White Collar - as an unofficial novel - part 6

Cinnamon

Early the next morning Neal walked into Jennings office. It was deserted except for Dylan, which was perfect.

"Morning, Dylan." Neal stopped by his desk, which was the first you met.

"Jennings isn't in yet."

"Good. I need some time in his office." Neal continued to the room in the room that Peter told him about. He had forgotten to tell him that it had a whole wall of glass though, so Jennings could see anyone coming and going.

"Well, the, uh... the door's locked," Dylan said, getting to his feet following him, "and Jennings and Reggie are the only ones with keys. But they'll be here any minute." The young idealist said it as if Jennings would just let him inside to snoop around if he just waited. Neal took out his lock pick set.

"So distract them," Neal said. "Can you do that?"

Dylan lingered on the answer. Which was answer enough. The lock was easy.

"I'm a terrible liar."

"Good. We need more terrible liars in politics." Neal snuck inside leaving Dylan outside of his comfort zone. He took the file cabinets first because they were in full display from the window. They were unlocked, all the drawers. What he was looking for would be inside something locked. He continued with the drawer behind the desk. Then he turned to the desk. There at last he found a locked drawer.

He sat down on his heels to pick the lock. A knock on the window from Dylan told him that Jennings and Reggie were on their way in. He opened the drawer.

"Senator," he heard their inside man say. "You're in early. Senator, I wanted to go over next week's schedule with you."

Neal grabbed the one thing that could be something and hid behind the desk. It was a matchbook. He had not seen Jennings smoke, nor had he smelled like he did. He took a photo of the cover and sent it to Peter.

He opened it. All matches were there. It could be just a commercial item, but something was written inside in pen: "CiNNaMon212".

He pushed the matchbook back in the drawer and locked it. A quick glance out and he pulled the chair back in its original spot and with a few hunching steps, he was out through the other door.

There he took a deep breath, pulled a hand through his hair, and turned Benjamin Cooper on.

"Morning, Senator," he greeted Jennings as he rounded the corner.

"Oh, nice and early. Good start already."

They shook hands.

"I was gonna go grab a smoke before we jump in. Do you have a light?"

"Smoking makes you look weak," he disapproved.

"I'll remember that." Jennings moved to his office but Neal caught up with him. "Oh, uh... We should discuss my fee. You know, I was hoping we could do it off the books."

"I'm sure we can come to an arrangement."

So the politician had at least pasted that threshold.

"How's your first day of work?" Peter asked when he called him.

"I've taken up smoking." How could drawing smoke in your lungs feel good at any time?

"Politics is already corrupting you."

"Yeah. You get the picture I sent?"

"Yeah. The symbol's the flower of Aphrodite. We ran it through the ACS database and came up with two coffee shops, a bakery, a winery, and a high-class escort service."