Need You Now

by James Grippando

Evan sighed and said, “All right. The level of encryption I’m seeing is more like something you would expect in a matter of national security.”

  “In Lilly’s files?”

  He paused, as if all too aware that he might sound ridiculous. “Yeah,” he said, “in your girlfriend’s files. There, I said it. You can start laughing now.”

  My sister and I exchanged glances. Then my gaze returned to Evan, his face aglow from a computer screen filled with mathematical equations.

  “Nobody’s laughing,” I said.

  I checked the time. It was past midnight. I was about to suggest we break for the night when Connie shoved her smartphone in my face.

  “Look at this!” she said.

  The lead story for the online version of the Daily News included a photograph of a woman who had been strangled and found dead in her apartment. A sick feeling came over me as I recognized both her face and the uniform.

  “That’s the park ranger who found me in Battery Park,” I said.

  The story reported “no known motive,” and I couldn’t think of one. But I wasn’t foolish enough to think that her slaying and my attack, separated by a matter of hours, were disconnected. It wasn’t easy coming to terms with the fact that the ranger would probably still be alive but for the misfortune of having found me in the park. The Daily News also said that police were urging anyone with information to come forward. I realized that I would have to follow up with Agent Henning and comb over the details of my own attack-though I had no doubt that the FBI had already connected the dots, since Andie had shown up at our last meeting with a copy of the Parks police report.

  I walked a complete circle in the apartment and took another start-to-finish look at Evan’s 360-flowchart of the Cushman fraud. I wondered where a photograph of the park ranger’s killer might fit in. I wondered who he was. And I wondered if, in some perverse way, he was enjoying the destruction of so many lives.

  “Nope,” I said, revisiting Evan’s fear that I might think he was nuts, “no one is laughing. At least not in this room.”

  31

  C lose to midnight, the BOS limo dropped Joe Barber at his estate in Greenwich. To him, the fresh blanket of snow on the wooded acre made his house atop the hill look like a Norman Rockwell painting, though he had to concede that there was little nostalgia in a twelve-thousand-square-foot mansion with seven bedrooms, twelve bathrooms, two swimming pools, a clay tennis court, and a bowling alley built on a special “floating” foundation to keep the subterranean vibrations from disturbing the priceless bounty of the wine cellar. His wife was asleep in bed when he got home. Miraculously, she wasn’t on the treadmill. Metaphorically speaking, though, he sure was.

  A management position with a troubled Swiss bank was not the capstone career move that Barber had hoped for after his tenure at Treasury as deputy secretary. BOS had barely survived the subprime crisis, its reputation forever tarnished. Its standing as the premier bank in Switzerland was in question, and in America, it was undeniably second tier. As his wife had so often reminded him, friends at firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley had offered Barber dazzling compensation packages. When he told them he was joining BOS, they had been shocked. When the journal reported that he was going there for less money, they feared that he had lost his mind. No one knew the real reason for his decision. No one could know that he was just following orders.

  Most important, no one could ever know who was telling him what to do.

  “Did you give them the data, Joe baby?”

  Barber wondered why the question even needed to be asked, and he was getting fed up with the condescending tone and insulting nicknames like “Joe baby.”

  “Exactly the way you told me,” said Barber.

  They were in the first-floor study, just Barber and a man he knew only as Mongoose. He didn’t have any of the weasel-like features of an actual mongoose, but, of course, it was the point of any good cryptonym to bear no resemblance to its subject. This Mongoose had short blond hair and the rugged good looks of a movie star, with broad shoulders and muscles so thick that his neck bulged.

  “So you called them into your office and…”

  “And I delivered the packages. End of story.”

  Barber shifted uncomfortably. He was seated in a chair that, tongue in cheek, he had always called “the hot seat,” a boxy Chinese antique made of rosewood that had an upright back and no cushion. Another pair from the same set of four had once graced his office at Treasury, and they were so uncomfortable that no meeting had ever lasted more than twenty minutes-the intended effect. Mongoose was seated in the leather chair behind Barber’s desk. Only Barber and the retired CEO of Saxton Silvers, who had passed it on to him, had ever sat at that desk. Until tonight.

