Page 75 of The Picasso Heist

I CALL BERGAMO and it goes to voicemail just as I walk into the Downhome Café a couple of blocks from my apartment.

The Downhome, cozy and quaint, is a neighborhood favorite, and there’s usually a line out the door on the weekends, especially for breakfast, as the place is famous for their sausage pancakes.

Yes, you read that right, and don’t knock ’em until you try them.

They mix diced homemade pork sausage into the batter, and each pancake is only a few inches wide.

Piglets, they’re called, and they come layered on your plate like a pyramid. Crazy-good, crazy-addictive.

“Good morning,” says the hostess. I’m pretty sure she’s a daughter of the owner. “Just yourself?”

“Just me,” I say.

She’d never give a booth to only one person during the breakfast rush, but one of the benefits of being newly unemployed is that I’m here at eleven a.m. on a weekday, so there’s no line and the place is only half full.

“Do you need a menu?” she asks.

“No, thanks.”

The waiter comes over and I order the piglets and some coffee that I sip while answering a few texts and emails. My head’s down the entire time. When I look up at the sound of footsteps, it’s not the waiter with my pancakes.

“Mind if we join you?”

Before I can say a word, the two guys are sitting in my booth. “What the hell are you doing?” I ask.

“Now, that’s funny. Because that’s the exact same question we want to ask you, Halston.”

The one doing the talking is all muscles and a crew cut, a US Army recruiting poster come to life. The one on my side of the booth, the guy who has me practically pinned against the wall, could’ve easily been the dude who killed Tony Soprano. I glance at his profile. His nose is crooked.

“What do you want?” I ask.

“We want to talk to you.”

“So go ahead,” I say. “Talk.”

“Not here.”

“Where, then?”

“You’ll see.”

“The hell I will,” I say. “If you don’t leave in the next five seconds I’m going to start screaming.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Five… four… three…”

“So what is she, about eight or nine years old?”

“Excuse me?”

“That little girl from the foster home. What’s her name—Michelle, right? What kind of a big sister would you be if something were to happen to her?”

I don’t say a word. Timing is everything, and my food arrives. The waiter looks at the guys and has only one question. “You two need menus or are you ready to order?”

“Thanks, but we won’t be staying.”

But apparently they will be eating my pancakes. The silent one next to me, Signore Omertà, reaches for my fork, pours some syrup, and digs into my piglets.

Lo and behold, he speaks. “Shit, these are good,” he says.

“What do you guys want?” I ask.

I watch as the military Ken doll across the table from me folds his arms and leans in. “I told you already,” he says. “We want to talk to you.”

“And the way you get me to talk to you is by threatening to hurt a little girl?”

“Would you say yes otherwise?” He takes out a wad of cash, pulls off two twenties, and places them under the saltshaker. “Shall we?”

One walks in front of me, the other behind, and we leave the diner.

We don’t go far. Just down the block is a Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows, the engine running.

I get in the back seat, my escorts on either side of me.

The driver, wearing aviator sunglasses, remains staring forward, motionless.

The second he hears the doors close, he peels away from the curb.

The next second, my world goes black.