Again, many thanks to all who have read and reviewed. And now it's time to leave Charm City and enter the DiNo-zone. Thanks for stopping by, hun.

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21 But it worked

Tony DiNozzo lived in the southeastern end of Mount Vernon, the not-yet-gentrified part, in a beaux arts building that had seen more beau days. The outer lock was broken, and Gibbs was annoyed to see that DiNozzo's name was on the buzzer. He didn't bother buzzing.

"Oh, hey," Tony said, opening the door bare-chested and with a toothbrush still in his mouth.

"You ever think about taking your name off the buzzer?" Gibbs asked.

"Why, you think the Mob will come calling? I'm not worried. I have a gun."

"Jesus, DiNozzo," Gibbs said. "You have to wash your gym clothes sometimes."

"I have really strong pheromones, that's why the women love me. And I haven't had time for laundry," Tony said. He'd put down the toothbrush and pulled a T-shirt over his head. "I've done nothing but sit around with lawyers all day. City attorneys, state attorneys, US attorneys. If I never see Fornell again I'll die happy. And the Feds don't buy donuts."

Gibbs shut him up by turning his chin. The bruises on the swollen-shut side were now yellow and green. "That was a pretty good shiner," Gibbs said.

"Not really," Tony said. "I've been hit harder-"

"By cheerleaders, I know. Were they the wrestling squad's cheerleaders?"

"No." Tony smiled in dreamy remembrance. "She taught kickboxing to pay her way through school. She could have taught the Big Unit a few things about the physics of transferring the muscle power of the central core to the far extremities. She taught me a few things." The dreaminess disappeared, replaced by the smirk. "Hey, I was a phys ed major. Here's a tip: Never tell a kickboxer to take her best shot. Even in fun."

Gibbs let that pass.

"So did Harrison call you?" Tony got to work on slicking back his hair.

"I'm here to pick up Zipper. And you owe me six bucks."

"For what?"

"The sixpack."

"It's your collar," Tony said. "You pay him. I did all the work."

"You put out a BOLO."

"And got the intel for the BOLO."

"I rescued your ass, DiNozzo."

"We'll split the difference. I'm not sure whether they tested his Tec 9 or not." Tony sighed. "Not that anyone in Evidence would call me. Maybe it's a good thing the Feds took over."

"You meeting with lawyers today? Dressed like that?"

"No, I'm going to the dentist to get my tooth fixed. I'm going in front of the grand jury next week on the evidence thing. Apparently I don't look trustworthy enough with a broken tooth."

"Shouldn't you have gotten that fixed sooner?"

"It's a crown. I've lost it before. Took an elbow to the face at Purdue."

"Cheerleader?"

"Center. I need to stop going up for rebounds against bigger guys. Especially in garbage time. I'm running late as it is." He put on his letterman's jacket.

"I can give you a ride."

"It's just a few blocks. You mind the walk?"

Gibbs shrugged, but he followed Tony out. "Can you believe they're making me buy a plain navy blue suit?" Tony said. "At Joseph Banks. And no cuff links. I'll look like Fornell."

"Get a haircut, too," Gibbs said dryly.

"What's wrong with my hair?" Tony asked.

It was a mild autumn morning, mostly gray. "This grand jury thing," Gibbs said. "Must have been a big case."

"It was nothing," Tony said.

Friendly had let Gibbs look at the file. And it was nothing, a 17-year-old addict beaten to death in an alley behind a row of strip clubs on the Block after an argument over the $10 rock she'd just bought. Just another sad little death in a city that had hundreds of them a year, the ending of a life so small that it had managed to fall through every safety net that was supposed to catch up the vulnerable. It was the type of killing that probably never made it into the Baltimore Sun, even in tiny type on an inside page of the B section.

Except it couldn't be nothing to a detective who had cared enough to crawl through six dumpsters on a cold wet New Year's Day to find the murder weapon. It couldn't be nothing if that detective had looked at a string of mugshots and seen the dissolution of a scared 14-year-old runaway into a prostitute pretty enough for the tourist trade into an addict and then a featureless corpse. It couldn't be nothing if that detective had seen a weary prosecutor decide not to fight a case with messed-up evidence, letting a killer go without even a battery charge. And it certainly couldn't have been nothing to this detective, who'd gone against the advice of an admired sergeant and put himself into the sort of trouble that could permanently mess up a career.

"It was nothing," Tony said again, and Gibbs liked him better for the lie.

"You looking forward to going back to Homicide?" Gibbs asked.

"I'm not going back to Homicide," Tony said.

"Is it the evidence thing?" Gibbs asked.

"No, it's policy. New detectives get rotated around every two years. It was just coincidence that I went to Homicide first. With my luck I'm off to the fugitive squad next."

It might be policy, but Gibbs suspected that if DiNozzo ended up in the quietest corner of BPD, it wouldn't be by chance, and DiNozzo had to realize that too. "You care so much about being in Homicide?"

"I'm not one of those I'm-a-murder-police-I-work-for-God guys. But at BPD the best police are in Homicide. I don't think I'll get any better hanging around Arson or Robbery."

Gibbs laughed. "I'm surprised that you think you still have things to learn."

Tony said, "I started playing football when I was nine. No one's born a great quarterback. You have to learn all of it. And the best quarterbacks aren't the guys with the strongest arms. They're the guys with the best coaches."

Gibbs found he liked him better for that, too. "You do understand," Gibbs said, "that this was a crazy operation. It shouldn't have worked."

"But it worked," Tony said.

Gibbs couldn't tell whether DiNozzo's sunny response was prompted more by naiveté or narcissism, but both possibilities worried him. "You're not always going to get that lucky. This is a dangerous job, DiNozzo. It's not a movie."

