"I don't think that's a surrender flag," Mozzie said, staring at the house they were surveilling. Neal awoke from his daydreaming and saw someone waving a white hanky through a window on the second floor.

"All right, stay here, Moz. I need to save Elizabeth."

He left the car, jogged across the street, snuck into the neighbor's garden, over the fence, and climbed the drainpipe. It had been no problem so far, but the windows had bars.

"Neal! He locked the door!"

"Elizabeth, I can't get through these bars. You're gonna have to pick the door lock yourself."

"I can't pick a lock!"

"It looks like a Birmingham, okay? It's perfect for a beginner. Can I see the pick set?"

"Yeah…" She picked it up and came to the window.

"Okay. Use that hook — the second one from the left and the little L-shaped tension wrench," Neal instructed. Elizabeth took them out and walked to the door. "You put the wrench in the lock and keep the pressure on it, okay? Just as if you were turning a key."

"Neal, I don't think I can do this."

"Just focus on the tip of the pick. Think of it as an extension of your hand. Put it in the lock and move it along the top of the cylinder."

"I feel the pins!"

"Good. Good. Now tiny, little upward motions. You'll feel the pins lock into place."

She worked on the lock, and suddenly, she turned her head to him, amazed.

"I got it."

Neal grinned.

"See?"

She rose, put the picks back, and opened the door. There was Peter.

"Hey, El." Then Peter saw him outside the window on the second floor, and his face hardened. "Hey, Neal."

"Hi."

"Elizabeth's been gone quite a while," Peter noted. Also noting that so had Ben.

"She's probably just checking her makeup."

"Mm." That's not what El usually did. Peter moved the quinoa around on the plate, wondering how he would ever manage to get it down.

"So, she's the one who tries to get you to eat healthy," Jessica said, smiling.

"You got me. I.. I'm more of a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy."

"Ben used to be."

"Mm." Poor guy, Peter thought.

"No rats," Ben said, returning to the table.

"Could be a chipmunk," Peter said. "We had one. Kept stealing my dog's kibble. I found tiny footprints right by Satchmo's bowl, so I stayed up one night. Caught the thief

with his cheeks filled." He thought of it as a funny story, but he just got silence and blank stares in return. "Ah, you revel in the small victories. I'm gonna check on my wife."

Peter walked upstairs and continued to the third floor. He found the bathroom door and knocked on it.

"El?"

He saw that the light was on, but there was no sound from inside. Worried, he pulled the door handle and found the door unlocked and the bathroom empty. Baffled, Peter figured that his gut feeling was right after all.

The sound from the second floor was neither rat nor chipmunk. He walked down to the second floor, where a door opened.

"Hey, El." His wife stared at him, and he took a step inside the room. And lo and behold, there was one face he did not wish to see in this constellation. "Hey, Neal."

"Hi…"

"Can somebody explain to me why my wife is holding a government Elite III lock-pick set?"

"Honey, it's Ben's. This is the reason why we're here. I wanted you to see this."

"Peter," Neal said, "there is no legal way for him to be in possession of an Elite — "

"Don't! Don't tell me about legality. Be at my house when I get there." He turned to his wife. "Let's go. I've suddenly lost my appetite."

They returned downstairs. Ben rose.

"Is everything alright?"

"No. Elizabeth's not feeling well," Peter said, picking up El's handbag. "She's been fighting something."

"Oh, no," Rebecca said. "You didn't get any pie. Fresh rhubarb."

"Ooh, save me a piece," Peter smiled politely.

"Well, thank you for a lovely dinner," El managed a smile and looked unwell at the same time. They turned and left without any more comments.

"Start at the beginning," Peter demanded. He had all three of them sitting down on his living room sofa. Neal took a deep breath, but Elizabeth got there first.

"Okay. I invited Mozzie over to listen to the scanner. We heard the same men planning something for tomorrow."

"One of those voices was Ben," Moz said, "who was across the street with a gun."

"A gun?" Peter asked, frowning.

"We think it was a gun," Elizabeth clarified.

"Or a Tony Award." Neal stared at Mozzie. He had no clear image of what a Tony Award looked like but he was pretty sure it did not look like a gun.

"You see a hypothetical gun, then decide to call in the cavalry," Peter asked.

"El wanted to make sure she wasn't crying wolf," Neal explained.

"I was embarrassed about what happened earlier."

"Oh, yeah, well, I know the feeling," Peter said. "My wife recently used me as a patsy."

"Yeah, and Operation Dinner Roll was a success," Moz pointed out.

"Operation what?!" Peter spat.

"You saw the Elite III," Neal moved Peter's focus to what was important. As a lifelong criminal, he knew something was going on here. Though he understood Peter needed a certain kind of proof to take legal actions, all this was about was to check things up.

"We thought if you saw the lock picks, you'd want to investigate," Elizabeth said.

"Investigate what?!"

"There was a duffel bag…" How was he supposed to convey his gut feeling to Peter?

"I… I found the duffel bag," she said. "It had a phone company uniform inside."

"A phone company uniform?"

"And some repair equipment…"

"The phones went out in a building on 47th and Park today…" Peter said.

"Some security systems are connected to phone lines," Neal said.

"See?" Mozzie chimed in. "There is something! Vindication is thine, Mrs. Suit."

There was a moment of silence.

"Will you look into Ben?" Elizabeth asked. Peter sighed in the way Neal knew what it meant. He knew there was something to look into, even if he did not like how he learned about it.

"Returning the surveillance gear?" Diana asked when Peter left the elevator with two big suitcases.

"Well, because of this," Peter sighed, "my C.I. spent an evening teaching my wife the finer points of lock-picking and B&E."

"I heard," she said, and Peter stared at her. "He came in early to follow up with the phone company," she explained as they passed Neal at his desk.

"Atoning. Good. Have we run Ben Ryan through indices?"

"I did. It's not good." She opened a file. "Ben served four years at Five Points correctional facility for possession of stolen property."

"Even when Neal's not around, I end up eating dinner with grand larcenists." And the guy had even been nice and handsome. Why was that so annoying? "Only four years for armed robbery?"

He put the cases down by his desk.

"He was caught with some of the haul, but they couldn't prove he pulled the job."

"Says he had a partner," Peter said.

"Yep," Neal said, popping up by the door. "And he still does. That building where the lines went down does have a phone-based alarm system. Overriding it is a two-man job.

You can cut the trunk line as long as a bypass line is connected simultaneously."

"They circumvented the alarm but didn't steal anything," Diana said.

"I think it was a dry run," his CI said.

"Making sure it'll work for whatever score they have planned," Peter followed the line of thought. "Diana, track down a list of known associates. Maybe we'll get lucky and find his partner."

"Okay." She left the room.

"El was right," Neal said. "You're living down the street from a criminal."

"I know," Peter nodded. "I need to call her."