Need You Now

by James Grippando

  Barber laid the mystery document aside and looked at me from across his desk. I knew I was not going to be fired, since it was corporate policy that at least two BOS representatives be present at the dismissal of any employee. It was a sad state of affairs when termination might well have been less troublesome than the actual purpose of the meeting.

  Barber looked at me and said, “Lilly won’t tell us.”

  “Tell you what?” I asked.

  “Your real name.”

  “I don’t know his real name,” said Lilly.

  I knew that was a lie, but I took it as a positive sign that, at least in front of Barber, she was pretending not to know that I was a Mandretti.

  Barber tightened his stare. “We know your name is not Patrick Lloyd.”

  I opted for silence.

  “I don’t know who you are,” said Barber, “and I’m guessing that you don’t want me or anyone else to find out.”

  I continued to listen, saying nothing.

  Barber rose, speaking as he walked to the window. A sea of city lights twinkled across Midtown, most of them below his fiftieth-floor vista. “I’m sure that if I kept digging, I would find out.” He turned away from the view and faced me. “But, frankly, I don’t care who you are.”

  I stole a quick glance at Lilly, trying to see if she was as confused as I was, but her gaze was cast at the floor.

  Barber stepped away from the window and leaned on the edge of his desk, facing us. “How would the two of you like to help me solve a little problem?”

  Lilly said nothing. “Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Great,” he said, rubbing his hands together. His sudden upbeat manner was laden with sarcasm. “Here’s the challenge: we need to find two billion dollars.”

  I shot another quick glance in Lilly’s direction, but I got nothing back from her.

  “What two billion dollars?” I asked.

  “The two billion that was supposed to go to Abe Cushman, but that the Treasury Department seems to think was squirreled away with the help of BOS/Singapore.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” I said.

  “Of course you don’t,” said Barber, his sarcasm even thicker, “and neither does Lilly. That’s why I’m through asking Lilly if she was complicit with you. And I won’t even bother asking if you were complicit with Lilly. In other words, I’m sick and tired of wasting my time.”

  He walked around his desk and picked up two large manila envelopes. They’d been hiding beneath the document he’d laid aside earlier.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” said Barber. He handed me one of the envelopes, unopened. I could tell from touch that it contained several CDs or DVDs in jewel boxes.

  “Patrick, I’m giving you full access to Lilly’s records for the past three years.” He handed the other sealed envelope to Lilly. “Lilly, I’m giving you complete access to Patrick’s records. Everything you need is there. Trading confirmations, e-mails, electronic data of every form imaginable. I want you to comb through it. Find that money.”

  I tried another sideways glance, and this time Lilly looked as confused as I felt. “I’m not sure I follow you, sir,” I said.

  “No worries,” he said. “One or both of you knows exactly what I’m talking about. One or both of you knows where the money is. My guess is, only one of you will come forward. The other will probably go to jail.

  “Work hard,” he said. “Search your conscience. Do the right thing. At the very least, save your own ass.”

  Barber walked to the door. Lilly rose, and I followed. I could see from the way she moved that her stomach was in knots. Stress had always taken a toll on her body, and I was feeling more than responsible for this bout.

  “Good luck,” said Barber, showing us out of his office. “You’re going to need it.”

  27

  L illy walked briskly down the hallway, not quite as if the building were on fire, but almost. There was no wait for an elevator, and it was just two of us inside when the doors closed.

  “Can we talk?” I asked.

  She kept her eyes fixed on the lighted numbers above the doors. I couldn’t tell if she simply didn’t want to talk while we were still inside the bank or if she hated my guts and never wanted to speak to me again. The range of possibilities seemed that broad.

  It was an express ride from the executive suite to the lobby. Lilly got out first, and I nearly had to break into a trot to follow her out of the building. It was the tail end of rush hour, but even a crowded sidewalk didn’t slow her down. I found myself dodging to and fro to avoid head-on collisions with oncoming pedestrians as I pleaded with her.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said.

  “You lied to me,” she said, never breaking stride.

  “A legal name change for reasons of personal safety is not a lie,” I said. “I’ve been Patrick Lloyd my entire adult life.”

  She stopped cold. “I came halfway across the world out of concern for your safety. I told you that the real name of the man who killed Gerry Collins is Tony Mandretti. You acted as if you’d never heard of him. Then you told me you had a business trip, got on a plane, and went to visit him-your father-in prison. That’s a lie.”

  I would have liked a killer comeback, but I supposed she was right. “It wasn’t as if I was never going to tell you the truth.”

  “That is so lame.” She turned angrily and started down the sidewalk. I took her by the arm, stopping her.

  “Let go of me,” she said.

  “Lilly, be reasonable.”

  “Reasonable? You want me to be reasonable? I had no idea Gerry Collins and Abe Cushman were a fraud. Now, even the Treasury Department thinks I’m hiding billions in dirty money. The bank fired me, thugs are chasing me, and my stomach feels like I swallowed a box of roofing tacks. Mind you, all of this came to pass after you arrived in Singapore.”

