Page 5 of The Picasso Heist
I don’t really have to go to the bathroom but it’s the quickest way to figure out the pecking order among these guys. Whoever responds to me is a little higher on the organizational chart than the other two. He’ll speak up because he knows it’s his decision whether or not we stop for me to pee. Already, though, I can rule out the driver. Drivers are always entry-level. My money’s on the guy to my left, whose only job thus far has been to sit there and do nothing.
Sure enough: “Hold it in,” he tells me. “We’re almost there.”
No surprise, we’re actually not. We’re still driving after half an hour. By the time we’re done taking all the turns and exits, I don’t even know what borough we’re in anymore or even if we’re still in New York. Finally we come to what I think is another red light, only it isn’t. Wherever we are, we’ve arrived. I listen to the loud, mechanical cranking of a heavy garage door rising. We creep forward only a little farther than the length of the Escalade before the cranking resumes: the same garage door closing. The driver cuts the engine, and the pillowcase gets pulled off my head. Before my eyes can adjust, I’m being manhandled out of the back seat.
A couple of hours ago, I was on the pristine grounds of the US Open making my way through the champagne-sipping, upper-crust crowd gathered to spectate the sport of kings. Now I’m being dragged to a rusted metal folding chair in an empty warehouse that’s layered in dust and smells like a dumpster. I spot a second black Escalade, and for a moment, I think my eyes still haven’t adjusted and I’m seeing double. I’m not. There’re two of them. One was already here, waiting. A man steps out of the shotgun seat of this second Escalade and walks toward me as I get pushed down into the folding chair with my hands still tied. He’s wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, and a look of utter disgust.
Odds are he plans to kill me.
CHAPTER4
“DO YOU KNOWwho I am?” he asks.
I do. He’s Blagoy Danchev, aka Blaggy, right-hand man and lead muscle for the Bulgarian mob that usurped all New Jersey–based online sports books due to their crypto prowess. I was courtsiding through their website, GameTime Wagers.
Blaggy repeats the question.“Do you know who I am?”Apparently, the higher up on the company ladder you are, the less prominent your Bulgarian accent is. It’s barely there.
“No,” I finally answer. “I don’t know who you are.”
“Are you sure?” He scratches his bald head. “Because I once read this story in a newspaper that said over eighty percent of murder victims know the person who kills them.”
Blaggy is trying to scare me so I’ll tell him everything about my operation, especially any and all partners I have. This is not to say that he won’t actually kill me. He might. Blaggy’s a cold-blooded murderer who makes people disappear faster than a Vegas magician.He’s capable of putting a bullet through me in a heartbeat. But he won’t. Not here. Not now.
Because I’m not dying today.
I look him square in the eye. “Can I ask you a question, Blaggy?”
He squints. “I thought you said you didn’t know who I am.”
“How did you guys catch me today?” I ask.
“You fucked up,” he says, shooting a look at the guys who brought me in. They’re surrounding me, but center stage belongs to Blaggy. “Two weeks ago, you gave the same wire instructions for six different accounts on our site to make a withdrawal. Your bank issued a fraud alert, and that’s how we figured you out.”
“But you didn’t freeze the accounts right away, did you?”
“No. We waited until—”
“Until I placed more tennis bets so you’d know which tournament I was at and precisely which match,” I say. “It’s crazy, right? I might as well have been wearing a neon sign over my head saying ‘Come and get me, boys.’”
Blaggy’s really squinting now. He hasn’t gotten where he is, second in command for the Bulgarian mob, by being slow on the uptake. I was able to angle them for a boatload of money without anyone catching on, so would I really be so sloppy as to give the same wiring instructions for multiple accounts opened under fake names?
Unless…
“Youwantedto get caught?” he asks.
“What I wanted was this right here, this meeting. It was the only way to get your attention,” I say.
“For what?”
“I need your help.”
Blaggy laughs in my face. They all do. “My help? You take us for a hundred grand, and now you want my help?”
“It’s actually a hundred and fifty grand,” I say.
Blaggy stops laughing. The others do too. He reaches for the backof his belt and steps toward me. For the first time in my life, I have the barrel of a gun pressed against my forehead, and I wonder if maybe, just maybe, I pushed the wrong button on the wrong guy at the absolute worst time.Don’t freak out now, Halston. Whatever you do, don’t freak out. Hold steady. Hold your ground…
“Give me one good reason I don’t put a hole in your head,” Blaggy says, grinding the barrel hard into my skin.
