Fanfiction: A Pack of Lies (8/8)
Title: A Pack of Lies
Author: runenklinge
Artist: petr_slavik
Genre: Crime
Characters: James Jesse, Neil Caffrey, Peter Burke, Hartley Rathaway, Mozzie, Diana Berrigan, Clinton Jones, Elizabeth Burke, Peter Hernandez, Sandra Kilgour; mentions of past Rogues
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 27k +
Warnings: mentions of past canon character death, character death
A/N: as you may or may not have guessed, this is a White Collar AU, just with more James Jesse. I want to thank petr_slavik for her terrific art, and kidezt for her wonderful management and handling of all things. I could not have done this without her.
Summary:
A new crime spree calls New York's White Collar unit to the task. But since the crimes bear the mark of the famous master criminal, the Trickster, the FBI decides to send in their expert on all things Trickster: Special Agent James Jesse. What follows are questions, doubts, more crime and a lot of lies.
This is my RoguesBang entry, check out more awesome entries there
Part 1 I Part 2 I Part 3 I Part 4 I Part 5 I Part 6 I Part 7 I Part 8 I
Alternate at AO3: here
You have to check out the beautiful art hoples made for me
Art Link: LJ
Epilogue
Peter was being checked out by a paramedic. The leader of the second team, the one in pursuit of Nero, went over to him.
“Thank you, Agent Morillo, this was perfect timing. I had almost no hope that the back-up would arrive in time, but you came.” Peter thanked him, and grimaced when the motion of sitting up straight caused his headache to flare.
“Back up? I'm no back-up. We were tipped off that a crime boss on our list, Nero, was here, so we came here guns blazing with every agent we could find.” Morillo looked confused, but only a bit. He probably thought that the bump on Peter's head was the cause for the mix-up.
“But...then you didn't get my message? Who called you?”
“I did.” Neal did an involuntary jump back as James' eyes suddenly snapped open and he sat up, in one fluid graceful motion. “I do have a habit of calling the cops on his trail whenever I see him.” He stretched his arms and popped his spine.
“You're dead,” Neal said, not sure himself if it was a question or a statement.
“As if,” James retorted and got up. He smiled brightly, and was now every bit the young man Neal had seen back at the hotel room.
“You planned this,” Peter realized and walked up to him, vibrating with anger, “you planned the whole thing.”
“Gosh, what tipped you off?” James wore a shit-eating grin. This was the Trickster, perhaps now for the first time since Neal had seen him. He reached into his pocket, Peter tensed and reached for his gun, “please, it's a handkerchief, I don't want the blood to dry.”
With a few strokes, his face was clean and he looked normal again. Sharply-dressed, with a grin on his face and a look that said 'come on, challenge me, I dare you'.
“I should shoot you, right here and now,” Peter said.
“What for?” James retorted and cocked his head, smiling an infuriating smile. Then he went over to his dead lover - if he had been that much to him - and said “Quit playing the drama queen, Piper.”
And just like he had, Hartley rose from the dead again. “God, this suit is ruined! Remind me to never listen to one of your plans that begins with 'here, hide this blood pack in your pocket'.”
“Noted.” James reached down to pull Hartley to his feet and smiled at him. He looked impossibly young, and without the glasses, he looked...right. They had been an act all along.
The agent who had been standing next to Peter came over, his face comically frozen with his mouth open.
“Ah, Agent Morillo, how's the promotion?” James said and winked.
“No.” Morillo replied.
“...that's an answer, but not to my question. But I think I can answer for you, you meant to say 'oh no, you didn't engineer this, you did not make the FBI hire me, you did not make them transfer me to New York because I was the one cop who would go after Nero faster than a speeding bullet. No, no, no, please tell me you weren't behind this all.' And yes, I was. No need to thank me.”
Both Morillo and Peter pulled out their handcuffs.
“Ah-ah-ah,” James said and took a step back, “you don't want to do this.”
“Oh, I disagree, I really really want to put you in cuffs,” Morillo replied.
“I meant 'want' in the sense of 'wow, you're going to regret this once the boss finds out that you tried to arrest me'.”
“I don't believe you.”
“Well, duh. But I figure that I owe you a story, how it really happened.”
“Let's talk at the office,” Morilla suggested, “I can't shake the feeling that you'll try to run the second I let your out of my sight.”
“Come on, that happened once. Twice.”
“Seven times,” Morillo countered. He stepped right next to James and grasped his arm, from the looks of it, a lot tighter than he would have had. “Let's walk to my car.”
“Can I turn on the siren?”
“One more word and you'll ride in the trunk.”
Hartley shook his head softly, smiled and followed them.
