Page 88 of The Picasso Heist
“I’ve lost my appetite,” said Lugieri.
His guy didn’t know how to react.
“Just give us one more minute,” said Malcolm.
His guy still didn’t know how to react.
Lugieri nodded. “Yeah, another minute,” he said. He took one more look at each picture on the table before leaning back in his chair.
“I figure, first things first, we find out who this girl was talking to,” said Malcolm.
“Don’t bother,” said Lugieri. “It doesn’t make a difference.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” said Malcolm. “So what do you want to do?”
“What’s her name again?”
“Halston. Halston Graham.”
Lugieri nodded, folded his arms across his chest. “She’s fucking with my sauce,” he said. “I want her alive… and then I want her dead.”
ACT IV
THIS WAY, THAT WAY, EVERY WAY
CHAPTER75
I CALL BERGAMOand it goes to voicemail just as I walk into the Downhome Café a couple of blocks from my apartment.
The Downhome, cozy and quaint, is a neighborhood favorite, and there’s usually a line out the door on the weekends, especially for breakfast, as the place is famous for their sausage pancakes. Yes, you read that right, and don’t knock ’em until you try them. They mix diced homemade pork sausage into the batter, and each pancake is only a few inches wide. Piglets, they’re called, and they come layered on your plate like a pyramid. Crazy-good, crazy-addictive.
“Good morning,” says the hostess. I’m pretty sure she’s a daughter of the owner. “Just yourself?”
“Just me,” I say.
She’d never give a booth to only one person during the breakfast rush, but one of the benefits of being newly unemployed is that I’m here at eleven a.m. on a weekday, so there’s no line and the place is only half full.
“Do you need a menu?” she asks.
“No, thanks.”
The waiter comes over and I order the piglets and some coffee that I sip while answering a few texts and emails. My head’s down the entire time. When I look up at the sound of footsteps, it’s not the waiter with my pancakes.
“Mind if we join you?”
Before I can say a word, the two guys are sitting in my booth. “What the hell are you doing?” I ask.
“Now, that’s funny. Because that’s the exact same question we want to ask you, Halston.”
The one doing the talking is all muscles and a crew cut, a US Army recruiting poster come to life. The one on my side of the booth, the guy who has me practically pinned against the wall, could’ve easily been the dude who killed Tony Soprano. I glance at his profile. His nose is crooked.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“We want to talk to you.”
“So go ahead,” I say. “Talk.”
“Not here.”
