Following behind, Amato resealed the apartment and began coming up with his story as to why he and Jimmy were here in the first place.  While Jimmy left the building he saw a white van coming slowly down the street.  Not thinking too much of it, he waited on the curb until the vehicle passed.  Instead it came to a complete stop, hearing the door roll back, his heart stopped, as three masked men jumped out of the van and tasered him before he could even reach for his gun.  Amato could only look on horror from the lobby as they dragged his unconscious partner into the van.  “Son of a bitch!” Amato growled as he fumbled to get his gun.  Running to the front door, he made it to the sidewalk and shot at the white van but it was all in vain.  The patrolmen also stumbled to react quickly enough and before they could even start their car, the van had already turned the corner and were out of their sight.  Angry, Amato threatened the patrolmen, “Find them or it’s your ass!”

Not one to sit back and twiddle his thumbs, Amato got in his Kia and followed the chaos.  Sadly, there was no use, the van was gone, as was Jimmy.  So much for walking away Amato thought.  Immediately, Amato went into action and called headquarters to his old boss to advise him about the situation.  “Track his phone, the GPS has got to still be on,” Amato pleaded.  Within ten minutes the entire neighborhood was swarming with Feds and local law enforcement.  As the flashing blue and red lights reflected off the shiny glass door, it magnified the intensity of the beams nearly blinding Amato.  Right there on the spot, the investigators bombarded him with questions about the appearance of the men as well as the description of the van.  Calmly he answered their questions in the hopes that it would help them find Jimmy.  Regretting having ever gotten involved in this case, Amato started to question his motives.  Why was it so important to find Stephano’s killer?  Why did he care about where Cassandra had fled?

His answer appeared in the street, dressed in his street clothes, Special Agent Cohen walked towards Amato.  He began firing off questions, “What the hell is going on? How did some street thugs outmaneuver two FBI agents?”  Immediately Amato could feel every muscle in his body getting tense.  Taking a deep breath, Amato answered Cohen’s questions and only those questions.  He never mentioned the results of his own investigation nor did he speak of his methods.  He didn’t trust Cohen, not with this investigation and certainly not with Jimmy’s life.  Amato would not give what was not earned.  When Cohen was done with Amato, he tried to put together what was going on, was this a ransom attempt or terrorism?  There were parts of Jimmy’s personnel file that were still classified, it’s very possible he was working some pretty important case.

Seeing Cohen just sitting there, Amato grew agitated and took charge of the investigation going back to the apartment building where he found the manager and requested to see any and all security footage.  Flashing his badge he was able to get the manager’s cooperation and was escorted to a small room next to the broom closet.  Only one camera was facing the front of the building and it caught everything.  Rewinding and replaying, Amato was able to finally pause the video and get a look at the kidnappers.  There was one in particular who looked rather familiar but he couldn’t be sure since the man was wearing a ski-mask.  Taking a zip file of the footage from the manager, he went back to the office to see if forensics could help him clear up the fuzziness of the image.  So far, it wasn’t looking good for Jimmy.