Sympathy For the Devil by Terrence McCauley Page B

Hicks’ operation. His natural impulse was to order a Varsity squad to hit Omar’s garage as soon as possible. But he also knew a raid would only confirm Omar’s idea that he was being watched.
    Hicks didn’t know what Omar knew or what Omar suspected. Colin had been trained to lie under interrogation, but he’d died before Hicks could’ve questioned him. Ordering a Varsity raid on Omar’s garage would only confirm Omar’s suspicions that he was being watched. Hicks decided to investigate him in other, more subtle ways.
    Hicks took another long pull on his cigar and looked at the status bar of the SD card’s scan. He willed the scan to go faster, but knew it would take as long as it took. He took another pull on his cigar instead. He just hoped there would be something on that disk he could show Jason because he didn’t want to get dressed down by that goddamned bean counter first thing in the morning.
    He’d just flicked his cigar ash for the first time when the search program pinged that it was finished. He clicked on the results and saw three ghost images that had been recorded over on the card. The first two were blurred shots of something that looked like a ceiling and maybe the top of a woman’s head. It was as though someone had turned on the camera by accident.
    But the third shot was solid gold.
    It would’ve made great blackmail material had he recognized anyone in the shot worth blackmailing. Pure party time action.
    Instead, it showed a black woman in a hotel room, looking to be in the middle of a striptease. The street ink above her left breast was a crude image of a dollar sign. Her blonde dreadlocks covered her face.
    But in the background, there was a black man in the bathroom, stark naked as he serviced a woman from behind who was bent over the sink. His face was obscured, but the reflection in the mirror was clear. It took a couple of seconds for the program to clear up the image, but when it did, the man’s face was as clear as a passport photo. He was also black, but lighter skinned than any of Omar’s Somalis. He was otherwise clean shaven except for a pencil thin moustache. Hicks had never seen him before, but knew the image would be clear enough for OMNI to identify him. If he was in any database in the world, they’d find him.
    Hicks selected the man’s face, pasted it into the OMNI facial recognition software, linked it to the two previous searches of the dead men and let the system go to work. He took another long drag on his cigar and let the technology do its thing.
    He had no idea who the man was or if he had anything to do with what had happened in the park. He could’ve just been a guy who’d gotten his picture taken during a drunken night out with the boys. He could’ve been the reason why Colin was dead. That was the problem with intelligence work. A definite maybe was often the best one could hope for. But wars had been started over less.
    Hicks’ had no intention of just sitting around waiting for the searches to run their course. He brought up the OMNI tactical screen for New York City and selected the trace he’d put on the car that sped away from him outside Central Park. OMNI had tracked the Toyota as far north as an indoor parking garage just off Broadway up in Washington Heights. The program showed the car had driven straight there after leaving Central Park West and got there in about thirty minutes. Pretty good time considering the streets hadn’t been plowed yet.
    There was no proof linking the driver to the Somalis in the park, but someone going that fast in that kind of weather must’ve had a reason. Hicks clicked on the icon showing last location where the satellite had tracked the car. According to the car’s black box, the car was registered to Mr. Jacfar Abrar at an address in Long Island City, Queens.
    The same part of Queens where Colin had been working undercover. According to immigration records, Abrar was also Somali. Just like Omar.
    Hicks clicked