Title: Suit Hacks
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: G
Length: 1,110 words
Note: Also for runthecon, for the prompt of "First", and for wc_rewatch. Set after 2.14 Payback.
Summary: “We have to make Mrs. Suit the first thing on the Suit’s mind!”


The French doors were open, and there were loud, cheerful voices coming from the patio. Neal had had a long, frustrating day at the office following dead-end leads on Keller’s whereabouts, and he’d been looking forward to a quiet evening at home, but he hung up his hat, put on a smile and went out to investigate.

Thankfully, it was only Moz and June, drinking, telling stories and talking over each other. June broke off when she saw him and held up a hand to interrupt Mozzie. “And here he is.”

Her eyes twinkled in greeting, and Neal relaxed, his own smile growing genuine. It wasn’t so bad to be welcomed home, after all.

“Oh good.” Moz held up an out-sized cocktail shaker. “Martini?”

Neal raised his eyebrows. “Shaken?”

“Stirred. I’m not a philistine.” Moz produced a fresh glass and a jar of olives. “You know that if you shake a martini, it chips the ice and dilutes the liquor. Ian Fleming has a lot of third-rate cocktails to answer for.”

“I know, Moz.” Neal took a seat and accepted his martini. “What’s going on?”

Moz picked up his own glass and touched the rim to Neal’s in a toast. “We’re discussing Suit hacks.”

“Like life hacks, but for federal agents,” explained June.

If it had been Mozzie on his own, Neal might have experienced a sinking feeling at this pronouncement, but he trusted June’s judgement. “Such as?”

“Well, it started when June was telling me how she retaliated the time Byron forgot their anniversary.”

“Oh, it was nothing really,” said June. “I simply had Ford rig Byron’s turntable so every time he tried to play a record, Sarah Vaughan’s ‘What am I here for?’ came out of the speakers instead. It drove him completely doolally.”

“And made your point,” said Mozzie. “I bet he never forgot your anniversary again.”

“Not once.” June looked smug.

Neal grinned. It would have been simple enough to rig a connection from one stereo to another, hidden one, and hook up the speakers to the latter. Then he caught Moz’s expectant look and remembered what they were actually talking about. “And you want to do something similar to an FBI agent? Why?”

“The Suit and Mrs. Suit had a fight about dry-cleaning. Clearly it behooves someone to intervene!”

“I…” Neal opened his mouth to dissuade them, then closed it again, remembering Peter’s dejection as he’d recounted the fight. Maybe Mozzie had a point.

“Some kind of automated aide mémoire,” said June. “Nothing illegal, of course.”

“We have to make Mrs. Suit the first thing on the Suit’s mind!”

“He has a job, Moz.” Not to mention a CI, who would also appreciate some attention now and then.

“That’s why we have to rig it to kick in only at certain strategic times, such as just when he’s about to leave for the day.” June was clearly enjoying herself immensely.

“We live in an age of technology and wonders,” said Mozzie. “I can’t believe he hasn’t set reminders for himself before.”

Neal felt compelled to come to Peter’s defense. “Of course he has, but you know how it is when you’re on a case. One things leads to another…”

“Exactly!” said June. She and Mozzie exchanged pleased looks.

Neal decided to hear them out before he vetoed anything. “So what’s your plan?”

Mozzie drained his glass and poured himself another generous drink. “Easy. You ‘adjust’ the Suit’s desk chair—” He used air quotes for the euphemism. “—so the seat slowly sinks over the course of the day, the longer he sits in it. That way, the reminder won’t interrupt any ‘important’ field work.”

“So we make his desk chair defective. That’ll just annoy him.” And an irritated Peter was far less fun to work with.

Mozzie waved the objection aside. “Minor sacrifices. The chair sinks, and when the Suit uses the lever to raise it up again, that triggers a reminder.”

“It sends a text to his phone? An email?” Neal didn’t see how this was any improvement on the current system.

Moz took a large bundle of translucent plastic out from under his chair. “Think bigger.”

“What is that?”

“State-of-the-art technology, mon frère. I have here a six-foot strip of acrylic sheeting with embedded LEDs. You can plug it into a phone and it basically acts like a screen, but when it’s not activated, it’s virtually transparent.”

“So…?”

June smiled like a sphinx. “So you install the plastic sheeting above the entry to Peter’s office, and when he pulls the lever on his chair, it triggers a scrolling message that displays to the whole floor: ‘Remind Agent Burke to collect the dry-cleaning.’”

“And then everyone—Diana, Jones, and all the junior agents become part of the hack,” said Neal, realizing what they were getting at. A blend of hardware and crowd-sourcing.

Mozzie nodded. “The social pressure is an important component. It’s too easy to dismiss a reminder on your phone, but not even the oblivious Suit could walk through an entire office of peer pressure without some trace of the message sinking in.”

“Public shaming.” If Neal were a better person, he might want to avoid embarrassing Peter in front of his subordinates, but when it came down to it, Elizabeth really did deserve a husband who remembered to pick up the dry-cleaning when it was his turn, and if Neal could help with that…

Peter would find out sooner or later, of course, but maybe he’d develop some good habits before he did. A kind of Pavlovian reaction. Besides, the technical installation would be an interesting challenge, and if the scheme relied on other federal agents, at least Mozzie couldn’t co-opt it for his own nefarious purposes. “All right, I’m in.”

“Excellent!” Mozzie reached under his chair and dragged out a heavy tool bag, which he dropped onto the patio next to Neal with a clanging thud. “Herein are all the tools and tech you’ll require, assembled by yours truly.”

“Look at you, Moz, laboring behind the scenes to help Peter’s marriage.”

Moz looked deeply affronted. “I’m doing this for El!”

June laughed. “Whereas I’m only in it for the kicks.”

Neal raised his glass to her. “So tell us, what other tricks did you, Ford and Byron play on each other? I bet you got up to all kinds of mischief.”

“Well, now that you mention it,” June settled back with a nostalgic smile, absently stroking the fur cuffs of her jacket, “there was the time Byron and I managed to convince Ford that the Botticelli he’d just stolen from the National Gallery was actually a fake…”


END