Need You Now

by James Grippando

  “You go ahead,” I said, “I’ll be fine.”

  Twenty minutes later I was still in the park, a short walk north of where Andie had left me, having found a peaceful place to let my thoughts gel. I simply wasn’t convinced that Andie was right about Lilly. The last two days, however, had me seriously entertaining the possibility that I was blinded by… love… lust? Whatever it was that had kept me from asking the right questions during all that time I’d wasted in Singapore.

  “Got a cigarette, dude?”

  I was staring out at the black river, standing on the bicycle trail that snaked along the western edge of the Hudson River. The tennis courts behind me were dark. Equally quiet was nearby Chelsea Piers, where I’d paid through the nose for countless buckets of balls at Manhattan’s only driving range. I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed the man on the park bench.

  “Sorry, I don’t smoke.”

  I fought off the shadows for a better look, the thought occurring to me that beneath the homeless getup might lurk that stranger from Singapore, who seemed to show up everywhere lately. This man was huge, much too big to be that other guy, even bigger than Robledo, and it wasn’t just the winter coat. His legs stretched out forever before him, and he had the hands of a man well over six feet tall. I turned and continued along the path toward the World Financial Center. The click of his heels followed.

  “Just one lousy cigarette,” he said. “That’s all I want.”

  This, of course, was just what I needed: a homeless Paul Bunyan with nothing better to do than hassle me. I ignored him, but he didn’t go away.

  “Don’t try and tell me you don’t smoke,” he said, still following.

  I quickened my pace, but he kept stride.

  “You Wall Street tight-asses all smoke,” he said, still trailing me. “I see you hanging out every day by the barricades outside the stock exchange.”

  I wasn’t a smoker, but he was right, in a general sense: no matter how cold the weather, you could find refugees from smoke-free office buildings puffing away in the pedestrian-only stretch of Wall Street off Broadway, right outside the exchange.

  But how did he know I had anything to do with Wall Street?

  I stopped and turned. He stopped, too. I looked him in the eye, which only reconfirmed that he wasn’t the guy from Singapore. I was trying not to panic, but my thoughts raced with the even more disturbing possibility that this might be the guy from Times Square. That armed escort from Agent Henning was looking pretty good in hindsight.

  “Who are you?”

  He was silent, didn’t move. I turned and continued on my way, listening carefully for the click of his heels behind me. We were coming up on a forested stretch of the path, and the darkness beneath nature’s canopy made me extra cautious. His rant continued.

  “Just as well,” he said, “cancer sticks are what did in Tony Mandretti.”

  That got my attention. I started to turn, but before I could react he had me from behind. The cord around my neck made me freeze. Anyone who could move that quickly was definitely no random homeless person.

  “Stop!” I said, but he was in control.

  “Be still!”

  The wire around my neck was taut enough to scare me, loose enough for me to breathe-barely. It was hard to focus. For the second time in as many days I was the victim of an attack, but I was having difficulty remembering the sound of the man’s voice in the back of the SUV. Maybe that was because this voice was different. I wanted desperately to compare the two, but I just wasn’t sure.

  “Stay away from Lilly Scanlon,” he said.

  That was the opposite of what the guy in the SUV had told me, and with the conflicting agendas I could suddenly discern a difference between the voices. This was definitely not the same guy from the SUV.

  “Okay, you got it.”

  “Stay away from the FBI, too.”

  I swallowed hard. He hadn’t mentioned Agent Henning by name, and before he could, I suddenly felt the need to protect myself, or at least to deny any connection to anyone who was off limits.

  “I honestly don’t know-”

  He tightened the wire and held it, which sent me into survival mode. I kicked backward and nailed him in the shin, but he pulled me to the ground and rolled me onto my belly. I swung my arms over my head, pried with my fingers at the wire around my neck-but the man was a bull. He had me, and he kept squeezing-not long enough to make me pass out, not so tight as to cause permanent injury. It was the perfect length of time and the precise amount of pressure to send a clear message: I was dealing with a professional. Finally, he allowed me some slack, and I coughed for air.

