James Grippando - Need You Now

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” said Barber. He handed me one of the envelopes, unopened. I could tell from touch that it contained several CDs or DVDs in jewel boxes.

“Patrick, I’m giving you full access to Lilly’s records for the past three years.” He handed the other sealed envelope to Lilly. “Lilly, I’m giving you complete access to Patrick’s records. Everything you need is there. Trading confirmations, e-mails, electronic data of every form imaginable. I want you to comb through it. Find that money.”

I tried another sideways glance, and this time Lilly looked as confused as I felt. “I’m not sure I follow you, sir,” I said.

“No worries,” he said. “One or both of you knows exactly what I’m talking about. One or both of you knows where the money is. My guess is, only one of you will come forward. The other will probably go to jail.

“Work hard,” he said. “Search your conscience. Do the right thing. At the very least, save your own ass.”

Barber walked to the door. Lilly rose, and I followed. I could see from the way she moved that her stomach was in knots. Stress had always taken a toll on her body, and I was feeling more than responsible for this bout.

“Good luck,” said Barber, showing us out of his office. “You’re going to need it.”

L illy walked briskly down the hallway, not quite as if the building were on fire, but almost. There was no wait for an elevator, and it was just two of us inside when the doors closed.

“Can we talk?” I asked.

She kept her eyes fixed on the lighted numbers above the doors. I couldn’t tell if she simply didn’t want to talk while we were still inside the bank or if she hated my guts and never wanted to speak to me again. The range of possibilities seemed that broad.

It was an express ride from the executive suite to the lobby. Lilly got out first, and I nearly had to break into a trot to follow her out of the building. It was the tail end of rush hour, but even a crowded sidewalk didn’t slow her down. I found myself dodging to and fro to avoid head-on collisions with oncoming pedestrians as I pleaded with her.

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

“You lied to me,” she said, never breaking stride.

“A legal name change for reasons of personal safety is not a lie,” I said. “I’ve been Patrick Lloyd my entire adult life.”

She stopped cold. “I came halfway across the world out of concern for your safety. I told you that the real name of the man who killed Gerry Collins is Tony Mandretti. You acted as if you’d never heard of him. Then you told me you had a business trip, got on a plane, and went to visit him-your father-in prison. That’s a lie.”

I would have liked a killer comeback, but I supposed she was right. “It wasn’t as if I was never going to tell you the truth.”

“That is so lame.” She turned angrily and started down the sidewalk. I took her by the arm, stopping her.

“Let go of me,” she said.

“Lilly, be reasonable.”

“Reasonable? You want me to be reasonable? I had no idea Gerry Collins and Abe Cushman were a fraud. Now, even the Treasury Department thinks I’m hiding billions in dirty money. The bank fired me, thugs are chasing me, and my stomach feels like I swallowed a box of roofing tacks. Mind you, all of this came to pass after you arrived in Singapore.”

“Are you suggesting I had something to do with all that?”

“Are you suggesting you had nothing to do with it?”

If this conversation was going to continue, there was only one way to answer such a broad question: “No, I’m not suggesting any such thing.”

My veracity caught her off guard. Slowly, the anger in her expression transformed into curiosity. We drifted out of the flow of pedestrians, crossed the sidewalk, and took a seat on the lip of a huge granite planter outside the office building. Overhead, a decorative strand of leftover Christmas lights twinkled in the bare branches of a potted maple tree. Our breath steamed in the chilly night air, the blinking lights coloring our little puffs of conversation.

“I’ve made mistakes,” I said, “and I’m sorry you’re the one getting hurt.”

She didn’t answer.

“But,” I said, “there are two sides to the story here.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s true that I didn’t tell you my real name was Peter Mandretti. But somehow you knew that, and a whole lot more, when you called Connie this morning and told her I had to get out of the ER and run for my life. You want to tell me how you got that information?”

“Why does it matter how I found out?”

“It matters because you’re getting bad information.”

“Don’t even try to convince me that you’re not Peter Mandretti.”

“That part is accurate. But you’re being led down the wrong path if someone told you that the Santucci family has figured out that Patrick Lloyd is Peter Mandretti and is after me.”

“How do you know it’s wrong?”

“Because I’d be dead by now if they were after me. My mom is proof enough of that.”

“Your mom?”

Lilly obviously didn’t know that part of the story. I digressed to fill her in. I wasn’t fishing for sympathy by bringing my mother’s murder into it, but the effect was there nonetheless.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” she said. “I really am. But hearing about her doesn’t make it any safer for me to tell you how I got your real name.”

Our eyes met, and I saw genuine fear in hers. “Talk to me,” I said.

“The man is scary, Patrick. Really scary. He knows everything. He knows about your family. He knows about Gerry Collins. He knows about Manu Robledo.”

“What did he tell you about Robledo?”

“That he opened the numbered account at BOS.”

“And you’re saying that’s the truth?”

“Yes. I knew it as soon as I went to the church and spoke to him. It was the same voice.”

“I knew that accent of his was phony,” I said.

“What accent?”

“He put on a weird voice when I went to see him at the church. At first it made me think he was some kind of cult leader. But it also made me think that maybe he was trying to keep me from recognizing him.”

“He must have realized how weak it was,” said Lilly. “He didn’t even bother trying to fool me.”

“So it is definitely Robledo who is threatening us, demanding the money.”

“And warning us that we’re dead if we go to the police. So don’t .”

“I just told you what happened to my mother when my dad went to the police. I’m not going to run and tell the police anything without a quid pro quo-protection, information, something. You know I wouldn’t negotiate without telling you.”

“Really? Right now, all I know is that you went to see Robledo and didn’t tell me a thing about it.”

“How did you know that ?”

“How do you think? There’s only one person who tells me anything, and your reaction just confirmed that he told me the truth. What do you have going on with Robledo?”

“Nothing. I only found out about him because you left a map to his so-called church in the search history of my Internet browser. I pulled it up after you climbed out the window of my apartment-which is another thing you haven’t explained to me.”

The anxious expression returned to her face. “The apartment,” she said, almost stammering. “I had to leave. Right away. It was him. The guy I’ve been telling you about. He showed up, pretending to deliver roses.”

“I found them.”

“I’m not kidding when I say that he’s scary, that he knows everything. He even knows stuff about us .”