Need You Now

by James Grippando

  “You need it, Lilly.”

  “No, I don’t need anything from you. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t even drink a cup of tea without scalding my mouth. Just leave me alone!”

  “Lilly, you are in serious trouble. You helped Gerry Collins funnel two billion dollars to Abe Cushman, and from the get-go, Treasury refused to believe that you were unaware of the scam when you did it. They still don’t believe you’re innocent.”

  “Oh, and I suppose you have some kind of direct pipeline to the Treasury Department, is that it?”

  “Maybe I do.”

  The way he said it, so matter of fact, gave her pause.

  “It’s all fitting together,” he said. “Patrick Lloyd is Tony Mandretti’s son. Mandretti killed Gerry Collins. We need to show Treasury that the real crook here isn’t you. It’s Patrick. If he’s dealing with Robledo on his own, that’s the missing link we need.”

  “What do you mean we ? And anyway, all they had was a conversation. That doesn’t mean there’s a link.”

  “The link was there before you even met Patrick.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “You’re in denial, sweetheart.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “If there was no link between your boyfriend and Manu Robledo, why did he suddenly drop everything in New York and go to Singapore?”

  “Singapore is a BOS stronghold in Asia.”

  “Really? And why did he immediately take to you like a fly to honey?”

  “Patrick and I… we hit it off.”

  “Come on, Lilly. You’re a beautiful woman, but let’s get real. He lied to you two days ago when he pretended not to know that Tony Martin was really Tony Mandretti. If Patrick didn’t know Robledo before going to Singapore, you can bet his father did. How else could Patrick have tracked Robledo down at his church and met with him before you did? We can’t let him get away with this.”

  The cold wind chilled her-or maybe it was the sickening realization of where his plan was headed. “Oh, my God. It’s not the mob who is chasing Patrick.”

  “Lilly, listen to me.”

  “It’s you . You’re keeping Patrick around long enough to take the blame for everything.”

  “He deserves the blame.”

  “I won’t do this to Patrick.”

  “He would do it to you.”

  “Patrick loves me.”

  “Yes, so much that he left you all alone in his apartment two hours after your reunion.”

  “He had to catch a flight. It was a business trip.”

  “Another lie. He went to see Tony Mandretti in prison.”

  Lilly tightened her grip on the phone. “I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t know a thing about him, Lilly! If it wasn’t for me, you’d still think his name was Patrick Lloyd. I told you he’s Tony Mandretti’s son. That’s the truth. The mob is after him and his father, and it was the mob who put Patrick in the hospital. That’s why I told you to stay away from him, but of course you didn’t listen. That scheme you cooked up to sneak him out of the hospital was idiotic!”

  “What did you expect me to do, just leave him there, a sitting duck, waiting for the Santucci family to come and finish the job?”

  “I expected you to stay away from him! Do only what I tell you to do, Lilly!”

  “I don’t believe you anymore. You put him in the hospital. Not the mob. I’m going to the police.”

  “And tell them what? You didn’t know Abe Cushman was a fraud? You didn’t know Gerry Collins was a thief? You had no idea Patrick Lloyd was Tony Mandretti’s son? Face it, Lilly. Patrick has caused you enough problems. Treasury has already decided that the best lead on the Cushman money is the Lilly Scanlon/BOS connection. Robledo shoved the memo in your face.”

  Lilly stopped so short at the curb that she nearly slipped on the ice. “How do you know about that?”

  “I know everything, Lilly.”

  It seemed as though he did. She was suffocating with fear all over again. “I don’t understand why they’re targeting me .”

  “You’ve been played,” he said, his tone softening. “First by Gerry Collins, then, even worse, by Patrick Lloyd.”

  She had a green light to cross Broadway, but she didn’t move. “No one could be worse than Gerry Collins.”

  “At least Collins was genuinely interested in you before he drew you into Cushman’s scheme. Patrick played you from beginning to end, on every level. Do you remember when you were on Changi Beach in Singapore and that seagull came out of nowhere and dive-bombed right on top of his head?”

