Need You Now

41

I took a PATH train from Manhattan and was in New Jersey by dinnertime. Lilly came with me, which I took as a positive sign that I was indeed on her deserves-to-live list. Just as Lilly had wanted to talk to me before forming any alliance with Agent Henning, I also needed to speak to someone. I phoned Connie several times, but her machine picked up.

“Call me,” I said, keeping my message short.

Connie had given me a key to her apartment with a standing offer to stay there. Lilly still had a hotel room, but with Evan Hunt’s shooting, she didn’t feel safe going back there. My place wasn’t an option, either, since her last stay had ended with a phony deliveryman forcing her to escape out the window. After a three-minute walk from Journal Square Station, however, I was seriously wondering how she would feel safer in this part of Jersey City. Things changed block by block, and some streets were easily better than our old neighborhood in Queens. Some weren’t. Connie’s definitely wasn’t. I had never asked my sister how much the zoo paid her, but if it was more than minimum wage, she was socking away a fortune in what she saved on rent. It was no wonder that she leaped at every opportunity to sleep in a tent on scouting trips.

Connie’s building was like the others on her street. An old three-story unit in need of a paint job. No alley between neighbors. Sheets of plastic covered the windows for added insulation. The buildings were set back from the street, and once upon a time there had probably been a front lawn, but now there were only driveways. With cars parked side by side, two and three deep, it was a safe bet that more people lived in these one- and two-bedroom apartments than they were ever intended to house.

The sidewalk had not been shoveled, and the cold night air had turned the snow to a crusty ice that crunched beneath my shoes as I climbed the front steps. Lilly waited at the curb, her arms folded for warmth, her eyes darting left to right, as if she were expecting a drug deal to go down at any moment. I reached for the key but decided to knock first, just in case she was home.

To my surprise, the porch light switched on.

“Connie?” I called out.

The light switched off, leaving Lilly and me in the distant glow of the streetlamp on the corner.

“Probably a motion detector,” Lilly said. “Open up and let’s go in before we get mugged.”

I heard Connie call out, “Be there in a minute!”

She wasn’t right on the other side of the door; her voice was more removed, as if she were in another room, perhaps the bedroom. It made me wonder why she hadn’t been answering her telephone, but I gave her a minute. I heard a door slam and what sounded like someone running across a wood floor.

I leaned closer to the door. “Connie?”

“Just a second!”

The door opened, and Connie invited me inside. She seemed out of breath.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, fine,” she said, though her voice cracked with nervousness. Lilly and I exchanged glances, clearly sharing the same impression that we’d caught Connie in a romp.

“Strong procreation gene,” I said, still looking at Lilly. “Runs in the family.”

Connie blushed. “Oh, you’re thinking that I was… No. It’s not that. There’s no one here. Just me, myself, and I.”

I heard a thud behind the closet door, followed by a ping and the sound of a penny rolling across a wood floor. I looked down and saw that it wasn’t a coin. I bent down and picked up the bullet that had rolled up against my heel. “What the heck is this?”

“Nine millimeter, hollow-point,” said Connie.

Either my hunch about sex had been dead wrong, or my sister was far kinkier than I had ever imagined. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

She drew a deep breath and then let it out, sighing. Slowly, with obvious reluctance, she turned the knob and opened the closet door. Wedged between an assortment of winter coats and camping gear, a man turned his head toward us and shot an awkward wave hello. The face was familiar, and when he stepped into the room where there was better lighting, I recognized him.

“Scully?”

I hadn’t seen Agent Scully since I was a teenager, but there are certain people, certain situations, that a person never forgets. Scully had served as the handler for our entire family when Dad turned against the Santucci family. As my father testified before a federal grand jury in lower Manhattan-literally, at that very moment-Agent Scully and my mother sat down with my sister and me at our dining room table in Queens and told us what a courageous thing our father was doing, how important it was to the fight against organized crime, and how, frankly, our young lives would never be the same.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I heard about your father’s friend, Evan,” he said. “So I reached out to Connie.”

“He’s concerned for our safety,” said Connie.

“So he’s hiding in your closet?”

“I can explain that,” said Scully.

“No, let me,” said Connie. “Patrick, I know how you feel about guns. But your big sister is one of those people who believes that a guy like Evan Hunt might have had a fighting chance if he had kept a gun in his apartment. So when Scully called and asked if there was anything I needed…”

I looked at Scully. “You brought her a gun?”

Connie groaned. “See, that’s why I hid him in the closet when you came knocking. I knew you’d be against this.”

Scully reached into the closet, retrieved a canvas duffel bag, and laid it on the floor. It clanged like an armory. “I brought an assortment, actually.”

“What are we doing here, forming a militia?” I asked.

“We’re protecting ourselves,” Connie said.

“I haven’t picked up a gun since Mom died,” I said.

“You got pretty good,” said Scully. “Just basic self-defense was all I wanted to teach you.”

Connie reached inside the duffel bag, pulled out a Glock semi-automatic pistol, and shoved in the ammunition clip like a pro. “I stuck with it. You probably could use a refresher course.”

Lilly backed away nervously. “I don’t like this. Patrick, you need to regroup with Agent Henning and find a safe place for us to stay.”

Scully said, “I can stay here as long as you kids want, if you don’t feel safe.”

It was odd to be called “kids,” but things apparently hadn’t changed from Scully’s perspective, either.

“I can also teach you to use a gun, Lilly,” Scully said as he pulled another pistol from his bag. “Maybe you’d be more comfortable with the Sig Sauer.”

“Patrick, let’s go,” said Lilly.

The image of Evan, faceup in the Dumpster, ran through my mind, and the pain of each physical trauma my body had sustained over the past few days came roaring back-the gun to my head and powder burns to my neck in Times Square, the wire around my neck and my chin hitting the sidewalk in Battery Park, the knee I’d torn up chasing Evan in Central Park.

“Agent Henning has offered to help us, and that’s the way I’m leaning,” said Lilly.

She wasn’t being unreasonable, but I looked at Scully and suddenly felt as though I’d found an old friend.

“Grab Connie’s phone in the kitchen and let Henning know where we are, if that makes you feel better,” I said. “But take off your coat. We should stay awhile.”