  “That’s my boy,” said Mongoose.

  “You need to stop calling me ‘boy,’ ‘Joe baby,’ or whatever the insult of the day is. I’m tired of that shit.”

  “This isn’t supposed to be fun, Joey. At least not for you.”

  “Killing innocent people? That’s your idea of fun?”

  Mongoose leaned back, put his feet up on Barber’s leather-top desk.

  “The park ranger was a regrettable piece of collateral damage. I needed to know what she and Patrick Lloyd talked about.”

  “What could she have possibly passed along to you that was of any value?”

  “Exactly what your inept security experts couldn’t: Patrick Lloyd is Peter Mandretti. Tony Mandretti’s son.”

  The news didn’t shock him. Barber’s own intelligence was not as inept as Mongoose thought. But in some situations it was best to play dumb. “What do you want me to do with that information?”

  “I want you to be very nervous. I want you to think about what could happen if I made a copy of the memo you wrote at Treasury and gave it to Tony Mandretti’s son.”

  That thought chilled him. Mongoose laughed, clearly enjoying that Barber had gone cold.

  Barber said, “I’ve done everything you’ve told me to do. You don’t have to kill innocent park rangers. You don’t have to bring Mandretti and his son into this. It’s enough that you have the memo.”

  Mongoose smiled with his eyes. “You wish you had never written it, don’t you?”

  Barber didn’t answer. But it was true: of all his regrets from his service at Treasury, the biggest was the classified internal memorandum he’d written about the Cushman Ponzi scheme.

  Mongoose said, “That’s one tough spot you put yourself in, Joey. You talk about me killing innocent people. What about you? Letting all those investors lose their money to a thief like Abe Cushman. Someone the government knew was a fraud. How do you justify that?”

  Barber had no answer.

  “It’s the same old line, isn’t it?” said Mongoose. “Every war has collateral damage-even a financial war, like this one. The investors who lost their money to Cushman are collateral damage. Pawns like Lilly Scanlon, who don’t even know they’re pawns, are collateral damage. A dedicated undercover agent whom you hang out to dry and who ends up with a bullet in his spine from Manu Robledo is collateral damage.”

  The antique chair was becoming more uncomfortable. Barber did not deny any of it.

  Mongoose said, “It all comes back to you, Little Joe. Your name is on the classified memo. And it’s crystal clear that Operation BAQ was your idea.”

  Again, no denial. Barber had even come up with the abbreviation, BAQ.

  “Let’s get on with it,” said Barber.

  “I’m tired,” Mongoose said, rising. “We’ve covered enough ground for one night. I’ll let myself out.” He started for the door, then stopped. “Oh, by the way. I’m sure you don’t have any delusions of stabbing me in the back or, more your style, hiring someone else to do it. But just in case, I wanted you to know: I have a safety valve.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Every blackmailer needs one. It’s a way to make sure that if something happens to me, the trigger gets pulled. Everything
I’ve threatened to do to you will come to pass.”

  Barber showed no reaction, not sure if he was bluffing or not.

  Mongoose studied his expression, then said, “I’m not sure you believe me. But it’s real. Your memo on Operation BAQ is mixed in with the BOS files you handed over today.”

  That was more than Barber could take quietly. “You son of bitch, if Patrick doesn’t know enough to connect the dots, his father sure does.”

  “Relax,” said Mongoose. “It’s still encrypted. They don’t have the key, and they don’t have the resources to crack the code. But here’s how my safety valve works. If I don’t log on to my computer every day and deactivate my safety valve, an e-mail will automatically go to Patrick and Lilly. The decryption key is in the e-mail.”

  There was no gun to his head, literally speaking, but Barber suddenly felt as if there were.