Neal had still not gotten over people coming back from the dead yet.
“Do you understand what's going on?” he asked Peter.
“No, but I have a concussion I can blame that on, you don't have that excuse. Tell Diana and Jones to give us a ride back, I want to hear this story desperately.” Neal didn't even try to suggest to Peter that he should go to a hospital.
“I could drive,” he offered.
“Not a chance, Neal.”
The drive was spent in stony silence. Neal wanted to ask a thousand questions, mind reeling, but he knew that no one here had the answers he needed. He wasn't sure what was real, what had been an act and what he was supposed to have suspected of being an act while it was the truth and - it was too confusing.
They pulled in just after Morillo and his two passengers. When they walked to the office and into the elevator, he could hear James and Hartley bicker at each other, although it was all in good nature.
“You're picking up my dry cleaning bill.”
“Come on, your family's loaded.”
“It took everything I had to convince my parents to play along with your charade. Did you hear her say 'Oh, Hartley, where's my son, Hartley!' Thank god she never tried to pursue an acting career.”
“Your dad was decent enough.”
“That wasn't an act, he just had to replace the name Earl with yours, and the speech was perfect.”
“Earl? You're still dating that brickhead? I know that tall, dark and handsome is your type, but he's so stupid, he asked me once why we named a planet after a candy bar.”
“I happen to like him, thank you very much.”
Ah, so that had been an act. Albeit one they were probably intended to find out, since it had been Agent Morillo who had told them about what was in the sealed records, and James had been involved there somehow.
Morillo brought them to Hughes' office who started at James disapprovingly, who in return smiled beatifically. “Take a seat,” Hughes said and gestured for them all to sit down. James sat on his chair like it was a throne, like he had always intended to end up here.
“Let me say, first of all, that I'm sorry for the deception. I won't say that I didn't enjoy parts of it, but at a certain point it had to get ugly, and I had to convince you that I was a villain, a monster, even. I said things that were hurtful, and for that I apologize.” He took a breath, and looked sincere. Neal of course wanted to believe him, but since he had seen how easily James could change moods, he didn't know if that was genuine or another mask.
“I suppose I should start at the beginning. The very beginning. Morillo, you know most of it, you can look out of the window or something. I left home, came to the big city and wanted to make a name for myself. And that name, was Trickster. I was involved in some petty crimes, no I won't even say allegedly, I really did stupid stuff. But that was technically as a minor, so no persecution there. Then I fell in with a bad crowd, but I loved it. Piper and I worked together on some jobs, but it was mostly Robin Hood style stuff. But the Trickster name thrived, even without me. And then, a lot of things happened very quickly, it went out of control, and my friends, well, they died. They got in over their heads and paid the price. I was desperate, wanted to do something. After some digging, I found out who was responsible for their murder, an Italian mafia lord named Nero. Nero is...a monster, to say the least. What I wanted was payback. I had heard about some meeting he was organizing, and I was going to be there.”
“As our informant,” Morillo continued, “Jesse came to us a few weeks before the big meeting was going to take place. He had gotten himself an invite, and offered us a deal: he'd go there, find out everything he could and then blow the whistle. We would swoop in, take Nero and his whole organization down, not only cut off the head of the snake, but kill the whole damn thing. In turn, Jesse would receive a clean slate and a new start at the agency. That was about three years ago. So, we sent Jesse off, and waited for his call.”
“I delivered, and Nero's organization went down. He himself died in a fire when his mansion burned down. Or so we thought, at first.”
“We made up some paperwork, and Jesse came to work for us. Of course we couldn't tell anyone that a known criminal had suddenly become an FBI agent, as much as we couldn't tell anyone that this man was responsible for bringing down a whole crime network, there would have been too many questions. So we dissociated him from the Trickster name, pretended that this was another man, another group of people. And most of the Trickster crimes had really been committed by other people, it was easy to bury the original ones beneath the fake ones.”
“This went on for some time, and no one suspected a thing. Only a handful of higher-ups and Morillo knew what had gone down in Europe. But a few months ago, I was contacted by Nero. He was alive, and he wanted revenge. He had bought the lie, he had thought that I had run to the FBI for protection, and that I was living in fear from him. And, he made me an offer: I could buy my freedom from him for 25 millions. And, again, I went to the FBI and told them about his deals.”
Hughes cleared his throat and continued.
“We asked him to play along, to lure Nero out in the open and to bring him down for good. It had been quiet around him, he was presumed dead and all, but his name still bears great weight, we couldn't risk him starting up something new in the USA. Jesse would commit crimes to get the money, would pretend to spiral out of control, and the bureau would go after him and find Nero by coincidence.”
