Page 98 of The Picasso Heist

WE DRIVE PAST the attendant, around a tight corner, and into a metal-cage car elevator that takes us up two levels; there, we park in a spot reserved for CIOCIOLA & CO.

Right next to the spot is a locked door with rusted hinges, a sign that warns about high voltage, and a keypad.

Skip puts in a code, and we enter a narrow hallway, at the end of which is another door and a keypad that requires a different code, or so Skip tells me.

Finally we’re inside.

“What is this place?” I ask.

“It’s a safe house. Well, more like a safe apartment,” says Skip.

The furnishings are sparse, just the essentials.

There’s somewhere to sit, somewhere to eat, somewhere to sleep.

A bathroom with a shower. Besides a lone flat-screen TV, the walls are bare, not a personal touch to be found anywhere, although nothing looks temporary either, the way it might if the place had been set up only for this assignment…

or whatever the FBI is calling it these days.

Originally, this was Operation Austin, named not for the city in Texas but rather for the golfer Mike Austin, who holds the world record for the longest drive off a tee in a professional tournament.

In other words, what we’ve been doing, Operation Austin, has been all about the long game.

Maybe they’re still calling it that, I don’t know.

Once the game started, any contact with the FBI stopped.

Not that there was too much before. There’s a fine line between trust and distrust, and I’ve been straddling it with the Bureau from day one.

In all fairness, though, and as Skip keeps reminding me, we approached them, not the other way around.

Now we’re waiting on them, stashed in a safe house. Scratch that, a safe apartment. “I’m hungry,” I announce.

“There’s some food in the fridge,” says Skip. “A couple of sand-wiches.”

“For real?”

“It’s not like we can order Uber Eats.”

“Good point.”

I’m halfway through a turkey and cheddar on wheat when Skip’s phone pings. He looks. It’s one of the agents texting. “They’re on their way,” says Skip.

Agents Sigma and Tau walk through the door about twenty minutes later, both looking exactly as they did the first and only time I met them a few months ago.

There really isn’t one word that captures the feeling they give you.

In fact, I don’t think any words apply. It’s more like an emotion.

When you look at them, you immediately feel the weight of everything they’ve encountered in all their years as field agents.

They wear it on their faces, their bodies.

They still joke and banter, but it’s done with an air of detachment.

Even when they’re right in front of you, they still seem far away.

“Tomorrow,” says Tau, grabbing a bottled water from the fridge and joining us at a table near the kitchen. “She would’ve done it today, but it’s Sunday. Less press coverage. Bad TV.”

She, of course, is Elise Joyce. And the it is her arresting Nikolov.

As soon as Joyce returned to the scene of the crime, as it were, and saw no evidence of anything she witnessed in that alley, the decision was made.

This is what Tau and Sigma tell us, courtesy of their guy at the organized crime task force.

Joyce is obliged to notify the OCTF in a situation like this.

“She has an unmarked staked out near the end of Nikolov’s driveway in case he tries to go anywhere before dawn,” says Tau.

“Is that when she wants to bring him in?” asks Skip. “Bright and early?”

“There’s something about arresting a mob boss in his pajamas,” says Sigma.

“She’s planning for six a.m.,” says Tau, “so we want to be in place at Nikolov’s home around five, which means we’ll be picking you up here at four.”

“There goes my beauty sleep,” says Sigma with the awareness of a guy who knows he’ll never be mistaken for a male model. He points at Skip and then me. “Although I am looking forward to seeing Joyce’s face when she walks in and sees the two of you back from the dead.”

“Who’s wearing the bodycam?” asks Skip.

“There’ll be two arresting officers in addition to us,” says Tau. “Both will have cameras.”

I can’t help thinking of how satisfying it will be when the footage goes viral.

Sure, for total clicks, it will never top Bergamo’s face-plant on the runway of his own fashion show, but the effect will be the same, and that’s all that matters.

Elise Joyce, who broke the law to put my father in jail, is finally going down.

I’m so wrapped up in picturing it in my head that I barely hear Sigma’s phone ring. He steps away from the table to answer it. I’m not paying attention. No one is.

“Fuck!” yells Sigma.

Now we’re all paying attention.