Need You Now (19 page)

35

L
illy didn’t answer my call to her cell phone, which came as no surprise. I sent her an e-mail and hoped she would bite:

The Treasury memo was in your files. Give me a chance to prove you’re innocent. Meet me at Puffy’s, 2 p.m. today.

The message was clear enough—surely she would realize that “the Treasury memo” was the one with her name in it—and I thought I’d struck the right tone by offering to help. Puffy’s was familiar territory, the Tribeca bar we’d stumbled out of singing
I need your cow
. Still, I had to catch my breath when she actually showed up.

“You came,” I said, stating the obvious.

Lilly slid into the booth, no kiss or hug to greet me. None was expected, but seeing her so tense, seated on the other side of the table, made me wish that I could erase the last four days and start over.

She unbuttoned her winter coat but left it on. “I can’t stay long.”

She was trying so hard not to be the Lilly I knew that it came across as robotic. I would have liked to melt some of the ice, but there was a glacier in the room, and I didn’t have ten thousand years.

“This won’t take long,” I said.

“Can I see the memo?”

“First, there’s something I need to know. How did it get into your BOS files?”

“I had no idea it was there until I got your e-mail.”

That made sense, and I realized that it was at such a high level of encryption that she wouldn’t have been able to read it even if she had known it was there. But I had to discount my assessment of everything Lilly said by a serious I-want-you-back factor.

“Patrick, are you okay?”

Just seeing Lilly could do terrible things to my ability to focus. “Yeah, sorry.”

“So now can I see the memo, please?”

“The short answer to that question is yes.”

She was wary, the way most people react if they’re smart enough to know that the long answer always swallows up the short answer.

“You don’t have it, do you?” she said.

I drew a breath, and it was hesitation enough for Lilly to get up to leave. “You are such a liar, Patrick.”

“Lilly, wait. I do have it.”

She stopped, threw me a look that said
You’d better not be lying
, and slid back into the booth.

A waitress came, and we ordered coffee. Decaf for Lilly. The aversion to caffeine told me that she hadn’t been sleeping well, which added to my own sense of regret.

“Lilly, I am really sorry that—”

“Stop,” she said. “Let’s not go there.”

“Right,” I said, pulling myself back together. “Here’s the deal with the memo.”

I paused, not sure where to start. Our talk outside the building after the meeting in Barber’s office had ended in disaster, mostly due to the way I’d skirted around my involvement with the FBI.

“Go ahead,” she said. “You were saying.”

I leaned closer, as if to emphasize that I was sharing a secret. “Do you remember last time we spoke, when I said I went to Singapore as part of an official investigation?”

She rolled her eyes. Clearly, it wasn’t a pleasant memory. “Yes.”

“It wasn’t an investigation for some warring faction of the Santucci family,” I said, using her words. “It was for the FBI.”

The waitress brought our coffee, which was a good thing, because it forced Lilly to keep her composure. The waitress left, and Lilly listened as I explained my deal with the FBI—cancer treatment for my father in exchange for any information I might find that Cushman was laundering money through BOS/Singapore.

“You mean information that
I
was helping Cushman launder money through BOS/Singapore,” said Lilly.

I was getting no wiggle room. “Well, yes.”

“So, the bottom line hasn’t changed. You
were
spying on me.”

“I didn’t even
know
you when I cut the deal. Everything changed after I met you. And once we started seeing each other, I never lied about my feelings for you.”

“ ‘Love at first sight’ was not a lie?”

“Lilly, don’t count this against my feelings for you now, but I never told you it was love at first sight.” I nearly gasped, not because of my honesty, but because I was starting to sound like a reject from
The Bachelor
.

“I know you didn’t,” Lilly said, lowering her eyes. “When I said love at first sight, maybe I was channeling my own feelings to you.”

She looked at me, and I at her, and after a moment I could see that we had come to the same critical realization: this was nauseating.

“
Oh, baby, I need your cow
,” I sang.

Lilly smiled, and then we shared a little laugh. I wanted to reach for her hand, but the feel-good moment hadn’t made our problems go away.

“So,” said Lilly. “The memo?”

She was back to the heart of the matter, but her tone was softer. I told her about the trip to Boston to see my father, the conversation with Andie Henning.

Lilly asked, “Do you think Agent Henning will actually show you the decrypted memo?”

“There’s a chance,” I said. “But there’s at least an equal chance that my tech guy will decode the encrypted version I already have.”

