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The Odd Couple
Peter had trouble wrapping his head around the fact that his new BFF was the criminal he had been chasing for years. Even though their relationship was cordial enough that they could have been friends on each other’s Facebook pages, Neal Caffrey would always remain a paradox for Peter. Time and again the conman managed to elude the clutches of the FBI during each of his daring escapades, but then he would check in with Peter afterwards to “test the waters,” as it were. The phone calls were sporadic. There was no rhyme or reason to their occurrence. On any given afternoon or evening Peter’s cell phone would receive a call from a blocked number, and Neal’s pleasant tenor voice would be on the other end of the line asking about any “new” cases that Peter was working on. It was almost as if Neal was challenging Peter to figure out which heist, robbery or confidence game he had orchestrated, and how it had been accomplished. Peter was secure enough in his own expertise to play these games with Neal. The conversations usually went something like this:
“Yes, Neal, it’s true that the Faberge Eggs that were crafted from Plaster of Paris were so exquisite that they were only discovered to be fakes after they had been on display for weeks at the Virginia Museum of Art.”
Working the crime, Peter had deduced that the exchange had been made after the security cameras had been temporarily placed on a loop the very first night of the exhibit. It was then that the authentic eggs were removed and hidden deep within urns that held the magnificent fresh flower arrangements that were swapped out weekly by a local floral designer. Inexplicably, Peter had trouble locating this elusive designer who went by the name “Noah Cavanaugh.”
Or…
“Yes, Neal, watching the security video feed of the cat burglar who eluded the French gendarmes during his escape from the Louvre with a priceless Degas was an exercise in frustration. And yes, watching that burglar employ Parkour to exit via a balcony, and then bounce from one rooftop to another during his escape was impressive.”
In truth, Peter’s heart had been in his throat watching this daredevil stunt. One misstep on Neal’s part could have sent him crashing to the cobblestones below with a subsequent broken neck.
The list went on and on. Not that Neal ever admitted that he was responsible for any of these crimes. He would just muse out loud how amazingly intelligent and talented the criminal was, and Peter would roll his eyes. Occasionally, Peter would be investigating a possible Caffrey case that had him truly stumped, so Neal would leave obscure clues to guide Peter along the way until the light finally dawned.
And so it continued. Peter had tried time and again to trace those phone calls, but that had always been an exercise in futility. After awhile he stopped trying and just looked forward to the next one.
Not all of the cases that Peter investigated were Neal’s work, of course. The only ones that he was really sure were Caffrey’s were the truly creative and daring ones that should have been impossible. Nonetheless, Peter was unaware of some of the “jobs” from time to time, so Neal took to leaving a calling card of sorts. Small exquisitely crafted origami figures began to show up at crime scenes. Apparently, Neal was extraordinarily proud of his work and craved Peter’s approval of his ingenuity and cleverness.
At other times, Neal was anxious to help Peter with his “non-Caffrey” cases, and they would brainstorm possible scenarios of how a particular crime went down. Neal’s insightful contributions were almost always helpful so that Peter could finally apprehend the culprit and make the arrest. Sometimes, it was Neal who brought him a case, like the human trafficking operation that was taking place right under everybody’s noses down at the shipyard. Neal was incensed by the horrendous crime. He supplied as much information as he could so that Peter could obtain a warrant and free the throng of women suffering a hell no human being should ever endure.
Apparently, Neal had a code of conduct from which he never deviated. He would most definitely never intimidate or demean another person, or cause them bodily harm. He only took from institutions or individuals who had so much wealth that they could afford a loss for a time until their insurance companies reimbursed them. It was more of a challenge to use charm and charisma. (Plus drop-dead gorgeous looks, Peter added in his own mind). But, nonetheless, Neal existed in a world populated by other people of questionable character with no such scruples.
So, it was of particular concern when weeks went by and Neal had been incommunicado. When the call finally did come in, Neal was unusually subdued with none of his normal teasing repartee. Peter’s senses went on high alert.
“So where have you been keeping yourself lately, Neal,” Peter queried.
“Oh, here and there, Peter. You know how it is, no rest for the weary,” Neal retorted.
“You were so busy that you couldn’t pick up the phone for five minutes?” Peter thought he was beginning to sound like an exasperated, chiding parent.
“Aw… you missed me didn’t you, Peter,” chortled Neal.
“Yeah, I missed you like I’d miss a toothache,” Peter returned.
“If I were truly gone for good, I think that you really would miss me,” Neal said quietly.
Peter felt the hairs on the back of his neck start to prickle. Something wasn’t right. For a brief instant, he calculated the odds that Neal was setting the scenario for faking his death……yet again. He had done it a few times in the past, even though each of his demises couldn’t be disproven at the time. But would Neal be that blatant and heavy handed in setting it up? It lacked finesse, and Neal was always cognizant of style.
