SquidgeWorld Archive

Undercover
By Gigi Sinclair

"Don't say a word, Kate."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Tony." The picture of professionalism, I adjusted my ear piece and checked the reception on our hidden camera, currently concealed in the dogtags around Tony's neck. Thanks to Abby's makeover skills, the tags nicely matched the earring clipped onto the cartilage of Tony's right ear, and offset the mesh tanktop and black jeans that left nothing to the imagination. Even mine.

"I haven't worn this much makeup since the last time Kiss played Baltimore," Tony bitched, even as he flipped open a pocket mirror and dabbed at his eyeliner with more precision and skill than I'd ever possessed. Whenever I had eyeliner issues, I always ended up spending twenty minutes in the ladies' room, and I still looked like a badly beaten racoon by the end of it.

"It's for a good cause." Very good, if Tony held up his end of the operation and we were lucky. Before the end of the night, we could have a murderer in custody, and there was no cause better than that.

The fact that Tony had to dress up like a bar scene extra from "Queer as Folk" was purely a bonus.

"I look terrible," he whined.

I sighed and looked away from the screen. "No, you don't." He looked, to put it plainly, beautiful, in the most traditional of the word. He was more feminine in his jeans and see-through shirt than I was crammed into the most impractical lingerie, but at the same time, he was clearly a man. And not only because he was sitting on the floor with his legs apart, using the compact mirror to check for stray nose hairs. "Although," I added, because Tony didn't need too much encouragement, "The glitter might be a little over the top."

"Dammit!" Tony gave up on the nose hairs and rubbed at the sparkles spread around his eyes and across his cheeks. "I told Abby that was too much. Probie," he turned to McGee, who was sitting at the other end of the van and had been studiously staring at the cement wall outside the window since Tony joined us. "Tell it to me straight, if you were a nervous closet case with some serious sexual confusion and a side-helping of Oedipal issues, would you pick me up?" McGee gaped like a goldfish, which was all the reassurance Tony needed. "Wait," he added, grinning as he slid the door open. "What do I mean, if?"

Tony crossed the parking lot to the bar, an unexpected sway to his hips that led me to wonder if he had done something like this before. Despite his outwardly assertive persona, I'd picked up traits of someone who would, in the right circumstances, be willing to do anything to please, although I'd never really stopped to wonder what "anything" might encompass. Before I could delve too deep into those possibilities, though, my earpiece buzzed and, from his position parked behind the bar, Gibbs snapped: "Talk to me, Kate."

"DiNozzo's just going inside."

"Where's Breitkreuz?"

"He's been in there about fifteen minutes." We'd given him a few minutes to get comfortable---or as comfortable as Chief Petty Officer Warren Breitkreuz ever got in the gay bar he hated and kept coming back to---before sending Tony after him. We didn't want to scare him off. At least not before he saw the six-foot-two undercover agent in makeup and glitter.

"You got a good view?"

"Great, boss." It was dark inside, but McGee and I could easily follow along on our screen as Tony slid up to the bar and settled himself on an empty stool beside a middle-aged man. The camera shifted as Tony leaned forward, and a large drink in a martini glass, complete with umbrella and a string of plastic beads, was pushed across the bar towards him. I smirked. "Tony's staying in character."

Gibbs grunted. "He's got a drink with an umbrella?"

"And beads," I confirmed.

"Christ," Gibbs muttered. I couldn't tell whether it was disgust or admiration. No one got into his undercover work like Tony did, I had to admit that.

The beads swung in front of the camera as Tony lifted his drink. He turned on his barstool, conveniently pointing his dogtags towards a table a few yards away where I could just make out the man we were looking for.

It was the man sitting next to Tony, though, who spoke. We---well, Abby---had calibrated the sound system to filter out as much of the background noise as possible, but it still took a lot of effort to make out the man, coughing nervously and saying: "So, you, ah, come here often?"

Logically, the clearer voice that replied had to be Tony's, but it didn't sound anything like him. It was more like Mae West meets 1950s B-movie starlet. "Every time so far, sweetie."

McGee coughed. I waved at him to be quiet and inched towards the screen, as Tony stood up and Gibbs snapped: "What's happening now?"

"You sure you don't want to be in here, boss?"

"We discussed this, Kate." We had, at great length, and Gibbs had been adamant he wanted to be behind the bar, waiting. It had almost seemed like he would have volunteered for any job as long as he didn't have to watch Tony camping it up, which surprised me. Gibbs had his issues, but he wasn't a homophobe. If anything, he was an equal-opportunity discriminator.