  “Just stay away,” he said. “It won’t be pretty if you don’t.”

  Before I could answer he delivered a crushing blow to the back of my skull-a head butt, maybe. My chin hit the pavers, and I was barely conscious as the taste of blood filled my mouth. I tried to lift my head, but the side of my face might as well have been glued to the cold bike path. The groan I let out was completely involuntary, and the next thing I heard was the sound of his heels echoing in my mind-a quick pace, a man running, my attacker getting away.

  Then all was black.

  “A re you all right, sir?”

  My eyes blinked open. The voice was a stranger’s, and I was gazing up at a woman I didn’t recognize. She was wearing a uniform. A cop? No, she was a park ranger, and only then did I even begin to remember what had happened to me. I sat up slowly. The ranger was at my side, down on one knee, and she braced my shoulder to steady me. My head was pounding, and it was a struggle to focus.

  “Do you know your name?” she asked.

  I was sure that I did, but the answer wouldn’t come. I was suddenly blinded by a flashlight, and the ranger apologized, saying something about checking my pupils.

  “Do you know what day it is?” she asked.

  Never had such a simple question seemed so complicated. It was still night, that much I could tell. I was fading in and out, but for a moment I managed to comprehend that I was exactly where Mr. Congeniality had delivered a head butt with sufficient force to drop a rhinoceros. “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Two twenty A.M. ”

  It hurt to think, but I forced myself to do the math. I’d been out cold for a couple of hours. Or had it been twenty-six hours? I wasn’t sure. “So, today is… Wednesday?”

  “Can you tell me your name?”

  There she went again, asking me that simple, impossible question. The answer was stuck somewhere between my brain and my tongue.

  “Sir, can you tell me who you are?”

  The night around me started to swirl. The ranger propped me up.

  “Sir, what’s your name?”

  I fought to remain conscious. “My name,” I started to say, but my train of thought was barely on the tracks. I drew a deep breath, reached inside, and yanked out the truth.

  “It’s Peter,” I said. “My name is Peter Mandretti.”

  13

  S he was alive. He could feel it. With two latex-covered fingers pressed against her neck, he detected a heartbeat. She was unconscious but slowly coming back. He’d taken her to the brink of death, but not beyond.

  He hadn’t lost his touch.

  Wisely, he’d decided to hang around the riverfront after taking down Patrick Lloyd. The nearby marina offered dozens of hiding places. Himself a sailor-if you called a former Navy SEAL a “sailor”-he’d chosen the fifty-foot Morgan in slip E-35. The lock on the cabin door had been child’s play, and while enjoying some rich investment banker’s twenty-year-old scotch, he had peered through night-vision binoculars-standard equipment in his tool kit-as the park ranger came to the aid of the fallen target. He saw her revive him and watched them have a conversation before Lloyd blacked out again. The only problem was that he hadn’t been able to hear what they were saying. All problems had a solution.

  The ranger worked the graveyard shift, which ended at six A.M. He’d follow
ed her to the subway, rode in the car behind hers, and got off the train ten seconds after she did. She’d had no idea he was tailing her, and by seven A.M. she’d unwittingly led him all the way to her apartment in New Jersey. Officially, sunrise was just minutes away, but the overcast sky was black with a hint of purple. Rows of barren elms cast long shadows in the glow of burning streetlights. He had the advantage of darkness, but he needed to be careful as the neighborhood came to life with morning commuters. Pretending to wait at the bus stop across the street, he’d watched the lights inside her apartment switch on and off, a silent trail that broadcast her trip from the front door to the bathroom to the bedroom. He’d imagined her undressing-there was definitely one hot body beneath that unflattering uniform-but he shook off the distraction. That wasn’t what this was about. He’d allowed her forty minutes to fall asleep, then made his move. The window in the alley had been his point of entry.