“You knew about this?” Diana asked.
“Not from the start, I was only let in on the secret after you had already suspected him. I was instructed to let him go, so I did. But I have a few friends in high places, and when he was on the way to the meeting place, and suddenly a squad of agents rolled out, I got another phone call, explaining the whole story.”
“Why wasn't I told?” Morillo demanded to know.
“To minimize any possible suspicion about our past involvement, I would guess,” James said, and Hughes nodded.
“It was supposed to look like Jesse had revealed his true colors, and since you would know that that was an act, you were kept out of the loop.”
“That was some kind of acting,” Neal said, admiration creeping back into his voice, “you were an innocent man pretending to be a criminal pretending to an innocent man pretending to be a criminal. And we all fell for it.”
“That just made my brain hurt,” Peter admitted, “although I blame the concussion.”
“Sorry about that as well. Better a blow to the head than a bullet, huh?”
“About that-” Peter interjected, “blanks? You pretended to shoot your friend...why?”
“I feared that if I didn't do it, Nero would. No sense in shooting a corpse. And it further convinced him that he had won completely.”
“And how did you manage to shoot yourself so convincingly?” Neal asked.
“That was risky, I had to get off the first shot and just drop to the ground. With all those henchmen, no one could be sure that one of their friends hadn't hit me, and with the police coming, they had more pressing matters than to make sure.”
“Hiding in plain sight,” Diana said.
“See?” James turned to look at Hartley and point at Diana, “she gets it.”
“Next time you need a partner, go ask her.”
“Maybe I will.”
“Not a chance,” Diana retorted.
“But, “ Neal began, “how did you commit these crimes? How did you pull those off?”
“Ah, that is my favorite part, my tricks! Of course, in exchange for ratting out Nero - again, I could call in some favors. Mainly immunity for one very special friend of mine. I won't name names, but she had a rather wild past as a thief. Before she had a kid and settled down. And I called Piper, my old friend, to help me with the charade, so that I'd have a believable excuse for all the little things that didn't add up. At first, you were supposed to stumble over his sealed record, after all. While I was in Chicago, working late and keeping my agents with me for the best possible alibi of all times, my friend robbed the gallery, lowering herself through the window, cutting open the glass case with a diamon device, stealing the necklace and retreating, but not before triggering the alarm on purpose. The silhouette and faked call were my idea, but I left the execution to my friend Piper. He really has a knack for impersonating voices.”
“That still doesn't get rid of the tapes,” Jones pointed out.
“And that's the beauty of the plan, since we were working for the FBI, we had an opportunity no other thief has: access to the crime scene as official law enforcement. Me as an agent, and my friend as a CSI tech. She went to get the tapes and 'found' them already tampered with. I believe you met her even. Of course she was wearing a mask and a hazmat suit and could have been anyone underneath, but she wasn't anyone, she was...my cat burglar.”
“Is that your ex?” Hartley asked in disbelief, “she is, isn't she? I should have known that was her, you wouldn't shut up about her then.”
“Piper, you're interrupting, and you're ruining a perfectly good mysterious story. As I was saying, we could access the crime scene any time we wanted and either place or remove evidence that would point to me.”
“That was the first robbery, but what about the second?”
“As you remember, Piper was at the party. So was she. I sneaked in to cut the power, they caused a commotion while I ran off with the pieces. And she came back to get rid of the evidence.”
“But we interviewed the guests, “ Neal said, “did we encounter her?”
“I doubt it, she was pretending to be ...an escort.”
“And you did interview me. After the robbery, I met with James and had to come up with an alibi. The first night we just went to my apartment and made a lot of noise, the second we went to a bar and tried to stick out as much as possible.”
“But the jewelry store, how did you do that?” Hughes asked.
“We played the part of the young graffiti artist.”
“We?” Peter inquired.
“For two weeks, I had to dress up in baggy pants and pretend to be a teenager, vandalizing the street, so that when the graffiti artist showed up again that night, he wouldn't rouse suspicion," Hartley said, sounding embarassed.
“But that night I took over his part, so that my theory of the fake graffiti artist as, well, true.”
“Hand on a second, the two guys in the bar said you had been there until 2am, which is hours after the robbery had been committed.”
“They were tipsy, so we challenged them to pool, lost on purpose - don't give me that look, it was totally on purpose - paid for a lot of drinks and just manipulated their watches and the clock in the bar. They were convinced it had been 2am when we left.”
“So, you got yourselves an alibi, an opening and than what?”
“That was probably the riskiest part of the whole operation.”
