Let me tell you how I met Gaga.

My sister had just been murdered. She was a hooker (my sister, not Gaga) and her body was found with her throat slashed and her tongue cut out.

Serial killer.

Or so the cops said.

The guy had been killing prostitutes, and my sister, Tanya, was the fourth one, far as they knew (a lot more than that were missing). Cutting out tongues was his signature, something all serial killers have, like an artist signing his paintings - he wants credit for what he did.

Tanya had just turned twenty-two, five years older than me. She'd pretty much raised me after our mother passed from diabetes, so you can see I had a very personal interest in finding the scum who did her.

Before we go further, to avoid confusion, a couple quick details: My official name is Anton Rausch, but mostly I go by Toko, the tag Tanya made up for me when I was first into graffiti (like I said, all artists want credit). The Anton came from my father, who wasn't actually married to my mother, and who split one day when I was six, leaving the three of us flat (Rausch was my mother's last name).

When I'm not in school, where I haven't been attending too often lately, I'm a pickpocket and do break-ins, along with some general hustling. Which means I can be self-sufficient, which is what I was going to have to be to find the creep who was doing the slashings.

Because I couldn't go to the cops.

No way.

Cops, it turned out, besides having me on their radar for some gang-related issues, were the last ones I should be going to, at least here in New York.

# # #

As mentioned, I'm pretty good at survival, but now I needed to up the cash flow.

I needed a big score.

I was thinking about that while the old Cuban guy squirted mustard on my hot dog at the Sabrett cart I liked to stop at just off Times Square. He handed me the frank and I paid him his buck, took a bite and started walking west on Forty-Fourth. Was passing by the St. James Theater when my eye caught what I could tell was a couple from out of town, standing in line to buy tickets for the matinee. Something about the husband with his new Calvins and loud laugh said big-wallet. Not the kind of score to solve all my problems, but maybe worth a grab-and-run. I got in line a couple places back, chewed my frank and watched for an opportunity.

I was swallowing my last bite, wiping some mustard off my mouth, when a large hand clamped down on my shoulder.

"Since when you actually pay to see a show?"

Shit. Bunko.

I turned around, all innocence. "I'm seeing if they got house seats."

But it wasn't bunko.

"Yeah, right," said Curly Sasso. He turned me around by my shoulder and headed me west again. "Let's walk."

Halfway down the block, after we'd gotten ourselves clear of the crowd, he said, "You ever answer your cell?"

"I keep it on vibrate. Sometimes I don't feel it."

He shook his head. "Christ."

Big Curly Sasso is what the underground art and jewelry trade calls a facilitator. He's the middle man between someone who wants a particular painting or diamond-studded whatever, which most times is in somebody's mansion or yacht, and the person who can get it for them, most times by illegal means. The reason he's called Big Curly is that he weighs about three-hundred pounds and there isn't a single hair on his huge head.

What he wanted with me I hadn't the slightest, but I'd done small chores for him in the past, so maybe there was a buck or two in it.

By the time we got our burgers at the Shake Shack on Eighth (I was still hungry and Curly was paying), and took them around the corner to sit in the sun on a brownstone stoop next to a church (Curly wanted privacy), my curiosity was beginning to kick in.

"You know this artist Warhol?" Curly said, already with a mouthful of burger.

"He work the subways?"

"What?"

"Of course I know."

Andy Warhol had pretty much invented pop art. He did everything from sculptures of tomato soup cans to hip portraits in primary colors of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and anybody famous in the sixties and seventies, including himself. He was a master at getting buzz in the press and today just about anything he'd turned out is worth a fortune.

"Good," Curly said with his mouth full. "And don't be a wiseass."

"I also know he's dead." Warhol died from some botched surgery back in the eighties.

"Which makes what he left behind worth all the more."

"So?"

"So I'm thinking about giving you a shot at upping your status." He gave me a sideways look while he chewed. Waited for a pair of nuns to walk by with some kids from the church school. "By the way," he said after they passed, "I was sorry to hear about your sister."

So there it was. His version of giving something back. And with Warhol involved, maybe something more than chump change.

Tanya had gotten him out of a jam once when she set up a guy who was trying to shake Curly down. I wasn't sure of the details, but I knew that photographs taken at a gay sauna were involved, pictures that the guy wouldn't have wanted sent to his wife.

