Page 97 of The Picasso Heist
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what Lugieri was saying—right before he was arrested this morning.”
“Bullshit,” says Bergamo. “There’s no way.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I would’ve heard.”
“You just did,” I say, holding up my phone. The picture’s a little blurry but it’s definitely Lugieri. It’s also definitely him in handcuffs.
“One minute! One minute to show!” yells the stage manager.
The throng of people behind Bergamo grows. Everyone needs him for something. He doesn’t even have to look over his shoulder; he can feel the pressure building, spiraling. His grin is long gone. His teeth are clenched, his jaw tightening like a drum.
“Can we talk about this after the show?” he asks, his voice barely cutting through the chatter around him.
“No,” I say. “We actually can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you won’t be here after the show.”
Bergamo fakes a laugh, desperately clinging to the idea that he still has some leverage. “Oh, so now you’re a cop too? What, you’re here to arrest me?”
“No,” I say, pointing, “but I think those guys are.”
Now he looks. Now he sees them. Two of New York’s Finest take their cue, slice through the crowd, and head right toward him.
There’s no more facade or false bravado, just sheer, unmitigated panic.
And panic can make a person do crazy things.
CHAPTER83
“PLAY IT AGAIN,”I tell Skip in a conference room at the First Precinct downtown in Tribeca. There’re just the two of us on one side of the table, sitting and waiting.
Within minutes of Bergamo’s arrest, the videos started popping up on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, you name it. The much anticipated debut of Enzio Bergamo’s fall fashion line kicked off with none other than the designer himself frantically sprinting from backstage and onto the runway with two cops—wearing classic dark navy with clean lines—in hot pursuit.
Skip taps his phone again and we watch the best angle yet. The other clips were from the side, peekaboo angles from the back. This one, somehow, was filmed from straight on, almost directly at the end of the runway. “The Fall of Bergamo,” reads the title.
Neither svelte nor in shape, Enzio was no match for the two cops. But just as he was about to be tackled mid-runway, he trippedover his own feet, fell flat on his face, and let out the kind of high-pitched yelp destined to be a meme unto itself.
As if his day could get any worse.
Skip checks the time on his Casio G-Shock. We’ve had our fill of Bergamo blowing up the internet. My brother’s bored. We both are. The Greer kids aren’t good with inertia, though we know that the longer this afternoon drags on, the more likely it is that things will unfold as we expect.
“At least the sodas are cheap,” says Skip, taking a last sip of his Diet Coke from the First Precinct’s subsidized vending machine. A dollar a can, what a bargain.
“Do you want another?” I ask.
The door opens before he can answer, and Elise Joyce walks in like she owns the place. Depending on who you talk to, she sort of does.
“You lied to me, Halston Greer,” she announces, taking a seat across from us at the table.
That’s Skip’s cue to remain silent. He leans back, folding his arms. I’m leaning in. “Lied to you? About what?” I ask.
“Bergamo and his fifteen-hundred-dollar-an-hour attorney just shared a lot of interesting information about how you set him up,” says Joyce.
“So what you really mean is that I lied to Bergamo.”
