The Prince of Risk A Novel(32)

“Got a call from Windermere,” said Mintz. “Guys found something at the scene.”

Alex tapped her pen impatiently. “Yeah?”

“There’s not just machine guns under the floor,” Mintz continued. “Looks like they turned up a lot more.”

“How much more?”

“Don’t know. But I think he used the words ‘a fuckin’ arsenal.’”

Alex dropped the pen. A second later she was up, throwing on her blazer, and coming around her desk. “Mind if I drive?”

“Sure…um…do you have to?”

“Attaboy.” Alex patted Mintz on the shoulder and led the charge to the elevators.

She remembered that there was only one thing that she didn’t like about Mintz. On the shooting range, he qualified last among all her charges on every occasion. His nickname was Deadeye.



In recent years, events in the Bureau’s history had come to have their own names, one- or two-word monikers that not only brought to mind the crime but somehow encapsulated the entire event: the criminal act, the investigation, and the aftereffect on the Bureau. WTC referred to the first bombing of the World Trade Center, in ’93. Oklahoma City, to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by the homegrown radicals Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Waco referred to the bloody and botched standoff between the federal authorities and the Branch Davidians led by David Koresh. There was Ruby Ridge and Flight 800 and the Cole and of course 9/11. With three officers killed in the space of a few minutes, Windermere was set to join that black pantheon.

It was this thought that filled Alex’s mind as she drove the Charger across Manhattan. She was under no illusions. Her career was history. There would be no formal reprimand. No mention of fault would be scribbled into her personnel file. Nonetheless, she was done. Within a month she would receive a transfer to a less visible and less important post. Or maybe a letter from headquarters offering early retirement, with a coyly worded suggestion that she would be wise to accept. They might even throw in free airfare to the retirees’ job fair held every January and June in D.C. But never again would she receive a promotion. Alex Forza had topped out at supervisory special agent, and all her privately held dreams of one day serving as the Bureau’s first female deputy director had been killed as dead as Jimmy Malloy.

Still, she refused to be sad. She was allergic to self-pity. She was pissed. Somebody was going to pay.

Windermere Street was cordoned off at both ends of the block. Alex flashed her badge to get through the line. Police vehicles clogged the street. She double-parked next to a blue-and-white and slipped her badge into an ID pocket and hung it around her neck.

The shooting was classified as a multiple homicide. The crime scene belonged to the NYPD. Normally a detective first grade would run the scene, but the deaths of three federal agents bumped things up the chain of command. She introduced herself to the lieutenant running the show, then passed under the police tape and entered the house.

Inside, the forensics teams were finishing up. A half-dozen men and women in white Tyvek “bunny suits” passed her on their way out. No one had cleaned up the spot where Jimmy Malloy had died, and the blood had coagulated into a crusty black pool as thick as mud. She halted, unable to keep herself from staring.



“Um, boss.” Mintz tapped her on the shoulder.

“Yeah, sorry.” Alex skirted the hole in the floor where Shepherd had fallen, ducking her head so no one would see her wipe away a tear. “Who’s running things for us?”

“I am,” said Bill Barnes from the top of the stairs. “Come on up. I want to show you something.”

Barnes was the ASAC for intel, and nominally Alex’s boss. He was a TV agent: tall, fit, a little too good-looking, hair too perfect, with a groomed mustache and twinkling brown eyes. He was wearing jeans and a white polo shirt with the New York CT logo on the breast pocket.

Alex hustled up the stairs and shook Barnes’s hand. “Hello, Bill.”

“Knew you’d be back,” said Barnes, not happily.

“For once, you were right.” Alex looked over the railing. “I thought all the stuff was downstairs.”

“We’ll take a look in a second. I think you’ll want to see this first.”

Barnes walked to the end of the corridor and gestured toward the last room on the left. Alex looked inside. Six cots sat at right angles to the wall, three to each side, in the manner of a very small dormitory. Each cot was fitted with a top sheet and a gray woolen blanket. Each was made to perfection.

Barnes took a quarter from his pocket and bounced it on the nearest cot. The quarter rebounded and he snatched it out of the air. “Mommy doesn’t teach you how to make a bed like that.”