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Amy Santiago has never been one to enjoy being undercover, even in the best of times. Going undercover isn’t as fun as her some of her colleagues make it out to be. And this has to be one of the least interesting undercover assignments she’s ever had—cashiering at a drug store, trying to bust open a shoplifting ring. It’s day three and she’d regretted jumping at Captain Holt’s request since about one hour into her first shift. An elderly woman had placed her Chihuahua on the check stand while she dug around for spare change, indifferent to Amy’s wheezes.
She’s surreptitiously eyeing some possible mope teenagers looking at razors when she hears a familiar laugh coming from just outside.
The double doors open and two black-clad Ianucci associates come in, followed closely by one Jake Peralta.
Jake grabs a blue shopping basket from beside the newspaper stand and Amy can’t help herself. Her gaze lingers on him just a second longer than normal for any social interaction between strangers at a drug store, but the gangsters have high tailed it to the beer aisle and won’t notice. Jake’s eyes bug out briefly and a ghost of a smile appears before he remembers himself and turns to follow his marks. He looks the same as always, wearing a wrinkly button down and jeans. It’s reassuring that he still looks like Peralta, weirdly.
Already Amy laments the nerdy blue vest she’s wearing for her uniform, complete with her “Annie” nametag. Four months ago, Peralta probably would have dubbed her Esmeralda Perkins, who’s cashiering part time to pay for her interpretative dance degree or something else equally ridiculous. If it were any other period of their professional relationship she’s sure there would be snickers and jokes and maybe even a new sex tape title. But she is a professional-- she can’t blow her cover, and certainly not his.
It’s late and the store is slow. Any other time of day and she’d have a customer to distract herself with, so instead she works on her pet project of neatening the cases of cigarettes behind her. Boy could she use one of these. She checks the camera footage feeding back to her under the counter and sees Jake and his associates scoping the beer refrigerators and grabbing a few bags of chips. It’s agonizing watching them consider the six packs and Amy lets her mind wander. Are they celebrating? Or are the just hungry? How entrenched is Peralta? How successful is it going? Does he still feel the same way… No, don’t go there, Amy.
The men laugh and Jake suddenly bolts down to the junk food aisle, filling up his basket in a way that almost makes Amy snicker out loud in spite of her cover. Some things never change.
Amy is pretending to peruse the store’s weekly ad when the gangsters approach her to pay for their beer. Upon closer inspection, it’s definitely Leo Ianucci and his cousin Tony. She’s taken to scanning the open racketeering investigations for no reason that she can really explain to Rosa, who noticed but didn’t say anything.
Amy cards them, because why not. Leo’s carrying a real ID under an assumed name, probably stolen but there’s nothing she can or should do about it now. Peralta’s somewhere down in the novelties section, doing who knows what. Leo seems completely disinterested in Amy’s existence, barely making eye contact when he takes the brown bag from her hands.
“Peralta, we don’t have all night!” Tony hollers down the store.
“He’s probably looking for some donuts,” Leo smirks. Tony laughs and Amy’s blood boils.
“I’m coming!” Jake says as he jogs up the main aisle to the cash register. He places his basket of teeth rotting junk food in front of her with a rakish grin toward his companions and pulls out his wallet. “How’s your evening going?” he asks her, oh so nonchalant.
Amy wishes the Ianuccis would wait outside, but they seem content to watch Jake pay for his gummy bears and lemonheads. “Oh you know. It’s fine,” she says with just a split second of eye contact.
“That’s good,” Jake says. He slides one of his many credit cards through the reader and signs the signature capture. Amy is sweating and completely at a loss, but Annie is bagging his things like it’s nothing.
She pushes the bag toward him when his card is authorized (amazingly) and tells him to have a nice evening.
“I will now,” he smiles and sticks his wallet back in his pocket before moving to pick up his stuff.
A flash of brilliance hits Amy as his receipt prints. “Sir, you should fill out our survey. You could win a gift card!”
“Um, ok,” Jake says and the Ianuccis are getting impatient. Amy scribbles on the back of his receipt and circles the website for the survey before handing it over. Leo and Tony are through the doors already, and Jake isn’t far behind them when he turns and winks at her, just once. And he’s gone.
***
Later that night, Jake is typing up his notes for the day. Being undercover on a mob case certainly involves more word documents than he ever could have imagined, but he needs to get everything down for the inevitable trial. And maybe for the screenplay he wants to write and star in. Under the Covers would star Jake as Jack Penalta: a double-crossing mob informant cop who just can’t play by the rules of the spooks or the outlaws, kills it with the ladies and maybe there’s a dog too (he hasn't decided on that just yet).
He’s halfway through outlining a phone call he overheard between two Ianucci lieutenants, but Annie and her blue drug store vest are distracting him. It looked good on her but not as good as the bulletproof armor does in his memory, or that amazing mermaid dress. Jake suddenly remembers her gambit and digs through the candy wrappers to find the comically long receipt and turns it over.
In her neat second grade teacher’s handwriting reads, “Good luck, Pineapples!”
His notes will have to wait.
***
The only thing more mind numbing than looking through security footage is looking through security footage alone and without a snack. She can admit she’s seen the wisdom on that one.
She told herself she wasn’t going to skip straight to 9:30, but nothing really was all that pertinent to the investigation until later so she skips through it. Peralta shows up on the tapes and Amy slows down the playback, watching him empty the candy aisle for a bit. He then walks toward the novelty aisle; full of toys forgetful uncles buy at the last minute. He smiles as he fondles a whoopee cushion and then zeros in on a stack of coloring books.
Amy’s lips part unconsciously as she watches him take his notepad out of his back pocket and disengage the pen from its nook in the spirals. He leafs open a book, looks over his shoulder and stares up at the security camera above him, effectively looking Amy straight in the eye. She’s reminded of that night in the parking lot four months ago, with that slightly sad seriousness in his face.
He scrawls something quickly, and then hides the coloring book at the bottom of the stack. Not long after that he gets called up to the front of the store and Amy pauses the video playback.
The store is quiet now. The manager has let her stay and watch the tapes after her coworkers got out as quickly as they possibly could. Amy pops open the back door and makes a beeline for the toys, her heart thudding for no good reason as she approaches the coloring books. She digs through the stack and pulls out “My First Trip to the Zoo.” On page three she sees his hurried chicken scratch.
“I still do.”