Need You Now (17 page)

31

C
lose to
midnight, the BOS limo dropped Joe Barber at his estate in Greenwich. To him,
the fresh blanket of snow on the wooded acre made his house atop the hill look
like a Norman Rockwell painting, though he had to concede that there was little
nostalgia in a twelve-thousand-square-foot mansion with seven bedrooms, twelve
bathrooms, two swimming pools, a clay tennis court, and a bowling alley built on
a special “floating” foundation to keep the subterranean vibrations from
disturbing the priceless bounty of the wine cellar. His wife was asleep in bed
when he got home. Miraculously, she wasn’t on the treadmill. Metaphorically
speaking, though, he sure was.

A management position with a troubled Swiss bank
was not the capstone career move that Barber had hoped for after his tenure at
Treasury as deputy secretary. BOS had barely survived the subprime crisis, its
reputation forever tarnished. Its standing as the premier bank in Switzerland
was in question, and in America, it was undeniably second tier. As his wife had
so often reminded him, friends at firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley
had offered Barber dazzling compensation packages. When he told them he was
joining BOS, they had been shocked. When the journal reported that he was going
there for less money, they feared that he had lost his mind. No one knew the
real reason for his decision. No one could know that he was just following
orders.

Most important, no one could
ever
know who was telling him what to do.

“Did you give them the data, Joe baby?”

Barber wondered why the question even needed to be
asked, and he was getting fed up with the condescending tone and insulting
nicknames like “Joe baby.”

“Exactly the way you told me,” said Barber.

They were in the first-floor study, just Barber and
a man he knew only as Mongoose. He didn’t have any of the weasel-like features
of an actual mongoose, but, of course, it was the point of any good cryptonym to
bear no resemblance to its subject. This Mongoose had short blond hair and the
rugged good looks of a movie star, with broad shoulders and muscles so thick
that his neck bulged.

“So you called them into your office and
. . .”

“And I delivered the packages. End of story.”

Barber shifted uncomfortably. He was seated in a
chair that, tongue in cheek, he had always called “the hot seat,” a boxy Chinese
antique made of rosewood that had an upright back and no cushion. Another pair
from the same set of four had once graced his office at Treasury, and they were
so uncomfortable that no meeting had ever lasted more than twenty minutes—the
intended effect. Mongoose was seated in the leather chair behind Barber’s desk.
Only Barber and the retired CEO of Saxton Silvers, who had passed it on to him,
had ever sat at that desk. Until tonight.

“That’s my boy,” said Mongoose.

“You need to stop calling me ‘boy,’ ‘Joe baby,’ or
whatever the insult of the day is. I’m tired of that shit.”

“This isn’t supposed to be fun, Joey. At least not
for you.”

“Killing innocent people? That’s your idea of
fun?”

Mongoose leaned back, put his feet up on Barber’s
leather-top desk.

“The park ranger was a regrettable piece of
collateral damage. I needed to know what she and Patrick Lloyd talked
about.”

“What could she have possibly passed along to you
that was of any value?”

“Exactly what your inept security experts couldn’t:
Patrick Lloyd is Peter Mandretti. Tony Mandretti’s son.”

The news didn’t shock him. Barber’s own
intelligence was not as inept as Mongoose thought. But in some situations it was
best to play dumb. “What do you want me to do with that information?”

“I want you to be very nervous. I want you to think
about what could happen if I made a copy of the memo you wrote at Treasury and
gave it to Tony Mandretti’s son.”

That thought chilled him. Mongoose laughed, clearly
enjoying that Barber had gone cold.

Barber said, “I’ve done everything you’ve told me
to do. You don’t have to kill innocent park rangers. You don’t have to bring
Mandretti and his son into this. It’s enough that you have the memo.”

Mongoose smiled with his eyes. “You wish you had
never written it, don’t you?”

Barber didn’t answer. But it was true: of all his
regrets from his service at Treasury, the biggest was the classified internal
memorandum he’d written about the Cushman Ponzi scheme.

Mongoose said, “That’s one tough spot you put
yourself in, Joey. You talk about
me
killing
innocent people. What about you? Letting all those investors lose their money to
a thief like Abe Cushman. Someone the government knew was a fraud. How do you
justify that?”

Barber had no answer.

“It’s the same old line, isn’t it?” said Mongoose.
“Every war has collateral damage—even a financial war, like this one. The
investors who lost their money to Cushman are collateral damage. Pawns like
Lilly Scanlon, who don’t even know they’re pawns, are collateral damage. A
dedicated undercover agent whom you hang out to dry and who ends up with a
bullet in his spine from Manu Robledo is collateral damage.”

The antique chair was becoming more uncomfortable.
Barber did not deny any of it.

Mongoose said, “It all comes back to you, Little
Joe. Your name is on the classified memo. And it’s crystal clear that Operation
BAQ was your idea.”

