Need You Now

by James Grippando

  I pivoted and did an about-face. The man was walking briskly and had already reached the corner. He stopped to check for traffic, then glanced over his shoulder. The glowing streetlamp provided just enough light: there was instant, mutual recognition. I dropped the suitcase and the food and ran after him. He took off like a rocket.

  “Stop!” I shouted, my arms and legs pumping. He ran even faster, heading west toward Hudson. I knew a shortcut through the alley and decided to head him off. I was at full speed when a truck backed out from behind a restaurant. I planted my foot, intending to cut like Reggie Bush, but I looked more like George Bush auditioning for Dancing with the Stars . My foot slipped, and I skidded into a pile of garbage bags.

  “Beat it, pal,” the driver shouted from his truck. “You can’t sleep here.”

  I thought about continuing my chase, but the pain in my ankle trumped that inclination. I pulled myself up and hobbled back to my apartment, only to find a homeless man seated on the sidewalk enjoying my pizza and Lilly’s salad. I grabbed my suitcase.

  “Hey, that’s mine!” he said.

  I was in no mood to argue, and under the applicable urban laws of street survival, he probably had the better argument anyway. “How much you want for it?”

  “Fifty bucks.”

  I gave him twenty, and he was happy. I dialed Lilly’s cell on my way into the building. There was no answer, which concerned me. At Puffy’s, the more I had thought about it, the less sure I was that I’d seen that man before in Singapore. This time, the opposite was true.

  I dialed my apartment, but it went to the answering machine. “Lilly, if you’re there, pick up the phone,” I said.

  She didn’t answer. I hurried into the building and took the stairs, no time to wait for the old elevators to descend all the way from the penthouse. I dug out my key as I ran down the hall, turned the lock, and pushed open the door-pushed so hard that I nearly dislocated my shoulder when the chain lock engaged. It should have occurred to me that Lilly would have it secured. But if she was inside, why hadn’t she answered the phone? I called out through the opening.

  “Lilly, it’s me.”

  I waited, then stepped back and rang the doorbell. No response. I dug out my cell and speed-dialed hers. Again, no answer. I dialed my landline and could hear it ringing inside the apartment, but it went to the answering machine, just like the last time.

  “Lilly!”

  Still no response. I dialed the front desk and spoke to the guard. “Gabriel, do you remember the woman I introduced you to last night?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you see her go out today?”

  “No, sir, but I’ve only been here since four.”

  I hung up and realized it had been a foolish question: my apartment had only one door, so if the chain was on, she had to be in there.

  “Lilly, wake up and open the door!”

  Lilly was a light sleeper, and it was odd that she would snooze right through the sound of the door catching on the chain, let alone a ringing telephone, the doorbell, and my shouting. I pushed my face into the opening, and this time I was struck by how cold it was inside-as cold as the outdoors. It was one of our longest-standing battles as a couple: I liked to sleep with the window open. Lilly never did.

  Never.

  Panic struck, fueled in part by having just spotted that guy from Singapore in my neighborhood. I feared the worst, and “the worst” had many faces, including the possibility that Lilly had done something stupid to extricate herself from a world that seemed to be crashing down upon her. I dropped my overnight bag and put my shoulder into the door, but that chain was serious hardware. I’d noticed a fire ax in the stairwell on my way up, right next to the alarm, and in a weird moment of life imitating art, I suddenly envisioned Kate Winslet in Titanic breaking Leonardo DiCaprio free from the handcuffs as water rose up around them. I ran and got the ax, racing down the hall as if the building were indeed on fire. I called out her name one more time, which drew only silence. One swing of the ax broke through the chain, and I rushed inside.

  “Lilly!”

  The apartment was as dark and cold as the night. I switched on the light and saw nothing out of the ordinary. I checked the bathroom, the closet, and then the loft. There was no sign of Lilly, but one window in the loft was wide open, which accounted for the cold wave that had gripped the apartment. I stuck my head outside. I’d never had to leave by way of the fire escape, but apparently Lilly had done just that.

