Page 70 of The Picasso Heist

JOYCE WANTS TO talk more, strategize, plan my next encounter with Bergamo. She has ideas, thoughts, everything short of a stack of color-coded index cards crammed with bullet points. Her entire focus is on recording as much dirt on Lugieri as possible.

But I tell her I have to go, that I need to be at work. It’s the truth. What I don’t tell her is why.

Smarmy’s latest voicemail was waiting for me hours earlier when I woke up. You can ghost a guy like him for only so long. Eventually he figured out a way to get me in the office. Charles Waxman ain’t the CEO of Echelon for nothing.

“I’ve been looking through your file,” he announced after the beep. He spoke slowly, ominously, to ensure I paid attention to every word of his message. “Apparently our head of HR has been keeping a few secrets about you, Halston Graham. I mean Greer.”

Really, Jacinda? In my file? You couldn’t leave my past alone, or at least keep it inside your head? You had to put everything down in writing?

Apparently.

So off I go to meet Smarmy face to face. His office at noon, he told me. He ended his message with “Don’t be late.”

I’m not. I’m standing in his doorway at noon on the dot. He smiles broadly at the sight of me because that’s what men like him do when they have the illusion of leverage.

“I want to apologize,” I say after he motions me in. I close the door to his office even though he doesn’t tell me to.

“Sorry for what, exactly?” he asks. “Not showing up to work? Not returning any of my calls? Or not being who you say you are?”

“I guess you can take your pick,” I say.

“I intend to.” He points for me to sit, not in the chair facing his desk but on his casting couch against the far wall. That figures.

I remain standing.

“If Jacinda wrote that in my file, she’s wrong,” I say. “I never lied about my name. I legally changed it to Graham.”

“I know you did. But we’ll get to that in a second. Now, please,” he says, pointing again at his couch.

As soon as I sit, he walks over from his desk and sits in the armchair catty-corner to me, his bended knees only inches from mine. I can smell his mouthwash and cologne, a nauseating combo of mint and musk.

“I know you’re curious about Bergamo,” I say.

“Curious? No. Tonight when I go to dinner at Le Bernardin, I’ll be curious about what the specials are.

Bergamo is a member of Echelon who just made the single largest auction purchase in our history, and now he’s being investigated by the FBI,” he says, jaw tightening.

I can see the tendons in his neck. “Believe me, I’m a little more than curious. ”

It’s as if I’ve flipped a switch inside him. Or maybe this was his plan all along—simmering anger that builds into a rage.

“I understand,” I say.

“Do you? Because it sure as hell doesn’t seem that way. You have an obligation to Echelon. You have an obligation to me.”

“I promised I wouldn’t say anything.”

“To whom did you promise that? The FBI?”

“What am I supposed to do? They said not to talk about the investigation with anyone.”

“Of course they said that. But they didn’t make you sign anything, did they? More important, they’re not the ones who sign your paycheck,” he says. “Or maybe you’d prefer to stop getting one.”

“That’s really not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair. But you already know that, Halston Greer. Why else would you try to hide from your past, from who you really are?”

If looks could kill, he’d be dead. “Leave my family out of this,” I say. “And I told you, I didn’t lie about my name.”

“I wouldn’t care if you did. What I care about is loyalty. That’s what got you promoted,” he says. “I’d hate to see it be the reason you get fired.”

“Lucky for you, you don’t have to,” I tell him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”