Page 89 of The Picasso Heist
“Where, then?”
“You’ll see.”
“The hell I will,” I say. “If you don’t leave in the next five seconds I’m going to start screaming.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Five… four… three…”
“So what is she, about eight or nine years old?”
“Excuse me?”
“That little girl from the foster home. What’s her name—Michelle, right? What kind of a big sister would you be if something were to happen to her?”
I don’t say a word. Timing is everything, and my food arrives. Thewaiter looks at the guys and has only one question. “You two need menus or are you ready to order?”
“Thanks, but we won’t be staying.”
But apparently they will be eating my pancakes. The silent one next to me, Signore Omertà, reaches for my fork, pours some syrup, and digs into my piglets.
Lo and behold, he speaks. “Shit, these are good,” he says.
“What do you guys want?” I ask.
I watch as the military Ken doll across the table from me folds his arms and leans in. “I told you already,” he says. “We want to talk to you.”
“And the way you get me to talk to you is by threatening to hurt a little girl?”
“Would you say yes otherwise?” He takes out a wad of cash, pulls off two twenties, and places them under the saltshaker. “Shall we?”
One walks in front of me, the other behind, and we leave the diner. We don’t go far. Just down the block is a Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows, the engine running. I get in the back seat, my escorts on either side of me. The driver, wearing aviator sunglasses, remains staring forward, motionless. The second he hears the doors close, he peels away from the curb.
The next second, my world goes black.
CHAPTER76
IT’S DÉJÀ VUall over again.
The only difference this time is a higher thread count. The pillowcase pulled tight over my head doesn’t feel like industrial-grade sandpaper against my face.
“Where are you taking me?”
Of course I ask that, and of course they don’t answer. I can’t see a thing. They tell me nothing. I’m just as I should be, completely in the dark.
We drive for about twenty minutes. Stoplights, turns, extended straightaways, but no bridges or highways. We’re still in Manhattan. No one’s talking; the radio’s off. I can hear the sounds of the city—traffic, construction, the occasional voices cutting through the background hum of people walking about—but it’s all just distant noise.
Then everything goes quiet as we take one last turn and slowly roll to a stop. There’s silence, just the engine idling. I ask again wherethey’re taking me, and again they don’t tell me. Instead, I hear the clanking of chains and the flexing, metal-on-metal grind of hinges. It’s a garage door being manually opened. We roll some more; the door closes behind us.Poof!I’ve disappeared.
The pillowcase gets yanked off my head, the doors of the Escalade open, and I get ushered into what could pass for an operating room, although I know we’re not in a hospital.
No, this is where you get taken when going to the hospital isn’t an option, and I don’t mean because you don’t have health insurance. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the echoes of lead clanking against stainless steel as, one after another, extracted bullets are dropped into a surgical bowl. When wiseguys get shot and still have a pulse, this is where they come. The mob doctor will see you now.
There’s an operating table, an x-ray machine, and some monitors. I’m told to sit in a folding chair near the wall. My hands get zip-tied, wrist against wrist. The silent treatment continues; my two escorts don’t say a word to me. They look to be waiting for something. Or someone.
I hear the footsteps before I see anything. Dress shoes against wooden stairs from above. The sound gets louder and louder until finally he appears, walking toward me and folding his arms tight against his barrel chest.
“You must be Halston,” he says.
