Gus set it down onto the open newspaper. He heard die hiss as Lucien sucked in his breath.
'Mon dieu, mon dieu.' The Frenchman dragged his eyes up to Gus's and all at once die sweat was popping across his narrow forehead. 'Jesus, Gus.'
Well, he had that right.
He looked down again and, following his example, Gus looked and saw that the newspaper was open at a photo spread of the museum.
'This is from the ...'
'Yeah,' Gus smirked. 'It's something, isn't it? One of a kind.'
Lucien's mouth was twitching. 'Non mats, il est completement tare, ce mec. Come on, Gus, I can't touch thus.'
It wasn't as if Gus wanted Lucien to touch it, he just needed him to sell it. And he couldn't exactly wait for a bidding war either. For the past six months, Gus had had a seriously bad run at the track.
He had been in the hole before, but never like this, and he had never before been in the hole to the people who were now holding his markers. Throughout pretty much all of his life, since the day he grew taller and heavier than his old man and had beaten die crap out of the drunken bully, people had been afraid of Gus. But right now, for die first time since he was fourteen years old, he knew what it meant to be afraid. The men who held die markers for his gambling debts were in a different league from anyone else he had ever known. They would kill him as readily and as easily as he would step on a roach.
Ironically, the track had also provided him with a way out. It was how he'd met die guy who got him in on the museum job. And now here he was, even though he'd been given clear instructions not to attempt to sell any of his hoard for at least six months.
The hell with that. He needed money and he needed it now.
'Look, don't worry about where it's from, all right,' Gus ordered Lucien. 'You just work out where it's going and for how much.'
Lucien looked like he was about to have a seizure. 'Non mats . . . listen to me, Gueusse, this is not possible. It's not possible at all. It's too hot to touch right now, it would be crazy to—'
Gus seized Lucien around the throat and dragged him halfway across the table, which rocked precariously. He thrust his face within an inch of Lucien's. 'I don't care if it's thermo-fucking-nuclear,' he hissed. 'People collect this shit and you know where to find them.'
'It's too soon,' Lucien's voice squeaked from the pressure around his throat.
Gus let go and the Frenchman dropped back into his seat. 'Don't talk to me like I'm some kind of retard,' he barked. 'It's always gonna be too soon for this shit, there's never gonna be a right time.
So it might as well be now. Besides, you know there's people who'll buy this because of what it is and where it came from. Sick fucks who'll pay a small fortune to be able to jerk off at the idea of having it locked up in their safe. All you have to do is find me one of them and find him fast. And don't even think of trying to dick me on the price. You get ten percent, and ten percent of priceless is nothing to piss on, is it?'
Lucien swallowed, rubbing his neck, then pulled out a taupe silk handkerchief and wiped his face.
His eyes darted around the room nervously, Ms mind clearly taking another tack now. He looked up at Gus and said, 'Twenty.'
Gus looked at him, bemused. 'Lucien,'—he always said it like 'loo-shin' just to annoy him
—'you're not growing balls on me all of a sudden now, are you?'
'I am serious. For something like this, it has to be twenty percent. Au moins. I will be taking a big risk on this.'
Gus reached out again but this time Lucien was too fast, sliding his chair back so that his neck was out of reach. Instead, Gus calmly took out the Beretta and moved closer, jamming it into Lucien's crotch. 'I don't know what you've been snorting, but I'm not really in a negotiating mood here, princess. I've made you a generous offer and all you do is try and take advantage of the situation.
I'm disappointed, man.'
'No, look, Gus . . .'
Gus raised his hand and shrugged. 'I don't know if you caught the best part on TV that night.
Outside. With the guard. It was something.
And I've still got the blade, you know, and, let me tell ya, I'm kinda getting into that whole Conan shit, you know what I'm saying?'
For a moment, while he let Lucien sweat it, Gus was thinking hard. He knew that, if he had all the time in the world, Lucien's fear of him would work in his favor. But he didn't have all the time in the world. The cross was worth a small fortune, maybe even seven figures, but right now he would take what he could get and be happy about it. The up-front cash he had made by signing on for the museum raid had bought him time; now he needed to get those leeches off his back.
'I'll tell you what,' he told Lucien. 'Make this worth my while, and I'll go to fifteen.'
He saw a flicker in Lucien's weasel eyes. He was hooked.
Lucien opened a drawer and pulled out a small digital camera. He looked up at Gus.
'I need to—'
Gus nodded. 'Knock yourself out.'
Lucien took a couple of pictures of the cross, clearly doing a mental run through his client list already.
'I'll make some calls,' Lucien said. 'Give me a few days.'
No good. Gus needed die money and the freedom it would give him. He also needed to get out of town for a while until the dust settled around the museum job. All of these things he needed now.
'Uh-uh. It's got to be quick. A couple of days, max.'
Once again, he could see something working away behind Lucien's eyes. Probably trying to figure how he could work a deal with a buyer, a fat fee for promising to barter the seller down, even though the seller had already agreed. The slimy little shit. Gus decided that a few months from now, when the time was right, he would really enjoy paying Lucien another visit.
'Come back at six, tomorrow,' Lucien said. 'No promises, but I'll do my best.'
'I know you will.' Gus picked up the cross, grabbed a cleaning rag that was lying on Lucien's desk, and wrapped it around the jeweled relic before tucking it into one of the inside pockets of his coat.
He then put the gun into another. 'Tomorrow,' he said to Lucien, and grinned hu-morlessly before he went out into the street.
Lucien was still shaking as he watched the big man walk all die way to the corner and disappear from sight.
Chapter 10
'You know, I could've done without this right now,' Jansson growled as Reilly dropped into a chair across from his boss. Already seated at the table in the assistant director in charge's office at Federal Plaza were Aparo and Amelia Gaines as well as Roger Blackburn, who ran the violent crimes/major offenders task force, and two of Blackburn's assistant special agents in charge.
The complex of four government buildings in lower Manhattan was just a few blocks away from Ground Zero. It housed twenty-five thousand government employees, and was also home to the New York field office of the FBI. Sitting there, Reilly was relieved to be away from the incessant noise in the main work area. In fact, the comparative tranquillity of his boss's private office was just about the only thing about Jansson's job that was even remotely tempting.
As ADIC of the New York field office, Jansson had been shouldering a huge burden over the last few years. All five areas of major concern to the Bureau—drugs and organized crime, violent crime and major offenders, financial crime, foreign counterintelligence, and, the latest black sheep of that odious herd, domestic terrorism— were firing on all cylinders. Jansson certainly seemed built for the task: the man had the imposing bulk of the former football player he was; although beneath his gray hair, his solid face had a detached, distant expression. This didn't throw the people working under him for long, as they quickly learned that one thing, beyond the proverbial death and taxes, was certain: if Jansson was on your side, you could count on him to bulldoze anything that came in your