  Chills cut through her. “You can’t possibly know about that.”

  “I saw it happen.”

  “You were watching us on the beach? That’s beyond creepy.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not some love-sick puppy who’s been following you around for six months. I was only doing my job.”

  “Your job? Who are you?”

  “Never mind that. Get back to my point about Patrick and his lies: it was sunscreen.”

  “What?”

  “When you were looking up at the birds in the sky, your poor, heartbroken boyfriend slapped himself on top of the head with a glob of sunscreen. You had finally found the courage to dump him, and he wanted to make you feel really bad about it.”

  A passing bus forced Lilly to jump back onto the sidewalk. The snow was ten minutes old and already turning to brown slush. “That can’t be true,” she said.

  “Trust me. The only shit on that beach was Patrick’s BS. There’s so much more I could tell you.”

  It was tempting to listen, but she reminded herself that she was dealing with a sick son of a bitch. “Stop. I don’t want to hear another thing.”

  “Okay. That’s enough for now, love.”

  “Stop talking to me like that!”

  “You’re confused. I understand. But admit it. Deep inside, you don’t really think I’m lying, do you?”

  “I-I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “Believe this: I’m here to lead you out of this mess. You should live.”

  He was making her skin crawl, but she resisted the urge to hang up. “Should Patrick?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Your list of people who should live,” she asked, “does that include Patrick?”

  There was silence, but Lilly sensed that he was still there. Finally, he answered: “That’s entirely up to us, Lilly.”

  “What do you mean us ?”

  The line went silent, and he was gone.

  21

  L ove was in the air. The little snow monkey was making eyes at the big, strong male. Nothing like fresh snow around the steamy cove to simulate the après-ski, in-the-hot-tub experience. All they needed was a bucket of ice, a bottle of chardonnay, and michael bublé on the loudspeaker.

  “That’s Boo-Boo,” Connie told me. “The big guy is Yogi.”

  “Cute, like the cartoon,” I said. “But I always thought the animated Boo-Boo was a boy.”

  “So is this Boo-Boo.”

  I took a closer look. If snow monkeys had a pop culture, Boo-Boo would be Sir Elton John. “Ah, now I get it.”

  The Japanese macaque (aka snow monkey) exhibit was Connie’s primary responsibility at the zoo, and it was one of my favorites, especially in winter. I could have watched them all afternoon, but I actually did have a day job. I’d been doing my best by e-mail for the past two days, but sooner rather than later I needed to figure out if, when, and how I would return to my office at BOS. But not before I gathered some intelligence on Manu Robledo.

  “Did you find anything?” I asked.

  Connie leaned against the exhibit rail with arms folded, her back to the snow monkeys. The tribe had no interest in us, their attention focused on a pair of black-neck swans that had apparently asserted squatters’ rights on monkey island.

  “I’m very nervous about this,” said Connie.

  “Is Robledo that scary?�
�

  “Well, possibly. But I mean, I’m uncomfortable about using Tom to check up on people like this.”

  Tom was her fiancé. He was a trained but unpaid volunteer in the Auxiliary Police Unit at the Central Park Precinct, which meant that he wore the familiar blue uniform and seven-point shield, carried a standard-issue radio that linked him to regular NYPD officers, and patrolled Central Park as the civic-minded “eyes and ears” of the sworn members of the service. It did not mean that he had access to law enforcement databases to run background checks-unless he pulled strings and called in favors.

  “I’m reasonably confident that Tom isn’t the first person to run a name through the computer for a friend.”

  “But…” she said, her expression pained, “he’s a scoutmaster.”

  So was Connie. They’d met while leading a group of aspiring Eagle Scouts on a ten-day hike through New Mexico. Rumor had it that Connie had flung Tom over her back and carried him the last eight miles. I wasn’t even aware that women were allowed to serve as scoutmasters, but Connie was totally committed. It seemed like the theater of the absurd: my life had been threatened, and it was still possible that my girlfriend had perpetrated a $2 billion fraud-but there I was before God and the gay snow monkeys, trying to console my sister about a possible violation of the Boy Scout pledge. A witness protection family was as dysfunctional as the next, I supposed.