  Mongoose said, “So unless you want your memo decrypted, unless you want the world to know about Operation BAQ and the role you played in it, then you need to be very concerned about my health. Understood?”

  Powerlessness was a foreign feeling to him, but Barber knew who was holding all the aces. “Understood.”

  “Good. Now, stay on top of those two jokers,” he said, meaning Patrick and Lilly.

  “I will let you know as soon as I hear back from them.”

  “No. Don’t wait. Follow up in the morning. Mandretti’s son is going to crack. I can feel it. Even though Lilly doesn’t know enough to make heads or tails of his data, Patrick has to be nervous that she might be able to make some sense of it. That’s your leverage. I want a complete road map to the money.”

  “He isn’t going to just knuckle under overnight.”

  “He will if you push the right buttons. That would make me very happy. In fact, if you get me an answer by tomorrow night, I might make you a partner. Wouldn’t that make you happy, Joey?”

  Barber was silent.

  “Good night, partner.” Mongoose laughed to himself. Then he turned, opened the door, and left the room. Barber listened as the footfalls of a blackmailer echoed in his own hallway. He heard the front door open, then close.

  Mongoose was gone.

  32

  A gent Henning agreed to meet me at eight A.M. It was her idea to get out of Manhattan, in case I was being watched or followed. By default, that meant Position Four on my list of meeting spots, a thirty-minute train ride to my old stomping grounds on the other side of the East River.

  I grew up in Queens, lived there till I was fifteen-until Peter Mandretti became Patrick Lloyd. I accepted the fact that Queens has its critics; I didn’t accept the criticism. Yes, Brooklyn has more interesting housing, and there can be only one Manhattan, one Gotham-like center of the universe. The Bronx has the Yankees, and Staten Island has… well, as I might have told my friends in Queens, I’ve never had no freakin’ reason to go there, so who the hell cares what they got? But I do know this: only Queens has the Lemon Ice King of Corona.

  Trips to the Ice King on warm summer nights hold a special place in my memory. Rainbow was my favorite flavor, notwithstanding my sister’s blunt reminders: “It’s the Lemon Ice King, moron.” The line could be long, but that was part of the experience, and with Shea Stadium a bike ride away, it was possible to snag a couple of last-minute seats for a Mets game on the cheap. Or you could just walk across the street to the park, where old Italian men played bocce ball for hours. The Ice King had no dining area-it was a tiny joint on the corner that served only ices-so benches by the bocce courts were the primo spot for scooping out chocolate or fruity slush from a cup. In summertime, you were lucky to find a seat.

  On a cold morning in January, I had no such problem.

  Andie glared at me, arms folded, her breath steaming as she fought off the cold. “You know, Patrick, it would have been perfectly acceptable for your list of designated meeting places to include one or two indoor locations.”

  “My bad,” I said. “I’ll bring you back for a cherry ice in July.”

  It was nearly an hour past dawn, but the sun was nowhere to be seen in the gray winter sky. Andie wasn’t getting any warmer, so I did a quick follow-up on the park ranger mentioned in the Daily News . Not surprisingly, the FBI was already aware that the victim was the same ranger who had found me unconscious and had sent me to the ER just a few hours earlier. Andie assured me that there was no need for me to speak directly to the detectives handling the homicide investigation-she had it covered-and then moved on to another subject.

  “I met with your father last night,” she said.

  Her mention of Dad was a funny coincidence. Just moments earlier, my gaze had drifted to the tuxedo shop across the street where, according to my mother, Dad had rented a hideous, yet stylish, powder blue tuxedo for their wedding.

  “How is he doing?” I asked.

  She offered a few details about his treatment, then added, “I wish I could tell you he was better. But he’s getting good care, and I can say he’s a fighter.”

  “That’s something, I suppose.”

  “I’m technically not allowed to tell you his new name or location,” she said. “In fact, my supervisor wouldn’t even give me that information. But I’m the curious type. And, frankly, I wouldn’t be much of an FBI agent if I couldn’t pinpoint a prison hospital that just admitted a sixty-year-old white male transfer patient who has non-Hodgkins lymphoma.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “He’s in Boston,” she said, and then she mentioned the name of the hospital. “His new name is Sam Carlson.”