"My client's a Warhol junkie, so to speak," Curly said, already finished with most of his burger. "He wants this particular piece to round out his collection of the guy's self-portraits. Last one sold at auction for thirty-eight mil." Curly had bought a backup burger, so for the moment mine was safe. "I figured you being a graffiti connoisseur, you'd be a good match for the job." He'd known me since my early days, knew I had a decent eye.

"Where's the piece?" I asked.

"Central Park West, building called the San Cristo, you probably know it, corner Seventy-Fifth. Guy who owns the piece is on vacation with his family in Boca. The apartment is empty, huge place, the painting's in the sitting room just off the entrance hall. You go in through the basement parking garage and up the service elevator."

"What about locks?"

"Here." He popped the rest of the burger into his mouth and pulled out his wallet. Took out a key card and handed it to me. "That's to the service elevator door that lets out into the pantry. Fifteenth floor. The only apartment on it." He read my expression as I took the card. "One of the maids was an illegal, needed some cash to take back home, which I obliged. The butler and his wife went with the family."

We discussed some more details, like my fee, which was to be twenty-percent of whatever Curley negotiated for himself. We agreed no time like the present and that I'd make the heist that night.

We shook hands and off I went to get myself ready, heading for my room in the basement of the Hells Kitchen whorehouse where my sister had started her career.

# # #

The woman with the agitated expression was in bed looking up at the knife poised in the dark above her. An eerie light glinted off the blade, just enough for her to know it was there and that the guy holding it meant business. In a blur the blade came plunging down, driving deep and ripping across her throat, slashing it wide open.

The guy drove his other hand into the gaping gash, felt around and grabbed her voice box. Twisted it and tore it out in a shower of blood.

Flung it off into the dark and reached for her mouth.

Pried it open and went in with the knife.

Sliced off her tongue.

Jesus.

And she had a concert to give tomorrow night.

She forced her eyes open and sat up in the strange bed, touched her throat and sank back against the pillows. Shook her head and after a couple of breaths asked herself, not for the first time, What kind of person has dreams like that?

She lay there uneasily in the dim room, which was part of the guest suite in her lawyer's apartment. He'd taken his family to their place in Florida, said she could use his apartment while her own place down the street on Central Park South was being redone. It would get her away from the paint smells and drop cloths and all the construction crap lying around. Besides, they needed someone here to feed the cat. There was a piano in the living room she could rehearse on or compose at. Or she could just sit there and drink her coffee and let the view of Central Park do its inspiration thing.

Maybe she should go play something now, something smooth to relax herself. It'd be a while before she could get back to sleep. If she got there at all.

She swung her bare legs out from under the covers, started to stand up - and froze.

Someone was out there. At the piano. She'd heard the clink of a note.

Was it maybe the cat jumping up on the keys? Or a sound coming up from the street? Or maybe she was still in the dream.

But it wasn't the cat. Or a street sound or dream.

It was yours truly.

I'd gotten into the place, no problem, just like Curly said - in through the garage when the parking attendant went to take a piss. Then up the service elevator to fifteen and into the pantry using the key card. And now I was in the living room, next to a Steinway grand. Probably best not to tap anymore keys, no telling where the sound might carry to.

I'd Googled the floor plan from the real estate company that sold the place to the lawyer (can you believe that stuff is public?), so I had a good idea where the sitting room would be that had the Warhol in it. I used my phone light to find my way around the furniture and out into the entrance hall, stepped across to the sitting room, went in and swept the light around on what I could see was some pricey artwork - a few old pieces but most of it modern, including a Picasso I thought I recognized.

I smiled when I came to the Warhol self-portrait. And not just because it meant a big payday.

It was a yellow-on-black silkscreen of the artist with wild flyaway hair, one of a series he'd done in different color combinations not too long before he died. There was something about the piece that made me just stand there and stare at it. Made me appreciate what a creator and self-promoter the guy was. I thought about something he said that I saw on a museum website I pulled up before I came over here: "It's not what you are that counts, it's what they think you are."

Like I said, I couldn't take my eyes off it. I was tempted to go over and turn on the room lights so I could see it better.

But suddenly they came on without my moving, and a voice spoke up.

"Who the hell are you?"

I spun around in the lit room and saw a woman standing there with sexy bare legs coming out of an oversize Jets T-shirt. She was pointing a large automatic pistol at me.

Bad sign.

And then I recognized the face behind the gun. A face I'd seen on music videos my sister and the girls in the house had played over and over. One that I saw at a live concert I'd actually paid cash to go see.

Lady Gaga.

(To be continued...)