James Grippando - Need You Now

“This is so obvious to me. If the guy who killed Gerry Collins is still out there-threatening you, threatening me-then Tony Mandretti is sitting in jail for something he didn’t do.”

“Lilly-”

“I know, I know. The man entered a guilty plea, and I understand he lost all his money to Cushman thanks to Gerry Collins. But I don’t care. Something’s not right.”

The cabdriver was off the phone. He called my attention to the meter, which was still running. “Sir, if you’re gonna sit here and talk, I gotta charge you.”

“Lilly, I need to go. I’ll be back in New York early this evening.”

“I’m scared. Maybe it’s time to go to the police.”

“You’re ignoring your own instincts,” I said, lowering my voice, my hand over my mouth to prevent the cabdriver from overhearing. “You said it yourself before: he threatened to kill us if we call the cops. It’s too soon to say he’s the same guy who killed Collins.”

“I’m going to call the police.”

“Lilly, don’t!” My tone was harsher than I’d intended-harsh enough for the driver to throw me a look in the rearview mirror.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

“I’m sorry. I have a lot on my plate today. Please, don’t do anything while I’m away. Don’t worry about going over to the hotel to check out. Just stay in the apartment until I get back.”

She didn’t answer right away. When she finally did, it was in a weak voice. “If you really think that’s the right thing.”

“I do. It’s okay. We’re going to be just fine.”

“I want us to be more than just fine.”

It was a nice sentiment, just enough to ease some of the tension. “Me, too,” I said. “I’ll call you this afternoon from the airport.”

We said good-bye, and the driver turned off the meter.

“That’ll be fifty-two fifty.”

I paid and asked him to come back in an hour for my trip to the airport. I grabbed my bag and started up the sidewalk to the visitation center, where visits to both the penitentiary and prison hospital were coordinated. The corrections officer seated on the other side of the Plexiglas divider looked up and asked, “Can I help you?”

I had to catch myself and make sure I asked to see Tony Martin, not Mandretti. The officer inspected my bag, checked my identification, and gave me a printed form to complete. My name wasn’t on the list of preapproved visitors, so there was even more paperwork. He made a phone call while I was filling it out, and he seemed a bit flummoxed after hanging up.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked.

“Have a seat, please. Someone will be out to see you in a minute.”

I went with the flow and found a chair by the vending machines. I checked my watch. Lilly had sounded completely freaked on the telephone, and I wondered how long it would take her to call again to see when I was coming back to New York. I felt guilty again for having lied to her, pretending that I didn’t know that Tony Martin was Tony Mandretti. She was so sure of her detective work on the mob connection to the Cushman money, but she was still poking at the tip of the iceberg.

I knew all about Tony Mandretti, the former New York mobster who had become Tony Martin upon entering the witness protection program. More than a decade had passed since Mandretti’s testimony against the Santucci family. It had been front-page news, though many in law enforcement had been opposed to a deal that, in their view, didn’t give Tony enough jail time. I had no firsthand knowledge, but those same critics must have seen it as poetic justice when, years later, they’d nailed him as Tony Martin for the murder of Gerry Collins. Assuming, of course, that they knew he was really Tony Mandretti. Very few in law enforcement had that information.

Outside of law enforcement, even fewer had it.

A buzzer sounded, and a man dressed in a polyester business suit entered through a secure metal door. He conveyed all the warmth of an IRS auditor. “Mr. Lloyd?”

“Yes,” I said, rising.

He introduced himself as the warden, which told me right away that something was up.

“I’ve been advised that you’re here to see inmate Tony Martin.”

“That’s right,” I said. “It was my understanding that he is hospitalized.”

The warden drew a breath. “He was.”

“Was? Is he back in his cell?”

“No. I’m sorry to have to tell you that Mr. Martin passed away last night.”

If the warden was expecting the news to upset or move me in some way, I completely let him down. Not because I was cold and indifferent to the death of a confessed killer. Not because I couldn’t believe, or wouldn’t believe, that he was dead. My reaction-or lack of it-was for a reason he couldn’t have begun to fathom.

I positively knew it was a lie. A complete, bald-faced lie.

I thanked the warden for his condolences, grabbed my bag, and headed for the parking lot-before he could ask how I had known Tony Martin, or why I had come to see him.

T wo minutes after my return flight from Raleigh to Newark hit the runway, I powered on my BlackBerry. The usual flood of messages crammed my in-box. One was not so usual. Opening it required the use of a decryption algorithm to unravel the cipher. Even then, the message would have meant nothing to anyone but me: “They know. Meet me at Position Three. 4:30.”

Sunset was near as I crossed Fifth Avenue at Seventy-second Street and entered Central Park, and less than a half hour of daylight remained by the time I followed the long concrete crescent of sidewalk around the west side of the Conservatory Water and up to “Position Three.”

The Alice in Wonderland sculpture is one of the park’s most popular destinations. True to an original John Tenniel illustration from the first edition of Lewis Carroll’s classic, the work depicts Alice perched on a giant mushroom reaching toward a pocket watch held by the March Hare. Peering over her shoulder is the Cheshire Cat, surrounded by the Dormouse and the Mad Hatter, and finally the White Rabbit. It is an unusual bronze, not just because of the magical subject matter, but also because the artist intended for children to play on it. Thousands have answered the call, their busy hands and feet polishing parts of the statue’s patina surface smooth. This was a place I had visited as a child, in one of the handful of trips my family made into Manhattan from Queens. Burned into my memory was the look on my father’s face as he approached the granite circle surrounding the sculpture and read the engraved line from “The Jabberwocky,” a poem by Lewis Carroll: “ ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.” Then he put his hands on his hips, faced my mother, and said exactly what you’d expect a native New Yawker to say: “What the fuck language is that supposed to be in?” It had sent a team of nannies from the Upper East Side hightailing it over to the carousel.

Years later, when I was asked to create a list of public sites in Manhattan to serve as potential emergency meeting places-“Position One” through “Position Five”-Alice made the cut.

The list was for FBI agent Andie Henning.

“I got your message,” I said, my breath steaming in the chilly air.

Henning turned at the sound of my voice. She was seated on the same bench that, years earlier, my mother had nearly fallen from in embarrassment. I sat at the opposite end. She was looking out toward the sculpture, her hands buried in her pockets, her leather jacket too short and stylish to be of much good in the long, cold shadows of a late afternoon in January. It was hard to tell in the twilight, but I would have bet that her lips were turning purple.