  Or did someone take her?

  “Is everything okay in here?”

  The old woman’s voice drew me from the window, and I climbed down from the loft. My eighty-year-old neighbor was standing in the doorway, dressed in a bathrobe that looked to be at least her age. The fire ax on the floor and the busted chain on the door cried out for an explanation, but I offered none. Instead, I tapped into “the eyes of the building,” as Mrs. Voss was known: she missed nothing, knew when her neighbors went to the bathroom, and could probably have made an intelligent guess as to whether it was number one or number two.

  “Honestly, I’m worried,” I said, understating it. “My girlfriend Lilly was staying with me. The chain was on the door when I came back, but she’s gone and the window is wide open.”

  “She left three hours ago,” said Mrs. Voss.

  “With someone?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I heard a noise on the fire escape and saw her climbing down. She was by herself. I don’t know what strange things you have going on in here, young man, but this is a respectable building.”

  It occurred to me how bad this must have looked-an ax-swinging man breaking into his own apartment, a young woman fleeing by way of the fire escape. “This is not what it seems,” I said.

  She seemed skeptical, even a little afraid.

  “Really,” I said. “It’s all fine.”

  She retreated quietly, muttering something about the guy who should never have sold me the apartment. I had the feeling that this was going to be prime grapevine material, if not a formal complaint to the condo association.

  I picked up the fire ax, laid it aside, and closed the door. The heater hissed, overworked in the battle against winter. I climbed back upstairs and shut the window. When I returned, I noticed the rose petals on the floor. Three of them were just inside the door. Several more marked the way like bread crumbs to the kitchen. On the counter, next to the computer, lay a scattering of long-stemmed red roses. Not a neatly bound bouquet, but six single roses that appeared to have been tossed aside.

  What the hell?

  I turned and took a better look around the place, trying to reconstruct what had happened. Any number of shops sold fresh flowers in my neighborhood. It was possible that Lilly had been bitten by the decorating bug and gone out, but if the intent had been to brighten my apartment, a mixed bouquet would have done just fine. More likely, Lilly had received a delivery. And then something had scared her off in a big way. Something to do with red roses. It made me wonder what-or more precisely, who -Lilly was running from.

  My eyes were drawn again to the roses on the counter, and then to my PC beside them, which was humming. I went to the computer and tapped the space bar. The screen saver vanished, revealing a typed message.

  They’re watching. Sorry I had to leave this way. Do not try to find me. Will let you know when it’s safe.

  I studied Lilly’s words. No doubt about it: she’d given someone the slip by using the fire escape. My ax-swinging Kate-and-Leonardo episode could have been avoided if she’d simply removed the chain on the door before climbing out the window, but she must have been in too much of a rush. Maybe they were banging on the door as she was making her getaway. Whoever “they” were. I had no way of knowing, and my second sighting of the mysterious man from Singapore had given me nothing to go on. I was tired of guessing. I went to work on the computer.

  My hunch was correct. The thought of Lilly cooped up all da
y in my apartment without going online was inconceivable, and either she didn’t care if I saw her Internet search history, or she’d left in too much of a hurry to erase it. A quick review gave me a road map to her activity. She’d hit Facebook, of course, though only a complete idiot would post her destination online before making a run for it. There were visits to nytimes.com and other news Web sites. Amid the idle browsing activity was a visit to Google maps. That intrigued me. I pulled up the exact page she’d visited, and voilà. It was the high-tech version of the gumshoe detective who finds the notepad left behind and shades the top sheet with the side of his lead pencil to turn indentations into words and draw up the last message.

  A street address popped up.

  It was downtown, maybe a twenty-minute walk from my apartment. I jotted it down, then thought better of it. I committed the address to memory and tossed the note in the garbage. Then I thought of yesterday’s ride through Times Square with a gun to my head.