“What’s wrong, Neal?” asked Peter quietly.
There was dead air on the line for so long that Peter wondered if he had lost the connection. He continued to hold the phone close to his ear until eventually Neal responded. “The world is what’s wrong, Peter. It’s empty! There is just no meaning to be found in life beyond what meaning we give it. That’s what encompasses all the amorality and unfairness that life throws at us. There is nothing at the core; just one big void.”
Neal was quiet for a beat and then continued, “I think that’s an existentialist view from Kierkegaard or Kafka, or one of those philosophy guys whose name begins with K. The one person who could tell me definitively…well, he can’t right now ‘cause he’s tied up.”
Peter thought he could detect a bit of a slur in Neal’s speech pattern.
“Neal, have you been drinking,” he queried.
“Maybe a bit…maybe not enough…..definitely something I’ll have to ponder and eventually make a judgment call.”
Well, it seemed that Neal was not a happy drunk. Peter added this to his list of known attributes in his mental Caffrey file.
“Neal, what’s this really about? Is this descent into a melancholy bender because you’ve had a fight with your girlfriend? I know you have one now. She was sighted and photographed with you in Paris.”
Neal continued as if Peter hadn’t spoken, “You know, Peter, existentialism is just another way of saying 'shit happens!'”
After an uncomfortably long pause in the conversation, Peter said, “Tell me about the shit that happened to you, Neal."
When no response was forthcoming, Peter pressed on, “Neal, are you hurt or in danger? Because if you tell me where you are, I can help you. I’ll get you medical treatment if you’re hurt.”
Finally Neal returned from wherever his mind had wandered.
“I’m not hurt, Peter; I’m just really toxic to myself and everybody around me. If you believe in auras, mine is an ugly shade of black!”
Peter didn’t quite know how to respond to that, so he ignored what he couldn’t comprehend. Peter was more of a facts/action kind of guy…… to hell with introspection.
“Well, if you’re not hurt, are you in danger? If you’re afraid that you’re in danger, I can protect you,” Peter pleaded. “I can put you in protective custody and nobody can get to you.”
“But you’d have to arrest me, right?” Neal asked in a quiet voice.
“Yeah, buddy, thanks to your escalating crime spree, the FBI now has hard evidence that will stand up in court on at least one of your forgeries. So, yes, I will have to arrest you, but I’ll make sure that I get you the best deal that I can.”
“No free pass, huh, Agent Burke?”
“Sorry, Neal, no free pass.”
“Well, I guess I can understand that, Peter. I appreciate your kind offer, but I don’t think I want to take you up on it right now. And thanks for always sparing the time to talk with me. I know I’m probably a pain in the ass, but I’ve really enjoyed being able to chat with you all these months. We’re really the 'Odd Couple,' aren’t we,” Neal snorted cynically.
“Yeah, Neal, I guess we are a very 'Odd Couple,'” Peter answered honestly.
“Goodbye, Peter,” were the last words that Peter heard before the call dropped.
Peter was in a quandary as to how to proceed. He didn’t really have anything to go on except his gut feeling that his favorite nuisance might be into something that was way over his head. His only alternative was to see how everything played out and hope that Neal would contact him again.
After another two weeks had passed with no “Caffrey” crime on his radar and no further communication from Neal, Peter really began to worry. Although he didn’t know for a fact that Neal was in New York, he hoped that he was nearby. The last phone call did not sound as if it had been transatlantic, and Neal, although a world traveler, always seemed to return like a lemming to New York City as a home base.
Peter played the words of that last conversation over and over in his mind and wondered if Neal was depressed enough to be suicidal. So, Peter’s first step in his deductive process was to check the city’s database for any suicides that had occurred since the phone call. He then checked the deceased statistics and found that none of them matched Caffrey’s description. That at least brought him a measure of peace.
Peter then took the next step. Using the argument that Neal Caffrey was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, an amenable judge granted him a subpoena to obtain the hospital emergency records in all five boroughs of any young men admitted to the facilities with injuries sustained violently, such as gunshot or knife wounds, aggravated assaults or beatings. He then cross-referenced that information with Neal’s description and all of his twenty plus aliases. Again, he had no luck.
Discouraged but still determined, Peter extended his search to dates that preceded the last phone call by three weeks. Being preoccupied at the time, he had neglected to add specific parameters to his inquiry. So, this time he was inundated with pages and pages of names. Even though he could quickly eliminate all females, he was still left with a substantial amount of names on sheets of paper with no concrete details. Peter felt like kicking himself for not being meticulous in his requests. Names meant nothing without more detail.