"Right." The dogtag camera swung forward as Tony planted himself across a table from our suspect. "DiNozzo's with Breitkreuz."

Or, at least DiNozzo's bizarrely vampy alter ego was. He was the one who said: "Hi there. This seat taken?" Even from this side of the camera, I could practically see Tony batting his made-up eyes, and looking ridiculously sexy doing it. It was all reflected on Breitkreuz's face.

"Help yourself," Breitkreuz grunted with clearly faked disinterest.

"What a gentleman." Tony laughed. It was his usual laugh, and coming after his girlish flirtatiousness, it sounded more masculine than usual. Breitkreuz liked that; it was obvious even through the video feed. He leaned forward and grinned, the bar spotlights glinting off his perfectly even white teeth. Warren Breitkreuz was the perfect Marine, right down to his exceptional dentition. If he hadn't made a hobby of killing innocent men because of his own psychosexual inadequacies, he probably would have had a great career.

"What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" Breitkreuz asked, and I felt nauseous even from this distance.

Tony, though, laughed again and set his drink on the table, casually moving it to one side when he must have realized it was obscuring our view. "Oh, make no mistake, sweetie. I'm all man." His hand appeared in the frame, reaching out to touch Breitkreuz's sleeve. Breitkreuz pulled back like he'd been burned, but Tony didn't move. "Listen," he continued, lowering his voice to the point where McGee and I had to clasp our headphones and strain to hear him, "I don't have all night. Why don't we go out back and I'll show you just how manly I really am...sweetie?"

"I thought Tony was going to string him along for a while," McGee said, clearly puzzled.

"He was supposed to." From what witnesses had told us about Breitkreuz's interactions with the other victims, he talked to them for a long time, sometimes an hour or more, before leaving with them. The ones he didn't have long conversations with, he didn't kill. Although, at the moment, I was more than willing to save him the trouble.

Before I could think of the most painful way to teach DiNozzo about sticking to the plan, though, Breitkreuz stood and actually offered his arm to Tony, like the hero in a slightly twisted Jane Austen dramatization. Tony stood up, leaving the drink on the table, and they headed out the back.

"They're heading your way, Gibbs."

"Already?" Gibbs said, once he'd swallowed what had to be a mouthful of coffee, unless he'd acquired Tony's surveillance sandwich habit.

"I guess DiNozzo makes a good gay guy." Either that, or I really was the only person in the world who didn't find him attractive.

Gibbs choked, and I hoped he hadn't spat anything on the equipment We'd all had a hard time of it when one of Abby's microphones came back from an op with a coating of Tony's mayonnaise.

"How far do you think he'll go?" McGee asked me, staring at the monitor.

"As far as he needs to." I had no doubt about that. Tony was many things, and one of them was a dedicated agent.

Unfortunately---or maybe fortunately---for McGee, though, we didn't get to watch Tony in action. The screen flickered and the video feed cut out.

"Dammit!" I pressed my earpiece. "Gibbs, we've lost visual."

"I've got him," Gibbs replied, not sounding particularly pleased about it. "They're heading into the alley. Get Abby on it, now." Then there was the unmistakable sound of a car door closing. Well, he wasn't going to be the only one having fun.

"Tell Abby about the camera," I told McGee, taking my weapon.

"Where are you going?"

"I need to powder my nose."

McGee blinked. "Really?" I rolled my eyes and slid the van door shut behind me. I was halfway across the parking lot when I heard the scream.

One day, when I'd first started working with the President, he disappeared for eight minutes. As he put it, he knew where he was, which was at a neighbour's ranch looking at some prize heifers, but I'd never been so worried in my life. Until now.

Tony is an immature, hormonally driven deviant, and a member of my team. The thought that something might have happened to him was enough to make my throat constrict and my heart pound as hard as it had the day the President sneaked away to look at cows.

I raced across the parking lot, glad I'd traded my office heels for field sneakers, and rounded the corner into the alley. And I immediately wished I had a camera to record the scene for posterity, and this year's Christmas cards.

Breitkreuz was doubled over on the ground, his pants around his ankles and his hands on his crotch. Tony, his makeup not even smudged, was holding what looked like Gibbs's jacket to a minor laceration on his neck. Gibbs had his hand on Tony's back and his gun trained on Breitkreuz, who looked pretty incapacitated as it was. The most interesting detail was the blood on Tony's mouth. It didn't look like it belonged to him and, when Tony smiled at me and I saw more blood on his teeth, it wasn't hard to connect the dots. Or, I'm sure, the teeth marks.

