Amelia followed the others into the apartment. It made the word "plush" sound cheap. Everything about it reeked of money. But as Amelia and the unit leader checked the place out, it quickly became apparent that this particular reek was of drugs.
The occupants, four men, were swiftly identified as Colombian drug traffickers. One of them had a serious gunshot wound in his upper body. Elsewhere in the apartment, they found a small hoard of drugs, a pile of cash, and enough leads to keep the DEA happy for months.
The tip-off, an anonymous phone call, had spoken of money to burn, weapons, and several men speaking in a foreign language. All of that was right. But none of it had anything to do with the museum raid.
Another disappointment.
It wouldn't be the last.
Disheartened, Amelia looked around the apartment as the other Colombians were handcuffed and led out. She compared this place with her own apartment. Hers was pretty nice. Tasteful, classy, if she said so herself. But this one was simply stunning. It had everything, including a great view of the park. As she looked around, she decided that overstated opulence was not her style and she didn't envy any of it. Except maybe the view.
She stood at the window for a moment, looking down into the park. She could see two people riding horses along a track. Even at this range, she could see that both the riders were women. One of them was having trouble; her horse looked to be high-spirited or maybe it had been spooked by the two Rollerblading youths gliding by.
Amelia took another look around the apartment, then left it to the tactical unit leader to wrap things up, and headed for the office to deliver her somber report to Reilly.
***
Reilly had been busy scheduling a succession of low-key visits to mosques and other gathering points for the city's Muslims. After a brief preliminary discussion with Jansson on the politics of this side of die investigation, Reilly had decided that these visits would all be exactly that. Simple visits, by no more than two agents or cops, one of whom was, as often as possible, Muslim. Not the merest hint of them being raids. Cooperation was what they sought and, mostly, cooperation was what they got.
Computers at the FBI offices at Federal Plaza had been spilling out data nonstop, adding to the rising tidal wave of information coming in from the NYPD, Immigration, and Homeland Security.
Databases that had mushroomed after Oklahoma City were awash with names of homegrown radicals and extremists; those following 9/11 were overflowing with names of Muslims of many nationalities. Reilly knew that most of them were on those lists not because they were suspected by the authorities of terrorist or criminal acts or tendencies, but simply because of their religion. It made him uneasy; it also made for a lot of unnecessary work, sifting out the few possibles from the many who were innocent of everything except their beliefs.
He still felt the bubba route was the way to go on this, but one thing was missing. The specific grudge, the link between a group of heavily armed fanatics and the Roman Catholic Church. To that end, a team of agents was scouring manifestos and databases for the elusive common thread.
He took in the open floor, absorbing the ordered chaos of agents working their phones and their computers before making his way to his desk. As he reached it, he spotted Amelia Gaines coming toward him from across the room.
"You got a minute?"
Everyone always had a minute for Amelia Gaines. "What's up?"
"You know that apartment we hit this morning?"
"Yeah, I heard," he said cheerlessly. "Still, it did buy us some brownie points with the DEA, which isn't a bad thing."
Amelia shrugged the notion away. "When I was in there, I was looking out the window into the park. A couple of people were out riding. One of them was having some trouble with her horse and it got me thinking." '
Reilly pushed a chair over to her and she sat down. She was a breath, of fresh air in the male-dominated Bureau, where the percentage of female recruits had only recently risen to the lofty height of ten percent. The Bureau's recruiters made no secret of their wish for more female applicants, but few applied. In fact, only one female agent had ever reached the rank of SAC, earning herself the mocking nickname Queen Bee in the process.
Reilly had worked with Amelia a lot over the last months. Amelia was a particularly useful asset when it came to dealing with Middle Eastern suspects. They loved her red locks and freckled skin; a well-timed smile or a strategic flash of skin often got more results than weeks of surveillance.
Although no one at the Bureau went out of their way to hide their attraction to her, Amelia hadn't incited any cases of sexual harassment; not that it was easy to imagine anyone victimizing her. She was raised in a military family where she had four brothers, she was a karate black belt at the age of sixteen, and she was an expert markswoman. She could pretty much take care of herself in any situation.
Once, less than a year ago, they had been alone at a coffee shop and Reilly had come close to inviting her out to dinner. He had decided against it, knowing that there was a good chance, in his hopeful mind anyway, that it wouldn't end with dinner. Relationships with coworkers were never easy; at the Bureau, he knew, they simply didn't stand a chance.
"Keep going," he now said to her.
"Those horsemen at the museum. Watching the videos, it's pretty obvious that those guys weren't just riding the horses, they were skillfully controlling them. Riding them up the steps, for instance.
Easy for Hollywood stuntmen, but in real life that's a pretty hard thing to do."
She sounded as if she knew; she also sounded uneasy.
Amelia saw his glance and smiled tightly. "I can ride," she confirmed.
He immediately realized she was onto something. The connection with horses glared at him. He'd had an inkling in the first few hours when he'd thought of how Central Park Precinct officers used horses, but he hadn't developed the thought. Had he done so, they might've been onto this sooner.
"You want to look into stuntmen with rap sheets?"
"For a start. But it's not just the horsemen. It's the horses themselves." Amelia moved a touch closer.
"From what we heard and what we've seen on the videos, people were screaming and shouting and there was all that gunfire. And yet those horses weren't panicking."
Amelia stopped, looking across to where Aparo was picking up a phone call, as if unwilling to add her next thought.
Reilly knew where she was going. He made the uncomfortable connection for her. "Cop horses."
"Right."
Damn it. He didn't like this any more than she did. Cop horses could mean cops. And nobody liked to contemplate the possibility of the involvement of other law enforcement officers.
"It's all yours," he said. "But go easy."
She didn't have time to answer. Aparo was rushing over.
"That was Steve. We've got something. Looks like the real deal this time."
Chapter 15
A s he turned into Twenty-second Street, Gus Waldron began feeling jittery. Okay, so he'd had the jumps since Saturday night, but this was different. He recognized the signs. He did a lot of things on instinct. Betting on the horses was one of them. The results? Lousy. But other things he did instinctively sometimes worked out for the best, so he always paid attention.
Now he saw that there was a reason for his jitters. A car, plain and ordinary. Too plain, too ordinary. Two men, looking carefully at nothing in particular. Cops. What else could they be?
He counted off the steps and stopped to look in a window. Reflected in it, he saw another car nosing around the corner. Just as unremarkable, and as he risked a quick glance over his shoulder he saw that two men were in this one as well.