#ficbears

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Fusco's balancing the two shopping bags, the pastry bag, and the cup of coffee, so he uses his shoulder to push the shop door open and edge inside. The place is even smaller than it looked from the street. Crammed full too. It could be one of those seek-and-find books he used to look at with Lee.

"Welcome, please don't let the storm in," someone says from the back room.

"Yeah," Fusco mutters. With nobody else around, he lets the shopping bags plunk onto the floor with a noisy metallic clatter and finally sets the coffee and pastry bag on top of the nearest display cabinet. Under the glass, pretty much what he expected: men's watches, rings, cuff links, a mixed bag of stuff all crowded together. Whenever Lionel's gone into one of the really high-end shops after they get knocked over, he always sees the displays are kind of spread out from each other, like they don't have enough merchandise to fill the place. One bracelet, then the matching necklace, the earrings, and a long walk before you got to the next stuff.

"The door," someone says pointedly, and Fusco looks over - it hadn't fully closed behind him. The gale winds are still going. Okay, fair. He should have noticed it hadn't gotten any quieter.

"Sorry." Remembering he's supposed to be making a good impression, he pushes it shut without slamming it and gives the handle a little pull to make sure it's really shut right. When he turns back, a woman much younger than he expected is easing herself onto the stool behind the counter. "You're Francesca Cattaneo?"

"Yes." Her accent's faint, but she does sound like she grew up around here. Early thirties, dark hair to her shoulders, a bit of muscle tone, but otherwise very wiry. Dark clothes. She looks less like she should run a hole-in-the-wall jewelry and watch repair shop and more like she should be working in the coffee place he just came from.

Or, maybe, she should have Finch's job. They could switch places pretty perfectly. He'd fit in perfectly here.

"Can I help you?" She's looking down at the stuff he's put down on her counter, clearly wishing he hadn't.

"Those are yours, actually." Fusco says with his chest out a bit. "Kind of a peace offering from the department."

Cattaneo's brows come together immediately - Finch warned him about this. "You're with the NYPD?"

"Detective Fusco." He holds his hand out. She takes it and shakes it in a way that means she is only doing it because leaving him hanging would be even more uncomfortable for her. No ground gained yet, he can see.

"You're the new guy on burglaries?"

"I'm... pitching in." Fusco see-saws his hand. "We're short staffed right now, if you haven't heard."

Her expression softens a little and she lets out a gust of air. "Yeah. Congratulations on getting some really bad apples out of there." When he waits for a moment, she finally looks back down at the pastry bag, nudging it open with a finger and then glancing on the scribbles on the side of the cup. Her brows come back together. "How-?"

"I just went across the street and asked for whatever the watch lady always gets." Fusco shrugs. "They seem to like you over there. Perked up when I said I was bringing this over."

Francesca has a look like she needed to go have a talk with these loose-lipped baristas. Man, like a croissant and a mocha are personal information - this woman's clearly interested in her privacy, at least from cops.

"I heard," Fusco says delicately, "that your friendly working relationship with Detective Paola fell apart when he started hassling your customers." He says it in a way that doesn't directly trash talk a fellow man in uniform, but also doesn't defend that piece of shit.

"Hassling is really an understatement. Wait. Was Paola part of HR?" She leans in with clear interest. It sounds like she'd feel seriously vindicated if he was.

"He married and settled down in Wilmington a few years ago, so I doubt it." Wanting to give her some satisfaction, though, he adds, "I never knew the guy personally... but he really had a reputation for how he felt about anyone who'd done time. Real 'once a crook, always a crook' kind of attitude." Which, the less said about Fusco's history in relation to that mindset, the better.

Rebecca looks at him one more time before pulling the croissant out of the bag and beginning to eat it. Between bites and behind her hand, she asks, "So what're you asking for?"

"Same deal as we used to have." Fusco puts his hands up. "We bring 'em in, you check 'em out. No subpoenas, no paperwork, just a first glance from the local expert. Five dollars for each, right?"

"I mean, yeah," Her eyes dart over to a large laminated poster with prices, "but I never charged you guys." A moment passes. "Was Paola saying I charged him? Was he getting reimbursed?"

Fusco leans back a little. Thinks back to the reports he reviewed. "That little fuck."

Francesca stares at him a moment, and then barks out a laugh. It seems to clear some of the tension between them - okay, maybe this will work out.  Fusco bends over and lifts up the black shopping bag, and when she gestures for him to, he tips its contents delicately as he can onto the counter. Nine men's watches altogether, in a messy little pile. She doesn't put her croissant down, eating with one hand and scooting the watches into two piles with the other.

Fusco's already forgotten which belong to Glasses and which ones he grabbed from the evidence locker, but it looks like Francesca here is figuring it out pretty fucking fast. Or at least, she's got confidence. Once four watches are in one pile and five are in the other, she ignores the far pile and picks one of the other ones back up to hold to the light and admire.

"I'm glad you're helping me out, here, Ms. Cattaneo, but I can't be here all day."

Her lips quirk to the side in disappointment. She puts one down and picks up another - they all look mostly the same to Lionel. Some have metal straps, some leather, that's really it. "You seem nice, Detective, so I'm gonna give you some friendly advice - if you want to test me again, if all the legit ones are owned by the same collector, that means they're all sized the same." She taps down at what must be the 'Finch' pile she keeps picking things out of and ogling. "This guy has great taste. A Rolex, expected, but a good choice of one. And a La Cloche, I don't get to see many of those around here."