  “Connie, really. Just this once, it’s okay.”

  “What’s done is done, I guess.”

  “Tell me what you got.”

  She took a breath, then let it go. “Manu Caesar Robledo. Born in Argentina. Forty-one years old, never been married. Travels between Miami and South America dozens of times a year. Owns a condominium on Brickell Avenue in Miami.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “Gerry Collins’ office was in the Financial District on Brickell.”

  “You’re thinking maybe Collins handled the finances of his so-called church?”

  “Or his own finances. His condo on Brickell has to be pricey. That’s where you’ll find all those glamorous high-rises on the bay in the opening credits for CSI: Miami .”

  “He wasn’t born rich, I can tell you that,” said Connie. “He’s from a little town called Puerto Iguazú. That’s in the Tri-Border area where Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil meet.”

  “That may explain the bizarre accent he was able to patch together when I was at his church.”

  “Could be. It’s an interesting part of the world.”

  “You know it?”

  “The zoo has a couple of endangered armadillos from that region. Ciudad del Este in Paraguay is right in that same neck of the woods. My supervisor went there on research three years ago. Said she felt safer in the jungle with the pumas and jaguars. It can be pretty lawless.”

  “What about our friend Robledo-any problems with the law?”

  “Nothing in this country or as an adult. He did get into some kind of trouble as a juvenile in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s, but Tom says he couldn’t tell anything about it from the computer entry.”

  “Could be worth exploring.”

  She looked like a nervous scout again. “We agreed that I would ask Tom this favor just once .”

  “I meant I would explore it,” I said, but my words were drowned out by a piercing scream. My gaze shifted to the snow monkeys, where Boo-Boo was standing atop a boulder and throwing a hissy fit at Yogi.

  “You tell him, Boo-Boo,” said Connie. We shared a laugh, but my sister was suddenly serious. My back was to the red panda exhibit, and Connie was gazing past me in that direction. “Don’t turn around,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “About a hundred feet behind you, standing beside a tree at about two o’clock from your left shoulder, there’s a man with a telephoto lens. At first I thought he was photographing the snow monkeys. But now it looks like he’s taking pictures of you and me.”

  I immediately thought back to Puffy’s Tavern and the guy wearing the rapper’s hat who had come and gone without drinking his beer-who looked just like the guy who had photographed Lilly and me in the Singapore Mall, and who’d shown up again outside my apartment.

  I couldn’t help turning my head, and Connie grabbed me.

  “I told you not to look!” she said, but there was no stopping me. I wheeled around completely, and like a laser my gaze locked onto the photographer by the tree. The lighting was flat on such a gray afternoon, and he was wearing a heavy winter coat, but his reaction alone confirmed it.

  “It’s him,” I said.

  “Who?” asked Connie, but I was off like a track star.

  “Patrick!”

  I was at full speed, my legs churning, defying the ice and snow beneath my feet. The man with the camera ran for the exit, jumped the turnstile, and hoofed it up the hill toward East Drive. I jumped the same turnstile, slipped on a patch of ice, and skidded on my knees across the salted pavers. It hurt like hell, and my pants were torn. Worse, I was down long enough for the guy to put another twenty yards between us.

  It occurred to me that he might have a gun, that I should give Connie a shout to call for security or dial 911. But he’d committed no crime, and I dismissed the thought. It was still daylight, and I had him in my sight. His lead was less than fifty yards. With everything I had been through in the past forty-eight hours, I could have closed the gap on Usain Bolt-even with my knees bloodied.

  I pushed myself up from the cold walkway and was off like a rocket. The fool was running away from Fifth Avenue, the taxis, the subway, and other means of escape. He was trying to lose me in the park. This time, he was not going to get away. This time, he was mine.

