Need You Now

by James Grippando

  “What is Operation BAQ?”

  “If I answered that question, I would have to turn in my badge.”

  “If it’s a matter of negotiation, I’m prepared to share the name of a certain account holder at BOS/Singapore.”

  “Manu Robledo,” she said.

  “You know about him?”

  “It’s been a productive morning,” she said. “At this point, I’m confident that I know more about Robledo than you do.”

  “Then I presume you’re going to arrest him.”

  “For what?”

  “For putting a gun to my head and threatening to send me the way of Gerry Collins if he doesn’t get back the money he lost.”

  She shifted, uneasy. I sensed that the bureau’s party line was coming, and that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. “As of this point in time, the FBI doesn’t have sufficient evidence to substantiate as a matter of fact that the attack took place.”

  As I’d expected: the party line. “You disappoint me, Agent Henning.”

  “I told you when it happened that you should have called me immediately. You even washed the powder burns away from your neck. There’s no physical evidence.”

  “You could at least bring him in for questioning.”

  “I’ve told you all I can about the FBI’s position on Robledo. There’s nothing more to say.”

  I felt the need to convince her otherwise, to demonstrate that our mutual exchange of information was still worth her while. The memo was my best angle.

  “BAQ is a Treasury operation, isn’t it,” I said.

  I didn’t expect her to confirm it, but clearly my educated guess had piqued her interest. “Why would you say that?” she asked.

  “It’s a fairly easy deduction. My tech guy did his best to decode all the data in Lilly’s files. He was able to extract the letters BAQ from a memo that was encrypted on the order of a national security memorandum. You just told me that BAQ is a government operation of some sort.”

  “I didn’t say it was a Treasury operation.”

  “You didn’t have to. The only government memorandum Lilly ever mentioned to me was a Treasury memo stating that she and BOS/Singapore represented the most promising lead in the search for the Cushman money.”

  “How would she know about a memo?” asked Andie.

  “Lilly got the same threat I did: hand over the Cushman money or die. She told him she didn’t know anything about it, but he showed her proof that she was lying.”

  “He showed her the memo?”

  “Yes.”

  She seemed to credit what I was saying, but I could see her concern as the realization sank in: in the world of quid pro quo, she owed me.

  “I want to see the memo,” I said, getting right to the point.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Lilly has already seen it. Why can’t I?”

  “My guess is that she didn’t see the classified version.”

  “There are two versions?”

  “One version has all the classified information concealed. There are black bars on the page wherever anything has been redacted.”

  “I want to see the classified, unredacted version of the Treasury Department’s Operation BAQ memorandum.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Sorry you feel that way,” I said. “I suppose I could take the encrypted file to someone who knows how to decode it. Maybe the Russian embassy can help me.”

  “That’s not funny,” she said.

  “I’m not laughing,” I said.

  “You’re messing with treason.”

  “You’re messing with my life and my family.”

  Neither of us had raised our voice, but I could feel the heat from the exchange.

  “Clearly, the smart thing is for us to work together,” Andie said.

  “Agreed. I’m offering to hand over the encrypted file I have in my possession and to keep quiet about it. But I want to know what’s in it.”

  “You’re asking too much.”

  “You’re giving too little.”

  Andie did not respond. I signaled to Connie that it was time to leave. “Think about it,” I told Andie as I opened the door. Connie exited first, and I followed. “But think fast,” I said. “I instructed my tech guy to be very careful with that encrypted file, but accidents do happen. I’d hate for him to hit the wrong button and send the thing viral over the Internet.”

  I closed the door, leaving Agent Henning alone in the room to consider the proposal on the table.

  35

  L illy didn’t answer my call to her cell phone, which came as no surprise. I sent her an e-mail and hoped she would bite:

  The Treasury memo was in your files. Give me a chance to prove you’re innocent. Meet me at Puffy’s, 2 p.m. today.

  The message was clear enough-surely she would realize that “the Treasury memo” was the one with her name in it-and I thought I’d struck the right tone by offering to help. Puffy’s was familiar territory, the Tribeca bar we’d stumbled out of singing I need your cow . Still, I had to catch my breath when she actually showed up.

  “You came,” I said, stating the obvious.

  Lilly slid into the booth, no kiss or hug to greet me. None was expected, but seeing her so tense, seated on the other side of the table, made me wish that I could erase the last four days and start over.

  She unbuttoned her winter coat but left it on. “I can’t stay long.”

  She was trying so hard not to be the Lilly I knew that it came across as robotic. I would have liked to melt some of the ice, but there was a glacier in the room, and I didn’t have ten thousand years.

  “This won’t take long,” I said.

  “Can I see the memo?”

  “First, there’s something I need to know. How did it get into your BOS files?”

  “I had no idea it was there until I got your e-mail.”

  That made sense, and I realized that it was at such a high level of encryption that she wouldn’t have been able to read it even if she had known it was there. But I had to discount my assessment of everything Lilly said by a serious I-want-you-back factor.

  “Patrick, are you okay?”

  Just seeing Lilly could do terrible things to my ability to focus. “Yeah, sorry.”

  “So now can I see the memo, please?”