My BlackBerry vibrated. I didn’t recognize the number, so I let it ring through to voice mail. “Lilly, I know this isn’t a pleasant memory, but I wanted to ask you about the day you were attacked. When you actually saw the memo.”

“We went over this the last time we were here.”

“I know, but so much has changed. Tell me not just what you read, but how he showed it to you, what he said to you. Everything.”

She took a breath, then let it out. “Okay. It was my last week in Singapore. I went for a run early, like I always did, before it got too hot. There’s a path by the beach that’s really beautiful when the sun comes up. I was in the zone, cruising along, and suddenly, I was down on the ground, my face in the sand. Before I really knew what was happening, he was sitting on my spine and I was pinned underneath him. My instinct was to fight back, but I was tired from the run, and he was way too strong. When he grabbed me by the hair, it was like he was going to pull it right out. Then I felt the gun at the back of my head.”

This version of events had more details than the one before, and her voice was starting to quiver. I gave her a moment.

“Then what?”

“It was a lot like what happened to you in Times Square. He said it was time to turn over the money that was funneled to Cushman through BOS.”

“Did you say anything?”

“I said I didn’t know a thing about Cushman. That’s how I ended up with the powder burn I showed you the last time we sat at this table. He pulled the trigger, jerked the gun away just enough for the bullet to brush past my neck. The silencer probably kept me from going deaf, but it told me I was dealing with someone who knew what he was doing.”

It was more than “a lot like” what had happened to me. It was virtually identical. “How did the memo come into it?” I asked.

“I kept saying over and over, ‘It’s not me, you’ve got the wrong person!’ He pulled my head up by the hair again and . . .” She swallowed hard, then continued. “I thought he was going to put a bullet in my head. But that was when he put the memo under my nose, literally, right in the sand.”

“You’re sure it was a Treasury Department memo?”

“It was on Treasury letterhead. I supposed it could have been a fake, but why would he forge it? He’d only be fooling himself.”

“Tell me everything you remember about it.”

“It was quick, so what I remember most is the part that mentioned me by name. Something like: ‘Treasury’s most promising lead as to concealment of proceeds from the Cushman fraud remains Gerry Collins’ banking activities at BOS/Singapore, and the key person of interest at BOS has been identified as Lilly Scanlon.’ ”

“Do you remember anything else?”

“Not really. He focused me on the key language. It wasn’t like he gave me time to read it from start to finish.”

My BlackBerry rang again, the same number as before. This time I realized it was Evan, so I begged Lilly’s pardon and answered.

“What’s up?”

“Got some good news,” Evan said.

“Tell me.”

He chuckled, then did a really bad imitation of a Russian spy: “I broke the code, comrade.”

36

B
y
midafternoon Andie was outside of Philadelphia. The small yellow house on the
corner was old but well maintained, one of many just like it on this quiet,
tree-lined street. It seemed perfect for a retired couple, except for the need
to shovel four inches of new snow from the walkway. As Andie climbed the steps
of the front porch, she noticed a plaque above the door from the Society of
Former Special Agents of the FBI. L
OYALTY,
F
RIENDSHIP,
G
OODWILL
, it read. It reminded Andie of F
IDELITY,
B
RAVERY,
I
NTEGRITY
, the motto on her own shield—the same
shield that Frank Scully had carried for twenty-five years. He was just beyond
the bureau’s minimum retirement age of fifty, but well short of the mandatory
cutoff at age fifty-seven.

He greeted Andie at the door, led her to the TV
room, and offered her a seat. He took the other armchair, facing her.

“Thanks for meeting with me,” said Andie.

“You didn’t give me much choice.”

Scully was right. The phone conversation had been
short and to the point. At first Scully had refused to talk about Tony
Mandretti. Knowledge was power, however, and her mere mention of a familiar name
had put the power in Andie’s hands.

Scully asked, “How did you find out about Manu
Robledo?”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Your secret is apparently
safe within the FBI. I can’t find a single agent who even pretends to know about
Robledo’s connection to Gerry Collins.”

Scully glanced at her sideways. He looked fit and
younger than his years, more like an agent who would have worked right up until
the moment he blew out fifty-seven candles, rather than take early retirement.
“So if you didn’t get it from the inside, who told you?”

“Tony Mandretti,” she said.

“I don’t believe you. Tony would never crack.”

“He would if he thought his children were at
risk.”

