James Grippando - Need You Now

Evan said, “I’ve more than kept my part of the deal.”

He meant the report on the wall, which he’d shared with me on the condition that I give something in return. He’d already filled a major hole. I had the feeling there were others he could fill. His rapport with Connie had been almost instantaneous, and now that I’d spent time with him, I trusted the guy, too.

“You’ve been very helpful,” I said.

And then I told him.

T he New York Stock Exchange was closed, the trading day was over, but Joe Barber gave me forty-five minutes to meet him in his midtown office-or I was fired. I left evan’s apartment and immediately called connie.

“I’m headed over to BOS,” I told her.

“Can’t you lie low, at least for a few days? I just snuck you out of the ER to keep the Santucci family from putting a bullet in your head.”

“That whole rescue was based on bad information from Lilly. What’s happening has nothing to do with the Santuccis. I’m sure of it, now that I’ve talked to Evan.”

I quickly told her who Evan Hunt really was, then explained my thinking. “He invested countless hours to expose Cushman’s fraud, and he’s put in even more time tracking the money. He’s like an encyclopedia, and in all the information he’s gathered, the only place the Santucci family shows up is when he and Dad first met-when Dad was still Tony Mandretti.”

“He’s a quant, not a private investigator.”

“He’s definitely right about one thing: if last night in Battery Park had been a hit on Peter Mandretti ordered by the Santucci family, I’d be dead now. The guy who attacked me didn’t say a single word to suggest that he knew my real name.”

“But Lilly was explicit when she called and asked me to help get you out of the ER: the Santuccis have figured out that you are Peter Mandretti.”

“Someone injected the mob into the equation to drive a wedge between Lilly and me. To make her stop trusting me. Or to make her trust them.”

“And you think that’s Robledo?”

“No. Robledo is only a part of the big picture.”

“According to Evan, you mean?”

“Connie, the man is a quant. You met him. He processes information better than a computer. More important, Dad trusted him. They teamed up on the Cushman report.”

Her response came with a sigh of resignation. “You told him, didn’t you?”

I took her meaning: the fact that I was Tony Mandretti’s son.

“Yes. We need him. He doesn’t think Dad killed Gerry Collins, either. Even better, I think he can help us prove it.”

She didn’t shout, didn’t even groan. My final point-that Dad had put his trust in Evan-seemed to have been the clincher.

“I need to get back to the bank,” I said. “Not just because the head of private banking says so. It’s the only way to find out what’s really going on.”

She realized there was no changing my mind. “Be careful,” she said.

I assured her that I would try.

G oing back to BOS presented a host of concerns, ranging from the questions that corporate security had raised about my identity to the fact that I really hadn’t done squat on the job since my return from Singapore-under “Patrick Lloyd” or any other name. I addressed the one problem that I could actually fix: my appearance. The combination of zoo blankets in Connie’s van and the Chinese restaurant below Evan’s apartment had me smelling like a snow monkey smothered in Szechuan sauce. Borrowing one of Evan’s orange dress shirts and Mickey Mouse ties-he had a closet full-was not going to cut it. My apartment was roughly on the way, and the cabdriver waited at the curb as I ran upstairs and did a five-minute Wall Street makeover. I reached the BOS/America executive suite with all of thirty seconds to spare. Barber’s assistant ushered me into his office, where I was hit with an immediate surprise.

“Lilly?” I said.

She was seated in the armchair facing Barber’s desk. “Yes,” she said coolly. “Lilly is my name. Always has been.”

The “always has been” remark was a clear indication of her anger toward me for lying about my past. I had sensed some of that in the ER, but it seemed to have escalated since the morning.

“Have a seat,” said Barber.

I took the leather armchair beside Lilly. She was no longer shooting daggers at me; she avoided eye contact altogether.

We waited in silence as Barber flipped through a document. There was no telling what it contained, but I suspected it had nothing to do with our meeting-that a man who enjoyed his power and position was simply making me sit, stew, and speculate about what kind of trouble I was in. It would have been easy to freak. Barber had a naturally hard look, and nothing about his office suggested that he was a man of mercy and compassion. Not a single photograph of his wife or kids anywhere. It was more of a shrine to his own achievements, a collection of plaques, honorary degrees, and photographs of him with everyone from the late Charlton Heston to three past presidents. A glass-encased issue of Fortune with his picture on the cover hung on the wall directly over his Bloomberg terminal.

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.