“Aside from you shooting me,” Hartley remarked,
“my friend had to sneak in just after the guard had slipped and before the next one would come. She hid behind a counter, grabbed what she could get and hid again. For about 10 minutes.”
“I think I understand,” Neal said, “when the police came, quickly and with all resources because they suspected this to be the third robbery, she pretended to be a CSI tech and just walked out with the rest of them.”
“Good, well done!” James said, smilingly.
“So, we had the pieces that we were going to 'fence', we knew that Nero was waiting for me, but I needed to convince him that he had won, that I had burned all my bridges, that I had been defeated. The Rathaway party had been planned for a month, and it was the perfect cover. And this time, we didn't even need to steal anything, we just needed to look very suspicious and then run off to the harbor, making sure not arrive with a string of 10 cop cars behind us.”
“You managed to lose everyone but us,” Peter said, “and you stole my phone and sabotaged my comm unit so that we couldn't call for help.”
“Yes, I had a feeling you wouldn't give up, but I couldn't let you call for backup while on the road, that would have arrived too early. I turned off your cell until we had arrived so they wouldn't track me.”
“But my anklet,” Neal interrupted him, “why did no one think to trace it?”
“Because,” Hughes answered, “if an agent who was not on the Nero task force had called and asked for the data, the computer would have had an unfortunate crash and would be out of order. We knew where the meeting was going to take place, we just had to time it perfectly.”
“Wasn't that a huge risk? One minute earlier or later, and we could have all been killed!”
“I was orchestrating that,” Hartley spoke up, “since no one was looking at me, I was free to contact the response team. I had the text message all typed out, all I needed to do was press 'send'.”
Neal said out loud what everyone was thinking. “Wow. That was awesome!”
“Reckless and stupid,” Peter added, “risky and dangerous” Diana added, “but undeniably cool,” Jones added.
“What? It was.”
James laughed, and it was not restrained, not polite, not like Agent Jesse; but not cruel, not cackling, not dark and twisted like the man he had been on the pier, not wicked and with just a hint of steel like the man standing in Neal's apartment, not shy and small like in the hotel room, this was free.
And it was one of the most beautiful sounds Neal had ever heard. James' eyes seemed to shine from within, and suddenly the whole room seemed brighter.
The END
The real Epilogue
Neal was too keyed up to relax, so after he had finally gone home, he called Mozzie. Mozzie was of course still awake and had heard about how the Rathaway party had gone up in smoke...literally. Neal told him to come over for the story of a lifetime. 20 minutes later, there was a knock on the door, and Mozzie came with wine, some of his stupid cheese and open ears.
Neal told him the whole story, from beginning to finish, and Mozzie listened enraptured.
“That was the best story I ever heard.”
Peter was under the care of Elizabeth who hugged him tight. He was sorry for scaring her, but this had been relatively minor, he would be fine. She had to wake him every couple of hours to make sure he was okay, but that was bearable.
And tomorrow, after breakfast, he could tell her the whole story.
Morillo had been held up by Hughes who wanted a more detailed story about the original Nero bust. Morillo complied, after he had called his wife and asked for permission to stay away for a day longer.
Hartley drove to his parents and reassured them that he was fine. He really should have changed beforehand.
The next morning, all the guards that had lost their jobs would find a job offer waiting for them from government facilities. With improved benefits and a hefty increase in salary.
As for James, he went to visit a certain ex of his. Maybe. Possibly.
The Secret Ending
Much too early, at least for Neal's taste, and for Mozzie's, too, judging from the grumpy sounds coming from his couch, there was a knock on his door. Neal dragged himself over and opened it. James was there, and he looked entirely too cheerful and refreshed for this time of day, especially considering what he had gone through the days before.
“Morning!” he said and went inside, “morning friend Mozzie.”
Mozzie shot up, desperately trying to smooth out his shirt. “Morning to you as well. It's...I know I have said this before, but it's an honor to meet you. The real you. This time. Hopefully.”
James laughed, “It's okay, it's not like I'm a king.”
“You're practically con men royalty,” Mozzie replied.
“You should print that on business cards,” Neal suggested, “what brings you here? If you're trying to get me as an apprentice, I'm tempted, but Peter already told me not to do that. Several times.”
“Sounds like Agent Burke. I heard he took a few days off to recover. And I'm here to say goodbye, actually.”
“Back to Chicago, to the same old job?”
“No, I'm flying to L.A to meet with my son Billy. That part was true.”
Neal felt sad to see him leave so soon. He had so many questions, but he suspected he'd never get answers, or at least never answers that wouldn't lead to him having more questions than before. And that was probably for the best, the Trickster was not someone who would let go of his secrets easily.
