Need You Now

by James Grippando

  “Are you a doctor?” I asked.

  “Henry Bozan, nurse anesthetist. How long has the patient been sleeping?”

  “He was out when I got here. That was around nine.”

  “I thought I heard you talking.”

  It was an odd tone, almost accusatory. “I’ve been telling him stories as he sleeps,” I said.

  “So he hasn’t told you anything?”

  Another odd question. “No,” I said.

  “You may want to get some rest yourself. He probably won’t come around until morning.”

  “Hopefully sooner than that. Dr. Kern reduced the Demerol.”

  He checked the drip hanging from the IV pole. “That’s not a good idea. This patient is in serious pain.”

  “Dr. Kern said he’s already at the daily maximum.”

  “I’m following the direct orders of the chief physician on the pain-management team.”

  “I’d prefer that you talk to Dr. Kern about that.”

  I heard voices in the hallway, someone approaching. The door opened. Dr. Kern entered with a distressed expression on her face and a corrections officer at her side.

  “That’s him!” she said.

  The ensuing moments were a complete blur. The corrections officer rushed past Dr. Kern and drew his weapon. I dived forward, shielding my father. The nurse anesthetist was suddenly like a gymnast on a pommel horse, pushing himself up on the bed rail with two strong arms, swinging his legs over the bed-over me and my father-and propelling himself feetfirst into the oncoming officer. Dr. Kern screamed as the gun flew from the officer’s hand, slammed into the wall, and fell to the floor. The nurse-turned-gymnast got there first and emptied two quick rounds into the officer’s chest, dropping him to the floor in a spray of blood. Then he slammed the door shut, grabbed Dr. Kern, and put the gun to her head.

  “Don’t move!” he said, meaning me.

  59

  A larms sounded throughout the prison unit. Door after door slammed in the hallway as the unit went into the hospital equivalent of lockdown.

  Andie Henning raced down the hall from Room 826.

  Andie’s plan had started with Patrick’s father. “Call Patrick,” he’d told her, knowing the end was near, “and let him know that there’s something I need to tell him, man to man.” With his approval, Andie had taken it a step further, the key to her plan being that she would call Patrick on his BlackBerry-a phone compromised with spyware. It was a virtual lock that the eavesdropper would hear the news and take the necessary steps to stop Patrick’s father from making a deathbed confession to his son about Operation BAQ. The FBI’s plan had been hatched on the quick, but Andie’s instructions to the Department of Corrections had been specific. Watch for red flags: a new corrections officer, a new nurse, a new doctor, a new janitor-anyone trying to enter the unit who had never entered before.Someone had obviously screwed up.

  Idiots!

  It was like riot control in the hallway, a team of corrections officers rushing to Room 834 in response to the gunshots.

  “He could have hostages!” Andie shouted, but she was too late.

  The first officer smashed through the door, weapon drawn. Shots erupted. The lead officer went down and fell into the room, his feet motionless in the open doorway. Three other corrections officers crouched into positions of cover, their backs flat against the walls in the hallway.

  “Officer down!” Andie shouted as she came up behind them, the alarm continuing to sound as she positioned herself near the intercom in the hallway.

  60

  T he guard went down hard to the floor, dropped by two quick shots that left him motionless. His pistol skidded across the tile toward the bed. I dived for it as the gunman took Dr. Kern and moved away from the window, toward the closet. I grabbed the pistol and took aim, but he was using the doctor as a human shield.

  “I have hostages!” he shouted in a voice that was loud enough for the officers in the hallway to hear him.

  A voice crackled over the speaker box on my father’s bed: “We hear you.”

  I recognized the voice as Andie Henning’s.

  The alarm went silent, and an eerie stillness came over the room. Two guards shot, my father barely alive. Andie’s voice continued over the intercom speaker:

  “We want to get medical treatment for the injured officers.”

