Page 62 of The Picasso Heist

YOU JUST DON’T barge into the office of the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York and demand to speak to the chief of the criminal division. You have to make an appointment.

And not just anyone can make an appointment. You have to be somebody, a big shot. I don’t qualify but thankfully Shen Wan does.

There’s a reason his casino has never been raided: Shen Wan is a one-man diplomatic back channel to the entire Chinese politburo. The US government looks to him from time to time to deliver sensitive messages. In return, it looks the other way on his various “business ventures.”

“Shen, I was thinking,” I say. “Maybe you want to pop in with me? You know, to make the introduction?”

“It will be fine,” Shen assures me. “Just do your thing.”

“You’re right. I’ve got this.” And yet I’m still not reaching for the door. I remain glued to the back seat of his limo.

Shen’s chuckling a bit. “I think I’ve discovered young Halston’s Achilles’ heel,” he says. “Contending with an older, accomplished woman who happens to be equally as smart as her. Men are much easier to manipulate, aren’t they?”

“Not all men. Not even most men. Only the ones who let their libidos get in the way of logic.”

“Are you sure that isn’t most men?” He points to the door, smiling. “Now stop stalling and get out of the car. I don’t want to miss my flight.”

“It’s your plane, Shen. I’m pretty sure your pilot will wait for you.”

Shen’s flying on his jet back to mainland China. He has business to attend to. There’s also the fact that Bergamo thinks he’s dead, and it’s easier to lie low for a few weeks when you’re sixty-eight hundred miles away.

“Good luck, Lucky Seven,” he says.

It takes me about five minutes to get from the limo, up the steps, and through security to the US attorney’s office in Brooklyn.

From there it’s another five minutes getting a visitor’s pass and taking the elevator up to the third floor, where I check in with an assistant in the lobby.

He instructs me to have a seat. Shen may have gotten me the meeting, but it’s not as if Elise Joyce, chief of the criminal division, is the least bit happy about it.

Lest there be any doubt of that, it’s an hour before her assistant comes for me.

“You’re still waiting to see Ms. Joyce, right?” the guy asks as if he’s rubbing it in. “I can take you back to see her now.”

Not all the way back, though.

Elise Joyce is standing in the middle of a long hallway next to an empty conference room. She’s reading something in a file. Her assistant dumps me in front of her without so much as a word.

Joyce barely looks up from the file. “So you’re my three o’clock favor, huh?”

“It’s more like four o’clock now,” I say.

That certainly gets her attention. I immediately regret being a smart-ass, but it’s hard to suppress a reflex.

“That’s funny,” says Joyce, not laughing. At least she’s looking at me now. “So why are you here?”

I glance around. We’re the opposite of alone. There are at least a half a dozen staffers within earshot.

“Is there a place we can talk more privately?” I ask.

“Yes, there is.”

I assume she’s going to suggest her office or the conference room, the door to which is less than three feet away. She does neither. Elise Joyce simply stares at me, not saying another word.

“So, yes? There’s a place?” I sound like a parrot, repeating myself. “There’s somewhere we can talk more privately?”

“Yes, there’s a place. No, we’re not going there,” she says. “Not until I know.”

“Know what?”

“That you’re not wasting my time.”

Elise Joyce looks tall on television. She’s even taller in person.

Everything I’ve read about her is playing out in this very moment.

She doesn’t suffer fools easily, and is 100 percent the right man for her job—all the more so because she’s a woman.

An extremely attractive one, at that. No wonder she’s dead set on becoming governor.

In three seconds, I know, this meeting will be over before it ever begins.

Unless I convince her otherwise.