James Grippando - Need You Now

“That may explain the bizarre accent he was able to patch together when I was at his church.”

“Could be. It’s an interesting part of the world.”

“You know it?”

“The zoo has a couple of endangered armadillos from that region. Ciudad del Este in Paraguay is right in that same neck of the woods. My supervisor went there on research three years ago. Said she felt safer in the jungle with the pumas and jaguars. It can be pretty lawless.”

“What about our friend Robledo-any problems with the law?”

“Nothing in this country or as an adult. He did get into some kind of trouble as a juvenile in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s, but Tom says he couldn’t tell anything about it from the computer entry.”

“Could be worth exploring.”

She looked like a nervous scout again. “We agreed that I would ask Tom this favor just once .”

“I meant I would explore it,” I said, but my words were drowned out by a piercing scream. My gaze shifted to the snow monkeys, where Boo-Boo was standing atop a boulder and throwing a hissy fit at Yogi.

“You tell him, Boo-Boo,” said Connie. We shared a laugh, but my sister was suddenly serious. My back was to the red panda exhibit, and Connie was gazing past me in that direction. “Don’t turn around,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“About a hundred feet behind you, standing beside a tree at about two o’clock from your left shoulder, there’s a man with a telephoto lens. At first I thought he was photographing the snow monkeys. But now it looks like he’s taking pictures of you and me.”

I immediately thought back to Puffy’s Tavern and the guy wearing the rapper’s hat who had come and gone without drinking his beer-who looked just like the guy who had photographed Lilly and me in the Singapore Mall, and who’d shown up again outside my apartment.

I couldn’t help turning my head, and Connie grabbed me.

“I told you not to look!” she said, but there was no stopping me. I wheeled around completely, and like a laser my gaze locked onto the photographer by the tree. The lighting was flat on such a gray afternoon, and he was wearing a heavy winter coat, but his reaction alone confirmed it.

“It’s him,” I said.

“Who?” asked Connie, but I was off like a track star.

“Patrick!”

I was at full speed, my legs churning, defying the ice and snow beneath my feet. The man with the camera ran for the exit, jumped the turnstile, and hoofed it up the hill toward East Drive. I jumped the same turnstile, slipped on a patch of ice, and skidded on my knees across the salted pavers. It hurt like hell, and my pants were torn. Worse, I was down long enough for the guy to put another twenty yards between us.

It occurred to me that he might have a gun, that I should give Connie a shout to call for security or dial 911. But he’d committed no crime, and I dismissed the thought. It was still daylight, and I had him in my sight. His lead was less than fifty yards. With everything I had been through in the past forty-eight hours, I could have closed the gap on Usain Bolt-even with my knees bloodied.

I pushed myself up from the cold walkway and was off like a rocket. The fool was running away from Fifth Avenue, the taxis, the subway, and other means of escape. He was trying to lose me in the park. This time, he was not going to get away. This time, he was mine.

“Patrick, stop!”

Connie was trailing far behind, but I could hear the concern in her voice. Strangely, it only propelled me. I was inside of twenty yards, and closing, as he darted in front of a horse-drawn carriage on scenic East Drive. The driver cursed and reined in his big draft horse, then cursed even louder at me as I, in hot pursuit, cut off the horse a second time. My target was slowing down, and adrenaline was pushing me even faster. He followed the sidewalk down a ramp and into a pedestrian tunnel. Wollman Rink was directly ahead, and I couldn’t let him get all the way there and disappear into a crowd. I went the other way, up and over the hill, and was dead even with him when he came out the other end of the tunnel. He glanced back into the tunnel and probably thought he had lost me as I dived like a hawk from the hill above him. He went down hard, breaking my fall like a human mattress beneath me. He writhed and squirmed, but he was exhausted from the run, and I was easily the bigger dog in the struggle. My knee was throbbing from the tumble over the turnstile at the zoo, but I drilled it into the small of his back anyway. He let out a miserable groan as I pinned his face to the frozen ground.

“Who are you?” I shouted.

He didn’t answer, but I wasn’t feeling much from him in the way of resistance.

“What’s your name?” I asked, harsher.

His resistance weakened even further. He was completely spent from the chase.

“Don’t hurt me!” he said, pleading.

“Tell me who you are!”

He started to cry-upper lip quivering, huge tears streaming down his cheeks. I had yet to slug him, and he was turning into gelatin. This was bordering on pathetic.

“Please, please, don’t hit me.”

It felt like I was beating up one of Connie’s Cub Scouts. “Start talking and no one is going to get hurt,” I said.

He drew a breath, then another. The crying was under control, but his body continued to tremble.

“Talk!” I said.

“My name is Evan,” he said with a sniffle, “and I can help you, Mr. Lloyd.”

T he black limousine passed a second time. Or was it a different one? Lilly wasn’t sure. They all looked alike. On any given workday, thousands of limos must have cruised down broadway in the financial district. That call from her source was making her paranoid. Or maybe she was just more alert. No, this was definitely paranoia.

Damn you, Patrick.

She shook off that thought. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Not everything her source had told her could be true. Not all the blame could be laid on Patrick Lloyd. Even though his name was really Peter Mandretti. And his father was in jail for murdering Gerry Collins. And he went to see Manu Robledo without any help from her.

“You’ve been played , ” her source had told her. “First by Gerry Collins, then, even worse, by Patrick Lloyd.”

A pigeon waddled past her on the sidewalk. Lilly thought of its cousin in Singapore-the seagull that had swooped down from the sky and dropped a direct hit on Patrick’s head. Allegedly swooped down. The timing of it-right in the middle of her breakup speech-had been rather unbelievable. Sunscreen. What kind of jerk would slap himself on the head with fake bird shit to make it even harder for his girlfriend to dump him?

“Patrick played you from beginning to end ,” he’d told her, “ on every level.”

Loser. That’s what you are, Patrick: a lying loser.

A black limo with dark-tinted windows passed. Lilly stopped as it turned at the next block. Very similar to the last one that had turned off Broadway at the same cross street. It was hard to say if it was the same one she had seen before, but the mere possibility was making her so nervous that it felt like she had broken glass in her stomach.

This is all your fault, Patrick, Peter-whatever your name is.

She jaywalked across Broadway, avoided the piles of slush at the curb, and cut down the narrow side street at St. Paul’s Chapel. Changing course made for a little longer walk, but she could get the subway at the World Trade Center. She thought about grabbing one of the cabs outside the Hilton, but her cash was running low, and the station was only two minutes away. She stopped at the crosswalk for the red light, glancing again at the chapel. She hadn’t attended services in years, but she was suddenly back in elementary school and reciting the Golden Rule, guilting herself into being the bigger person and doing the right thing.