Need You Now

14

I woke in a strange bed with side railings, a white fluorescent ceiling light assaulting my eyes. An angled mattress had me somewhere between the upright position and flat on my back. Squinting, I propped myself up further on one elbow and peered through a crack in the white curtain before me. It wasn’t a window curtain. It was a room divider that separated my private cubicle from the busy common area beyond, where nurses and doctors wearing green hospital scrubs darted about. I was alone and still in my street clothes, no shoes. I had no memory of coming to the emergency room, but my mind was clear enough to recall a conversation with a park ranger before blacking out a second time.

She must have brought me here.

Details of that conversation suddenly came flooding back- “My name is Peter Mandretti”- and in a moment of panic, I checked the hospital ID bracelet on my wrist.

P ATRICK L LOYD, it read.

I breathed a sigh of relief. The park ranger had apparently dismissed my “Peter Mandretti” slip of the tongue as the incoherent ramblings of an assault victim. Presumably, the hospital had checked my driver’s license upon admission.

My BlackBerry rang, but it wasn’t in my pocket. I was still gathering my wits and adjusting to my surroundings, and I was having trouble locating the phone. I sat up and listened more intently, but by the time I focused on the bag of personal belongings hanging from the bed railing, the ringing had stopped.

I checked the phone. It was 8:35 A.M. The call was from my team leader at BOS, and the history told me that I’d slept right through four earlier calls from him. I suddenly recalled that the first thing on the day’s agenda had been a 7:30 breakfast meeting with a client who was wealthy even by BOS standards, and it was my job to recommend changes to his portfolio.

The ringing resumed-call number six in the last twenty minutes. With a sense of dread I answered, only to get an earful.

“Where the hell are you, Patrick?”

“I’m sorry. I-”

“I don’t want to hear your excuse. Unless you’re dead or dying, there is none.”

How about under threat of death? I decided not to go there. “I’ll grab a cab and be there in-”

“Forget it,” he said. “I was able to wing it this time. But if you ever do that to me again, I will fire your ass. Period. Do you hear me?”

He hung up before I could answer. Jay was my best friend when things were going well, my worst nightmare if I screwed up. The harsh tone was a stark reminder that there was plenty to lose even if I didn’t lose my head-literally. Not that it would have helped to explain things to him or to anyone else at the bank. A gun to my head, a cord around my neck, threats with tentacles reaching back to Abe Cushman-all brought about by my decision to become the eyes and ears of the FBI inside the very bank that employed me. Even I was having trouble comprehending it.

The curtain parted, then closed, giving me a start. It wasn’t a doctor or a nurse. Lilly spoke before I could get a word out.

“I know who you are,” she said. Her voice was just above a whisper; her tone, somewhere between pain and anger. “Why did you lie to me?”

I could have played dumb. Lying in an ER bed, I could have turned it right back on her and demanded an explanation of all that had happened since she’d shown up and dragged me into Puffy’s Tavern. But the look on her face left me powerless to do anything but put aside the last forty-eight hours and say what I’d wanted to say for months.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She stood there, silent, just looking at me. I wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but an I’m sorry, too would have been nice.

She breathed in and out, then said, “I don’t even know why I’m helping you.”

Not exactly the mutual exchange of apologies I had hoped for. “Helping me? What do you mean, help -”

She shushed me, gathered my shoes from a chair in the corner, and told me to put them on. “We need to get out of here,” she said, her tone urgent.

“Do you know what happened to me?”

“You’re fine. They did a CT scan two hours ago.”

“How do you know?”

“I read your chart when the nurse was away from the desk. Trust me, they wouldn’t have you lie here by yourself sleeping if they thought you had a serious head injury.”

“Hold on a second,” I said.

“No, we need to get going before the nurse comes by to check on you again.”

I took her hand. “Just wait , okay?”

She stopped, and our eyes met. If we were going to embrace, this would have been the moment. But things had gotten way too complicated, and it didn’t feel right-not to me, and, I sensed, not to her, either. I let go of her hand.

“Three days ago I would have given anything to see you again,” I said. “You’ve shown up twice since then, which coincides exactly with the number of times someone has tried to kill me.”

“Please, Patrick-or should I call you Peter?”

The dig triggered another pang of guilt. “How did you find out?”

“Don’t turn this around and make it about me,” she said. “When did you intend to stop lying?”

“Lilly, do you have any idea what I’ve been through?”

“All I can tell you is that it wasn’t the people who are after the Cushman money who did this to you.”

“How do you know that?”

She pulled on my shoe, no time to waste. “It’s like I told you at Puffy’s: when they had you in the back of that SUV in Times Square, I promised to deliver their money in one week, instead of two, if they didn’t hurt you. It would make no sense for them to put you in the ER after cutting a deal like that. They’d already made their point.”