  “They’re dead! And if you make another run at this room, they’re all dead!” Then he looked at me, his gun pressed to Dr. Kern’s head, and said, “Drop your gun!”

  I held my aim, my finger on the trigger.

  “Do it!” he said as he shoved the pistol even harder against the base of the doctor’s skull.

  I didn’t move. Andie’s voice was on the speaker again.

  “Patrick, do as he says. We don’t need your help.” She paused and then addressed the gunman directly. “Mongoose, there’s no escape. We know who you are.”

  “Mongoose,” I said quietly, a reflex, as if there were at least partial closure in knowing what he called himself.

  “It’s hopeless, Mongoose,” said Andie. “Joe Barber is being arrested as we speak. Drop your weapon and surrender now.”

  Mongoose glared at me from across the room, his eyes like lasers. “Put the gun on the floor and slide it toward me,” he said in a calm, but threatening tone.

  The doctor’s eyes widened with fear. I should have done as I was told, should have followed Andie’s direction. But there was no guarantee that my father would ever wake, and I had Mongoose’s attention-a chance to get some answers. I couldn’t let go.

  Mongoose tightened his stare on me and said, “There’s no one here worth dying for, Patrick. Your father is a traitor to the U.S. government.”

  “You’re reaching,” I said.

  “Your father cut a deal with terrorists.”

  “Right. And yo’ mama eats worms. Now, put down the gun, asshole!”

  “You think this is a joke?” he said, pressing the pistol even harder against Dr. Kern’s head.

  It had been a knee-jerk effort to show Mongoose that he wasn’t in control, that I wasn’t afraid to shoot him. But the doctor’s terrified expression made me regret my words. “Not a joke,” I said, backpedaling. “Let’s put away the weapons and talk.”

  “Just shut up and listen! I heard the truth last night from Manu Robledo. If not for your old man, Manu Robledo never would have seen the quant’s analysis showing that Cushman was a Ponzi scheme.”

  I held my aim. Mongoose kept talking.

  “Your father wanted to get someone riled up enough to kill Gerry Collins, and he didn’t care who else Robledo took out along the way. Didn’t care if he took me out.”

  The anger in his voice was palpable. He seemed to hold as much animosity toward my father as he did toward Robledo-and, by extension, toward me.

  Mongoose continued his rant. “For three years I was convinced that the government had forced your father to confess as part of Operation BAQ. Nobody forced him. Your father took the rap so that Robledo could stay out of jail and find the money that Collins had stashed away. We’re talking billions of dollars from terrorist financers who would have killed Robledo unless he got it back. Your father confessed for a cut of that money-money that he would leave to you and your sister.”

  I had actually been with him right up till then-until the part about a cut of terrorist seed money. “You’re making this up.”

  “Robledo spilled his guts last night.”

  “I doubt that Robledo has ever told the truth in his life.”

  “Trust me, he was in no position to be less than truthful.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I just spoke with Joe Barber. Even he can’t figure out who started this fiction about a government-forced confession.”

  “Oh, now, there’s an honest politician.”

  “I know a traitor when I see one. Your father is a traitor, Patrick.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “He is lyi
ng,” my dad said.

  It happened in a split second. The Demerol wasn’t enough to force sleep through a gunfight, and the sound of my father’s voice had startled Mongoose more than me. I was standing in the marksman’s pose, holding a Glock that was identical to the one that Scully had taught me how to use in Connie’s apartment, the sights lined up, my finger on the trigger. Dr. Kern dived for safety, and I squeezed the trigger. The shot erupted like thunder, and in a crimson explosion, Mongoose’s head jerked back. His gun dropped to his feet as his body collapsed in a heap. Dr. Kern raced into the arms of the first officer to burst through the door.

  I dropped the gun, fell on the bed, and squeezed my father so hard that I could barely breathe. Fifteen years of emotional confusion collided with a week of stress, anxiety, and my own near-death experiences to create a long, cathartic embrace. “I’m fine, it’s over,” I said. “Mongoose is gone.”

