Page 32 of The Picasso Heist

SOMETIMES IT’S BEST to play dumb. This ain’t one of those times.

“How’d you know?” I ask.

“Your right ear,” he says. “You tuck your hair behind it when you’re hiding something.”

“Bullshit.”

“You did it when we first met. Of course, a tell isn’t a tell until you do it more than once. You’ve done it three times in the past five minutes.”

Note to self: Never play poker with Anton Nikolov. “I’m not so much hiding something as stalling,” I say. “We’re waiting on a phone call.”

“From whom?” he asks.

“Bergamo. We had a bit of a curveball thrown at us after the auction. It’s a new security measure Echelon’s implemented.”

“What kind of security measure?”

“That’s the problem. I don’t know what it is yet.”

“Once again, you work there. How do you not know?”

“Because I don’t run the place,” I say. “But it’s not going to be a problem.”

“How do you know that if you don’t know what it is?”

I take out my phone. “Because Bergamo is about to call and tell us. And then, whatever it is, we’ll deal with it.”

“Or maybe I just don’t transfer the money for the painting. Maybe I bow out,” says Nikolov. “How about that, huh? And why the hell are we waiting on Bergamo? I’ll call him myself.”

“You can’t.”

“Of course I can.”

“No. I mean he won’t pick up, not if he’s still in the Echelon building,” I say. “Plus, he might still be with his wife.”

“The way that woman drinks, she won’t remember a damn thing in the morning.”

“Okay, that one I’ll give you.”

Nikolov scoops up his glass, heads for a credenza doubling as a bar, and pours himself some more scotch, all but emptying a bottle of Macallan. As soon as he takes a sip, my phone rings.

“Put it on speaker,” says Nikolov.

I walk over to him, place the phone on the credenza, and accept the call. “You’re on speaker,” I tell Bergamo.

Nikolov wastes no time. “What are we dealing with?” he asks.

“A number,” says Bergamo.

“What do you mean?”

“A serial number,” he says. “It’s handwritten with a black charcoal pencil on the back of the frame.”

“How do you know it’s a charcoal pencil?” I ask.

“Because they told me,” says Bergamo.

“So what’s the number?” asks Nikolov.

“That’s not the question,” I say.

“What do you mean? How can it not be? Of course it is,” says Nikolov.

“It’s not just the numbers we need, it’s the handwriting. The style.” I take a deep breath, then exhale. I edge closer to my phone and almost whisper to Bergamo, “Please tell me you took a picture.”