  I fished the note from the trash can, flushed it down the toilet, and headed out the door.

  11

  D o not try to find me. Lilly’s instructions could not have been clearer. Of course, that was like telling a six year old, Whatever you do, don’t think about pink elephants. I was determined to find her, and not even that herd of pink elephants on the corner of Canal and Hudson was going to stop me.

  “Where to?” asked the cabdriver.

  I gave the address. The subway would have been just as quick, but my BlackBerry didn’t always work down there, and a few minutes in the back of a cab gave me a chance to answer some e-mails and do my real job. One thread seemed particularly important. I’d been watching a company called Tatfree, a little-known medical-instruments manufacturer whose researchers were on the verge of developing a quick and relatively painless process for the removal of unwanted tattoos without scarring. It seemed like a wise investment in a world where my generation had gone tattoo crazy, seemingly oblivious to the fact that someday the girl with the dragon tattoo would be the old woman with a shriveled up reptile on her backside. My team leader wanted me to nail down rumors of plans for an initial public offering.

  “Will make some calls,” I wrote, “and provide color in the a.m.”

  I was starting to overuse that expression, but its utility was immense. Even if you hadn’t done a damn thing, even if you didn’t have squat to say, as long as you claimed to provide “color,” your words had value on Wall Street.

  “You can drop me here,” I told the driver. We were way down on John Street, and if the cabbie hit one more pothole, I was going to shatter a molar. It was close enough for me to walk the rest of the way. I paid the fare and negotiated around two blocks of road construction by way of a temporary sidewalk.

  Several of my favorite sandwich shops were on John Street, but they were closer to Broadway. This far from the heart of the financial district was unfamiliar territory. After nine P.M. the streets were deserted, and most storefronts were barricaded, which made some of the city’s oldest buildings look even older. I had only an address, not a description of the building, so I did a double take when I reached my destination. It was a stone church, as tiny as it was old. I climbed the foot-worn granite steps out front-just three in all-and read the sign on the door. H OURS OF W ORSHIP, it said, but nothing was posted. Beside it was a notice for an upcoming service to commemorate the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This did not have the feel of an active church.

  “Looking for something?”

  I turned to see a man standing on the sidewalk, his face barely visible in the faint glow of the streetlamp on the corner. He was wearing an overcoat, but even discounting that, he appeared to be of impressive stature. I climbed down the steps.

  “I’m not sure I’m in the right place,” I said.

  “Then perhaps God has brought you here,” he said, extending his hand. “I am the Reverend Manu Robledo.”

  “Patrick,” I said, withholding my last name as we shook hands. “Is this your church?”

  He chuckled. “ My church? No, I’m merely the rector. This building belongs to the faithful. It’s the future home of the Church of Peace and Prosperity International.”

  And I work for the Swiss Bank of Love and Kindness , I wanted to say. But I held my tongue. “Where is the church’s current home?”

  “En todas partes , ” he said, the words rolling off his tongue in Spanish. “Everywhere.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is indeed,” he said, seeming to detect my skepticism. “The church has tens of thousands of followers worldwide. We built ourselves from the ground up, but only in the figurative sense. Heretofore we’ve operated entirely in the virtual world, linked only by the Internet. This old building will be our brick-and-mortar headquarters, our first piece of terra firma.”

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  He thanked me, but he was suddenly studying the contours of my face. I took a better look at him as well, though the shadows made it difficult. The dark eyes and complexion jibed with his Hispanic surname, and he had the heaviest eyebrows I’d ever seen, almost as thick and broad as his black mustache. I was having trouble pinpointing the accent. I had enough international clients to know the difference between Mexican Spanish and, say, Colombian Spanish. But the rector’s accent seemed to change from one sentence to the next. At times I also detected hints of Brazilian Portuguese. There was even a little Middle Eastern dialect. It had me stumped. And intrigued.