  “What… do you want?” she asked in a voice that quaked.

  She was almost completely conscious now, revived if not refreshed, but at least coherent enough to ask a valid question. It amused him that she would even entertain the possibility of a response. He would ask the questions, and having taken her to the brink of death, he was assured of the truth.

  He buried his knee firmly into her kidney. She was flat on her stomach, facedown on the bathroom rug, hands cuffed behind her waist, unable to move beneath his two-hundred-plus pounds of sculpted muscle. A man of considerably less strength could have obtained the same results. Control was more about technique than brute force. The strangulation stick was a simple but lethal device, a two-foot loop of nylon rope attached at both ends to a ten-inch wooden handle. It allowed him to twist with one hand and choke his victim, leaving the other free to control her.

  Her legs twitched with each futile kick against the white tile floor. Some degree of fight remained inside her, but experience told him that he couldn’t take this one to the edge again and be certain of her return. Three such journeys seemed to be her limit. Each twist of the noose around her neck had made her groan and squirm up until the point of lost consciousness. At precisely the right moment he would release. The loop at the end of the stick would loosen. Her swanlike neck would lose the hourglass effect. Her breathing would resume. Blood would bring oxygen to her dying brain. The purple ring of bruises around her neck would swell, then throb. Slowly, her near-dead body would return to life. As an interrogation tactic, the garrote was riskier than waterboarding, but when done properly it was far more effective.

  Again he gave her a moment to catch her breath, then spoke in the stern voice that had elicited secrets from subjects much tougher than this one.

  “Tell me what he said to you!”

  “What who said?”

  “The man you helped in the park.”

  “He didn’t tell me anything.”

  “I saw you talking before he blacked out. What did he say?”

  “I-I don’t remember.”

  “Tell me!”

  “Honestly, I don’t re-”

  A twist of the stick tightened the rope. She gasped, and he released. He leaned closer, breathing his words into her ear. “Tell me what he said. Or you die right now.”

  Her body shook, but her feeble resistance concerned him. She should have been pleading for her life. He feared he was losing her. He grabbed her by the hair and raised her head off the floor. Her eyes had rolled back into her head. Time was running out. He grabbed her by the shoulders and sat her up against the bathtub. The faucet was close enough for him to soak a bath towel, and he splashed her face. It was like trying to keep a druggie from slipping into a coma, but he was making some headway.

  “Tell me what he said. Right now .”

  “He, uh…”

  He splashed her again with cold water. “He what ?”

  “He made no sense,” she said.

  “Just tell me what he said, damn it!”

  She breathed in and out, but it was beyond a struggle. The wheezing told him that her throat was crushed, and she wasn’t getting enough air.

  “He said… his name… Peter,” she said, her eyes closing.

  “Peter what?”

  She didn’t answer, but he was determined to get it, even if he had to shake it out of her. “Peter what ?” he said, prying her eyes open.

  “Mandretti,” she said.

  Her voice was little more than a whisper, and he might not have caught it if he hadn’t heard that surname before.

  “Like Tony Mandretti?” he asked, but she didn’t answer. Her shoulders slumped, and her chin hit her chest.

  Peter Mandretti. Tony Mandretti’s son. It made perfect sense to him. It was as he had suspected: the son was driving the car, but the father was navigating him down the road to Cushman’s money.

  He allowed the deadweight of her torso to slide to the right, and her body became a heap of collateral damage on the bathroom floor.

  The interrogation was over, successful beyond his wildest dreams.

  14

  I woke in a strange bed with side railings, a white fluorescent ceiling light assaulting my eyes. An angled mattress had me somewhere between the upright position and flat on my back. Squinting, I propped myself up further on one elbow and peered through a crack in the white curtain before me. It wasn’t a window curtain. It was a room divider that separated my private cubicle from the busy common area beyond, where nurses and doctors wearing green hospital scrubs darted about. I was alone and still in my street clothes, no shoes. I had no memory of coming to the emergency room, but my mind was clear enough to recall a conversation with a park ranger before blacking out a second time.