Again, no denial. Barber had even come up with the
abbreviation, BAQ.

“Let’s get on with it,” said Barber.

“I’m tired,” Mongoose said, rising. “We’ve covered
enough ground for one night. I’ll let myself out.” He started for the door, then
stopped. “Oh, by the way. I’m sure you don’t have any delusions of stabbing me
in the back or, more your style, hiring someone else to do it. But just in case,
I wanted you to know: I have a safety valve.”

“Meaning what?”

“Every blackmailer needs one. It’s a way to make
sure that if something happens to me, the trigger gets pulled. Everything I’ve
threatened to do to you will come to pass.”

Barber showed no reaction, not sure if he was
bluffing or not.

Mongoose studied his expression, then said, “I’m
not sure you believe me. But it’s real. Your memo on Operation BAQ is mixed in
with the BOS files you handed over today.”

That was more than Barber could take quietly. “You
son of bitch, if Patrick doesn’t know enough to connect the dots, his father
sure does.”

“Relax,” said Mongoose. “It’s still encrypted. They
don’t have the key, and they don’t have the resources to crack the code. But
here’s how my safety valve works. If I don’t log on to my computer every day and
deactivate my safety valve, an e-mail will automatically go to Patrick and
Lilly. The decryption key is in the e-mail.”

There was no gun to his head, literally speaking,
but Barber suddenly felt as if there were.

Mongoose said, “So unless you want your memo
decrypted, unless you want the world to know about Operation BAQ and the role
you played in it, then you need to be very concerned about my health.
Understood?”

Powerlessness was a foreign feeling to him, but
Barber knew who was holding all the aces. “Understood.”

“Good. Now, stay on top of those two jokers,” he
said, meaning Patrick and Lilly.

“I will let you know as soon as I hear back from
them.”

“No. Don’t wait. Follow up in the morning.
Mandretti’s son is going to crack. I can feel it. Even though Lilly doesn’t know
enough to make heads or tails of his data, Patrick has to be nervous that she
might be able to make some sense of it. That’s your leverage. I want a complete
road map to the money.”

“He isn’t going to just knuckle under
overnight.”

“He will if you push the right buttons. That would
make me very happy. In fact, if you get me an answer by tomorrow night, I might
make you a partner. Wouldn’t that make you happy, Joey?”

Barber was silent.

“Good night, partner.” Mongoose laughed to himself.
Then he turned, opened the door, and left the room. Barber listened as the
footfalls of a blackmailer echoed in his own hallway. He heard the front door
open, then close.

Mongoose was gone.

32

A
gent
Henning agreed to meet me at eight
A.M
. It was
her idea to get out of Manhattan, in case I was being watched or followed. By
default, that meant Position Four on my list of meeting spots, a thirty-minute
train ride to my old stomping grounds on the other side of the East River.

I grew up in Queens, lived there till I was
fifteen—until Peter Mandretti became Patrick Lloyd. I accepted the fact that
Queens has its critics; I didn’t accept the criticism. Yes, Brooklyn has more
interesting housing, and there can be only one Manhattan, one Gotham-like center
of the universe. The Bronx has the Yankees, and Staten Island has
. . . well, as I might have told my friends in Queens, I’ve never had
no freakin’ reason to go there, so who the hell cares what they got? But I do
know this: only Queens has the Lemon Ice King of Corona.

Trips to the Ice King on warm summer nights hold a
special place in my memory. Rainbow was my favorite flavor, notwithstanding my
sister’s blunt reminders: “It’s the
Lemon
Ice King,
moron.” The line could be long, but that was part of the experience, and with
Shea Stadium a bike ride away, it was possible to snag a couple of last-minute
seats for a Mets game on the cheap. Or you could just walk across the street to
the park, where old Italian men played bocce ball for hours. The Ice King had no
dining area—it was a tiny joint on the corner that served only ices—so benches
by the bocce courts were the primo spot for scooping out chocolate or fruity
slush from a cup. In summertime, you were lucky to find a seat.

On a cold morning in January, I had no such
problem.

Andie glared at me, arms folded, her breath
steaming as she fought off the cold. “You know, Patrick, it would have been
perfectly acceptable for your list of designated meeting places to include one
or two indoor locations.”

“My bad,” I said. “I’ll bring you back for a cherry
ice in July.”

It was nearly an hour past dawn, but the sun was
nowhere to be seen in the gray winter sky. Andie wasn’t getting any warmer, so I
did a quick follow-up on the park ranger mentioned in the
Daily News
. Not surprisingly, the FBI was already aware that the
victim was the same ranger who had found me unconscious and had sent me to the
ER just a few hours earlier. Andie assured me that there was no need for me to
speak directly to the detectives handling the homicide investigation—she had it
covered—and then moved on to another subject.

“I met with your father last night,” she said.

Her mention of Dad was a funny coincidence. Just
moments earlier, my gaze had drifted to the tuxedo shop across the street where,
according to my mother, Dad had rented a hideous, yet stylish, powder blue
tuxedo for their wedding.

