Page 54 of The Picasso Heist
“No. This isn’t about anything I said to the police,” I say. “But it does have to do with what happened.”
Jacinda blinks as if I’ve just short-circuited her brain. She has no cue cards for this scenario. Should she stop me or should she let me keep talking?
“Maybe you should run this by the lawyers first,” she says.
“No,” I tell her.
“No?”
“You’re the one I need to talk to.” I cross my legs, settling into the chair. “Over the weekend, I got approached by a reporter from thePost.”
“Approachedas in the reporter called you?”
“Approachedas in he stalked me. He literally came up to me in a Starbucks.”
“Shit,” says Jacinda. “What’d you tell him?”
“Nothing. But he knew I was the one who ran after the thief.”
“How?”
“I asked but he wouldn’t tell me. Probably because I wasn’t giving him anything in return. I wouldn’t even confirm that I worked here.”
“Good.”
“For now, maybe,” I say. “Which is why we’re having this conver-sation.”
“Listen, if you’re worried for your safety, then—”
“No, that’s not what I’m worried about…”
I watch as it clicks for Jacinda. She suddenly connects the dots the same way that imaginary reporter might.
“Oh,” she says with a sigh. “I get it.”
It might have been no secret within Echelon as to when Bergamo was picking up his Picasso, but once it was stolen and destroyed, this place, as I knew it would, switched into a communications lockdown. Smarmy Waxman gathered every Echelon employee on the auction floor and laid down the law: No talking to the press. No talking to your family. No talking, period. Well, except to the police. If you were asked, you answered their questions. Other than that, it should be as if the Picasso had never existed.
“The House of Echelon lives or dies based on how we conduct ourselves from this moment forward,” Waxman declared.
The line was overly dramatic, perhaps, but it got the job done. Collective amnesia set in. Especially when Waxman tacked on “Anyone caught betraying my trust will be terminated immediately.”
“As you said yourself, Jacinda, it would be a bad look for Echelon if it was known that you hired the daughter of Conrad Greer. When you confronted me about it, I didn’t think anyone would ever find out. But things have obviously changed. Echelon’s now under a microscope. You don’t disagree, do you?”
She can’t. She doesn’t. “I don’t,” she says.
Mission accomplished. Sayonara, House of Echelon.
It’s a clean break; I’m leaving without a whiff of suspicion. If anything, I’m taking one for the team. All that’s left for me to do is say the words out loud and make it official. It couldn’t be any easier.
“Knock, knock!” someone says, barging in. Even before I turn my head, I know there’s only one person at Echelon who can open a closed door anytime he wants. “Am I interrupting?”
“No,” a startled Jacinda tells her boss. “Halston was just—”
“Halston, indeed,” says Waxman, only there’s no smarm this time. There’s no anything. His face is expressionless. He points at me. “You and I need to talk.”
CHAPTER49
CALL IT ACEO power move. Or just Waxman being Waxman.
