Page 38 of The Picasso Heist

I’M OUT OF breath within a block. I’m out of shape for an art heist.

I keep running because I have to, because I need to see this through, and because all the street cameras are watching.

There’s one on top of a traffic light ahead, one in the entrance of the bank I just passed, several of them all along the route.

They’re seeing everything. Then, after the thief makes a quick turn and I follow, they’re seeing nothing.

The thief cuts hard right down an alley where no one’s watching. No cameras. It’s only the two of us running.

Blaggy doesn’t say a word, doesn’t move—his body, his bald head; everything is perfectly still.

At the last second he holds out a case that’s identical to the thief’s, this one with Wolfgang’s fake inside it.

They exchange cases, and the handoff is seamless; no one breaks stride, and we both come out the other end of the alley in view of another security camera.

I’m gaining on the guy and he knows it, and that’s what the footage will show.

He’s looking over his shoulder again and again, and as we approach the intersection, as another camera will show, the cement mixer approaches, an accident waiting to happen.

It happens.

The cement-mixer driver—fortune cookie number 3—hits his horn; the sound startles the thief, who trips, falls, and goes sprawling, sending the case directly underneath the truck’s right front tire, which smashes to smithereens the supposedly priceless Picasso that no one but a handful of players in this game and the few fortune cookies working for them will ever know was a forgery, especially after the police forensics unit pieces together just enough of the remains to see the Echelon serial number, the newly added security measure that the new girl in the valuations department has no idea about.

If you’re having a hard time keeping track of all that, good. Because that’s the beauty of organized chaos.

You’re only supposed to see the chaos.