Page 43 of The Picasso Heist

DOMINICK LUGIERI’S CREW looked like a pack of wolves, Malcolm thought. Their hair slicked back, prowling in unison, eyes darting— they were hungry for a fight.

Malcolm stayed a few steps behind them as they crossed Moore Street in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, a neighborhood that featured more street-art murals, facial hair, and organic-juice brands per square foot than any other part of the country.

It was hipster heaven or it was hell, depending on who you asked.

Malcolm hung back because he was the new guy. New guys followed; they didn’t lead.

New guys also weren’t fully trusted. Malcolm wanted to keep an eye on these wolves, and he knew the feeling was mutual.

Today was a test. He clearly had impressed Lugieri when they’d met in his private dining room at Osteria Contorni, but now the boss wanted to see how Malcolm handled himself in the field.

Could he mesh with his crew? Lugieri’s men—one of them, at least—would surely be reporting back to him about the new guy, giving him the lowdown. That was the way it worked.

Malcolm knew he was being groomed for something big. That was the whole reason for the Lugieri introduction. Until he was fully trusted, Malcolm would be tasked with smaller things. Kid stuff. In this case, literally.

Bushwick was hardly Lugieri turf, but the “kids” they were paying a visit to were definitely under his rule.

The kids—that’s what Lugieri liked to call them.

A group of about a dozen recent grads from NYU who were pursuing “alternative career paths” in the post-COVID economy.

Forget grad school or even Wall Street—these kids were opting for sales and marketing in a particularly high-demand area of medicine: designer weed.

Business was booming for the Grass-Fed Pandas, as they labeled themselves, in part because these kids had had the foresight to partner with a one-stop shop for protection against gangs, the police, and even state legislators.

In return, Lugieri received a cut of 40 percent. But he had the sneaking suspicion that the Grass-Fed Pandas were cooking the books, pocketing more of the profits than they were reporting.

Had they never seen the pilot episode of Ozark?

Still, Lugieri was first and foremost a businessman.

He could mete out brutal punishment with the best of them, but cartel justice in this situation would amount to cutting off one of his prime sources of cash flow.

He didn’t want to kill the Pandas. He just wanted to teach them a lesson.

Take them back to school. Give them a little refresher course in the fundamentals of proper accounting.

The blood and broken bones would be viewed as extra credit.

As Lugieri’s crew approached the three-story brownstone that functioned as the combined home and headquarters for the Pandas, Malcolm had a quick flashback to his time in the Panjshir Valley of Afghanistan.

Anything with a wall or a door in that desert hellhole was treated as if the devil himself were waiting behind it.

Flank formation, a finger on every trigger—every possible precaution was taken.

And when they came upon the sketchiest of buildings, the “Pandora’s boxes,” they wouldn’t enter without first sending in one of the remote-controlled bots for a look-see.

But Bushwick wasn’t the Panjshir Valley, and the Pandas weren’t the Taliban. Nor were they the Crips or the Bloods or any other street gang. These kids carried 4.0 GPAs, not guns. And half of them were probably asleep now after sampling their own product, which they did on a daily basis.

So there was no flanking or fanning out around the brownstone. No fingers on triggers. Lugieri’s men kept their Glocks, Walthers, and SIG Sauers tucked in their belts. They even rang the doorbell.

Still, for all that was different, for all the miles and missions that separated Malcolm from that time in Afghanistan, he got the same bad feeling in the pit of his stomach that he used to get before certain raids.

It was the sense that something was about to go sideways.