  “The short answer to that question is yes.”

  She was wary, the way most people react if they’re smart enough to know that the long answer always swallows up the short answer.

  “You don’t have it, do you?” she said.

  I drew a breath, and it was hesitation enough for Lilly to get up to leave. “You are such a liar, Patrick.”

  “Lilly, wait. I do have it.”

  She stopped, threw me a look that said You’d better not be lying , and slid back into the booth.

  A waitress came, and we ordered coffee. Decaf for Lilly. The aversion to caffeine told me that she hadn’t been sleeping well, which added to my own sense of regret.

  “Lilly, I am really sorry that-”

  “Stop,” she said. “Let’s not go there.”

  “Right,” I said, pulling myself back together. “Here’s the deal with the memo.”

  I paused, not sure where to start. Our talk outside the building after the meeting in Barber’s office had ended in disaster, mostly due to the way I’d skirted around my involvement with the FBI.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “You were saying.”

  I leaned closer, as if to emphasize that I was sharing a secret. “Do you remember last time we spoke, when I said I went to Singapore as part of an official investigation?”

  She rolled her eyes. Clearly, it wasn’t a pleasant memory. “Yes.”

  “It wasn’t an investigation for some warring faction of the Santucci family,” I said, using her words. “It was for the FBI.”

  The waitress brought our coffee, which was a good thing, because it forced Lilly to keep her composure. The waitres
s left, and Lilly listened as I explained my deal with the FBI-cancer treatment for my father in exchange for any information I might find that Cushman was laundering money through BOS/Singapore.

  “You mean information that I was helping Cushman launder money through BOS/Singapore,” said Lilly.

  I was getting no wiggle room. “Well, yes.”

  “So, the bottom line hasn’t changed. You were spying on me.”

  “I didn’t even know you when I cut the deal. Everything changed after I met you. And once we started seeing each other, I never lied about my feelings for you.”

  “ ‘Love at first sight’ was not a lie?”

  “Lilly, don’t count this against my feelings for you now, but I never told you it was love at first sight.” I nearly gasped, not because of my honesty, but because I was starting to sound like a reject from The Bachelor .

  “I know you didn’t,” Lilly said, lowering her eyes. “When I said love at first sight, maybe I was channeling my own feelings to you.”

  She looked at me, and I at her, and after a moment I could see that we had come to the same critical realization: this was nauseating.

  “ Oh, baby, I need your cow ,” I sang.

  Lilly smiled, and then we shared a little laugh. I wanted to reach for her hand, but the feel-good moment hadn’t made our problems go away.

  “So,” said Lilly. “The memo?”

  She was back to the heart of the matter, but her tone was softer. I told her about the trip to Boston to see my father, the conversation with Andie Henning.

  Lilly asked, “Do you think Agent Henning will actually show you the decrypted memo?”

  “There’s a chance,” I said. “But there’s at least an equal chance that my tech guy will decode the encrypted version I already have.”

  My BlackBerry vibrated. I didn’t recognize the number, so I let it ring through to voice mail. “Lilly, I know this isn’t a pleasant memory, but I wanted to ask you about the day you were attacked. When you actually saw the memo.”

  “We went over this the last time we were here.”

  “I know, but so much has changed. Tell me not just what you read, but how he showed it to you, what he said to you. Everything.”

  She took a breath, then let it out. “Okay. It was my last week in Singapore. I went for a run early, like I always did, before it got too hot. There’s a path by the beach that’s really beautiful when the sun comes up. I was in the zone, cruising along, and suddenly, I was down on the ground, my face in the sand. Before I really knew what was happening, he was sitting on my spine and I was pinned underneath him. My instinct was to fight back, but I was tired from the run, and he was way too strong. When he grabbed me by the hair, it was like he was going to pull it right out. Then I felt the gun at the back of my head.”

  This version of events had more details than the one before, and her voice was starting to quiver. I gave her a moment.

  “Then what?”

  “It was a lot like what happened to you in Times Square. He said it was time to turn over the money that was funneled to Cushman through BOS.”

  “Did you say anything?”

  “I said I didn’t know a thing about Cushman. That’s how I ended up with the powder burn I showed you the last time we sat at this table. He pulled the trigger, jerked the gun away just enough for the bullet to brush past my neck. The silencer probably kept me from going deaf, but it told me I was dealing with someone who knew what he was doing.”

  It was more than “a lot like” what had happened to me. It was virtually identical. “How did the memo come into it?” I asked.

  “I kept saying over and over, ‘It’s not me, you’ve got the wrong person!’ He pulled my head up by the hair again and…” She swallowed hard, then continued. “I thought he was going to put a bullet in my head. But that was when he put the memo under my nose, literally, right in the sand.”

  “You’re sure it was a Treasury Department memo?”

  “It was on Treasury letterhead. I supposed it could have been a fake, but why would he forge it? He’d only be fooling himself.”

  “Tell me everything you remember about it.”

  “It was quick, so what I remember most is the part that mentioned me by name. Something like: ‘Treasury’s most promising lead as to concealment of proceeds from the Cushman fraud remains Gerry Collins’ banking activities at BOS/Singapore, and the key person of interest at BOS has been identified as Lilly Scanlon.’ ”

  “Do you remember anything else?”

