It Must be Tuesday

Kate deftly poured out a round of Jameson for the three regulars still standing, for herself and for Bobby.

"Cheers" Ira toasted. "Cheers" she and Dave echoed back and then five bumped the glasses down on the wood and swallowed away the whiskey.

Bobby gathered the shot glasses with his long, deft fingers and went back to washing the nights remaining glassware. Kate kept her glance off his hands as a rule, too many associations…. but tonight she couldn't help just a peak. She wondered if Bobby had ever tried sculpting, wondered how deft he'd be at something like that, if she'd find echoes there too - and pain ricocheted out of her heart to the tips of her fingers and psyche.

"You've got a look about on you tonight, Janey" Dave commented.

"She's always got a look" John returned.

Ira, on the end of the three, simply shook his head, back to nursing his final beer of the night.

Kate ignored them and moved down the bar to her till, popping it open to begin organizing her money. It was the weekday night ritual: Lock the doors, pour a round for any soul standing, count out and put the bar's money in the safe while leaving the bar back - almost always Bobby - to get every one else out while she entered the day's take in for Marie, the owner. It was a small, neighborhood bar with just enough of a kitchen to serve burgers and sandwiches and a mac and cheese good enough to write home about during the day and with eggs, hash and pancakes in the morning.

Today had been visitor's day. Today had been the sixth time she hadn't made it after three and a half years of clock work: showing up, being friendly with the guards and making the entire rigamarole run as smooth as she could, as smoothly as he'd taught her too. Neal. Damn it - Kate pulled out the till and slammed the drawer closed with more force than necessary. She didn't look left or right as she stalked out from behind the bar but nodded and gave a smooth smile as she slid past the trio, slid past Bobby still washing while bulling the guys to finish up their beers, and used her key to get into the back hallway and office.

Back at the bar Dave turned on John, "You can't tell me she's not got something extra going on today" Dave insisted.

John shook his head, meeting Dave's eyes, working on his own beer, "She smiled tonight just fine."

"She always smiles fine" Ira interrupted the bickering, his tone flat.

"See!" Dave exclaimed.

John rolled his eyes, "Dave, man, your missing it. Janey always smiles, for every one, even when she's throwing them out on their asses. Even when they're threatening to make a mess she just tosses them out and keeps going."

Back in the office Kate filled and entered the paperwork for the day's take, putting the bar money in the safe and entering her inventory and sales into the computer while she counts out her own money from the day, folding it into her wallet before closing the spread sheets. It was a slow day and she's not in the mood to go up and small-chat with the men as the relinquish their stools before heading home. They mean nothing but the best but Kate doesn't have any kind of patience to mother their insecurities or neuroses tonight. She has too many of her own and, besides, the night is over. She pulls up the security cameras on the computer, two over the bar, one over each exit, one street, one alley, and catches a familiar half silhouette haunting the alley camera. Damn. She really thought she'd disappeared but if anyone could find her it would be him…

The cameras in the bar show Bobby locking the doors on an empty bar. Soon enough there's a polite rap against the frosted, scaled glass of the office door, enough to swing it in. "Hey, Jane, Ready to go?"

Kate shakes her head, frowning disappointedly, handing off his take. "Not yet. I need to get everything entered in inventory for Marie" the lie trips easily into being.

Bobby just nodes, motioning at himself.

Kate jumps slightly, like it just occurred to her, "No, no! Go! Sorry. I'm just being slow."

"You going to be okay getting home?"

Kate shrugs a shoulder, "Still got my taser."

Bobby nods and then is gone. The bar lights shut off and she listens as the back door catches and the only source of light the overheads in the office and what leeks in from the city that never, ever, sleeps. Her eyes go back to the surveillance playing on the monitor and she watches Bobby saunter off, cock sure and fancy free like only some one 22 can be. Its fast but she catches the silhouette cross the ally to become part of the solid black of the wall of this building, expertly imperceptible all the way to the door. She's ready and waiting when the knock finally comes.