It was the closest Gibbs had seen DiNozzo to real anger. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, things don't always work out. I got that memo a long time ago." More coolly, Tony continued, "Busting into that warehouse wasn't exactly a well-planned thing. If you suit up, you have to be ready to play the game."

Gibbs stopped. "Why are you a policeman, Tony?"

Tony smiled, a perfect, glossy, quarterback-homecoming king-all American-boy smile, an I'm-going-Disney-World smile, even with the broken tooth. "Steve McQueen, remember?" he said. "I'm in it for the badge and the babes."

It was another lie, and Gibbs gave him a hard look, the kind that melted away even the best, most believable fake smiles. The perfect smile did disappear, but it was replaced by a real smile, as if the actor was pleased to have finally found someone who appreciated the depth of his performance. Gibbs wouldn't have answered that particular question either.

"When are you done with the grand jury?" Gibbs asked.

"Next week, I think. With the Macaluso stuff, I don't know."

"Give your notice today. You can start in three weeks."

"Start in three weeks? Are you offering me a job?"

"Apparently," Gibbs said.

"Why?"

"You need adult supervision, DiNozzo."

"I think I'm a pretty good police already."

"You can be better."

Tony smiled, his real smile again. "So you do think I'm already a pretty good police." The smile faded. "I don't know. I'm a policeman. I'm not a Fed."

"We're not the FBI. We're not uniform. Or predictable."

"You sure aren't. Have you heard of the fourth Amendment?" But after that they walked the better part of a block, and it was the longest Gibbs had ever seen DiNozzo go without running his mouth. "Okay," he said finally.

"I have rules."

"The Freds do, too. I bet they're the same ones. What are yours?"

"There are lots of them. Rule number one: Separate your suspects."

"Duh."

"Rule number four: Wear gloves at a crime scene."

"You do know that I'm already a policeman, right?"

Gibbs smiled. "There are more. They get harder. You'll learn. But it won't be all big busts, DiNozzo. The press won't always be alerted."

"I loved playing football," Tony said. "I mean, I loved everything about it. Even the practices and watching film. Lifting weights. Learning the playbook. It's a lot of work and maybe only a few plays really go well. Once a week. If you're lucky."

"DiNozzo. If you're going to work for me you're going to have to stop comparing everything to football."

Tony looked at him sympathetically. "You're a baseball guy, right? I thought so. I can stop the football thing, I think. But I talk. It's how I figure things out."

"I'll let you know when you're talking too much. But I think we're going to need a few more special DiNozzo rules. Number two is no dating Abby."

"Not a problem," Tony said. "I mean, she's a great girl, and a beautiful one, and she saved my life for no reason except I'm a good bowler. But I'm not getting a tattoo for anyone."

"Good."

"I can still go bowling with her though, right?"

"You might want to stop picking up the nuns' family members."

"Okay. But I have some rules, too. Or at least requests."

Gibbs rolled his eyes. "You won't find me as easy to manage as Fred Friendly."

"I was a rookie patrolman in Peoria. I was a rookie plainclothes in Philadelphia. I was a rookie detective in Baltimore. I don't think I should be called rookie any more."

"At NCIS we call them probies."

"That's even worse."

"Fair enough," Gibbs said. Bringing down the Baltimore Mob, even on fraud charges, did deserve a little respect.

"And I won't call you sir."

"You're damned right you won't. I work for a living."

"So, is it…Leroy?" Tony asked, wincing.

"It's Gibbs," Gibbs said. "Or Boss."

"Okay, Boss."

"And don't tell me about some movie with a character named Boss. Or Gibbs."

"Okay, Mistah Tibbs. Hey, last time, I promise."

Gibbs handed over the envelope from Morrow. Tony opened it, pulled out an application form, and said, "You cocky son of a bitch. You were so sure I was going to say yes?"

"I wasn't even sure I was going to ask." Morrow was one smart man. But it occurred to Gibbs that he hadn't really just made up his mind. That had been done when Tony asked Fornell for the Block shooters, or when Gibbs had seen the earnest and angry policeman in the NCIS conference room, or even earlier, when he'd seen the detective smiling, thinking he was running the game even from the backseat and in handcuffs. Fornell was right: he was a cocky young man. But Friendly was right, too: Tony DiNozzo was a real police.

Some degree of what was most irritating to Gibbs about DiNozzo, his preening, his endless, uncensored, artless chatter, was in fact art, showing all the lesser details so that the more important ones would go unnoticed. No wonder Tony had taken to undercover work so well; whatever made him a policeman was already mostly undercover, beneath the kickboxing cheerleaders, squeaky girls, and movie references. Gibbs could live with the idea that he might never get answers to any of the Why questions. He didn't like giving those answers himself. Gibbs had a gut feeling this cocky young man wouldn't be a disappointment. And he already knew how to work the remote.

"Three weeks," Gibbs said. "Eight o'clock. If you're late, don't bother showing up."

"Eight?" Seeing Gibbs's look, he said, "Eight it is, Boss."

"And you owe me three dollars."

Gibbs picked up Zipper and his Tec 9 at Central Booking and then headed south. A sign told him that he was leaving Charm City. He hadn't found the city all that charming and he was glad to be leaving it. But he figured out what he was doing in Baltimore. He'd closed his case and annoyed Fornell. He'd finally set Stephanie free from the sad little mistake of their marriage. He'd freed himself from the weight of The Piles and the question of what to do next. He'd found what he needed without having to dance on the Mall in his pajamas. The universe didn't take hints and it worked in strange ways. But it worked.