James Grippando - Need You Now

“I still don’t hear a denial,” Connie said.

“He doesn’t know.”

“What?”

“If it’s any comfort to you, your father never knew I stabbed him in the back. When I got Treasury to pay him some money for agreeing to sit on the Cushman report, I told him that it was compensation from the CIA for his confession-that if he didn’t take the deal, and that if he ever claimed he was framed, it was the CIA who would hand his kids over to the Santucci family. As far as he knew, the CIA had to keep Robledo out of prison for Operation BAQ to work. To this day, he thinks I was just the messenger.”

“You’re even worse than I thought you were.”

“Hey, at least I let him have the money.”

“Yeah, money he couldn’t even use to pay for his own cancer treatment once he was in prison.”

Scully kept one hand on the wheel and dialed his cell.

“Who are you calling?” asked Connie.

“Your dumbass brother,” he said. “Be still and behave yourself. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

I had no phone, but my number rang to Andie’s cell. It had taken a tech agent in the Boston field office all of thirty seconds to program the wireless hijacking and reroute my calls to Andie.

“It’s Scully,” she told me.

We were still in the parking lot, seated in the back of an FBI van that had arrived on the scene. Andie quickly plugged her phone into the mobile audio system. Her phone rang a second time-this time over the van’s surveillance speakers.

“You want me to take it?” I asked.

“Yes. Play this exactly the way I told you to play it. And keep Scully on the line as long as possible so that our techies can triangulate a location.”

On the fourth ring she hit Talk and handed me the phone.

“Scully, where are you?” I asked.

Andie gave me a quick thumbs-up, letting me know that she could hear the conversation just fine.

“I have your sister,” he said.

“Good. Bring her back. Dad wants to see her.”

He was on to my act. “Don’t play dumb,” he said. “I will hurt her.”

I’d never heard that tone from Scully, and it chilled me. The man was clearly desperate.

“Okay,” I said. “What do you want?”

“For starters, you need to keep your mouth shut. If you go to Agent Henning or anyone else with any of the things your father told you, Connie’s dead.”

Again I felt chills. It was clear that Scully had no idea that the FBI was involved and that it had all been a setup-that my trip to Boston to see my father, the whole idea of a deathbed conversation, was something that Andie and my father had coordinated with me in order to draw out Mongoose and Barber. Andie slipped me a note: Don’t tell him you haven’t talked to your father.

“I hear you,” I said into the phone.

“It would have been much better for everyone if he had taken his secrets to the grave. But he just had to share all the things Agent Scully told him, didn’t he?”

I was tempted to play along and stall, but with Connie’s safety on the line, I was afraid to wing it.

Scully pushed harder. “What did he tell you, Patrick?”

Andie handed me a note. I wasn’t sure if I was just buying time for the tech agents to triangulate the call, or if it was another strategy, but I followed her script.

“Dad told me that he was forced to confess,” I said as I grabbed a second note from Andie. “But it was Robledo who killed Collins.”

“I know he told you more than that.”

I looked again at Andie, who handed me yet another note. “He said Operation BAQ would fail if Robledo was locked up for murder. That’s why-”

I stopped, bordering on panic. I wasn’t sure that Andie had written down her thoughts correctly.

Scully said, “That’s why what ?”

Andie underlined her words, reaffirming the message. I delivered it as written: “That’s why Dad believed you when you lied and told him it was the CIA that forced him to confess.”

Scully paused, and when he finally spoke, he sounded a bit philosophical. “So the poor bastard finally figured out it was me.”

It was confirmation of the theory Andie had scribbled out on her notes. She gave me a signal to keep him talking, but Scully had never really stopped.

“Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it, Patrick?”

I wasn’t sure what he meant. Scully’s betrayal had been difficult for me to comprehend-the way he’d turned against my father, against Connie and me, against the bureau. Money could make people do worse things, I supposed. But his mention of “payback” made me realize that something more personal was also driving him.

“My father was the stain on your perfect career. That’s what this is about, isn’t it, Scully?”

He answered in a low, angry voice. “I told him and your mother both: stay away from each other. The fact that her maiden name was Santucci didn’t make it any easier for me to protect her. I made it crystal clear that the mob would put a gun to her head if they thought for one minute that she could reveal where your father was hiding.”

“But Dad wouldn’t listen.”

“Neither one of them listened.”

“So they killed her,” I said, the words catching in my throat. But I had to push through this. “She was killed on your watch . Not a very career-enhancing move in the bureau, I suppose. Losing the mother of two children.”

“Are you playing shrink on me, Patrick?”

“No. Just calling your ‘payback’ what it is. When Robledo waved all that money under your nose, it wasn’t so hard for you to grab it at my father’s expense, was it?”

“Not as hard as it might have been. But that’s all in the past. Let’s deal with the present. I don’t want to have to hurt your sister.”

“I don’t want you to hurt her, either.”

“Then forget what you know about your father and me. Forget that I gave him Robledo’s name. Forget especially that I ever mentioned Operation BAQ or the CIA to him.”

I didn’t know the ins and outs of constitutional and criminal law, but I was pretty sure I recognized the voice of a former FBI agent who was looking at potential charges that ranged from obstruction of justice to treason.

“That’s fine with me, Scully,” I said. “Everything that was said in the hospital was between my father and me. Just don’t hurt my sister.”

“Good. Now, I need you to follow my instructions-to the letter.”

“I’m not going to help you go on the run with an escape plan, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“You will, or your sister pays.”

I swallowed hard. Saying it would have sounded like heroic hyperbole, but I truly thought it: I wished he had taken me instead of her.

“I want to talk to Connie,” I said.

“Shut up and listen.”

“No. I need to know she’s still alive. Put her on.”

He didn’t refuse right away, which I took as a good sign. I was about to prod one more time when he answered.

“Fine. I’ll let you hear her voice.”

Andie gave me the stretch sign, though she was openly frustrated that her tech agents needed still more time to pinpoint the call.

“That’s not enough,” I told him. “How will I know it’s not just a recording? She has to talk to me-to answer a question from me.”

Again, I took his hesitation to mean that he was considering it. I nudged.

“A former FBI agent should know my request is reasonable,” I said.

“Fine. You can ask her a question. One question.”

Andie gave me a signal that said her techies were almost there. But Scully was no dummy, and I had the sense that he knew exactly how long he could stay on the line without being triangulated. The thought of his hanging up seconds before his position could be determined was more than I could bear.