White Collar - as an unofficial novel - part 5

Bee's nest

When Neal came home he found Mozzie sitting with the back to him by his kitchen table, tabletop covered in protective paper and there were trays and paper and material all over it. Mozzie himself sat with a pair of giant tweezers over a pan filled with water and a sheet of paper on top.

Neal walked closer and leaned over his shoulder.

"How's it coming?"

His friend screamed and turned around, tweezers raised as if it was a dagger.

"Moz, overreact much? What are you gonna do with tweezers?"

"The shinobi ninja can fashion a weapon out of anything," Mozzie said. Well, those tweezers could maybe harm a fly at the most. So calling them 'weapon' was to overstate things a lot.

"You're not a ninja."

Moz grinned.

"That's exactly what I want you to believe."

This was a road Neal was not interested in taking. He steered away from it.

"How's the bottle coming?"

"Oh, I paid off a guard at that maritime exhibit for French cork made before the Industrial Revolution."

That was good news. Neal leaned over the table and took a closer look of the newspaper.

"We got our newspaper. This is a New York Gazette from 1785." Impressive. He smiled at Mozzie. This man was quick to find things when needed.

"They use it for insulation in the walls at the Colonial Ale House," his friend told him.

"That's perfect." Nothing was stolen, nothing that someone would miss, nothing that would bug Peter.

"There's only one egg missing from our basket."

Neal scanned the table and saw it at a glance.

"Wax."

"Preferably 18th-century beeswax from the Chateau Du Munn vineyard."

Neal stared at Mozzie.

"Grace, Keller's broker, has a few Chateau Du Munn in her vault. How much wax do we need?"

"Not much. I can make it work with just a few shavings. How's the security there?"

"Good," Neal assured him. "Keypad with a rotating code, biometric scanner plate—"

"Oh, we can ju—"

"With pulse monitor," he added.

"Oh, that makes it trickier. So how do you get in?"

He just assumed Neal would, and rightly so. And he knew exactly how.

"Have her open the door."

"For you?"

"No. For my client, Carlton Leed." Neal grinned. "I have to go to see Peter."

"Now about those office hours you take such pride in these days?" Mozzie mocked him, already returning to his work with the label.

The phone rang when they were having dinner. Peter saw it was Neal and ignored it. He was having a quiet time with his wife after a hard day's work. A few minutes later the kid called again.

"Aren't you gonna take it?" El asked.

"No. This is our time of the day," he said raising his glass to his wife. "What can possibly be more important than that?"

"When it comes to Neal, I can think of many things." But she smiled at him, not insisting that he should answer.

A few minutes later there was a knock on the door and somehow Peter knew who was waiting outside before opening the door.