Wednesday, December 3, 2003.

Steve Tabernacle flew coach. Neal Caffrey should have been able to talk the ticket agent into an upgrade for his latest alter ego, but he was too tired to give it his best effort. He knew he was going to sleep through the flight, anyway. Why bother with first class if you're not awake to enjoy it?

Right before he boarded the flight, he took the recommended dosage of an eight-hour cold medicine. Fortunately, he didn't get sick often. Unfortunately, that meant he didn't have a lot of experience with cold meds or his reactions to them. Yesterday, when the sneezing and coughing became persistent, Mozzie had pushed him out the door of the safe house, shouting directions to the nearest pharmacy. Neal discovered that the medication he'd purchased put him to sleep after half an hour. Then he woke up about two hours later, clear-headed, able to breathe normally, and wired to the point of pacing the floor. Gradually he slowed down, growing more miserable and obviously sick in the final hour and a half. If he timed this right, he'd get to the initial meet in St. Louis right in the middle of the cycle, when he felt most normal. He'd crash in the evening, and then be back near normal again for the actual job.

The job itself didn't sound difficult, which was disappointing. He liked to show off, and that was the whole point of agreeing to a job in the town where he grew up. He guessed being sick upped the challenge a bit, but he couldn't imagine an investigator saying, "It would have been a simple job, except one member of the crew had a bad cold. I'm really impressed he got away with it."

As the flight attendants went through the standard safety briefing, Neal let their voices lull him to sleep. There may have been a child in the row behind kicking his seat, and an infant screaming five rows ahead, but he didn't notice. He was still somewhat out of it when he boarded the Cessna in Chicago. About halfway through that second flight, he felt his mind engaging.

He thought about the call from Mozzie this morning. A wake-up call, to make sure the cold or meds didn't cause him to miss his flight. Mozz had added, "Word is Roland has more of a temper these days than when I last worked with him. They say he was betrayed by a member of a crew a couple of years ago, and the Feds have been breathing down his neck ever since. Sometimes out of the blue he accuses people of being out to get him. Since he knows you the least of anyone on the crew, you'll have to be the most careful. Stay on plan, don't surprise him with any improvisations, and you'll be safe."

"Safe from what, exactly?" Neal had asked.

Mozz mumbled something that might have been "strangulation" and then hung up.

Neal wanted to pace again, but there wasn't room in the Cessna. Instead he turned his mind to his plans for the future. He'd designed what he thought of as his own degree program, studying with a wide variety of criminal "professors." He had the basics down. He was preparing for what he thought of his master's degree, and that meant identifying people who could take his skills to the next level. He wanted to be extraordinary, a true renaissance criminal.

Mozzie, Matthew Keller, Roland Villiers. Neal wanted to work with each of them because of what they had in common. They were gifted strategists, skilled in planning and leading jobs, and willing to let Neal learn from them.

But they were each different. That was the point. If they were all the same, he could work with just one of them and learn everything he needed to know. Instead they could each train him in a unique area of specialization.

And he wasn't limiting his mentors to criminals. Even people wholly unconnected with crime could teach you helpful things. Art teachers loved to show you how to copy the work of the masters. And then there was that girl who flirted with him in a coffeeshop last summer, asking how he kept in shape while she kept raving about rock climbing. He'd learned anyone could take classes that taught you the skills you needed to scale buildings. You could buy the supplies legally, not raising any red flags. Amazing!

He'd tried to tell Keller how cool it was to learn cat burglary skills in a neighborhood gym, but the guy didn't get it. They'd had fun when they first met, but Keller seemed so intense and impatient now. He had no time to enjoy the experience, to savor the rush of getting away with something that would boggle the minds of Interpol. Why stay in the business if you stopped having fun? That's what Neal should ask him next time.

Wow. Those cold meds made his mind jump like a grasshopper. But it would wear off. He'd be more focused, less wired by the time he reached the bar where he'd meet Roland.

On that last job, Keller had a strip of wire with him. Neal saw Keller take out a guard with it. Keller said he'd choked the man, cutting off the air just long enough so he'd pass out. No permanent damage, no danger of murder charges or the extra penalties of being caught with a gun. "I'll save those risks for a more important job," Keller had said. And he'd been joking. Of course he'd been joking. It was just Mozzie's possible reference to strangulation bringing the memory back now, making Neal imagine that Keller hadn't been joking at all, because Keller didn't have fun anymore.

And that was making Neal question why he'd want to work with Keller again or even start to work with this Roland guy. Maybe alternate mentors, ones who weren't deadly criminals, were the way to go for his master's program.

Mozzie had avoided working with Roland this time. Did that mean anything? Why had Mozz kept the New York job and farmed out the one in St. Louis?

Farmed. That summed it up. Mozz thought any city as small and Midwestern as St. Louis was the middle of nowhere. It was hard to picture Mozzie agreeing to a job in St. Louis in the first place. Although he'd said something about Detroit being the original location, and that was a place where Mozzie would have felt more comfortable.

When Neal mentioned that he'd grown up in Missouri, Mozzie's response had been, "That's why people instinctively trust you. Innocent, earnest farm boy couldn't possibly fool them."

Even when Neal had protested that he'd been raised in a city and didn't know the first thing about crops or livestock, Mozzie simply shook his head. "You used the words crops and livestock in the same sentence, proving my point. You can always reference that mindset to disarm people. It's a useful talent." A talent Neal planned to use today to convince Roland to trust him.

Neal was more on his game when he landed in St. Louis. The woman at the car rental company was happy to chat and to ignore the paperwork. She barely glanced at his driver's license, not questioning that twenty-four-year-old Neal was thirty-two-year-old Steve. And when he said there was a typo in his address on the form, she let him take over the keyboard to make the corrections on his reservation. He distracted her from reviewing the final printout and signature, which said his name was Henry Winslow.

A few miles away he stopped at a fast-food place, paid cash for a soft drink and fries, and tossed the Steve Tabernacle ID in the trash. As twenty-seven-year-old Henry, he had a sporty car and an hour to kill before meeting Roland. Plenty of time to visit the spot where Danny Brooks had died.