Scully fell silent, but his expression confirmed
that she’d struck a chord.

“Is that what you told him?” he asked.

“I did,” said Andie, “because it’s true.”

“How do you even know Tony’s kids?”

“Because I’m the agent who carried out the
money-laundering investigation at BOS that you drew up before retiring.”

“Ah,” he said, as if things were falling into
place. “How close did you stick to the way I drew it up?”

She told him about her arrangement with Patrick,
the promise of cancer treatment for Tony Mandretti in exchange for Patrick’s
cooperation with the FBI. “At the time,” she went on to say, “I presumed that
the bureau had targeted Patrick because his father was in jail for the murder of
Gerry Collins.”

“That would seem logical,” he said.

“I also had no reason to believe that Tony
Mandretti was anything but guilty as charged,” said Andie. “Now that Manu
Robledo is in the picture, I’m not so sure.”

Scully didn’t answer.

“Let me ask you the same question you put to me,”
said Andie. “How did you find out about Robledo?”

“Sources,” he said.

“Inside the bureau?”

“Operation BAQ was not an FBI operation.”

“Then how were you able to get Robledo’s name and
pass it along to Tony Mandretti?”

Scully shifted in his chair, and Andie could see
his discomfort.

“I’m waiting,” she said.

He chuckled, but it was nerves. “I guess now you’re
starting to get a feel for why I took early retirement.”

“You can answer my question,” said Andie, “or I can
report my full conversation with Tony Mandretti to headquarters, and you can
explain it to them.”

“Is that a threat?”

“You might prefer to think of it as having the
power of choice.”

His nervous smile vanished. Anger was beginning to
rise up. “I was a damn good agent,” he said. “Worked hard, did the right thing.
I always kept my word, even when I gave it to a former mobster like Mandretti.
It took a lot of courage for him to flip and testify against the Santucci
family. It’s no secret what he gave up—his wife, his kids, his life. It made me
sick the way the bureau turned its back on him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tony went into witness protection and really tried
to straighten out his life. He started up his own repo business, totally legit.
He was the muscle that lenders hired to repossess expensive cars, boats,
airplanes—all the toys the new rich guys played with until they burned through
their dough like the fools they were and couldn’t afford to play anymore. Every
penny Tony made, he saved and invested. It took him fifteen years, but he had
himself a pretty nice nest egg. Almost a quarter million bucks. He always said
it was for his kids. It was his way of proving to them that he never forgot
about them, never stopped caring. It was all good. Until he invested his money
with Gerry Collins.”

“Lost it all,” Andie said.

“Every penny. Like everyone else.”

“But Tony wasn’t exactly like everyone else.”

“No,” said Scully. “That money was definitely more
than just money to him. It was fifteen years of sweat from his own brow.”

“And it was for his kids.”

“More than that,” said Scully. “I don’t think you
can understand unless you’ve lost touch with a child. It wasn’t just
for
his kids, the way parents raise their children,
watch them grow up, and then leave something for them in their will. This was
Tony’s only chance for any connection to the family he’d lost, and it was his
kids’ only chance to feel connected to him. At least that’s the way Tony saw
it.”

“Collins lost his money, and Tony wanted him to pay
for it.”

“Not dead, necessarily. But he wanted Collins to
feel the hurt.”

“I would think that a guy like Mandretti might
enjoy doing that himself.”

“Tony was on parole. If he violated parole, he not
only went to jail, he was out of witness protection. The Santucci family has
long tentacles. How long do you think Tony Martin would last if it got out that
he was really Tony Mandretti?”

“So you gave him the name of Manu Robledo, someone
who would put that kind of hurt on Gerry Collins if he knew Collins was a
fraud.”

He nodded. “If he knew he was a fraud.”

“Which brings me back to my question: How did you
find out about Robledo?”

“That was part of a larger deal.”

“By larger, you mean . . .”

“Operation BAQ was run out of Treasury. Years in
the making. Manu Robledo was the key.”

“How did you find out about it?”

“Tony gave me the analysis showing that Cushman was
a fraud. I took it to the SEC, thinking this would be purely a regulatory
matter. The hope was to get Tony a whistle-blower bounty for exposing Cushman’s
fraud. I heard nothing from them, which was pretty surprising. I started poking
around, looking for information on Gerry Collins.”

“That’s how you came across the name Manu
Robledo?”

