White Collar: An unofficial novel - part 10

Popcorn

Neal went home that night with mixed feelings. He had enjoyed being in power over Peter, but it was far less fun to get robbed of an opportunity to do a break-in sanctioned by the FBI.

And Peter posing as a thief, could that ever work? Neal had been impressed by his friend many times, but in this case, he feared that the agent had reached the limits of his talents.

He met June inside the front door.

"Hello, June."

"Hello, my dear." They exchanged friendly kisses. "Could I ask you to tell your friend to be careful with that gas he brought up? I prefer to keep my house intact, and there is a lot of wood upstairs."

Neal had no idea what she was talking about, but he knew Moz.

"Sure. I'll tell him."

He walked upstairs and found Mozzie in an overall and welding mask with a gas torch in his hand doing something on his kitchen table. Moz was a genius but was surprisingly naive and lacked imagination in some areas.

"You know that table is made out of wood, right?"

Mozzie looked up from his work.

"Oh, hi, Neal."

"Working on the antenna?"

"Why else would I be working on here? Each thing has its place where it belongs."

"Yeah..."

Neal did not dwell on the subject and fetched scissors, cutters, and glue. He sat by the same table and got to work with his ID. Or rather Peter's ID, with the badge and all. It had been fun pickpocketing him for it. Even better that he felt justified to alternate his trophy a bit. Peter had insisted that they kept their switched roles. Then he needed an ID.

"Welding is a lot harder than it looks," Mozzie said, bending a hot rod. "I deserve a medal. Sorry about the flames. You want to wear my extra helmet?"

"I'm good."

"Nothing like wearing a leather flame suit on the hottest day of the year," he continued turning the gas off and pulling up his mask. "I'm almost back to my fighting weight. For the last parts for the antenna, I've been scouring eBay Europe. Are you even listening to me?"

Right now, he was mainly glad that the kitchen table was not on fire.

"You wouldn't believe the amount of paperwork required to send someone undercover," he told Moz.

"Isn't that the Suit's job?"

"Nah, he made me do it since I told a whistle-blower I was Peter Burke." And he had been stupid enough to ask what Peter was doing at his desk all day. Mozzie laughed. At first.

"Why would you do that?"

"We were gonna lose her. I had to. Now I'm stuck with the IS9 form, A.K.A. the whistle-blower declaration of facts."

Neal put glue on his photo and pressed it on top of Peter's. It was not quality work at all, but he did not want to ruin Peter's ID, nor be in more trouble than needed.

"Okay, remember when your mother said, 'Don't cross your eyes 'cause they're gonna stay that way'?" Mozzie asked with a concerned look on his face.

"Yeah?"

"The same thing holds for impersonating a Suit," Moz said. Neal sighed in disagreement and pushed the ID back into the holder by its badge. "Get out, or I'm gonna find you wearing wingtips."

Neal grinned and held up the complete badge.

"What do you think?"

"Oh. I'm too late. The metamorphosis is complete. Cockroach."