“What about Nero? Did they find him yet?”
“The FBI is looking but it seems that he managed to flee from the harbor. But I'm sure he will be found, sooner or later.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Neal, think a bit. Last night, there were so many questions that you asked me. But there was one that wasn't asked to my surprise. And I had such a neat answer for that, too.”
“What was the question?” Mozzie wanted to know.
“Why I stole a necklace from a Russian tsar, paintings and a statue from an art museum, and various diamonds from a Greek jewelry store? Why these items precisely?”
He was right, in all the commotion, their heads swirling with the truth, the real truth, no one had come to ask that question.
“And what is your answer?”
“I would inform you that the necklace was on loan from a Russian expatriate living in New York who makes his money on the fish market, that the art pieces were donated by a Chinese businessman who deals in the export business, and that the diamonds belonged to a Greek diamond dealer. Which is the truth. And if no one, absolutely no one was listening, I would maybe tell you that those three men are all very important men in their respective crime families, and that they received a tip on who has their valuable items now, and where to start looking.”
James looked serious. “He will always be on the run, never being able to stop, hunted from four powerful teams, each more ruthless than the next. He will not know peace for even one second of his life. I won.”
Neal flashed back to the harbor, to a cold night when a monster told him about why killing was easy and what proved more challenging. It chilled him to realize that James had won, by all accounts.
“Why? Isn't what you did enough?”
“It would have been, if Nero had called me and asked for money, like I told the bureau he did. That would have been an appropriate response.”
“I take it that is not what did then,” Mozzie guessed.
“He talked to my kid. Was waiting for him outside of his school one day, said he was an old friend of his dad. Billy ran to his mom and she called me the second she could. No one threatens my family. No one.” Images flashed before Neal's eyes - James in the laser grid, James at the harbor, and Nero, too. But that expression was gone as sudden as it had appeared.
Neal offered him a handshake. “It was ...great to meet you. You were fantastic. Best conman I have ever known.” James took his hand.
“It was a pleasure to meet you. You know, in another life, I'd probably ask you to run away with me, team up and be unstoppable.”
“And in this life?”
“You have a job you like, friends you love, and I have a kid, and ex-wife, an ex-girlfriend whom I owe so so much and two pissed agents back home whom I ditched and never let in on the secret. I should really call them. From the other end of the states, probably. Just to be sure.” He grinned.
“Take care, Neal. Goodbye, Mozzie.”
“Just, before you go,” Neal couldn't resist, “is there more that was just a lie for the bureau?”
“Maybe. Maybe I was tempted to join Nero at first, but couldn't bring myself to in the end because I was a coward. Maybe Piper and me are way to good at pretending to love one another. Maybe I disguised myself as an Italian aristocrat at the museum party. Maybe I lied about who my burglar was. Maybe I'm telling you all these maybe so you can never be sure about me. Maybe everything was a lie. Maybe nothing was. But isn't wondering the most fun?”
He winked and then he left.
Mozzie and Neal looked out the window to see him off.
They expected him to get into a taxi, or walk away. Neal held a faint hope that he'd see the mystery woman. Mozzie said he bet that the whole woman was a lie and that she probably never existed. Neal scoffed at that remark. And yet....what if?
He'd never know.
About what if....
if Neal could have seen James on the way to the airport, he would have seen that he got in a cab and let the driver take him there. And at the airport, he would have seen him get out, meet up with Hartley. He could have seen them embrace and then hold hands as they walked inside. If Neal had accompanied Diana to interview the guests, he would have recognized Thomas and Elizabeth O'Neill greeting them. If Neal had followed Jones to verify James' alibis, he would have recognized Hartley's neighbor standing there with a duffel bag. Or if he'd gone with Diana instead, he would have seen Leo and Calhoun from the bar; Leo talking to Elizabeth and Calhoun laughing at some private joke. Had Neal seen James off on his first visit, he might have even recognized the cabbie, who spoke with a thick Australian accent, arm slung around the shoulder of the supposed neighbor.
He would see the group laugh together, clapping each other on their shoulders, reenacting some things and make plans. He could have seen the security guard from the diamond store who had judged the color of the graffiti wrong joining them, behind him the other guard who had or had not called his colleague away from his post, who was carrying an alarming amount of bags for his girlfriend who had a toddler on her hip. And maybe he wold have seen the teenager with the spiky mohawk, baggy pants and paint stains on his finger tips come, too, at last.
And maybe he would have realized that Mozzie had been right, that there had been no mystery woman cat burglar, that all it took was the help of a few friends. Five of those had supposedly died. Maybe....possibly....but not at all.