  As per our previous conversation, we were operating on a quid pro quo basis, and I knew this update was not gratis. She wanted something from me.

  “I believe it’s time for you to give up the name of the man who opened a certain numbered account at BOS/Singapore.”

  She meant the account that was at the heart of the search for Cushman’s money, of course. I said, “As I recall, there was one more condition. You were going to tell me why the FBI is still helping my father, even though your supervisor thinks I’ve been holding out.”

  “I’ll be honest with you,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed her, which made me want to hold on to the name Manu Robledo until she really gave me something. “That’s not good enough.”

  A wisp of wind sent a swirl of white powder across the frozen bocce court. I shifted gears and told her about my meeting with Barber and Lilly. The exchange of data piqued her interest.

  “What would it take to get my hands on Lilly’s files?” she asked.

  “That’s way beyond the scope of our original deal,” I said, “and it’s confidential bank data. But I might see my way toward sharing it with you if you can tell me what BAQ means.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “One of the files mixed in with Lilly’s data is encrypted on a level that the federal government would use for a matter of national security. The only thing my tech expert can determine is that the letters B-A-Q appear in sequence with unusual frequency. It’s possible that it’s an abbreviation for something.”

  “Your tech expert?” she said.

  I had no intention of bringing Evan into this. “Don’t ask,” I said.

  “The abbreviation BAQ doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “I didn’t expect an answer off the top of your head. Do some digging. Get me an answer, and I’ll give you Lilly’s files. Get it to me quick, and I’ll throw in the name of the man who opened numbered account 507.625 RR.”

  It was the first time I’d mentioned the actual BOS account number, and it seemed to buy some credibility.

  “Deal,” she said.

  Another breeze, which became a gust, cut across the bocce courts. Andie was downwind and took the brunt of it.

  I said, “Why don’t you go find someplace warm.”

  She brushed the icy powder from her eyebrows, muttered something about a fast plane
back to Miami, and then looked me in the eye. “One last thing,” she said. “I shared your father’s new name and location because you wanted to know them. But after meeting with him, I feel like I should add one thing you probably won’t want to hear: don’t contact your father.”

  Her bluntness took me aback. “Would you tell me if he was going to pass soon?”

  “It’s not imminent, but that’s not my point. I don’t say this to be cruel or to hurt your feelings, but your father was moved and given a new identity at his own request. He doesn’t want you to find him.”

  A reunion had never been my stated mission, but Andie’s frank advice made me realize that it had indeed been a subconscious goal. I tried to absorb the blow. “Did he tell you that?”

  “Yes. In almost exactly those words.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “He has his reasons.”

  “That doesn’t really answer my question.”

  She drew a deep breath of the cold morning air as she considered her response. “There are things that he doesn’t want to have to explain to you.”

  “That’s pretty vague.”

  “He’d prefer it that way. I’m sure of it.”

  “Did he kill Gerry Collins?”

  “Patrick, I can assure you of one thing. It has absolutely nothing to do with your father’s guilt or innocence.”

  “It’s my mother, isn’t it?”

  Andie struggled. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but your mother tried to contact your father while he was in witness protection. He’s convinced that’s what got her killed.”

  “I didn’t know it, but I always suspected.”

  “Now you know.”

  “That was a long time ago,” I said. “The Santucci family isn’t what it used to be. Who’s to say it would be anywhere near as dangerous for his children to see him before he dies?”

  “He doesn’t want to take that risk.”

  Our eyes met, and held. The vibe between us wasn’t about love and romance, but it suddenly occurred to me that I’d worked harder at this relationship with Andie Henning than I’d worked at any relationship with any woman who wasn’t named Lilly. I didn’t always trust her-not by a long shot-but at least, with respect to her advice about my father, I sensed that I could trust her completely.