Page 18 of The Picasso Heist

THE OLD GENTLEMAN behind the wheel of the white Rolls-Royce Phantom parked down the street from Osteria Contorni watched the beads of water trickle down the windshield. The heavy rain that had blown through the city at sunset was now barely a drizzle.

“This too shall pass,” he muttered.

The young man sitting shotgun turned to him. He’d been killing time by looking at the fake driver’s license in his wallet. It truly was a spot-on replica of a real one. “What was that?” the young man asked. “What’d you say?”

“A lot of people think that line is from the Bible,” said Amir, adjusting the rearview mirror. “It’s not. It’s actually an old Persian expression. This too shall pass.”

There were two things Amir never talked about. One was how much money he had. The other was what his life had been like before he had any.

Amir and his wife, newlyweds at the time, had escaped Iran on Valentine’s Day 1979, three days after the end of the revolution that saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, better known as the last shah of Iran.

After living in abject poverty in Pakistan for a year, the couple immigrated to the United States, where they settled in New Jersey.

“Are you okay?” asked the young man.

“I’m fine,” answered Amir. “What about you?”

“I’m okay.”

“Are you nervous?”

“No. Not really.”

“You should be,” said Amir.

“If this is your idea of a pep talk, it needs a little work.”

“When’s the last time you took a punch?”

“For real?” asked the young man.

“Yeah, a real punch. Something hard. A teeth-rattler.”

The young man, Malcolm, smiled. “It was in the fourth grade. During recess. Joey Mendelbaum, next to a jungle gym.”

“I’m serious,” said Amir.

“So am I.”

“The last time you were in a fight was the fourth grade?”

“That’s not what you asked. I’ve had plenty of fights since then. But only Joey Mendelbaum landed a solid one,” said Malcolm. “The little bastard was left-handed.”

Amir laughed. He believed every word of what Malcolm had just told him.

There was a reason the kid was sitting next to him in his Rolls-Royce, and it wasn’t his sense of humor.

Malcolm was six foot two, two hundred and twenty pounds, and shredded.

Most important, he was smart. Really smart.

He had the best education money could buy combined with the kind of education money can’t buy—the kind you get on the battlefield.

Still, this was new territory for the kid.

Amir glanced at the rearview mirror again. “Okay, they’re here,” he said. “They’re just walking in now.”

Malcolm turned, looked over his shoulder. “I see ’em.”

“We’ll wait a few more minutes, then you go in.”

The two fell silent, both considering what lay ahead. “So you really think someone’s going to take a swing at me in there?” asked Malcolm. “Like it’s some initiation type of thing?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

Amir turned to the kid. There was a big age gap between them. Amir had had forty-plus more years of living.

And learning.

“They’ll check you for a wire, then they’ll check you for a weapon,” he said.

“You have neither, and you’ll act ticked off that they suspect otherwise.

You know it’s not personal, they have to do it to anyone new, but you don’t give a shit because you’re not just anyone, and they need to know that.

You have to show them and in no uncertain terms.”

“How?”

“The only way you can. By being the biggest badass in the room,” said Amir. He pulled back the cuff of his dress shirt, glanced at his gold Rolex. It had been more than a few minutes. “You ready?”

Malcolm nodded. “Ready,” he said.

Malcolm stepped out of the car and was about to close the door behind him when Amir told him to wait a second. Malcolm watched as Amir got out from his side and joined him on the sidewalk in the slight drizzle.

“The ring,” said Amir, pointing at Malcolm’s right hand.

“What about it?” It was a black opal ring that Malcolm had picked up at the Pul-e Khishti bazaar in Kabul during his second tour in Afghanistan. He almost never took it off.

“Let me see it for a second,” said Amir.

Malcolm removed the ring and handed it to Amir, who immediately put it on the middle finger of his left hand, front and center.

“What are you doing?” asked Malcolm.

He never saw the answer coming. Amir, a southpaw, wound up and punched Malcolm as hard as a seventy-year-old man could. The edge of the ring caught Malcolm’s cheek, immediately drawing blood, and he staggered on his feet.

“Now you’re ready,” said Amir.