James Grippando - Need You Now

Scully shook his head. “Tony, I tell you this for your own good: the chances of getting back the money you invested with Cushman are slim to none. Let it go.”

“Let it go? That son of a bitch Collins has my life savings and won’t give it back. Says he can’t honor any more redemptions. What kind of crap is that?”

“Tony, I’m sorry, but-”

“This is for my kids,” said Tony, “something from me to them, finally, for the way I screwed up their lives. It’s all I got to make it good.”

“I understand.”

“I laid out everything the SEC needs to know, and you’re telling me that you can’t even get their attention? I expected you to come back and say there’s some haggling over the amount of the bounty. I never expected this. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Listen to me,” said Scully.

“No, you listen. I couldn’t care less about your government classified bullshit. I’m not going to let this die.”

“Take it down a notch,” said Scully, his tone ominous. “You need to be very careful with this.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Consider it friendly advice. This report of yours-it’s like a financial weapon of mass destruction.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that Cushman and his feeders, guys like Gerry Collins, have been making a lot of people very rich. Those people are going to be very upset to find out that Cushman is a fraud. Some of those people would be very angry at anyone who says it’s time to get off the merry-go-round. If I were you, I’d be very concerned about how those folks might express their anger.”

“I’m not in this to win a popularity contest.”

“I’m not talking about the typical whistle-blower backlash, Tony. Between you and me, Gerry Collins has some, shall we say, ‘questionable’ clients.”

“I don’t scare easily.”

“It’s not a question of scared. It’s about smart versus stupid. Let me be clear: Gerry Collins has clients who would kill you if they thought you were trying to destroy the goose that lays the golden egg.”

Tony considered the possibilities, and one of them brought a thin smile to his face. “Or they might take it out on Gerry Collins.”

“What?”

“Say, for example, that this report landed in the lap of one of those ‘questionable’ clients-from an anonymous source, of course. I could see one of those clients going straight to Gerry Collins and giving him one fine ass kicking.”

Scully smiled back. “Wouldn’t that be sweet? Too bad that we can’t-”

“Give me a name,” said Tony, his expression very serious.

“What?”

“I want the name of one of those clients who would kick Gerry Collins’ ass if he knew Collins was a fraud.”

“Tony, I can’t do that.”

“I’m asking you this one favor: give me a name.”

Scully struggled with it. Tony’s stare only tightened.

“I lost my kids,” said Tony. “My wife is dead. I lost my life. You owe me.”

Tony hadn’t come to the table with plans to play the payback mantra, but he could see in Scully’s expression that it was working. Finally, Scully blinked.

“All right,” he said. “But you didn’t hear it from me. I’ll get you a name. Just don’t blame me if they do more than kick his ass.”

Tony took another pull from his beer, then said, “I can live with it.”

A gust of winter wind rattled the hospital window, startling him. The voices in the hallway grew louder, and Tony could count the footfalls in the tiled corridor as the guard approached with his visitor.

The thought of seeing Scully again presented a mixed bag. On some level Tony thought of him as a friend; but, at bottom, he was FBI. With all that had gone down in the past few weeks, Scully was probably coming to remind Tony of their agreement-the condition under which he had given Tony the name “Manu Robledo.”

You didn’t hear it from me.

“I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” the guard said. “Behave yourself, Carlson.”

Tony turned his head toward the door as it closed. His visitor approached. It wasn’t Scully. Not by a long shot.

“Special Agent Andie Henning,” she said as she extended her hand over the bed rail. “I’ve come to talk to Tony Mandretti about his son.”

C onnie’s regular Wednesday-evening scout meeting ran from seven to nine P.M., and right after it ended, she caught up with me at Evan’s apartment. His 360-degree mural of Cushman’s fraud blew her away, but Evan was far more interested in hearing how her troop was ready to smash the competition in the upcoming Pinewood Derby. By ten P.M. I’d heard enough about graphite axles and other ways to make a five-ounce block of wood zip down an eight-lane track in record time. If I hadn’t cut her short and put Evan back to work, he might never have cracked the code on the BOS data files.

“Almost there,” said Evan.

He was still in the center of the room, keyboard clacking, matching wits with some other computer genius who had encrypted the BOS files from Lilly’s computer.

“How much longer?” I asked.

“He just said he was almost there,” Connie snapped.

Evan smiled at the way she’d come to his defense. Yet again, I had to wonder if poor Tom, her fiancé, was destined to run last in the proverbial Pinewood Derby of egghead romance.

Evan said, “The bank has different levels of security attached to different files. Lilly’s e-mails were relatively simple. You can review those on my laptop while I keep working on the tougher codes.”

Connie and I spent the next ninety minutes doing just that. The vast majority of e-mails were worthless or, worse, distracting. Our task was to unravel the trail of money from Gerry Collins through BOS/Singapore. Instead, I found myself reliving my relationship with Lilly through e-mails. It was funny to see how cautious the early communications had been.

How about lunch?

Coffee?

What Lilly didn’t know was how many drafts it had taken to come up with such brilliance and finally hit Send. If I wrote Starbucks instead of coffee , would she think it was a hot stock tip? If I wrote buy you a coffee , would she think I was cheap and limiting her to just one? If I wrote buy you coffee , would she think I was making a run over to the Food Stop and offering to bring her back a bag of beans? I could have written buy you a latte . But maybe she hated lattes-or, more likely, pretentious men who drank them. Coffee. That was perfect.

Too bad she was in bed by the time you finally sent it.

“Aw, this is so sweet,” said Connie. She was reviewing another group of Lilly’s e-mails on her smartphone, and apparently she, too, had found the personal stuff. “I didn’t know you had such a sensitive side, little brother.”

I approached Evan and quickly changed the subject. “Are we there yet?”

“Don’t rush me.”

“I’m not rushing you. Just wondering when you think you’ll be finished.”

Evan’s hair was standing straight up, shaped by the number of times he’d run his hands through it in frustration. “With this last group of files, it may not be a question of when,” he said.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

He wiped the sweat from his brow, then ran his hands through his hair once more. “I hate to admit it, but I’m not sure I can break this.”

I glanced at Connie, whose mouth was agape. It was as if Evan had just confessed that he’d never actually seen an episode of Star Trek .

Connie pulled herself together and said, “I’ll get Tom to look at it.”

“Who’s Tom?” asked Evan.