"Uh huh." Lionel pulls out his phone and takes a quick photo of the piles and texts it back to Finch. "So in about twenty seconds, you've really confirmed which are real and which are fakes? That's what you're saying?"

"The band circumferences are a giveaway, but hypothetically this medium-wristed guy could've gotten scammed once, or, you know, some people intentionally have knockoffs in their collection..." She leans on her elbow and picks up one of the fake-pile watches out with one finger, letting it dangle like it's trash. "This is a knockoff Versace watch. What a pointless fucking thing. It's a quartz movement to begin with."

All Greek to him. Fusco's phone beeps, and he checks the text: 100% accurate, Finch is confirming.

Well, shit. Maybe this woman really was some kind of savant who could help. "Okay, that was nine watches, so it's forty-five bucks on my tab so far? Let's go one more round before I cash out." He swipes the watches back into the black bag and pulls up the second one, tips it out - the ladies' watches are a little more glittery, a little more petite-looking, otherwise pretty similar. Something about the pile seems to interest her almost immediately.

"Okay, okay." She leans in and picks up a few up in turn. "Last bag, that was one multimillionaire guy's collection combined with a bag of halfhearted Chinese knockoff trash you could by for $20 on the street. This is..." She puts two to the side and picks up a third, turning it over and staring at the back for a while and then focusing back on the face. "All the same collection. A woman... who is not as rich as the first guy, but she's still loaded."

So far, correct, but not an impressive cold read quite yet. Fusco lets her paw through the stuff and hold things up to the light, pull out a magnifying thing, the works.

"She started collecting in the late 90s - this early '70s Cartier is a outlier, it was probably a hand-me-down from mom or someone, so I'd guess she was born into money. Decent taste. Just like the first guy, she's not flaunting it, she just has really, really good shit. Buuuuut..." She holds one with a big diamond-studded face away from her a moment, then brings it back in. "Yeah, I recognize some of these."

"Recognize?" Fusco echoes. Doesn't she recognize practically all of them? Doesn't her weird jeweler brain clearly have some sort of database of every watch ever made?

Cattaneo sighs and seems kind of bummed out. She sets two aside, then glares another down and makes it the third. Then a fourth. Then she pulls out her own phone, takes a photo, and presumably texts it to someone.

"You phoning a friend on these?"

Cattaneo points to the pile. "I know Dan Nowak, he runs a place downtown. You know him?"

He runs one of the bigger pawn shops. Cops are in there all the time about stolen shit. Dan usually seems exhausted about it. "Yeah, I know him."

"Well, least last week when I saw him," she lines the four watches up toward Lionel, "he had three of these in his main display case." She waits a second, then continues. "Like, these exact models. The legit versions."

Fusco's starting to get the picture. "You're saying you think someone stole some of this woman's collection and replaced them with knockoffs?"

Francesca shrugs and sighs. "Does she have a new partner? Maybe a house cleaner, but it's usually a partner. Someone who can get near her jewelry and whatever else when she's not around?"

Fusco thinks Reese mentioned something about a girl their number had been going steady with for a few months, but this is only circumstantial evidence, and getting caught stealing your girlfriend's valuables isn't necessarily going to lead to a life-threatening circumstance. "You said some people buy fakes on purpose, though."

"It'd be a real coincidence if she'd always only had these fakes, and the real versions are all in the same pawn shop cabinet. Less than five miles from where a cop is coming and showing me these fakes."

Yeah, okay. "And it's not possible she's got money problems and took them over to Dan herself?"

Francesca tilts her head. "It's possible," she allows, "and I've seen it happen, but. It's usually less mega-rich folks. And when it does happen, they usually didn't have the time or interest in buying top-tier fakes to replace them." She glances at his expression. "Listen." She softens her tone a bit. "Watches, diamond earrings, these things get thrown at people like me or Dan all the time when shit goes wrong and someone needs money fast. This woman," she taps the good pile, "I'd be real surprised if she needed money fast. And if she did, and she wanted so badly to replace every good watch she sold... those fakes shipped to her from China really freaking quick. What would make way more sense in my experience is that someone got her trust, researched her collection, invested a couple hundred bucks in buying copies of every single watch you showed me that currently has solid fakes for sale... and swapped them out as soon as they had those fakes in hand."

"You see this happen a lot," Fusco hazards.

"Not a lot a lot," she admits. "It's a long-term gig and you gotta put down some decent money for the fakes before you can make money selling the legit ones. That only makes financial sense if you're putting down, I don't know," she gestures dismissively. "Two or three hundred dollars per fake so that you can flip a ten thousand dollar watch, fifteen, something like that."

"Each of these little things is that much?"

"Or more." Francesca picks up the old-fashioned one. "Major brands only ever appreciate in value... so 70's Cartier here is worth more than your car and mine put together, I'd bet."

"Jesus."

"You said it." She pulls out a small unbranded paper bag with twine handles and sweeps the legit watches into it, handing it back. "Ten of these and nine from the other bag, nineteen times five is ninety five bucks. Let's call it ninety since you got me a snack."

"What, no tax?"

"You wanna pay tax?"