  “Not really. He focused me on the key language. It wasn’t like he gave me time to read it from start to finish.”

  My BlackBerry rang again, the same number as before. This time I realized it was Evan, so I begged Lilly’s pardon and answered.

  “What’s up?”

  “Got some good news,” Evan said.

  “Tell me.”

  He chuckled, then did a really bad imitation of a Russian spy: “I broke the code, comrade.”

  36

  B y midafternoon Andie was outside of Philadelphia. The small yellow house on the corner was old but well maintained, one of many just like it on this quiet, tree-lined street. It seemed perfect for a retired couple, except for the need to shovel four inches of new snow from the walkway. As Andie climbed the steps of the front porch, she noticed a plaque above the door from the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI. L OYALTY, F RIENDSHIP, G OODWILL, it read. It reminded Andie of F IDELITY, B RAVERY, I NTEGRITY, the motto on her own shield-the same shield that Frank Scully had carried for twenty-five years. He was just beyond the bureau’s minimum retirement age of fifty, but well short of the mandatory cutoff at age fifty-seven.

  He greeted Andie at the door, led her to the TV room, and offered her a seat. He took the other armchair, facing her.

  “Thanks for meeting with me,” said Andie.

  “You didn’t give me much choice.”

  Scully was right. The phone conversation had been short and to the point. At first Scully had refused to talk about Tony Mandretti. Knowledge was power, however, and her mere mention of a familiar name had put the power in Andie’s hands.

  Scully asked, “How did you find out about Manu Robledo?”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Your secret is apparently safe within the FBI. I can’t find a single agent who even pretends to know about Robledo’s connection to Gerry Collins.”

  Scully glanced at her sideways. He looked fit and younger than his years, more like an agent who would have worked right up until the moment he blew out fifty-seven candles, rather than take early retirement. “So if you didn’t get it from the inside, who told you?”

  “Tony Mandretti,” she said.

  “I don’t believe you. Tony would never crack.”

  “He would if he thought his children were at risk.”

  Scully fell silent, but his expression confirmed that she’d struck a chord.

  “Is that what you told him?” he asked.

  “I did,” said Andie, “because it’s true.”

  “How do you even know Tony’s kids?”

  “Because I’m the agent who carried out the money-laundering investigation at BOS that you drew up before retiring.”

  “Ah,” he said, as if things were falling into place. “How close did you stick to the way I drew it up?”

  She told him about her arrangement with Patrick, the promise of cancer treatment for Tony Mandretti in exchange for Patrick’s cooperation with the FBI. “At the time,” she went on to say, “I presumed that the bureau had targeted Patrick because his father was in jail for the murder of Gerry Collins.”

  “That would seem logical,” he said.

  “I also had no reason to believe that Tony Mandretti was anything but guilty as charged,” said Andie. “Now that Manu Robledo is in the picture, I’m not so sure.”

  Scully didn’t answer.

  “Let me ask you the same question you put to me,” said Andie. “How did you find out about
Robledo?”

  “Sources,” he said.

  “Inside the bureau?”

  “Operation BAQ was not an FBI operation.”

  “Then how were you able to get Robledo’s name and pass it along to Tony Mandretti?”

  Scully shifted in his chair, and Andie could see his discomfort.

  “I’m waiting,” she said.

  He chuckled, but it was nerves. “I guess now you’re starting to get a feel for why I took early retirement.”

  “You can answer my question,” said Andie, “or I can report my full conversation with Tony Mandretti to headquarters, and you can explain it to them.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “You might prefer to think of it as having the power of choice.”

  His nervous smile vanished. Anger was beginning to rise up. “I was a damn good agent,” he said. “Worked hard, did the right thing. I always kept my word, even when I gave it to a former mobster like Mandretti. It took a lot of courage for him to flip and testify against the Santucci family. It’s no secret what he gave up-his wife, his kids, his life. It made me sick the way the bureau turned its back on him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tony went into witness protection and really tried to straighten out his life. He started up his own repo business, totally legit. He was the muscle that lenders hired to repossess expensive cars, boats, airplanes-all the toys the new rich guys played with until they burned through their dough like the fools they were and couldn’t afford to play anymore. Every penny Tony made, he saved and invested. It took him fifteen years, but he had himself a pretty nice nest egg. Almost a quarter million bucks. He always said it was for his kids. It was his way of proving to them that he never forgot about them, never stopped caring. It was all good. Until he invested his money with Gerry Collins.”

  “Lost it all,” Andie said.

  “Every penny. Like everyone else.”

  “But Tony wasn’t exactly like everyone else.”

  “No,” said Scully. “That money was definitely more than just money to him. It was fifteen years of sweat from his own brow.”

  “And it was for his kids.”

  “More than that,” said Scully. “I don’t think you can understand unless you’ve lost touch with a child. It wasn’t just for his kids, the way parents raise their children, watch them grow up, and then leave something for them in their will. This was Tony’s only chance for any connection to the family he’d lost, and it was his kids’ only chance to feel connected to him. At least that’s the way Tony saw it.”