“This way,” he said to Sticks.
With how quickly this job had been thrown together, Benji half expected the info about the painting being in the formal dining room would be wrong. But sure enough, the Stone hung right where it was supposed to be.
Benji pulled it down, removed it from its frame, and leaned the frame against the wall. Sticks then placed one of his fire starters on the floor against the frame. Since there had been no time to prep any false evidence, the frame alone would have to sell the idea that the painting had burned.
By the time Sticks said “Ready,” Benji had the Stone wrapped in a fire blanket.
“Light it up,” Benji said.
The device burst into flames that quickly spread onto the wall.
“Let’s go,” Benji said.
He raced into the living room.
From across the room a deep voice yelled, “What the hell are you doing?”
A middle-aged man stared at Benji from the base of the stairs, one foot on the first riser, as if he had been about to go up, his voice identical to that of the homeowner Devin was supposed to have sent away.
“This house is on fire!” Benji shouted. “You need to get out!”
“What is that under your arm?”
“Sir! You shouldn’t be in here. It’s too dangerous.”
From above came the sound of running feet. A younger clone of the guy came halfway down the stairs, then stopped. Devin was right behind him.
“Dad?” the kid said. “This guy said the house is on fire.”
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Devin said.
The father’s gaze moved past Benji and Sticks to the dining room entrance. From his angle he could see the empty frame and the flames below it.
He looked back at Benji. “Is that my painting?”
“Let’s go!” Benji yelled and began running toward the open French doors.
“You’re the people the insurance people called me about today, aren’t you?”
Benji nearly tripped over his own feet. He looked back. Before he could ask what the guy meant, Sticks grabbed his shoulders and pushed him toward the French doors. “Run, dammit!”
They sprinted out the doors and across the backyard. They had just reached the hedges when a gunshot sounded behind them.
“Oh, shit!” Sticks exclaimed, then raced past Benji toward the fence around the community.
Benji glanced over his shoulder, looking for Devin, but didn’t see him. He told himself it had probably been easier for his friend to escape through the front door, not wanting to consider the alternative.
Sticks scaled the fence first and started to run again.
“Where the hell are you going?” Benji said. “You have to help me.”
There was a moment when it looked like Sticks was going to ignore him, but he came back and Benji passed the painting to him before scaling the fence himself. They hurried back to their car.
Devin wasn’t there yet. They climbed in, and Benji started the engine, but didn’t put it into gear.
“We gotta go!” Sticks said.
“We’re waiting for Devin.”
“Fuck Devin. If he got out, he would have radioed us by now.”
Benji had completely forgotten about the radio. He checked his mic. It was still on. “Devin, you there?”
Silence.
“Devin?”
Still nothing.
“Maybe his radio broke.”
“Right, sure.” Sticks clearly didn’t believe that. “Come on, Benji. Maybe he got caught, maybe he didn’t. Whatever happened, we’re dead meat if we don’t go.”
Benji scowled, then started the car, knowing Sticks was right.
Once they were safely on the freeway heading north, he called his brother.
“Did you get it?” Simon said, through the car’s speakers.
“We did, but—”
“Then why are you calling me? It’s... after midnight.”
“We might have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Something might have happened to Devin.”
“Might have?”
“Things went sideways before we left the house. The owner saw us. Sticks and I got away with the painting, but I don’t know what happened to Devin. I can’t reach him.”
“He’s probably just — how do you say it? — lying low.”
Memory of the gunshot echoed in Benji’s mind. “I’m not so sure.”
“You got the painting. That’s what matters.”
“Except the guy we took it from knows it didn’t burn.”
There was a long pause in which Benji feared his brother realized the severity of the situation. Instead of addressing it directly, though, Simon’s tone simply turned low and threatening. “I’ll be at the gallery tomorrow morning by nine-thirty. I expect you to be waiting for me.”
He hung up.
“Devin was right,” Sticks said. “Your brother is an asshole.”
Benji sighed. “He is.”
“How much longer are you going to work for him?”
“Until he doesn’t need us anymore.”
“Buddy, there is no ‘us’ here. After the drop-off, I’m done with him.”
“And then what? You’re not going to find a job that pays as good as this one.”
Sticks snorted. “I already have.”
Benji shot him a surprised look. “With who?”
“Why would I tell you?”
Neither said a word for the next few miles.
Then Benji said, “Any room on that new job for me?”
Chapter 37
The first thing Teddy did when he woke up Thursday morning was check the recording from the audio tap on Simon’s hotel room.
The device was voice activated and had only gone off once, at 12:13 a.m., when Simon received a phone call. Teddy could hear only his side of the conversation, but it was more than enough to confirm Simon was dirty.
“You got the painting,” Simon had said on the recording. “That’s what matters.”
Simon wasn’t tangentially connected to the thefts. He was directly involved. He also revealed that the painting was to be delivered to him at his gallery in just a few hours.
That sounded like an event Teddy should attend, too.
By 8:15, he was parked a few blocks from the gallery. Dressed as an elderly retiree, he shuffled to a spot where he had a view of the gallery’s parking lot.
Twenty minutes later, a dark gray BMW 530i pulled into the lot, carrying two passengers. The engine shut off, but the men didn’t get out.
Whether they were the art thieves or not, Teddy had a strong feeling they had an interest in the upcoming delivery.
He snapped several pictures.
At the same time Teddy was disguising himself for his stakeout, Simon woke to find a voice message awaiting him from Nico Savage.
“Hi, Simon. Mr. Petry has learned that you’ll be receiving the third painting this morning. We want to be there when that happens, so expect us at the gallery at nine.”
Simon stared at his phone.
Only five people knew about last night’s job: himself, Phillip, Benji, Devin, and Sticks. And of that group, only Simon and his brother knew about the delivery time.
Wait, he thought.
Sticks had been in the car with Benji, so he would have heard everything. He had to be the one who’d told Petry.
The son-of-a-bitch pyro needed to be dealt with, but after Simon took care of the more immediate problem of Petry.
Simon had promised him the paintings tomorrow, not today, so the other two were with Rudy Morgan. Simon had planned on personally taking the third one to the forger this morning.
While he could swing by and pick up the originals on his way to the gallery, he was loath to turn them over to Petry.