  He laid his arm across my back, not really holding me, but doing the best he could with the strength that remained.

  “ ‘Yo’ mama eats worms’? ” he said.

  His muted chuckle was little more than a tremble, and I broke our embrace long enough to see a hint of a smile crease his lips. I wanted to laugh and cry in the same breath. It was beyond comic relief. It brought a moment of humanity to years of sorrow and separation.

  And then it faded.

  “Dad?”

  I didn’t want to lose him. Holding on tight seemed like the only option.

  “Go get your sister,” he whispered into my ear.

  I took a breath and released him. I knew what he was telling me. “I’ll be right back,” I said, catching one last glimpse of Mongoose in a puddle of blood as I hurried out of the room.

  61

  I ran to the elevator. Andie followed. I had no cell phone but she was able to dial Connie’s number on hers.

  No answer.

  I didn’t know how much time my father had left, hours or minutes, but standing around waiting for my sister to pick up her cell was not an option. The lockdown had triggered additional security, but Andie cleared us through it, and the express elevator took us to the main lobby. I went straight to the spot where Connie had been sitting. The television was still playing in the corner, but the lobby was deserted, no sign of Connie. The gunfire had clearly triggered an evacuation.

  “Come with me,” said Andie.

  She led me outside to the parking lot, where a group of people was waiting for the all clear to come back inside. It was a cold night, and falling snow flickered in the cones of yellow-white glow beneath the lampposts. People in the crowd were shifting their weight from one foot to the other, arms folded or hands in pockets, trying to stay warm.

  “Connie!”

  A few heads turned in response to my call, but no one responded. I went from person to person, searching. My sister was nowhere.

  “Has anyone here seen a woman named Connie Ryan?” I asked in a loud voice.

  A few people shook their heads. Most glanced in the other direction, ignoring me. Finally, a high school kid dressed in a hoodie and smoking a cigarette came forward.

  “White chick?” he asked. “Blue coat?”

  “Yeah.”

  He took a drag from his cigarette. “Me and her was watching the Celtics game on the TV. She left with some dude about a half hour ago.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. They was arguing, like she didn’t want to go. I was gonna say something, but I guess they worked it out. Better not to get involved, you know?”

  “What did the guy look like?” I asked.

  The kid shrugged. “Big guy, kind of old for her. Fifties, I guess. An asshole, if you ask me.”

  I looked at Andie, and she read my mind. “Scully,” we said to each other.

  62

  A pair of headlights pierced the night as the white SUV rental headed down the highway toward Providence. Connie rode in the passenger seat, her hands tied behind her back. Scully drove. The dashboard rattled with the tinny sound of an overworked defroster struggling to clear the windshield. The whump-whump of the wipers pushed the falling snow from one side to the other.

  “We trusted you, Scully,” Connie said.

  His eyes narrowed. Some idiot driver in an approaching car had his high beams on, nearly blinding him. Scully flashed him back.

  “Dad trusted you,” she said.

  “Shut your trap, Connie. Your father was no Boy Scout.”

  “He changed.”

  “No, he didn’t. Your father lost everything in a Ponzi scheme, so he asked me for the name of another victim who would take Collins for a one-way car ride if they knew he was a fraud. I gave him Robledo’s name.”

  “It wasn’t a crime for Dad to give Evan Hunt’s report to Robledo.”

  “Robledo wasn’t given anything. I sold it to him.”

  “My father wouldn’t have taken money from a man like Robledo. Not after everything he gave up.”

  “You’re right. All your old man cared about was getting even with Collins for stealing his nest egg. But that report gave Robledo something that no one else in the world got. Robledo got a heads-up on Cushman’s fraud, and the chance to recover his money. Why shouldn’t I get a cut?”

  “A cut of what ? The money was already gone.”

