Need You Now

by James Grippando

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  There was compassion in her tone, and it was as if she was telling me that hearing the harsh truth was only part of the equation. Now all I had to do was deal with it.

  Or, knowing myself, ignore her well-intentioned advice.

  33

  M ongoose took the early train from New York to Boston. By nine A.M. he was at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital Correctional Unit in Jamaica Plain.

  Finding the right hospital hadn’t been difficult. He’d already confirmed that Tony Mandretti was Tony Martin, who had been treated for non-Hodgkins lymphoma in North Carolina. The number of correctional institutions equipped to render quality treatment was not endless. He’d zeroed in on the facility that had most recently admitted an out-of-state transfer.

  “Right this way, Father,” the corrections officer told him.

  For purposes of this visit, Mongoose was Father Michael Devane, complete with black shirt, white collar, dog-eared Bible, and rosary beads. At three A.M. it had taken less than thirty minutes to hack into the prison unit’s computer records and add the name of a nonexistent Catholic priest to the approved list of visitors for inmate Sam Carlson.

  “Bless you,” said Mongoose.

  The correctional unit was on the hospital’s eighth floor, which was at full capacity with twenty-three inmates. Shattuck was a medium-security facility, but medium did not mean lax. Security cameras provided a continuous live feed to the unit desk on the eighth floor and the main desk downstairs. Armed corrections officers were posted at each end of the brightly lit corridor. Others stood guard directly outside the rooms of inmates who presented a heightened security risk or a possible threat to health care professionals. Mongoose followed the officer down the hallway, and they stopped outside an open doorway.

  “Wait here,” said the officer, and then he entered the room. Mongoose stood in the hall, opened his Bible, and pretended to read from it as nurses and orderlies went about their business, ignoring him.

  “He’s asleep,” the guard said as he emerged from the room. “Not much else to do when you’re on that much pain medication.”

  “I’m sure he needs his rest. Don’t wake him. If I can’t pray with him, I’ll pray over him.”

  “Sure thing, Father. I’ll be right here if you need me.”

  Mongoose tucked the Bible under his arm and entered the room alone. He stopped at the bed rail and cast his gaze downward at the man now known as Carlson. His face was thin, his hair was gone, and his pallor was more suitable for a corpse. Cancer had left him a mere shell of his former self, but Mongoose immediately recognized him as Tony Mandretti.

  Some things from his days with the agency Mongoose would never forget.

  Mongoose laid the Bible and his beads on the table, his gaze sweeping the room. Breakfast was on the tray table; Mandretti hadn’t touched the scrambled eggs or the burned wheat toast. An IV hung from a pole beside the bed. A steady drip from three separate bags mixed to become a pharmaceutical cocktail that flowed through a single plastic tube, which fed into the veins of Mandretti’s forearm. An even longer tube from a second IV pole disappeared beneath the sheets, presumably feeding into his leg or abdomen.

  Mongoose hated hospitals. They brought back bad memories-or perhaps “memory” was the right term, since he’d been unconscious for most of his four-week stay in intensive care. He had no recollection of the triage in the emergency room, the rush to the OR, the surgery to stop the bleeding and repair the damage to internal organs. Luckily, it had not been hollow-point ammunition, which would have taken the internal injuries to another level. Even so, no one had expected him to survive-least of all the man who had shot him: Manu Robledo.

  His supervisory agent hadn’t sold the assignment to him as a particularly dangerous one, as far as undercover operations went. The blue eyes and fair skin that made Mongoose believable as an Irish priest tonight had also made it easy for him to play a German financier named Niklas Konig, a European mover and shaker in the nebulous international circles of Miami money. He would live on a confiscated yacht, a customized Hatteras Convertible that was fit for the lifestyle of the Colombian drug lord who had forfeited it to the DEA. Konig would introduce Manu Robledo to Gerry Collins and get Robledo to move his clients’ money to a numbered account at BOS/Singapore, after which Collins would steer it through a maze of other banks on its way to Abe Cushman. Weird thing was, for a time he had actually liked Collins. Robledo, too. As Gerry used to say, online dating may be the trend, but nothing will ever replace plunking down a stack of Benjamins for thousand-dollar bottles of Crystal as the way to meet women. He was having a good time, totally outclassing those two jerk-offs. Until that night on the yacht.

  He could still see the expression on Robledo’s face. The way Robledo had raised his arm. The way the gun had suddenly found its way into his hand from inside the sleeve of his peacoat. He’d faced down gunmen before, but never unarmed, never so certain that the son of a bitch was actually going to pull the trigger. He would never forget the anger in those dark eyes, hooded by those thick brows, and then the flash from the muzzle. After that, there was a gaping black hole. His next memory-and he could see it clearly now, standing at Mandretti’s bedside in this cold and sterile room-was waking up on his back in a hospital bed, looking up into the eyes of his supervisory agent.

  “W hat the hell happened?” asked Mongoose. They weren’t his first words, but he had no memory of the earlier mutterings that had marked his return from a coma.