Nonetheless, Peter busied himself reading through the pages of names looking for any of Neal’s aliases that the FBI knew about. He found none that set off alarm bells. But Peter kept coming back to one name, "Johnny Ramensky," and he just couldn’t figure out why that name intrigued him so much. Then it suddenly came to him in a “Eureka” moment!
During training at Quantico many years before, Johnny Ramensky had been a topic for an afternoon’s lecture. He was a Scottish career criminal who used his safe-cracking expertise as a commando in World War II. After the war ended, Ramensky did what he knew how to do best, often demonstrating great strength and gymnastic skill during a heist. Ramensky maintained that he never targeted individuals’ houses, only businesses, and he never resorted to violence. Hence, he earned the nickname of “Gentleman Johnny.” He was most aggressively chased by Scotland’s Detective Superintendent Robert Colquhoun for years. When the policeman became ill, Ramensky sent his old adversary a message wishing him a speedy recovery and suggested that he had been working too hard in pursuing him.
With Neal’s penchant for nostalgia and his love of bygone eras, this could very well be Neal’s latest incarnation. When Peter called Mt. Sinai Hospital and asked to be connected to Mr. Ramensky’s room, he was told that he was no longer a patient at that institution. Now Peter knew he needed to see those medical records so he could make his mind up once and for all if Ramensky was Neal.
Another subpoena from his favorite judge got Peter around the HIPPA regulations, and he spent an afternoon perusing Mr. Ramensky’s copious medical records containing an extraordinary amount of medical jargon. Eventually, he discovered that the admission and discharge summaries were the most comprehensive and the easiest route to go for a layman.
Quite quickly he discovered that this was not Neal, but rather a 46-year-old White male who had been admitted by ambulance to the emergency room after sustaining a gunshot wound to the upper chest. This had occurred a few weeks before Neal’s last phone call. The police had determined that Ramensky had been sitting on a park bench in the middle of the day when he was shot at close range by an assailant. The person or persons responsible were never apprehended, and the case was labeled a random act of violence on the streets of New York.
The patient had almost died while on route to the hospital, and actually did arrest in the emergency room, but was revived and sent immediately into surgery to remove a bullet that was lodged dangerously close to his heart. After the surgery, he remained in a coma for quite some time. When he finally woke up, it was determined that he would need intensive rehabilitation to regain his strength. Mr. Ramensky had then been transferred to an exclusive and exorbitantly expensive rehab facility in Scarsdale. Ramensky had no medical insurance, but his hospital bill was paid in full upon his discharge by the person who was his medical power of attorney. That person’s name was Nathan Cantrell.
Peter wrote down the name of the rehab facility. All he had was a supposition courtesy of his gut, but his instincts had served him well in the past. Caffrey was somehow connected to this Ramensky. Peter intended to drive out to the rehab center at the end of the day to talk with him, but, of course, concrete FBI work got in the way and tied up his time until early evening. Nonetheless, 9 PM saw Peter driving into the facility’s parking lot, deserted at this time of night. Although he was worried that they would not let him visit due to the late hour, such was not the case. The receptionist at the desk was thrilled to see him.
“Oh, how wonderful that you’ve come. Mr. Ramensky never gets any visitors, except for Nathan, of course. But he’s really not a visitor…he’s more like a fixture. That wonderful boy is simply devoted to Mr. Ramensky. He stays here almost constantly and is such a help with the bathing, feeding and physical therapy. Most nights he falls asleep in the chair and we simply don’t have the heart to wake him and make him leave. And it gives Mr. Ramensky such comfort to have him here. He’s in the room now, if you’ll just walk down the corridor to the last door on the left.”
Was it really going to be this easy? Staring at the closed door at the end of the hall, Peter had grave doubts. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” Peter mused. He quietly eased open the door and let his eyes adjust to the soft illumination from a small bedside lamp. The room was elegantly furnished as befitting an exclusive institution that charged an arm and a leg for the privilege of staying there. There was a full-size bed with a brass headboard backed up to one cream colored wall. A small, bald man appeared to be asleep under a soft, down-filled comforter. Peter immediately recognized him as an associate of Neal’s from pictures taken while the conman had been under surveillance early in the chase. Adjacent to the side of the bed was an overstuffed wing chair. Sprawled bonelessly in that chair, with a book flattened against his chest, was Neal Caffrey. He was deeply asleep and he looked peaceful and heart-wrenchingly young.
Peter inched his way forward, his footsteps soundless on the thick pile of the carpet, until he stood near enough to Neal to reach out and touch him. He laid his hand gently on the side of the young man’s head, but all Neal did was murmur softly and sigh. Peter studied him for a long time and then smiled fondly as he whispered,
“You’ve got your free pass, Neal.”