A waltz raps out and she pulls it open, Moz catching the door half open and sliding thru only to press it closed at his back. He glares at her thru the ambient light spilling in from outside, street traffic sending racing patches of light flaring and refracting off anything with a sheen or reflection.

"What have you done?" He hisses.

Kate slaps him, surprising herself a little, stinging his cheek and her hand, staring down at his for all she's worth. "You're the one haunting my doorstep" she returns.

"Touche."

Both stare at each other, in impasse, for several moments.

"I have some wine in back" Kate offers finally.

"Lefite?"

"2-buck-chuck."

Mozzie deflates, "It'll have to do."

Kate leads the way, moving past the office into one of the supply rooms, the light steady back here thanks to the incandesce overhead that she actually pulls on with a snap of a chain. She lifts an actual bottle of wine from one of the less trafficked corners of the and presents it to Mozzie. Some of his frown clears and he makes a pleased sound. It's part apology, part forgiveness, not actually giving him 2-buck-chuck. It's like so much of their relationship, that they are something together caught in necessary but unsought; like Neal is their sun and they just fell the same gravitational sphere. Mozzie wastes no time scurrying out and reappearing with appropriate glasses.

Solemnly Kate fills both glasses when he returns, letting the bottle clink dully on the cement floor at her feet when she's done and she takes the offered glass from Mozzie regally offers. Both hold the vino gently in their palm, breathing, and meet each others eyes.

"Neal's dead" Mozzie announces quietly.

Kate flinches, hard. She drains half the glass and looks at Mozzie. "How?"

"Single GSW in his omniscient eye after his fingers were broken and a few of his ribs cracked."

The wine doesn't agree with her. It wants out. Or Kate doesn't agree and the only thing she might expel is the wine. Poor wine, it's such a nice vintage. God Damned Tuesdays.

"Where?"

"You're old apartment." Mozzie condemns. "Every one showed up; Neal, the NYPD, the FBI, the Marshals, even SWAT."

Kate's lungs empty, "No" she barely sounds. "No"

"Good thing he walked out of that Maximum Security Prison so easily, huh, Kate."

Kate simply glares at him.

"What did you tell him to get him to chase after you again? You couldn't be content to leave him be for ninety six more days? Ninety six more days and you could have shown up at the gate, picket him up and driven off into the sunset to live out your little fantasy of breeding in suburbia!"

"Jesus" Kate hisses at him. "I didn't think he'd actually get out" she amends.

Mozzie levels the coldest look at her she's ever seen, his face dead, his eyes reptilian, and she remembers that he started out in Detroit and made a fool of the Detroit Mob, that, with less whimsy and fewer morals he'd be a perfect assassin — no one would see him coming and he's very good at chemistry and is far too good with working Rube Goldberg models. "Neal's the Golden Child, he wants something, he gets it. He got you back, after all."

That was below the belt low and the sucker punch forces the wine burning up a second time. "It's not like that" Kate begs.

"So tell me" Mozzie challenges, squaring himself to her, his arms folded with his hand cradling the wine glass level in front of his heart.

"Two months ago I noticed I was being followed. I didn't want to mention anything to Neal, I figured the Feds were just harassing me again. The next visit a Fed was waiting for me outside the prison when I was done. He took me for a ride, told me Burke was still after Neal, that Burke could find enough for a life sentence and leveraged that he could make deal for Neal instead, immunity if he coped to everything he'd taken and turned it over. A clean slate. He showed me the paperwork and it was good — legitimate even…"

Mozzie snorted.

Kate rolled her eyes. "Don't bother. I wasn't biting. He gave me a fake name but he was in a Fed car. He spoke Fed."

"Can't fake Fed" Mozzie begrudgingly agreed.

"It gets better" Kate continues. "The next week, the agent's waiting for me again."

"You went back?" Mozzie nearly spits in the wine he's so aghast.

