Page 3 of The Picasso Heist
HE FOLLOWS ME out of the stands, staying a few steps behind me and talking only when he needs to tell me left, right, or keep going straight.
I glance back over my shoulder just once, not at his lumpy face but down at his Gucci-wannabe shoes with inch-high heels that scrape on the pavement, first one, then the other, sounding like a rusted metronome.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks when I make a sharp turn that he didn’t instruct me to take.
“I’m thirsty,” I answer.
He looks and sees the water fountain against the wall to our left.
What I don’t think he sees is the security camera about twenty yards away from it.
He of course knows there are cameras everywhere at the tournament but he most likely doesn’t realize that this is how the police will know I didn’t leave alone.
I had company, and it’s the guy cooling his cheap one-inch heels behind me while I bend at the waist and take a long sip.
No one’s ever going to mistake the two of us for boyfriend and girlfriend.
I turn around, take another glance at his greasy hair and that god-awful teal windbreaker. Ugh. At least I hope not.
He falls in step behind me again, definitely closer now. “Up ahead, just outside the gate,” he says. “The Uber lot.”
We leave the grounds, passing a couple of cops along the way.
I don’t look at them, staring instead at the huge black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows that’s idling behind a couple of rows of late-model Nissan Sentras and Toyota Camrys doing pickups and drop-offs.
The most unsurprising sentence of the day is when he announces that our destination is the Escalade.
As we near it, he walks in front of me, then opens the back passenger door and points inside.
The second I get in, I see another huge, hulking guy sitting by the opposite window; he tells me to slide over.
He’s also got an Eastern European accent, although not quite as thick.
I move to the middle seat, and Mr. Ugly Teal Windbreaker climbs in next to me and slams the door shut.
And just like that, I’m the meat in a goon sandwich.
Faster than you can say rodeo, my wrists are zip-tied tight together.
My wig and sunglasses are yanked off, a black pillowcase is pulled over my head, and I officially can’t see where we’re going.
The driver, who I didn’t get a good look at, takes off, but not before turning up the radio in case I decide to scream.
Why they didn’t gag me too, I don’t know.
Then again, who says a mob abduction has to be an exercise in airtight logic?
I’m not about to scream. There’s no point.
Besides, it would only make it hotter underneath this pillowcase, the fabric of which likely possesses the thread count of industrial sandpaper.
I remain silent, as do the other three, while Bruce Springsteen belts out “Rosalita.” Only when we speed up and merge onto what I’m guessing is Grand Central Parkway does the radio get turned down.
Still, no one talks until about twenty minutes later when we veer onto an exit, slowing down.
That’s when I make an announcement. “I have to pee,” I say.
I don’t really have to go to the bathroom but it’s the quickest way to figure out the pecking order among these guys.
Whoever responds to me is a little higher on the organizational chart than the other two.
He’ll speak up because he knows it’s his decision whether or not we stop for me to pee.
Already, though, I can rule out the driver.
Drivers are always entry-level. My money’s on the guy to my left, whose only job thus far has been to sit there and do nothing.
Sure enough: “Hold it in,” he tells me. “We’re almost there.”
No surprise, we’re actually not. We’re still driving after half an hour.
By the time we’re done taking all the turns and exits, I don’t even know what borough we’re in anymore or even if we’re still in New York.
Finally we come to what I think is another red light, only it isn’t.
Wherever we are, we’ve arrived. I listen to the loud, mechanical cranking of a heavy garage door rising.
We creep forward only a little farther than the length of the Escalade before the cranking resumes: the same garage door closing.
The driver cuts the engine, and the pillowcase gets pulled off my head.
Before my eyes can adjust, I’m being manhandled out of the back seat.
A couple of hours ago, I was on the pristine grounds of the US Open making my way through the champagne-sipping, upper-crust crowd gathered to spectate the sport of kings.
Now I’m being dragged to a rusted metal folding chair in an empty warehouse that’s layered in dust and smells like a dumpster.
I spot a second black Escalade, and for a moment, I think my eyes still haven’t adjusted and I’m seeing double.
I’m not. There’re two of them. One was already here, waiting.
A man steps out of the shotgun seat of this second Escalade and walks toward me as I get pushed down into the folding chair with my hands still tied.
He’s wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, and a look of utter disgust.
Odds are he plans to kill me.