  His supervisory agent was at the bed rail. A doctor came quickly. Several doctors. Maybe some nurses, too. Mongoose wasn’t sure who they were. The questions they asked seemed silly. How old are you? Where did you grow up? The pointless jabber was wearing him out. He wasn’t sure how long it went on. It could have been minutes, could have been an hour or more. At some point, his mind cleared. He reached over the side rail and grabbed his supervisor by the arm.

  “Get me out of here,” he said.

  The doctor stopped him. “Try to be still,” she said. “It’s important that you not make sudden movements.”

  Mongoose tried to sit up and protest, but the sharp pain in his back choked off his speech. It was as if someone had heated the blade of a steak knife and jabbed him in the spine.

  “Holy shit,” he said as he settled back onto the mattress. He overheard the doctor speaking to a nurse.

  “We may need to increase the medication,” she said.

  “What is wrong with me?” asked Mongoose.

  “You were shot.”

  “I know that, damn it. What is this pain in my back?”

  The doctor leaned closer, speaking to him in a calm, even tone. “You were hit in the chest. Fortunately, we were able to repair all damage to your organs. But the exit wound was more problematic. The projectile fractured the left pedicle of the thoracic five vertebra in your spine. The spinal cord was indirectly damaged by what we call ‘cavitation.’ ”

  “Spinal cord injury?” That was not the news Mongoose wanted to hear.

  “The good news is that the surgery was successful. We did a microscopically assisted posterior revision at T-four/five.”

  “Can you speak English, please?”

  “Your motor function should be fine.”

  That hot knife was suddenly jabbing him in the spine again. He got through it with clenched teeth. “What about the pain?”

  The doctor hesitated, then said, “There are some limitations there.”

  “Limitations?”

  “The damage to the vertebrae can be addressed surgically only if we were to remove your internal organs. That’s high risk. I recommend that we wait and see.”

  Another wave of pain took his breath away. “Wait and see what?”

  “See if the pain subsides with time. It could.”

  “Could? Or should?”

  “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  His supervisor gestured toward the
doctors and nurses, and they left the two men alone. It was just Mongoose and his boss, who was speaking in a hushed voice. “Don’t worry, Manu Robledo will get his. Cushman is going down before Christmas. Robledo’s investors will take care of him once they find out he lost their money.”

  “You’re not going to arrest him?”

  “No. If we do that, all you worked for will be for nothing. Operation BAQ fails.”

  Mongoose closed his eyes, trying to absorb the pain shooting down his spine. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Listen to the doctor. Rest, and it should go away.”

  “Robledo will pay for this.”

  “Like I said: just let it play out. The FBI is all over Collins to find out if he was also part of the setup.”

  “Collins is alive ?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was he shot?”

  “No. Robledo spared him.”

  “Spared him, my ass. If Collins is alive, he’s in with Robledo.”

  “We’re looking at that.”

  Mongoose grabbed him by the arm. “Robledo had a source. He came to the boat with a report, some kind of proof that Cushman was a fraud.”

  “A report?”

  “An analysis, he called it. He was saying something about it right before he started shooting.”

  “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “Collins didn’t tell you?” asked Mongoose.

  “No.”

  Mongoose blinked hard, trying to contain his anger. “It’s the three of them. Collins, Robledo, and somebody who tipped off Robledo with that report. It’s no coincidence that the only guy who got shot is the federal agent.”

  “Just concentrate on getting well.”

  “I want to know who tipped off Robledo.”

  “I want you to concentrate on getting better.”

  Mongoose propped himself up on an elbow, ignoring the pain, and looked his supervisor in the eye. “Get me that fucker’s name,” he said, “and then I’ll get well.”

  T he hum of an electric motor drew Mongoose from his memories. A blood pressure cuff automatically tightened on Mandretti’s bicep, and the reading flashed on the digital monitor alongside his bed. One thirty over one ten.

  Mongoose’s was much higher.

  He leaned over the side rail and looked down at the patient. It was exactly the wrong move, and it triggered the pain in his spine-the excruciating pain that had never gone away, that had made him a slave to the pill mills that dispensed Percocet like candy. Mongoose worked through it, focusing.

  Mandretti was breathing, but it was barely noticeable. Seeing him in such sorry shape only reaffirmed the decision Mongoose had made from the outset: there was no point in killing a man who was already headed for the grave. The better plan, the only route to true revenge, was to add to his misery in his dying days.

  Mongoose leaned closer, his lips to Mandretti’s ear. “Fight to stay alive,” he said, caring not that Mandretti was unable to hear him. Then he stood upright, took hold of his Bible and beads, and resumed his priestly role. “May you live to feel a pain worse than mine,” he whispered as he made the sign of the cross. “The pain of destroying your son’s life. Forever.”

  34

  C onnie borrowed the zoo’s van for the day, and we headed to Boston. She drove. I tried not to breathe through my nose.

  “Sorry. When one of our furry friends has an accident, it can take a week for the smell to go away,” she said.

  By “accident” she didn’t mean fender bender. I rolled down the window a crack and drew in the cold air.

