Page 68 of The Picasso Heist
CHAPTER59
DO NOT WALK.Run.
Bergamo and I don’t look back, not once. It’s not a decision, it’s instinct, a million years of Darwinism kicking in at once. Feet racing. Hearts racing faster.
“I can’t breathe,” says Bergamo as I start the engine, shift into drive, and speed away almost in one motion.
He’s gasping from the sprint to my rented Camry but I know that’s not what he means. He can’t breathe because he’s in shock.
I don’t say anything. I focus on driving. Only when the shipyard disappears from my rearview mirror do my first words come. I’m talking to myself, thinking out loud. “They knew we’d be there, but how? We weren’t followed. You and I didn’t say anything over the phone. Hell, we never talked about any of this over the phone. All our texts were clean, spotless. No mention of the shipyard or Shen or anything. So how did they know? How?How did they know?”
“It was them. It had to be,” says Bergamo. “The guys who were following me, right? The two guys in the white van?”
“I’m thinking the same thing.”
“What about Shen, though?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Whoever those two guys are, they knew beforehand how they were getting away. Shen’s boat. Maybe it wasn’t anything you and I did. Maybe they were also tracking Shen.”
“You’re right about the boat. They couldn’t know about it from us.”
I can feel Bergamo’s anger building like a wave. It’s overtaking his shock. “Why did he have to say anything? He should’ve just stayed quiet. What the hell was he thinking?”
“Stop it!” I yell at him. “Don’t do that!”
“I know you were close to him, I get it. But he could’ve gotten us all killed.”
I swerve off the road, jam the brakes.“Shut up!”
But he doesn’t. He won’t. “I don’t really give a fuck about your feelings right now!” Bergamo yells back. “We need to focus. We need to figure out what we’re going to do.”
“There’s only one thing we can do,” I say. “We’re going to the police.”
I can hear the gears turning in his head. He’s picturing how it would play out, start to finish. “No,” he says. “We can’t. We can’t do that. We can’t go to the police.”
“Of course we can. We have to.”
“Think about it.”
“What’s there to think about?”
“Everything.”
“That night at Shen’s casino, do you remember? When we werebeing followed afterward? That’s all you wanted to do,” I say. “Go to the police, go to the police.”
“That was different and you know it.”
“No.Thisis different. Shen was just killed right before our eyes.”
“Yeah, I know. I was there, for Christ’s sake,” he says. “But what the hell are we going to tell them?”
“How about the truth?”
“Oh, really? Suddenly now that’s what you want to do—tell them everything we’ve been up to, the whole plan?”
“It doesn’t have to be everything.”
