smart enough to put it through to Mozzie.

It did not take many signals before Mozzie answered.

"The Dentist is in."

"Mr. de Luca has a question for you."

"Ask him..." he lingered on the question and then: "what's his favorite ice cream?"

A question Neal did not expect, but he was not the one who had played games with a gangster.

"Mr. de Luca would like to know, what is your favorite ice cream?"

"Seriously?" he heard Diana in the background.

"Bubble gum." Mozzie had answered without hesitation. Was that even an ice cream flavor? He hung up.

"Bubble gum," Neal said to De Luca.

The gangster watched him as he put his hand inside his suit jacket. For a gun? Neal forced himself not to back away.

De Luca's hand held an envelope.

"Dentist pulled a con, a big one, on my father. I want him to pull the same hustle on this guy here in New York who, uh, wasn't so friendly to me."

"Who's the mark?"

"Patrick O'Leary."

"Irish mob."

"All the details are in there." De Luca handed him the envelope, and Neal put it in his pocket. De Luca and his goon left with their car.

The meeting was over.


Peter opened the envelope the kid had got from the invading gangster.

"De Luca thinks O'Leary's responsible for his father's death," he concluded after reading.

"Rule number one: don't mess with the family."

"He came all the way here to put the Dentist in the middle of a mob war."

"Mozzie gets caught in the crossfire," the kid said.

"Two birds, one stone." No matter that, Peter felt that he did not want a mob war in the middle of New York City. "What sort of con did Mozzie pull to have de Luca so pissed?"

"I don't know, but it involved stealing 500 grand from de Luca's dad."

"No wonder they've got it out for the Dentist."

"Who they think is you," the kid said, looking at him.

"What's that look? I don't like that look."

"De Luca wants the Dentist to run a con. If you go through with it..."

"And put the cash in de Luca's hand," Peter continued getting where Neal was heading, "we got him on extortion." This could actually turn into something quite good.

"De Luca goes down, and Mozzie and Jeffries are free."

"That's why we pay you the big bucks!" Peter grinned. Then saw Neal's face. "If we paid you." We should pay him, Peter thought. And we will once you're a free man, kid. "Think we can get Mozzie to tell us how he did it?"

"You threat him with a future of toilet wine, and he will sing like a canary."

It felt good to have Neal on his side on this. He smiled. For once, he would have the upper hand on Mozzie.

"I can scare him pretty good."


"Before I tell you anything," Mozzie declared, "I want complete immunity and the truth behind DARPA's —"

"No and no," Peter returned. "You are still a suspect in a dozen other crimes.

Start talking."

"Fine. But the statute of limitation protects crimes committed by a minor."

"Minor?" Peter stared at the man. "How long ago did this happen?"

Mozzie was silent, and his eyes went from him to the kid and back.

"When I was twelve." He almost sounded ashamed for being too young.

"You were twelve when you stole five-hundred grand from the Detroit mob?" Neal asked, as baffled as Peter.

"Gifted child."

"There's your immunity," Peter sighed. "Talk." And if it turned out that he was lying about his age, it would be a later story. They had no time to dwell on that particular detail right now.

"Look, when you're an orphan, a family is like your holy grail. Mr. Jeffries worked really hard to find me one, and he did; a wonderful urbane couple from Sterling Heights. They taught me about all the finest things in life. Music, art. They were quite decent." Mozzie watched a spot on the desk, lost in thought. Then remembered where he was. "For people who wore suits."

"What went wrong?" Peter asked.

"They had a son. An only child. Their son, he got jealous, so he stole a priceless family heirloom and pinned the crime on me, and I got scared. Ran away. I hit the streets."


"I got a job making book for a numbers guy," Mozzie continued. "Before long, I knew the business better than he did. But he did enjoy it when I started to suggest alterations to the business. Problem was, who's gonna trust a kid? Adults like to feel superior. They want to think they're smarter than everyone else. So I learned the art of the con. Letting adults think they were smarter and still guide them the way I wanted. Bruno, in particular. I told him he had a brain winning tic-tac-toe with six in a row. No one had probably said he had a brain before."

"You got yourself a patsy," Neal smiled.

"You use what you learn. I talked Bruno into opening a back office in a betting parlor. He was the public face of the Dentist. I was the brains."

"Why 'the Dentist'?"

"I was 12. A Dentist was the scariest thing I could think of, and...it worked. Together, Bruno and I ran the biggest street lottery in town, had runners working for us all over the city. People loved us. Except the ones who owed us money. That's when de Luca came in. He didn't like me cutting into his profits. De Luca caught wind of the Dentist, threat Bruno into closing shop. Of course he did not know that the kid on the sidewalk eating bubblegum ice cream was the real Dentist."

"Bubblegum ice cream," Neal said, remembering the odd question. "How…"

"De Luca Senior brought De Luca Junior with him. Then I was just a kid to bully because he wanted to be like his father. He took my ice cream cone and threw it on the ground. I wanted payback, for that and for threatening Bruno, so I got de Luca Senior. on a wire con. He went in for five-hundred large."

"How'd he find out you were the kid behind the curtain?"

"Bruno sold me out. He told them I was the Dentist. I had to retire the moniker - no more Dentist. I took the money, left for New York, and became a new person."

"All right, what about everything attributed to the Dentist since then?"

"De Luca didn't want the world to know he'd been taken by a prepubescent grifter."

"He started the rumor that the Dentist was Superman," Neal mused. He

"Yep. The Dentist became the perfect patsy for every criminal in the northeast."

"You're a living conspiracy theory," Peter said.

"See? They do exist!"

Jones opened the door to the interview room behind Neal.

"Ohio turnpike clocked Jeffries' car running a toll a couple of hours ago," he said.

"Mr. Jeffries would never run a toll," Mozzie protested. "He's a very conscientious driver." Neal sighed. Until: "Wait! That's another clue! Do they have a photo?"

Jones glanced at Peter and then:

"It's on its way."

Neal turned to Peter.

"Look, Mozzie's given us everything we need to run the con on O'Leary. What are you gonna do with him now?"

Peter sighed and glared at Mozzie.

"I'm gonna check and recheck every case in this file. Your story better hold up."

"It will."

"You're in danger, and you're a liability to us on the street. Jones, take him to a safe house."

Neal relaxed and mouthed a silent "thank you" to Peter, because he could never say that aloud so that Mozzie could hear him.

"An FBI-monitored safe house? That's legalized torture!"

Neal left to plan the con leaving Jones and Peter to handle his eccentric friend.


"You're in danger, and you're a liability to us on the street," Peter told Mozzie. They could not under any circumstances have this man unmonitored. "Jones, take him to a safe house."

To his surprise, the kid seemed to whisper a "thank you" to him.

"An FBI-monitored safe house?" their very special liability protested. "That's legalized torture!"

Peter noted that Neal had left.

"It's that, or I set you in lockdown until this is over." Peter was firm on this.

"Ah, safe house it is," Mozzie agreed. But when they turned to leave: "But — but I have demands. My atopic eczema requires custom-made silk pajamas. Reading glasses, slippers, sleep machine. All vital." Peter exchanged a look with Jones. "Oh, and, and I have soft gums, so I'll be needing my electronic toothbrush."

"Do we look like your errand boys?" Peter asked.

"Fine. Then no complaints when I'm forced to sleep in the nude tonight."

Both Peter and Jones agreed that it was time to make a list. Peter felt he could not deal with more of this and had to administrate an FBI-sanctioned con.