James Grippando - Need You Now

“How did you find my name?” he asked.

“None of your business.”

She felt a cold, round point of pressure at the base of her skull. “How about now?” he asked, nudging her with the pistol. “Still none of my business?”

Lilly tried to keep her voice from shaking. “It doesn’t matter how I found out.”

The old church was silent, save for the unmistakable sound of a pistol cocking.

“It matters to me,” Robledo said.

Lilly searched for the words her source had fed her, but her delivery failed her. “I’m… I’m in control.”

He grabbed her by the hair, yanked her head back against the pew so that she was staring at the ceiling. The muzzle of the pistol was at her temple.

“You got my first warning shot in Singapore,” he said, speaking so close that she could feel his breath in her ear. “Your boyfriend got the second one in Times Square. That’s it. No more mock executions. The next bullet goes in your pretty little head. I’m giving you five seconds to answer my question: How did you get my name?”

Thinking under this kind of pressure-caught between one man threatening to slash her wrist if she breathed a word about his existence, and another who threatened to blow her brains out if she didn’t-just wasn’t part of her constitution.

“I don’t know,” she said, agonizing. “I don’t remember, I just don’t-”

“Patrick told you, didn’t he?”

Lilly froze. That was exactly what the man who’d delivered the flowers had wanted her to make Robledo believe.

Robledo didn’t wait for her response. “Patrick came to see me,” he said.

He couldn’t see her face, but Lilly wondered if Robledo could nonetheless sense her surprise. She wondered if that was the reason Patrick had at the hospital, seemingly out of the blue, asked about her possible involvement in a cult.

“I didn’t give Patrick your name. I swear.”

“That’s what I’m saying! He gave it to you. Didn’t he? ”

“No,” she said, searching for another explanation, anything she could think of to keep Patrick out of it. A lie finally came to her. “I got your name before I left Singapore. That’s why the bank fired me.”

“I almost believe you, which makes you one lucky girl. I’m not convinced that it takes both you and Patrick to find my money, but I’m not sure that it doesn’t. So you’ve bought yourself some daylight. For a while.”

“I need more time to find the money.”

“No.”

“I’m not going to beg.”

“Wouldn’t make a difference anyway.”

“This is not a bluff. The snags are real. Don’t worry. It’s nothing we can’t handle. We’ll get there.”

“Then get there,” he said. “No extensions.”

“I’m not asking for an extension. You gave me two weeks originally. I said I could do it in one if you kept your hands off Patrick. Just go back to the two weeks you gave me.”

“No.”

“It’s just another week.”

“I said no !” He pushed her head forward with so much force that her chin hit her chest. “And never come here again. You got that?”

Lilly felt as though she were suffocating, trapped between her fear of Robledo and an even greater fear of the deliveryman who had told her what to say to him.

“Yes,” she said. “I got it.”

I t had stopped snowing, but a few flakes still swirled in the sky, blown from treetops by a chilly north breeze. My toes were freezing in an inch-deep blanket of white that had fallen since breakfast. Alice and her friends looked almost edible, a chocolate bronze topped with cream-cheese icing. Snow in central park was the perfect antidote for my six months in steamy singapore.

The last two days were another story.

Barely forty-eight hours had passed since I’d skulked out of the wrong meeting in the Paradeplatz Conference Room, only to face an executive-style grilling from Joe Barber about Lilly Scanlon and Abe Cushman. Not exactly what I’d hoped for on my first day back in the New York office. How had so much gone wrong so quickly? It was almost as hard to swallow as “the official response of the bureau” that Agent Henning had just announced to me.

“What do you mean you can’t protect me?” I said.

She was standing before me, no time to brush the snow from the bench and take a seat. It was just the two of us. Connie had tired of waiting and insisted that she needed to return the van, presumably before her boss called upon Curious George and the zoo police to retrieve it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but my hands are tied.”

Andie had a copy of the Parks police report with her, and I’d added the details about my visit to the emergency room. The FBI’s quick rebuff on protection wasn’t what I had expected.

“So, that’s it? Too bad, so sad, you’re on your own, Mr. Lloyd?”

She glanced away, then back. “Can we walk? I’m freezing.”

Always cold. I kept forgetting that the bureau had tapped her from Miami for this operation. I matched her stride, and the new snow squeaked beneath our feet as we followed the path around the sculpture.

“Part of the problem is my supervisor,” she said. “He thinks you haven’t been all that forthcoming.”

“The information I agreed to pass along was very limited. Essentially, I promised to tell you if Lilly confessed to money laundering.”

“The deal was broader than that. You agreed to tell us if Lilly made any admissions that are consistent with our theory of money laundering.”

“If that’s the FBI’s view, then you should have told me more about your theory.”

“We told you what you needed to know. I would have liked to tell you more, but like I said-”

“Your hands are tied, I know. That can be a highly convenient predicament.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Maybe it is,” I said. “But if you want the truth from me , tell your supervisor he needs an attitude adjustment.”

We stopped walking, and our eyes locked. A moment of sunlight broke through the clouds, forcing Andie to squint, which made her expression even harsher.

“Is that some kind of threat?” she said. “ Are you holding out?”

I was thinking of Manu Robledo. “I may have a name for you. I don’t have anything in writing, but it may well turn out that he’s the holder of a certain numbered account at BOS/Singapore.”

“Who?”

“I’m not prepared to share.”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“We’re playing by my rules now. My six months in Singapore were payment enough for what you did for my father. Going forward, anything you get from me is strictly on a quid pro quo basis.”

The sun disappeared, but Andie’s eyes continued to narrow as she studied me. Finally, she said, “We’re still helping your father.”

I was already of the firm belief that Dad was alive, but it was hard not to react to official confirmation. I struggled to play it cool. “I knew he was alive,” I said.

“I gave you more than that,” she said. “I told you we’re still providing specialized medical treatment for him. Don’t ask me where or under what name. I can’t tell you.”

“If your supervisor thinks I haven’t kept up my end of the deal, why are you continuing to provide treatment to him?”

She blinked. It was Andie’s first flinch in the eight months I’d known her, and it was as if she had looked me in the eye and said, That’s a very good question, Patrick, and I wish I knew the answer.

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” she said.

“Nice try.” I said. “Quid pro quo. I’ll give you the name of the numbered account holder when you tell me the following: What is my Dad’s new name? Where did you send him? And why is the FBI still helping him even though your supervisor thinks I’ve been holding out?”