  “Are you suggesting I had something to do with all that?”

  “Are you suggesting you had nothing to do with it?”

  If this conversation was going to continue, there was only one way to answer such a broad question: “No, I’m not suggesting any such thing.”

  My veracity caught her off guard. Slowly, the anger in her expression transformed into curiosity. We drifted out of the flow of pedestrians, crossed the sidewalk, and took a seat on the lip of a huge granite planter outside the office building. Overhead, a decorative strand of leftover Christmas lights twinkled in the bare branches of a potted maple tree. Our breath steamed in the chilly night air, the blinking lights coloring our little puffs of conversation.

  “I’ve made mistakes,” I said, “and I’m sorry you’re the one getting hurt.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “But,” I said, “there are two sides to the story here.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It’s true that I didn’t tell you my real name was Peter Mandretti. But somehow you knew that, and a whole lot more, when you called Connie this morning and told her I had to get out of the ER and run for my life. You want to tell me how you got that information?”

  “Why does it matter how I found out?”

  “It matters because you’re getting bad information.”

  “Don’t even try to convince me that you’re not Peter Mandretti.”

  “That part is accurate. But you’re being led down the wrong path if someone told you that the Santucci family has figured out that Patrick Lloyd is Peter Mandretti and is after me.”

  “How do you know it’s wrong?”

  “Because I’d be dead by now if they were after me. My mom is proof enough of that.”

  “Your mom?”

  Lilly obviously didn’t know that part of the story. I digressed to fill her in. I wasn’t fishing for sympathy by bringing my mother’s murder into it, but the effect was there nonetheless.

  “I’m sorry about your mother,” she said. “I really am. But hearing about her doesn’t make it any sa
fer for me to tell you how I got your real name.”

  Our eyes met, and I saw genuine fear in hers. “Talk to me,” I said.

  “The man is scary, Patrick. Really scary. He knows everything. He knows about your family. He knows about Gerry Collins. He knows about Manu Robledo.”

  “What did he tell you about Robledo?”

  “That he opened the numbered account at BOS.”

  “And you’re saying that’s the truth?”

  “Yes. I knew it as soon as I went to the church and spoke to him. It was the same voice.”

  “I knew that accent of his was phony,” I said.

  “What accent?”

  “He put on a weird voice when I went to see him at the church. At first it made me think he was some kind of cult leader. But it also made me think that maybe he was trying to keep me from recognizing him.”

  “He must have realized how weak it was,” said Lilly. “He didn’t even bother trying to fool me.”

  “So it is definitely Robledo who is threatening us, demanding the money.”

  “And warning us that we’re dead if we go to the police. So don’t .”

  “I just told you what happened to my mother when my dad went to the police. I’m not going to run and tell the police anything without a quid pro quo-protection, information, something. You know I wouldn’t negotiate without telling you.”

  “Really? Right now, all I know is that you went to see Robledo and didn’t tell me a thing about it.”

  “How did you know that ?”

  “How do you think? There’s only one person who tells me anything, and your reaction just confirmed that he told me the truth. What do you have going on with Robledo?”

  “Nothing. I only found out about him because you left a map to his so-called church in the search history of my Internet browser. I pulled it up after you climbed out the window of my apartment-which is another thing you haven’t explained to me.”

  The anxious expression returned to her face. “The apartment,” she said, almost stammering. “I had to leave. Right away. It was him. The guy I’ve been telling you about. He showed up, pretending to deliver roses.”

  “I found them.”

  “I’m not kidding when I say that he’s scary, that he knows everything. He even knows stuff about us .”

  “What kind of stuff about us?”

  “He was watching us in Singapore.”

  So was Evan Hunt , I thought-but I kept that to myself.

  “He knows the littlest details, like how we broke up on the beach,” she said. “He witnessed the whole incident with the seagull pooping on your head.”

  “Wonderful. I suppose that will end up on YouTube.”

  It was a stab at levity, but she remained deadly serious. “He said it was all a stunt. He saw you splatter yourself with a handful of sunscreen.”

  “What?”

  “He said you were just trying to make me feel worse about dumping you.”

  Apparently, my joke about YouTube wasn’t far from the mark. “Lilly, I Facebooked about the seagull after we broke up. I got about a hundred comments. I’m sure that’s how he found out about it. He wasn’t on the beach watching us. This sunscreen story is ridiculous. It just proves that he’s a liar who wants to turn you against me. Who is this idiot?”

  She ignored my question, her eyes narrowing. “He said your transfer from New York to Singapore wasn’t just a career move. He said it was part of a plan.”

  “Really? He actually said that?”

  “Getting to know me, getting me to trust you, was part of your plan.”

  I was starting to squirm. Lilly had been right-this guy’s breadth of knowledge was scary-and I wasn’t sure how deep a hole I was in. Honesty had been paying dividends so far tonight, though I wasn’t sure how much was too much. I gave it a shot.

  “Let’s clear some of this up,” I said.

  “Aren’t you going to deny it?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t just a career move, but let me explain.”

  “Are you saying there was a plan?”