  “Patrick, stop!”

  Connie was trailing far behind, but I could hear the concern in her voice. Strangely, it only propelled me. I was inside of twenty yards, and closing, as he darted in front of a horse-drawn carriage on scenic East Drive. The driver cursed and reined in his big draft horse, then cursed even louder at me as I, in hot pursuit, cut off the horse a second time. My target was slowing down, and adrenaline was pushing me even faster. He followed the sidewalk down a ramp and into a pedestrian tunnel. Wollman Rink was directly ahead, and I couldn’t let him get all the way there and disappear into a crowd. I went the other way, up and over the hill, and was dead even with him when he came out the other end of the tunnel. He glanced back into the tunnel and probably thought he had lost me as I dived like a hawk from the hill above him. He went down hard, breaking my fall like a human mattress beneath me. He writhed and squirmed, but he was exhausted from the run, and I was easily the bigger dog in the struggle. My knee was throbbing from the tumble over the turnstile at the zoo, but I drilled it into the small of his back anyway. He let out a miserable groan as I pinned his face to the frozen ground.

  “Who are you?” I shouted.

  He didn’t answer, but I wasn’t feeling much from him in the way of resistance.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, harsher.

  His resistance weakened even further. He was completely spent from the chase.

  “Don’t hurt me!” he said, pleading.

  “Tell me who you are!”

  He started to cry-upper lip quivering, huge tears streaming down his cheeks. I had yet to slug him, and he was turning into gelatin. This was bordering on pathetic.

  “Please, please, don’t hit me.”

  It felt like I was beating up one of Connie’s Cub Scouts. “Start talking and no one is going to get hurt,” I said.

  He drew a breath, then another. The crying was under control, but his body continued to tremble.

  “Talk!” I said.

  “My name is Evan,” he said with a sniffle, “and I can help you, Mr. Lloyd.”

  22

  T he black limousine passed a second time. Or was it a different one? Lilly wasn’t sure. They all looked alike. On any given workday, thousands of limos must have cruised down broadway in the financial district. That call from
her source was making her paranoid. Or maybe she was just more alert. No, this was definitely paranoia.

  Damn you, Patrick.

  She shook off that thought. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Not everything her source had told her could be true. Not all the blame could be laid on Patrick Lloyd. Even though his name was really Peter Mandretti. And his father was in jail for murdering Gerry Collins. And he went to see Manu Robledo without any help from her.

  “You’ve been played , ” her source had told her. “First by Gerry Collins, then, even worse, by Patrick Lloyd.”

  A pigeon waddled past her on the sidewalk. Lilly thought of its cousin in Singapore-the seagull that had swooped down from the sky and dropped a direct hit on Patrick’s head. Allegedly swooped down. The timing of it-right in the middle of her breakup speech-had been rather unbelievable. Sunscreen. What kind of jerk would slap himself on the head with fake bird shit to make it even harder for his girlfriend to dump him?

  “Patrick played you from beginning to end ,” he’d told her, “ on every level.”

  Loser. That’s what you are, Patrick: a lying loser.

  A black limo with dark-tinted windows passed. Lilly stopped as it turned at the next block. Very similar to the last one that had turned off Broadway at the same cross street. It was hard to say if it was the same one she had seen before, but the mere possibility was making her so nervous that it felt like she had broken glass in her stomach.

  This is all your fault, Patrick, Peter-whatever your name is.

  She jaywalked across Broadway, avoided the piles of slush at the curb, and cut down the narrow side street at St. Paul’s Chapel. Changing course made for a little longer walk, but she could get the subway at the World Trade Center. She thought about grabbing one of the cabs outside the Hilton, but her cash was running low, and the station was only two minutes away. She stopped at the crosswalk for the red light, glancing again at the chapel. She hadn’t attended services in years, but she was suddenly back in elementary school and reciting the Golden Rule, guilting herself into being the bigger person and doing the right thing.

  You have to call Patrick.