Page 20 of The Picasso Heist
“Hi, Daddy.”
ACT II
MOVERS AND SHAKERS AND ALL THE WORLD’S TAKERS
CHAPTER18
THE OLD GENTLEMANbehind the wheel of the white Rolls-Royce Phantom parked down the street from Osteria Contorni watched the beads of water trickle down the windshield. The heavy rain that had blown through the city at sunset was now barely a drizzle.
“This too shall pass,” he muttered.
The young man sitting shotgun turned to him. He’d been killing time by looking at the fake driver’s license in his wallet. It truly was a spot-on replica of a real one. “What was that?” the young man asked. “What’d you say?”
“A lot of people think that line is from the Bible,” said Amir, adjusting the rearview mirror. “It’s not. It’s actually an old Persian expression.This too shall pass.”
There were two things Amir never talked about. One was how much money he had. The other was what his life had been like before he had any.
Amir and his wife, newlyweds at the time, had escaped Iran onValentine’s Day 1979, three days after the end of the revolution that saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, better known as the last shah of Iran. After living in abject poverty in Pakistan for a year, the couple immigrated to the United States, where they settled in New Jersey.
“Are you okay?” asked the young man.
“I’m fine,” answered Amir. “What about you?”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you nervous?”
“No. Not really.”
“You should be,” said Amir.
“If this is your idea of a pep talk, it needs a little work.”
“When’s the last time you took a punch?”
“For real?” asked the young man.
“Yeah, a real punch. Something hard. A teeth-rattler.”
The young man, Malcolm, smiled. “It was in the fourth grade. During recess. Joey Mendelbaum, next to a jungle gym.”
“I’m serious,” said Amir.
“So am I.”
“The last time you were in a fight wasthe fourth grade?”
“That’s not what you asked. I’ve had plenty of fights since then. But only Joey Mendelbaum landed a solid one,” said Malcolm. “The little bastard was left-handed.”
Amir laughed. He believed every word of what Malcolm had just told him. There was a reason the kid was sitting next to him in his Rolls-Royce, and it wasn’t his sense of humor. Malcolm was six foot two, two hundred and twenty pounds, and shredded. Most important, he was smart. Really smart. He had the best education money could buy combined with the kind of education money can’t buy—the kind you get on the battlefield.
Still, this was new territory for the kid.
Amir glanced at the rearview mirror again. “Okay, they’re here,” he said. “They’re just walking in now.”
Malcolm turned, looked over his shoulder. “I see ’em.”
“We’ll wait a few more minutes, then you go in.”