“No. I found out Collins had drawn a lot of
attention from law enforcement for business with offshore banks. After twenty
years with the bureau, I hear offshore bank and I think organized crime, drug
cartels, or both. That’s when I went back to Tony and told him to be careful
about bringing down Cushman through Gerry Collins.”

“And that must be when he asked you for the name of
someone who would give Gerry Collins a mob-style beating if they knew he was a
fraud.”

Another nervous smile. “My goodness, you and Tony
did have quite the talk.”

“Yes, we did. He’s a dying man trying to protect
his kids.”

Scully said, “I take it that you promised to help
him with that.”

“Yes,” she said, turning it right back on him.
“Just like you did.” Andie let her words sink in, and her explicit reminder of
the role of “handler” that Scully had played for the Mandretti family seemed to
strike a blow. She pushed even harder.“I heard you say you were a man of your
word, even when dealing with a mobster like Tony. I’m sure you did all you
could. But I’ve exhausted every avenue I have inside the bureau. I can’t pick up
where you left off—I can’t help Tony or his kids—unless you tell me how you
zeroed in on Manu Robledo.”

Silence followed, the former agent and the younger
one locking eyes. It took a minute, and finally, without uttering a word, they
reached an understanding that what was about to be said would not leave the
room.

Scully started talking. “I kept poking around in
Gerry Collins’ offshore transactions, deeper and deeper. Too deep. Next thing I
knew, I was flying to Washington for a meeting with the deputy secretary of the
Treasury and two of his assistants.”

“Joe Barber?”

“The one and only.”

“Are you saying that Barber, personally, saw the
analysis outlining all the reasons Cushman was a fraud?”

“I’m saying that Barber and everyone involved with
Operation BAQ knew that Cushman was a fraud, and they knew it long before I
showed them Tony’s analysis.”

Andie took a moment to absorb that revelation. “Was
it Barber who gave you the name Manu Robledo?”

“His name came out in the negotiations.”

“What do you mean?”

“Treasury wanted me to get Tony to sit on the
Cushman analysis. I couldn’t promise that Tony would just pretend like it didn’t
exist. So Treasury cut a deal with him.”

“A deal?”

“Yeah. It was agreed that Tony would get his
analysis into the hands of Manu Robledo. In essence, the fact that Cushman was a
fraud would be laid out in black and white for a man who was identified by
Treasury as Gerry Collins’ dirtiest client.”

“Dirty in what way?”

“I don’t have that information. But there was no
doubt in anyone’s mind that Robledo would go straight to Gerry Collins and,
shall we say, confront him.”

“So Tony got exactly what he wanted.”

“And more. Tony was allowed to stay in witness
protection, and he also got back the money he lost to Gerry Collins. Two hundred
fifty thousand dollars.”

“Treasury agreed to pay him a quarter million
dollars if he kept his analysis of Cushman’s fraud to himself?”

“Not exactly to himself. He was allowed to show it
to no one but Manu Robledo—who, of course, would then confront Gerry
Collins.”

“That’s a pretty sweet deal for Tony.”

“There was one other component—a very important
contingency from Treasury’s standpoint. Like I said, there was a substantial
risk that Robledo might do more than inflict a bruising on Gerry Collins. Tony
agreed that if Collins ended up dead, then . . .”

He didn’t finish, leaving it to Andie to fill in
the blank. “Tony would take the rap.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Tony was terminally ill with cancer.”

“I understand that it might be easier for a man to
agree to prison for the rest of his life if he knows it means three years
instead of thirty years. But why would Treasury ask Tony to make that promise as
part of their deal with him?”

“Clearly, it was important to Treasury that Manu
Robledo not land in jail.”

“Why?”

“Pretty obvious, don’t you think?”

“Not to me,” said Andie.

“How could Operation BAQ work if Manu Robledo was
behind bars for the murder of Gerry Collins?”

“I can’t answer that,” said Andie. “I have no idea
what Operation BAQ is.”

Scully looked at her. “Neither do I.”

“I’m not sure I believe you.”

“Oh, you can believe me on that one,” he said with
a mirthless chuckle. “I
tried
to find out. That got
me nowhere . . . except a ticket to early retirement.”

It smacked of politics and cover-up, and nothing
offended Andie more than a good agent getting a raw deal. “Where would someone
start if she was interested in picking up where you left off?”

“You really don’t want to do that.”

Andie leaned closer, meeting his stare. “Try me,”
she said.