Page 99 of The Picasso Heist
“No, screw it,” I say. “Screw her.”
“I think you’re overlooking something,” says Joyce. “There’s something else you’d be getting besides your father.”
“What’s that?” asks Skip.
“Immunity,” she says.
“The minute I strapped on that wire for you, we already had it,” I say.
Joyce gives me a pitying sigh. “You’re an Ivy League grad, Halston. But you’re definitely no lawyer.”
“I don’t need to be. In fact, I don’t need to be here listening to this bullshit.” I stand.
“That’s fine,” says Joyce. “Trust me, the immunity offer is in spite of you, not because of you. It’s only on the table because of your brother and his military service.”
“Great. Maybe you can put him in one of your campaign ads.” I turn to Skip. “Are you coming or what?”
Skip isn’t moving. He’s just staring at me, his eyes narrowed in indecision. “Halston—”
I cut him off. “Seriously? You’re going to sit here and put up with this crap?” It looks like he is, and that leaves me with only one move.
“Screw you both!” I say and bolt out of the room.
CHAPTER84
I’M PISSED. FUMING.Livid. Cursing out loud.
I keep it up along the hall, down the stairs, and straight through the lobby of the First Precinct—anyone and everyone I pass bears witness to my fury, and they’re all thinking the same thing:Wow, that girl is absolutely, positively ticked off about something.
It’s enough to make me smile the second I hit the street.
An hour later, when I’m sitting in my Jeep exactly where I need to be, my phone rings. “Hi, I’m looking for Meryl Streep,” says Skip.
I can’t help but laugh. “Very funny.”
“And very believable, sis. Well done.”
I’msiswhen my brother’s genuinely impressed. I’mmetalheadthe other 99 percent of the time.
“So she bought it?” I ask.
“Right now Elise Joyce is thinking you’re in dire need of therapy.”
“She should talk.”
“She joked afterward about your needing an anger-managementclass,” says Skip. “Apparently you also made quite the impression on a few cops while leaving the building.”
“Go big or go home, right? So she bought my routine. What about yours?” I ask. “Any chance she saw through it?”
“No chance,” he assures me. “The leading cause of blindness will forever be the pursuit of power.”
“Who said that? Mark Twain?”
“No, a bartender in Kabul.”
There’s something beautifully ironic about pulling off a good-cop, bad-cop routine in a police precinct. The moment I stormed out of that conference room was the moment Elise Joyce realized that she desperately needed Skip’s cooperation. So he played right into it. He pitched the plan that could deliver Anton Nikolov in addition to Lugieri, giving her a double hit on organized crime. A mob massacre, the press would call it, the kind of coup that could propel a budding politician into the highest realms of power.
All that was needed was the help of a man so hell-bent on avoiding jail that he’d do almost anything.
