Page 103 of The Picasso Heist
I follow them up the long driveway lined with tall trees and park in front of Nikolov’s gaudy brick mansion. The two humongous bear topiaries are still flanking the front door, as are a couple of guys with AR-15s.
Before Blaggy even begins walking toward me, I step out, cell phone in hand, and spread my arms. He’s patting me more for a wire than a weapon. Blaggy turns to his boss with a nod, signaling I’m clean.
“So what do you have to tell me that’s so important?” asks Nikolov.
“In your driveway? Nothing,” I say. “Let’s go inside.”
“We’re fine right here,” he says.
No, we’re not. “Is the painting inside?”
He doesn’t have to ask which one. “Why?”
“It’s not a trick question,” I say. “It’s a beautiful painting, a Picasso in his prime, and I miss looking at it. That’s why. I was an art history major, after all. So is it inside?”
“Of course it is,” he says. “You can’t freeport a painting that everyone thinks was destroyed. We all know it doesn’t exist, right?”
That’s right, Anton. That’s why I knew it would be here.
“I’m thinking you keep it in one of two places,” I say. “It’s in your office or in some mystery safe room like you see in the movies.”
Nikolov nods at his guys with AR-15s. “My whole house is a safe room.”
With that, he puffs his chest out, turns, and walks inside. Blaggy points a thick finger at Nikolov, and I fall in line.
I can tell Blaggy’s even more pissed at me than his boss is because this is now twice I’m walking into this house on my own terms. The first time I’d orchestrated my own kidnapping and tricked Blaggy into introducing me to Nikolov. This time I managed to tail Nikolov without Blaggy knowing. This guy’s got one job: to watch his boss’s back, guard his six. And he still didn’t see me coming. He knows it.
I follow Nikolov through his foyer. The shine on the white marble floor is near blinding. “I never thought I’d be back here,” I say.
“That makes two of us,” says Nikolov.
“If I’m not mistaken, the last time we were together with Bergamo, it was in your apartment in the city and you had a gun to my head.”
“Yeah, right after you kicked Bergamo in the balls.”
“He deserved it,” I say.
“And you deserved the gun to your head.”
“We’ll agree to disagree on that, but we both don’t like the guy. Am I wrong?”
Nikolov stops in his tracks halfway through his living room and angrily turns to me. “For your sake, there better be more to this conversation than you and I just thinking the guy’s a prick,” he says.
“There is.”
“So let’s have it.”
“I want to see the painting first.”
“Damn, you’re annoying.” He starts walking again, muttering over his shoulder, “If you weren’t a girl…”
It’s not in his office or in a safe. The Picasso hangs over a fireplace in a mahogany-paneled room complete with a bar, a poker table, and an entire wall of game-hunting receipts, among them the heads of the African big five: a lion, a leopard, a buffalo, an elephant, and a rhinoceros.
But I barely look at them. I only have eyes for Pablo.
“There you go,” says Nikolov. “Have a good, long look. Soak it in, there, art history major.”
Which is exactly what I do. “It’s quite something.” I fall into a deep silence as I stare at his beloved Picasso, knowing I’m driving him nuts.