Tony, of course, wasn't one to leave anything unsaid.

"You know how it is, Kate. If you don't make them buy you a drink first, they won't respect you in the morning." He winked at me and wiped his mouth.

***

When we got back to the office, Gibbs sent me home.

"DiNozzo and I will do the report," he said. "You can fill in your part tomorrow."

"Or I could do it now." It wasn't like I had anyone waiting for me at home.

"Kate." Gibbs patted my shoulder. "Go home. Have a life."

"At three o'clock in the morning?"

"Hey," Tony put in. He still hadn't taken off the makeup, or the mesh tank top. The dogtags, which Breitkreuz had apparently tried to strangle him with just before Tony did his impersonation of a nutcracker, had been bagged as evidence. "As soon as I'm done here, I'm going back to that bar. You should have seen the looks I was getting."

"Of pity, or disbelief?" I asked.

"I don't know, Kate," Gibbs replied. "Everyone loves gawking at a freak show."

"Boss!" Tony began. I left before I heard the rest of his reply.

As I stepped into the elevator, I realized I'd left my sweater at my desk. I was going to leave it, until I remembered I was stopping by the drycleaner's before I came back to work and, thanks to Tony, there was a coffee stain the size of a small continent on that sweater. Sighing, I opened the elevator doors again and headed back to my desk.

I didn't get very far before I heard Tony, out of sight behind the partitions, say: "You sure you don't want me to start wearing makeup more often? Might spice things up a little."

I stopped in my tracks. It was a joke of course, I knew that, innuendo, double entendres, sexually inappropriate banter. It was Tony's speciality when it came to me, McGee, Abby, suspects, witnesses and random people on the street. Not, though, when it came to Gibbs. I couldn't imagine what his reaction would be, and I could never have predicted he would say: "Clutter it up, more like. I'm not looking for a fourth wife."

I had to turn around. Forget the sweater, I needed to leave right away. And I would have, if I could have convinced my legs to follow my brain's directions.

They didn't, so I was still there when Tony reverted to his breathy, Mae West voice, the one he'd used in the bar. "I dare say, Mr. Special Agent Gibbs, I wouldn't marry you anyway."

"Yes, you would," Gibbs replied, confidently and apparently seriously. Clearly, for some unknown reason, he was playing along with Tony's joke, for some reason. There was no other explanation. Except one that, as a professional profiler, I would have been a fool to miss.

"And why would that be?" Starlet-Tony asked.

"Because the engagement is the only part I do right. I'd give you a rock the size of an eyeball and you'd be kneeling in front of the altar in no time."

Tony laughed, normally thank God, and in his regular voice said: "You don't need a diamond to get me on my knees. But now you know, if you ever piss me off..."

Now, my legs listened. I turned around and pressed the elevator call button. It took too long. Certain Gibbs and Tony were going to find me and know I'd been eavesdropping, I grabbed the door to the stairwell.

It squeaked loudly enough to attract attention from the Pentagon.

"Yeah?" Gibbs called. Tony's head appeared over the partition.

"Hey, Kate." He sounded so relaxed, I wondered if I'd imagined all that. In case I hadn't, I said:

"I got all the way to the car, and I realize I forgot my sweater. So I came back. All the way from the car."

"You took the stairs?"

"Exercise."

"You could use some."

I scowled, then remembered I was feeling guilty. "I'm going. See you later."

"Your sweater, Kate?"

I breathed deeply and turned around again. "Right." I forced a smile. "Thank you." Tony disappeared in the direction of the bathroom, and I went to my desk. Gibbs was at his, typing. I took the sweater.

"Give DiNozzo the drycleaning bill," Gibbs said, without looking up from the screen. "He can always turn tricks to pay it off."

That was a Gibbs response. Maybe, I thought, I had imagined everything, or at least misinterpreted it. I was tired, and full of leftover adrenaline from the stakeout.

"OK. Good night, Gibbs." I wasn't a fool. If it had been something, I knew, I would have known about it long ago.

"Good night, Kate."

Satisfied, with myself and the situation, I headed back to the elevator.

And, as I passed Gibbs's desk, I caught a glimpse of glitter at the corner of his mouth.

END