  “You look familiar to me,” he said. “Have we met?”

  “I highly doubt it.”

  “No, I’m very good with faces. Even better with names. Tell me your last name, Patrick.”

  I hesitated to give too much information, but whenever people tried to guess my name it made me nervous, made me spit out the alias that the government had given me-anything to shut down the fishing expedition. “Lloyd,” I said. “My name is Patrick Lloyd.”

  He snapped his fingers, smiling with recognition. “Yes, Patrick Lloyd. I knew I’d seen your face before.”

  “I’m quite certain we’ve never met.”

  “I’ve seen your photograph,” he said. “On Facebook. You’re Lilly Scanlon’s boyfriend.”

  Lilly was the reason for my visit, but it still took me aback. “You know Lilly?”

  “Very well,” he said. “We spoke on the telephone not too long ago.”

  “How long?”

  “Not long.” His evasiveness seemed purposeful, and I had no way of knowing if “not long” meant ten weeks or ten minutes.

  “Tell me, Patrick: Is everything okay with Lilly?”

  “I’m not sure, to be honest.”

  “No one is, it seems. Such a shame. Lilly is one of our lost sheep.”

  “Are you saying that Lilly is a member of your church?”

  He smiled again. “You say that as if we were some kind of cult.”

  If the shoe fits…

  His cell rang, and he begged my pardon to check the incoming number. “I’m afraid I must return this call,” he said. “But if you see Lilly, please tell her that we miss her. Will you promise to do that for me, Patrick?”

  It came across not as a casual request, not mere idle conversation. He seemed to be sincerely soliciting my promise.

  “Sure thing,” I said.

  “Good man,” he said with a smile. “Lilly can’t hide from us forever, you know. But I’m sure she knows that.”

  His friendly tone lent some ambiguity to his words. Some. “I’m sure she does,” I said.

  He bade me good night, climbed the steps, and unlocked the door. Then he turned and shot me another smile, adding a little wink before he disappeared inside the Church of Peace and Prosperity International.

  I stood alone on the sidewalk, not sure what to think, but I had never seen a phonier smile or a wink less sincere. And that accent was so all over the place. I was having a hard time accepting that it was his real voice-that anyone actuall
y spoke that way. It had me thinking that we had indeed met before.

  But the Reverend Robledo didn’t want me to know where.

  12

  I t was almost midnight, and I was still walking. old “Tri-be-ca,” named for the “triangle below Canal,” wasn’t that big. In the chilly night hours that followed my meeting with Manu Robledo I’d managed to cover virtually every square inch of my neighborhood. My best thinking was done while walking or while out for a run, and I had plenty to digest.

  Lilly’s possible connection to the International Church of Phony Baloney had raised a slew of questions. My subsequent conversation with Agent Henning answered none of them. Public parks were our preferred meeting spot, and this time I’d chosen “Position One”: the stairway to nowhere along the Battery Park waterfront, basically an observation platform that rose up over the trees like a giant stuck horseshoe and offered killer views of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. It was unusual for us to meet twice in a single day, but things were happening fast. In twenty minutes I recapped everything for her, from the reappearance of the stranger from Singapore to Manu Robledo’s phony accent and thick, distinctive eyebrows. She gave me nothing in return, save for her assurance that I need not report Lilly as “missing” to the police. The FBI had it covered. I was grateful for that, and for the fact that Andie hadn’t given me a big fat “I told you so.”

  “You want me to walk you to a cab?” she asked.

  Even though I’d requested protection the last time we’d met, her offer was somehow emasculating. It made me realize that I needed to think through exactly what I meant by “protection.” Maybe it was as simple as a panic button directly to the FBI. I wasn’t sure-but a personal bodyguard definitely was not what I had in mind. This was my neighborhood, I loved living here, and I refused to let myself be afraid to walk home without an FBI escort. I was also fully aware that the park was patrolled at least until the piers closed at one A.M.