  He shot her a quick glance, and for an instant, Connie thought she almost saw the old Scully-a man who surely understood that Connie would never agree with what he’d done, but who didn’t want her to think he was evil. “There’s my dilemma, Connie.”

  “Dilemma?”

  His gaze returned to the icy road, but he kept talking. “One percent of two billion dollars is a lot of money. But I got one percent of nothing if Robledo couldn’t track down his money. It didn’t take a genius to see that Robledo would never recover a dime if he went to prison for killing Gerry Collins.”

  Connie knew exactly what he was saying. “You pig! You forced my father to confess!”

  “Your father was already sick with cancer. It wasn’t like he was going to be locked up forever.”

  “You bastard! You used his kids against him, didn’t you? You were our handler. How could you threaten to out Patrick and me unless he confessed to something he didn’t do?”

  He slapped her with the back of his hand. It landed with so much force that Connie’s head slammed against the passenger’s-side window.

  “Connie! Oh, my God, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

  She blinked hard, trying to shake off the blow and take the blur out of her vision. Scully’s apology left her equally dazed. Clearly he was at war with himself over his betrayal, the FBI version of an abusive spouse who returns home with a bouquet of flowers after pushing his wife down the stairs. The salty taste of her own blood trickled from her mouth as she spoke.

  “That’s what Dad wanted to tell Patrick today, isn’t it?” she said. “That Scully is dirty.”

  Scully was no longer smiling. His audience of one was spitting the vitriol of an angry mob. He focused on his driving, the tires humming on the snow-covered highway.

  “I still don’t hear a denial,” Connie said.

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “What?”

  “If it’s any comfort to you, your father never knew I stabbed him in the back. When I got Treasury to pay him some money for agreeing to sit on the Cushman report, I told him that it was compensation from the CIA for his confession-that if he didn’t take the deal, and that if he ever claimed he was framed, it was the CIA who would hand his kids over to the Santucci family. As far as he knew, the CIA had to keep Robledo out of prison for Operation BAQ to work. To this day, he thinks I was just the messenger.”

  “You’re even worse than I thought you were.”

  “Hey, at least I let him have the money.”

  “Yeah, money he couldn’t even use to pay for his own cancer treatment once he was in prison.”

  Scully kept one hand on the wheel and dialed his cell.

  “Wh
o are you calling?” asked Connie.

  “Your dumbass brother,” he said. “Be still and behave yourself. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

  63

  I had no phone, but my number rang to Andie’s cell. It had taken a tech agent in the Boston field office all of thirty seconds to program the wireless hijacking and reroute my calls to Andie.

  “It’s Scully,” she told me.

  We were still in the parking lot, seated in the back of an FBI van that had arrived on the scene. Andie quickly plugged her phone into the mobile audio system. Her phone rang a second time-this time over the van’s surveillance speakers.

  “You want me to take it?” I asked.

  “Yes. Play this exactly the way I told you to play it. And keep Scully on the line as long as possible so that our techies can triangulate a location.”

  On the fourth ring she hit Talk and handed me the phone.

  “Scully, where are you?” I asked.

  Andie gave me a quick thumbs-up, letting me know that she could hear the conversation just fine.

  “I have your sister,” he said.

  “Good. Bring her back. Dad wants to see her.”

  He was on to my act. “Don’t play dumb,” he said. “I will hurt her.”

  I’d never heard that tone from Scully, and it chilled me. The man was clearly desperate.

  “Okay,” I said. “What do you want?”

  “For starters, you need to keep your mouth shut. If you go to Agent Henning or anyone else with any of the things your father told you, Connie’s dead.”

  Again I felt chills. It was clear that Scully had no idea that the FBI was involved and that it had all been a setup-that my trip to Boston to see my father, the whole idea of a deathbed conversation, was something that Andie and my father had coordinated with me in order to draw out Mongoose and Barber. Andie slipped me a note: Don’t tell him you haven’t talked to your father.