  She must have brought me here.

  Details of that conversation suddenly came flooding back- “My name is Peter Mandretti”- and in a moment of panic, I checked the hospital ID bracelet on my wrist.

  P ATRICK L LOYD, it read.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. The park ranger had apparently dismissed my “Peter Mandretti” slip of the tongue as the incoherent ramblings of an assault victim. Presumably, the hospital had checked my driver’s license upon admission.

  My BlackBerry rang, but it wasn’t in my pocket. I was still gathering my wits and adjusting to my surroundings, and I was having trouble locating the phone. I sat up and listened more intently, but by the time I focused on the bag of personal belongings hanging from the bed railing, the ringing had stopped.

  I checked the phone. It was 8:35 A.M. The call was from my team leader at BOS, and the history told me that I’d slept right through four earlier calls from him. I suddenly recalled that the first thing on the day’s agenda had been a 7:30 breakfast meeting with a client who was wealthy even by BOS standards, and it was my job to recommend changes to his portfolio.

  The ringing resumed-call number six in the last twenty minutes. With a sense of dread I answered, only to get an earful.

  “Where the hell are you, Patrick?”

  “I’m sorry. I-”

  “I don’t want to hear your excuse. Unless you’re dead or dying, there is none.”

  How about under threat of death? I decided not to go there. “I’ll grab a cab and be there in-”

  “Forget it,” he said. “I was able to wing it this time. But if you ever do that to me again, I will fire your ass. Period. Do you hear me?”

  He hung up before I could answer. Jay was my best friend when things were going well, my worst nightmare if I screwed up. The harsh tone was a stark reminder that there was plenty to lose even if I didn’t lose my head-literally. Not that it would have helped to explain things to him or to anyone else at the bank. A gun to my head, a cord around my neck, threats with tentacles reaching back to Abe Cushman-all brought about by my decision to become the eyes and ears of the FBI inside the very bank that employed me. Even I was having trouble comprehending it.

  The curtain parted, then closed, giving me a start. It wasn’t a doctor or a nurse. Lilly spoke before I could get a word out. />
  “I know who you are,” she said. Her voice was just above a whisper; her tone, somewhere between pain and anger. “Why did you lie to me?”

  I could have played dumb. Lying in an ER bed, I could have turned it right back on her and demanded an explanation of all that had happened since she’d shown up and dragged me into Puffy’s Tavern. But the look on her face left me powerless to do anything but put aside the last forty-eight hours and say what I’d wanted to say for months.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She stood there, silent, just looking at me. I wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but an I’m sorry, too would have been nice.

  She breathed in and out, then said, “I don’t even know why I’m helping you.”

  Not exactly the mutual exchange of apologies I had hoped for. “Helping me? What do you mean, help -”

  She shushed me, gathered my shoes from a chair in the corner, and told me to put them on. “We need to get out of here,” she said, her tone urgent.

  “Do you know what happened to me?”

  “You’re fine. They did a CT scan two hours ago.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I read your chart when the nurse was away from the desk. Trust me, they wouldn’t have you lie here by yourself sleeping if they thought you had a serious head injury.”

  “Hold on a second,” I said.

  “No, we need to get going before the nurse comes by to check on you again.”

  I took her hand. “Just wait , okay?”

  She stopped, and our eyes met. If we were going to embrace, this would have been the moment. But things had gotten way too complicated, and it didn’t feel right-not to me, and, I sensed, not to her, either. I let go of her hand.

  “Three days ago I would have given anything to see you again,” I said. “You’ve shown up twice since then, which coincides exactly with the number of times someone has tried to kill me.”

  “Please, Patrick-or should I call you Peter?”

  The dig triggered another pang of guilt. “How did you find out?”

  “Don’t turn this around and make it about me,” she said. “When did you intend to stop lying?”