"Mozzie, visiting hours are set. One of the many many many reasons you refuse to go see Neal yourself."

Mozzie grunts at that.

"He handed me Ellen Parker's address. He said if I wouldn't help he was going to Ellen next."

Mozzie went white. He lifted the wine to his lips and sipped. He lowered the glass down even with his elbow. "Oh."

"I panicked. I took the Fed to Neal's stash in San Diego —"

"It's in Portland" Mozzie corrected her.

"Well it's not in San Diego" Kate sniped back. "Or, at least, it's not where Neal told me it was in San Diego."

Mozzie nodded sagely, "Very good. He'd told neither of us the true location. I've taught him well."

"Well, Sensei" Kate interrupted, "I made with the disappearing. Again. I broke up with Neal in an open facsimile of a phone booth where the plexiglass was between us with a greasy plastic black phone from the seventies pressed to my ear and made him break four feet away from me with no way to touch him. I haven't touched him in years, Mozzie, years, and I told him it was over and that it had "been real". "Been real" was all I could come up with, that and some other shit I don't even remember because I was tapping out a message with my finger on my thigh which I know he didn't see because he was staring into my eyes as I broke his heart." Kate's vision is blurred and her throat is tight, her voice hoarse as she finishes.

This sits between them, everything she's disgorged. Kate swallows. Slowly her pulse fades back to a background murmur. With a sigh Kate picks up the wine bottle and fills her glass up, millimeters within the brim. She tilts the bottle over Mozzie's glass next, his acquiescence automatic, and she empties the bottle, rising his to half full. They sip in unison.

"You have some where safe?" Mozzie hazards.

Kate nods her head, stupidly, thinking of the studio she'd found four blocks away for cash off the books, leased to and Ashley Danielson while she's holding this job under the name Jane Palmer. It's a cramped and a walk up but it had an artist's light coming thru the windows she told herself and she'd gotten over the kitchen and bath being separated by a opalescent plastic screen after a two days. Also, no roaches and barely any mice.

"Good. I couldn't even find it" Mozzie compliments. Kate just drinks. Six weeks is all it took and now Neal's dead, its over — what ever it was they were, their story is done. She's alone.

Mozzie nods, decisively. "If you have to drop this job leave a note for me under the nom de guerre Oliver Athos."

"Not Rene Aramis?" Kate volley's back.

Mozzie levels a dirty glare on her. He hands over a folded slip of paper. "This is October. Don't use it" then, more quietly, "I like October."

Kate slips the slip of paper held between his fingers with her own two fingers and brushes it into her back pocket in an easy gesture. "I'll be fine, Mozzie" Kate soothes. "they can't even find me and I'm still in the same town."

"They found Neal."

Self-hate burns thru Kate, "They must have still been watching my place. Its the only way the Fed could have cornered him."

"They broke his fingers" Mozzie adds.

Kate tilts her head at him and Mozzie shrugs, "Passive alerts. I got there as fast as I could, to the cafe across the street, but by then it was the NYPD Homicide as the opening circus act…"

"Neal doesn't tell, he doesn't give any thing away" Kate stated.

"and Neal's dead" Mozzie follows up.

"Ellen's fine, no one's bothered her. I fell for a bluff -" Kate builds.

"and Neal doesn't tell" Mozzie repeated. "This isn't about Neal. This is about something Neal did."

Mozzie nodes decisively, "I'm going to go and get Neal. It might take a day" he cautions, drains the last of his wine, and then slips out, his voice echoing back "Cremation. Okay?" and it twists a bittersweet smile across Kate's lips. She listens to the heavy fall of the back door. She tilts her glass up between her lips, and looks at it once she levels it. Theres still some left. She swirls it inside the bowl of the glass, thinking. She swallows and then lifts the glass to her lips, drains the rest. She takes care to blow on the shelf, redistributing the dust into enough of a cloud to hide the filched bottle.