  I struggled with this one, measuring my words. “My trip to Singapore was part of an official investigation.”

  Her mouth fell open, and finally she spoke. “You went there to spy on me?”

  “Spying is a strong word.”

  “So it’s true?”

  “I can’t say it’s true, because I don’t know what he told you, but-”

  “Oh, my God. You are such a liar.”

  “I’m not lying. I’m being completely honest.”

  “Now you are. But you played me for months.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “All your talk about love at first sight-that was just a line to make me trust you. All part of an official investigation .”

  “Lilly, just calm down.”

  “An official investigation for whom ? Some warring faction of the Santucci family run by your father from a prison cell?”

  I couldn’t mention the FBI. “Lilly, please. That’s not it at all.”

  “Go to hell, Patrick.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  She clutched the envelope Barber had given her, her glare shooting back at me like lasers. “We’ll see what the data says.”

  She turned and joined the late rush-hour flow, disappearing into the night.

  28

  “I t’s all encrypted,” said Evan.

  My package from Barber contained eight DVDs. After watching Lilly storm off to examine my data, I returned to Evan’s apartment and enlisted some added firepower to examine hers. My instincts had been dead on: I officially needed Evan more than he needed me.

  “Can you break the code?” I asked.

  Evan looked up from his computer screen. I followed his gaze as it swept the flowchart of arrows, photographs, and handwritten narrative on his walls.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  It wasn’t arrogance; it was just a fact: Evan’s first language was numbers. He spoke through numbers, read through numbers, looked for stories in numbers. Evan didn’t simply make sure his checkbook and credit card statements balanced to the penny -which was weird enough. He was the kind of guy who, just for grins, would extract the raw data from his monthly statements and create an intelligent computing algorithm to analyze the dynamics of the prices he’d paid for his daily cup of coffee, accounting for his cost of transportation to each coffee bar, “cost” expressed as a function of both actual out-of-pocket expense and travel time.

  “I think I’ve come to the right place,” I said.

  Evan went to work. I walked around the room and examined the flowchart more carefully. I noted the question marks attached to his reference to a numbered account at BOS/Singapore. Clearly, he was unaware of what Lilly had just confirmed for me-that it was Manu Robledo who had opened the account. But even as I filled in blanks, I realized that the more I studied the analysis, the more questions I had. One of his “red flags”-the thirty-eight obvious signs that Cushman was running a Ponzi scheme-was simply dollar signs. I hated to interrupt him, but it was too cryptic for me to decipher.

  “What do these dollar signs mean?” I asked.

  Evan looked up. No doubt he was in the middle of a mathematical calculation that stretched out at least thirty decimal places, but he switched gears with remarkable ease.

  “Red flag number twelve,” he said.

  “I can see that,” I said, “but what does it mean?”

  “Cushman Investment maintained accounts at two different banks. At the end of every reporting period, Cushman had his CFO convert all of the firm’s holdings to cash equivalents-Treasury bills-to avoid SEC disclosure requirements. That should have been a tip-off to the SEC.”

  “That was in your report?”

  “Yup. That and three dozen other red flags.”

  “And you gave all that to the SEC?”

  “Well, not me, personally. Your dad did.” Evan went back to work, then stopped and looked
up again. “That’s why I think he’s in jail.”

  I turned, confused. “How’s that?”

  “I don’t have the proof-yet-but I believe your father was framed for the murder of Gerry Collins because he put the report in the hands of the SEC and had the power to tell the world that the SEC knew that Cushman was a fraud. They locked him up and shut him up.”

  I thought about it, but I was still confused. “That doesn’t really make sense. He could still talk from prison.”

  “Yes,” said Evan. “If he wanted to. Clearly, he doesn’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s the missing part of the puzzle.”

  I could have strained my brain trying to figure that one out, but there was another problem. “I just don’t see it,” I said. “It wasn’t simply a frame-up. My dad confessed.”

  “No one said it was a voluntary confession.”

  I shook my head. “Forcing a man to confess to murder is going way too far to protect the SEC’s reputation. Do you really think my dad is sitting in jail just so the industry won’t think the SEC is incompetent?”

  “That’s the point,” said Evan. “It wasn’t incompetence.”

  I glanced back at the flowchart-the thirty-eight red flags that proved beyond any doubt that Cushman was running a Ponzi scheme. “If that’s not incompetence, I don’t know what is.”

  “Nobody is that incompetent,” said Evan.

  “So what are you saying?”

  His expression turned deadly serious. “They knew,” he said. “They positively knew Cushman was a fraud. They didn’t miss it. They overlooked it.”

  “You mean they knowingly looked the other way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “To advance some other agenda.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re saying that the SEC could have shut Cushman down, but they let it play out because-”

  “Because it advanced another government agenda. Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I don’t know what that agenda is yet, but I think your father does. That’s what got him in such a jam. Your dad kept my name out of it when he presented my report to the government, which I believe is the only reason I’m still alive. That makes twice your father saved my life. So I’m making it my business to find out what that other government agenda is. And when I do, everyone had better run for cover.”