Page 49 of Caper Crush
“Because we grew up together. I’m here for you.”
That’s what Edmund always says, but once he drove us to a graduation party in Long Island and then left me there. He told Annabelle I’d gone with Rex, and they left together. Alone time with Annabelle trumped bringing me home.
“How do you know Vinnie so well?”
“I don’t know him that well,” Edmund says. “We have similar taste in art. It seems like we can be useful to each other.”
How useful?Vinnie’s taste in art is far broader—the Kimimoto being one prime example of abstract art that he likes.
We exit the subway and walk down the wide, deserted street. A pair of sneakers hangs from a lamppost. No trees break the concrete sidewalks. A sign for a metalworking shop hangs crookedly, a notice of eviction plastered on the shopfront’s grate. An empty, plastic bag billows down the street.
“We shouldn’t have met here,” I say. We pass a butcher shop, the hooks for the meat slabs hanging empty, the smell of dried blood lingering. “We should have met in Manhattan on a very crowded street in a packed diner.”
“They would only meet here,” he says. “I didn’t particularly want to come to Brooklyn.” Edmund doesn’t usually stray far from his Upper East Side neighborhood, similar to those New Yorkers who never go north of Fourteenth Street.
We pass by a stone-making place that looks like a quarry—and a good place to be buried.
Edmund has no muscle to him. He’s skinny. He didn’t even do sports in high school.
I know self-defense, but I can’t afford to get hurt. I need to be able to waitress and perform if no money is coming in from selling paintings.
This might have been a mistake.
I did check the meeting place on Google Maps. It’s a coffee shop, and the back door leads out to a parking lot. What if we are hustled out the back door into a car? My imagination is in overdrive. Tessa is tracking me on her phone, unless she’s called into a meeting.
My phone rings. It’s William. I silence my phone.
“How will we know who we’re meeting?” I ask.
“He’ll have a book,” he says.
“Not a rose?” I ask.
“It’s good to know you haven’t lost your sense of humor yet.” Edmund pushes open the glass door to the small, no-frills restaurant. A bell jingles. A waitress by the cash register on the back counter gestures to find a table and then returns to checking her phone. A huge, muscular man with a mustache commands the Formica table in the corner, his back to the wall. He holds a book as if reading it. The restaurant is otherwise empty.
Edmund retrieves his book from his briefcase. What is with this old-school code? I would have thought they’d call each other. I’m in a bad B-movie. And you know what happens to the stupid girl in those movies—the one who decides to wander around at night in her lingerie.
The man nods.
We approach. As I pull out my chair, it makes a raspy sound against the linoleum-tiled floor. I flinch.
“You said you had information about the Kimimoto?” Edmund asks.
“I do,” the guy replies in a deep, gravelly voice with a New York accent. “First the money.”
“First we need to know if the information is actually worth the money,” Edmund says.
Oh, go Edmund.I had not expected him to be good at this.
The two men take each other’s measure like bulls preparing for a fight. I edge my chair back so that I’ll be out of the way.
The man says, “There’s a Staten Island art ring. They steal art and sell it in Europe, in countries where provenance matters less. They’ve put out the word that the Kimimoto is for sale.”
I tilt my head. He knows something about how art theft works.
“How can we contact them?” Edmund asks.
“What aboutPlaying Around?” I ask.