  I hadn’t decided to visit Dad on a whim. Connie was against it. Had Evan sided with her in opposition, they might have been able to talk me out of it. The idea had blossomed around midnight, as I was taking one last look at Evan’s walls. The photographs he had taken over the years were an integral part of the Cushman timeline. Most required no explanation. Lilly with Gerry Collins. Lilly and me in Singapore. They prompted me to ask about the shots he’d snapped just before I ran him down in the park, the ones of Connie and me talking in front of the snow monkeys-where would they fit into the flowchart? “They don’t,” he’d said, which made me push for an explanation. The hour was late, and perhaps fatigue had caused him to drop his guard. Or maybe he had simply come around to the view that I deserved to know the truth: “Tony asked me to take those weeks ago, when he was still in North Carolina.”

  That Dad had asked for pictures of Connie and me was no small thing. It was the reason Evan had suspected that we were Tony Mandretti’s children, the reason my confirmation of his suspicions had come as no surprise. More important, for me it was proof enough that Dad wished his children were still part of his life.

  “Coming here is a big mistake,” said Connie.

  We were driving through Brookline, ten minutes from Lemuel Shattuck Hospital. Connie had insisted on driving rather than taking the train so that she could talk freely en route-i.e., talk me out of it.

  “We’ve been over this,” I said. “I’m not changing my mind.”

  “What are you going to say to him?”

  It was a good question. Maybe I was tired of being told that the people who mattered most to me were criminals and that I had to keep my distance. Dad. Lilly. It was time to claw back and take control of my personal life.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to say,” I said.

  We parked in the snow-covered visitors’ lot and followed the freshly salted sidewalk to the hospital’s main entrance. There was a separate registration window for visitation to the prison unit. Connie followed me to the desk, and I told the corrections officer behind the glass that I had come to see Sam Carlson.

  “Visitation is by appointment only,” she said. “Department rules require at least twenty-four hours’ notice.”

  Connie was shameless in her sarcasm. “Oh, what a pity. Come on, let’s go home.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “We drove all the way here from New York. There must be some flexibility.”

  “On a normal day, maybe,” the officer said.

  It wasn’t a holiday or a weekend. “Today’s not a normal day?” I asked.

  The officer didn’t answer. She took our names and asked us to wait right there. A minute later she returned, buzzed us through a locked entrance door, and led us down the hall. We passed an express elevator that serviced only the prison unit on the eighth floor. Just beyond it was a small vacant room, where the officer told us to sit tight. The room had no windows, and Connie took the only chair. The officer left and closed the door, and both Connie and I heard her secure it with a key from the outside. I tried to turn the knob, but it was locked.

  “I’m getting a bad vibe,” Connie said.

  “Brilliant, sis. It must be all the time you spend with zoo animals that gives you such a keen sense of danger.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t you dare insult me, Patrick. Who knows what kind of mess we’re in now? I told you we shouldn’t have come here.”

  I heard I told you so , or words to that effect, several more times before the latch turned and the door opened. Andie Henning entered the room, closed the door, and glared at me with double-barreled death rays.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “What are you doing here?” I replied.

  “There was a breach of security. Someone hacked into the hospital computers last night and added the name of a bogus priest to the list of pre-approved visitors. He came to see your father this morning.”

  “Is Dad okay?” asked Connie, blurting out my exact sentiment.

  “He’s fine,” said Andie. “He’s not even aware that he had a visitor. Needless to say, all visitation to the entire unit is suspended until we figure out what happened.”

  Connie rose and formally introduced herself. “I presume you’re the FBI agent who arranged for Dad’s medical treatment?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean
to be rude,” I said. Over the past few days Andie had been so much a part of my conversations with Connie, and vice versa, that I had forgotten they’d never actually met.

  “No problem,” said Connie. “It’s all that time I spend at the zoo that gives me such a keen sense of common courtesy.”

  Touché.

  “Did I miss something?” asked Andie.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Do you have any idea who the visitor was?”

  “Nothing definite yet, but we have two solid leads. Security cameras captured some clear footage. We’re running images through a facial-recognition database, but that’s a needle in a haystack. We also have a match on a shoe print.”

  “Match to what?” I asked.

  “The floors on eight were polished clean last night, and the video surveillance showed us exactly where our suspect walked, so we were able to pull up a clear shoe print.”

  Connie said, “I would have thought you needed a soft surface, like carpeting, to pick up a shoe print.”

  “Actually, the best shoe prints are on hard surfaces, like tile,” said Andie. “Or the polished marble floor of a park ranger’s bathroom.”

  I caught her drift. As did Connie, who looked at Andie with concern. “So the man who strangled that park ranger was just here in my dad’s room this morning?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Andie. “You two should go back to New York. Even if you are going to ignore my advice to stay away from here, today is obviously not the day to push to see your father.”

  “She’s right,” said Connie.

  I understood, but I was determined to make the most of the trip. “Andie, what about BAQ? Have you made any headway on decoding that?”

  I could tell that she had, but she paused to measure her response. “Your instincts were correct,” she said. “BAQ is not a random sequence of letters. It stands for Operation BAQ.”