“How is he doing?” I asked.

She offered a few details about his treatment, then
added, “I wish I could tell you he was better. But he’s getting good care, and I
can say he’s a fighter.”

“That’s something, I suppose.”

“I’m technically not allowed to tell you his new
name or location,” she said. “In fact, my supervisor wouldn’t even give me that
information. But I’m the curious type. And, frankly, I wouldn’t be much of an
FBI agent if I couldn’t pinpoint a prison hospital that just admitted a
sixty-year-old white male transfer patient who has non-Hodgkins lymphoma.”

“What did you find out?”

“He’s in Boston,” she said, and then she mentioned
the name of the hospital. “His new name is Sam Carlson.”

As per our previous conversation, we were operating
on a quid pro quo basis, and I knew this update was not gratis. She wanted
something from me.

“I believe it’s time for you to give up the name of
the man who opened a certain numbered account at BOS/Singapore.”

She meant the account that was at the heart of the
search for Cushman’s money, of course. I said, “As I recall, there was one more
condition. You were going to tell me why the FBI is still helping my father,
even though your supervisor thinks I’ve been holding out.”

“I’ll be honest with you,” she said. “I don’t know
why.”

I wasn’t sure I believed her, which made me want to
hold on to the name Manu Robledo until she really gave me something. “That’s not
good enough.”

A wisp of wind sent a swirl of white powder across
the frozen bocce court. I shifted gears and told her about my meeting with
Barber and Lilly. The exchange of data piqued her interest.

“What would it take to get my hands on Lilly’s
files?” she asked.

“That’s way beyond the scope of our original deal,”
I said, “and it’s confidential bank data. But I might see my way toward sharing
it with you if you can tell me what BAQ means.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“One of the files mixed in with Lilly’s data is
encrypted on a level that the federal government would use for a matter of
national security. The only thing my tech expert can determine is that the
letters B-A-Q appear in sequence with unusual frequency. It’s possible that it’s
an abbreviation for something.”

“Your tech expert?” she said.

I had no intention of bringing Evan into this.
“Don’t ask,” I said.

“The abbreviation BAQ doesn’t mean anything to
me.”

“I didn’t expect an answer off the top of your
head. Do some digging. Get me an answer, and I’ll give you Lilly’s files. Get it
to me quick, and I’ll throw in the name of the man who opened numbered account
507.625 RR.”

It was the first time I’d mentioned the actual BOS
account number, and it seemed to buy some credibility.

“Deal,” she said.

Another breeze, which became a gust, cut across the
bocce courts. Andie was downwind and took the brunt of it.

I said, “Why don’t you go find someplace warm.”

She brushed the icy powder from her eyebrows,
muttered something about a fast plane back to Miami, and then looked me in the
eye. “One last thing,” she said. “I shared your father’s new name and location
because you wanted to know them. But after meeting with him, I feel like I
should add one thing you probably won’t want to hear: don’t contact your
father.”

Her bluntness took me aback. “Would you tell me if
he was going to pass soon?”

“It’s not imminent, but that’s not my point. I
don’t say this to be cruel or to hurt your feelings, but your father was moved
and given a new identity at his own request. He doesn’t want you to find
him.”

A reunion had never been my stated mission, but
Andie’s frank advice made me realize that it had indeed been a subconscious
goal. I tried to absorb the blow. “Did he tell you that?”

“Yes. In almost exactly those words.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“He has his reasons.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question.”

She drew a deep breath of the cold morning air as
she considered her response. “There are things that he doesn’t want to have to
explain to you.”

“That’s pretty vague.”

“He’d prefer it that way. I’m sure of it.”

“Did he kill Gerry Collins?”

“Patrick, I can assure you of one thing. It has
absolutely nothing to do with your father’s guilt or innocence.”

“It’s my mother, isn’t it?”

Andie struggled. “I don’t know if you’re aware of
this or not, but your mother tried to contact your father while he was in
witness protection. He’s convinced that’s what got her killed.”

“I didn’t know it, but I always suspected.”

“Now you know.”

“That was a long time ago,” I said. “The Santucci
family isn’t what it used to be. Who’s to say it would be anywhere near as
dangerous for his children to see him before he dies?”

“He doesn’t want to take that risk.”

Our eyes met, and held. The vibe between us wasn’t
about love and romance, but it suddenly occurred to me that I’d worked harder at
this relationship with Andie Henning than I’d worked at any relationship with
any woman who wasn’t named Lilly. I didn’t always trust her—not by a long
shot—but at least, with respect to her advice about my father, I sensed that I
could trust her completely.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome.”

There was compassion in her tone, and it was as if
she was telling me that hearing the harsh truth was only part of the equation.
Now all I had to do was deal with it.

Or, knowing myself, ignore her well-intentioned
advice.