That made sense, I supposed. But there was still one major problem. “So, are you any closer to meeting the one-week deadline?”

“Nope.”

“Then how do you plan to keep your promise?”

She stopped and looked me in the eye. “I have absolutely no idea. I’ll figure that out once I get you out of here.”

“I don’t understand. You still have time to get their money. What are we running from?”

“We aren’t running. You are.”

“Me? No. Forget it. I’m not going on the run from some thug who jumped me in the park.”

Lilly peeked out the curtain, then glanced back at me. “You’re talking like Patrick Lloyd. It’s Peter Mandretti who needs to run.”

Her expression was deadly serious, and the fact that we were even having this conversation chilled me.

“How much do you know?” I asked.

“More than I want to. We need to go. Now. ” She handed me my coat. “We’re going to walk out of here, turn left- away from the main desk-and follow the hallway to the exit doors on the other side of the ER. Got it?”

“Sure.”

“Just walk like you’re a visitor and stay with me.”

Lilly stepped out first, and I did exactly as told. We passed several cubicles. Some had the curtains drawn for privacy. Others were open. We passed a man with a broken arm and an old woman with an ice pack to one knee. Another patient was hunched over a bucket with his head down. The odor left no doubt that it was flu season. We passed two nurses as we rounded the corner, but they were too busy to stop and question us. The pneumatic doors opened automatically, and they closed behind us as we exited the ER. We passed the Radiology Department, and the sign on the wall indicated that we were headed in the opposite direction of the main entrance. In fact, this hallway was marked E MERGENCY P ERSONNEL O NLY.

“I’m guessing you have a plan,” I said.

“You guessed right.”

Actually, I was tired of guessing. She’d put me on the defensive with talk of Peter Mandretti, but she wasn’t the only one entitled to an explanation.

“Lilly, why did you climb out the window of my apartment?”

“Long story,” she said.

She quickened her pace, and I kept up. We were leaving through the chute that received patients brought in by ambulance. The long corridor was deserted at the moment, no emergency in progress.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“I left you a note on your computer. Didn’t you see it?”

“Yes. It didn’t explain anything. Don’t change the subject.”

We’d gobbled up a hundred feet of polished tile floor and were near the end of the corridor, ten feet away from the sliding glass doors and the driveway beyond. The walk was clearing my head, but I wasn’t completely myself. I probably should have started with questions about Manu Robledo and the Church of Peace and Prosperity International, but my head was pounding, and honestly the name just wasn’t coming to me.

I stopped her, laid my hands squarely on her shoulders, and looked her in the eye. “Lilly, are you involved in some kind of cult?”

“Cult?” she said, scoffing. “Seriously, do I strike you as a cult personality?”

“No, but…”

“But what?”

“The more I get to know you, the less I know you.”

“Well, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black,” she said.

“Stop avoiding the question. Why did you run away?”

A white commercial van pulled up in the driveway outside the sliding glass doors. “That’s our ride,” said Lilly, pulling me along. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll tell you on the way.”

The glass doors slid open, and a blast of cool morning air hit me in the face. Lilly opened the rear door of the van and managed to get me to climb in first. The door slammed behind me.

Lilly was still in the driveway.

“Lilly!”

I tried to open the door, but there was no handle on the inside. The only windows were in the cockpit, so I couldn’t see Lilly, but I heard her slap the side of the van and shout, “Go!”

The driver put the van into gear, and we pulled away.

I was alone in the cargo hold amid blankets and cardboard boxes. A wire grate separated me from the cockpit, and I pushed away a stack of boxes to get right behind the driver.

“Stop!” I shouted.

“Relax and be quiet.”

I immediately recognized the driver’s voice, and a moment of eye contact in the rearview mirror confirmed it.

“Connie?”

My sister glanced over her shoulder and said, “Who else can you count on to save your butt?”

I caught her drift: certainly not our father.

“Get under the blankets and sit tight,” she said.

I hesitated.

“Do it!” she said. “We have to make sure no one sees you leaving the hospital.”

If Lilly was right-if the danger was to Peter Mandretti, not to Patrick Lloyd-I could see the wisdom in the plan. I grabbed the nearest blanket and found a spot by the wheel well in the cargo hold. The ride out of the parking lot was smooth and steady, not too fast and not too slow-nothing to arouse the suspicion of whoever was waiting to see if and when I walked out the hospital’s front door.

The tires hummed below me as I wondered exactly how Lilly and my sister had teamed up for this stunt. I wondered how long they’d been a team. More than anything, I wondered why Connie would have told her that our last name wasn’t Lloyd.