Need You Now

“I saw it happen.”

“You were watching us on the beach? That’s beyond creepy.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not some love-sick puppy who’s been following you around for six months. I was only doing my job.”

“Your job? Who are you?”

“Never mind that. Get back to my point about Patrick and his lies: it was sunscreen.”

“What?”

“When you were looking up at the birds in the sky, your poor, heartbroken boyfriend slapped himself on top of the head with a glob of sunscreen. You had finally found the courage to dump him, and he wanted to make you feel really bad about it.”

A passing bus forced Lilly to jump back onto the sidewalk. The snow was ten minutes old and already turning to brown slush. “That can’t be true,” she said.

“Trust me. The only shit on that beach was Patrick’s BS. There’s so much more I could tell you.”

It was tempting to listen, but she reminded herself that she was dealing with a sick son of a bitch. “Stop. I don’t want to hear another thing.”

“Okay. That’s enough for now, love.”

“Stop talking to me like that!”

“You’re confused. I understand. But admit it. Deep inside, you don’t really think I’m lying, do you?”

“I-I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“Believe this: I’m here to lead you out of this mess. You should live.”

He was making her skin crawl, but she resisted the urge to hang up. “Should Patrick?”

He didn’t respond.

“Your list of people who should live,” she asked, “does that include Patrick?”

There was silence, but Lilly sensed that he was still there. Finally, he answered: “That’s entirely up to us, Lilly.”

“What do you mean us ?”

The line went silent, and he was gone.

21

L ove was in the air. The little snow monkey was making eyes at the big, strong male. Nothing like fresh snow around the steamy cove to simulate the apres-ski, in-the-hot-tub experience. All they needed was a bucket of ice, a bottle of chardonnay, and michael buble on the loudspeaker.

“That’s Boo-Boo,” Connie told me. “The big guy is Yogi.”

“Cute, like the cartoon,” I said. “But I always thought the animated Boo-Boo was a boy.”

“So is this Boo-Boo.”

I took a closer look. If snow monkeys had a pop culture, Boo-Boo would be Sir Elton John. “Ah, now I get it.”

The Japanese macaque (aka snow monkey) exhibit was Connie’s primary responsibility at the zoo, and it was one of my favorites, especially in winter. I could have watched them all afternoon, but I actually did have a day job. I’d been doing my best by e-mail for the past two days, but sooner rather than later I needed to figure out if, when, and how I would return to my office at BOS. But not before I gathered some intelligence on Manu Robledo.

“Did you find anything?” I asked.

Connie leaned against the exhibit rail with arms folded, her back to the snow monkeys. The tribe had no interest in us, their attention focused on a pair of black-neck swans that had apparently asserted squatters’ rights on monkey island.

“I’m very nervous about this,” said Connie.

“Is Robledo that scary?”

“Well, possibly. But I mean, I’m uncomfortable about using Tom to check up on people like this.”

Tom was her fiance. He was a trained but unpaid volunteer in the Auxiliary Police Unit at the Central Park Precinct, which meant that he wore the familiar blue uniform and seven-point shield, carried a standard-issue radio that linked him to regular NYPD officers, and patrolled Central Park as the civic-minded “eyes and ears” of the sworn members of the service. It did not mean that he had access to law enforcement databases to run background checks-unless he pulled strings and called in favors.

“I’m reasonably confident that Tom isn’t the first person to run a name through the computer for a friend.”

“But…” she said, her expression pained, “he’s a scoutmaster.”

So was Connie. They’d met while leading a group of aspiring Eagle Scouts on a ten-day hike through New Mexico. Rumor had it that Connie had flung Tom over her back and carried him the last eight miles. I wasn’t even aware that women were allowed to serve as scoutmasters, but Connie was totally committed. It seemed like the theater of the absurd: my life had been threatened, and it was still possible that my girlfriend had perpetrated a $2 billion fraud-but there I was before God and the gay snow monkeys, trying to console my sister about a possible violation of the Boy Scout pledge. A witness protection family was as dysfunctional as the next, I supposed.

“Connie, really. Just this once, it’s okay.”

“What’s done is done, I guess.”

“Tell me what you got.”

She took a breath, then let it go. “Manu Caesar Robledo. Born in Argentina. Forty-one years old, never been married. Travels between Miami and South America dozens of times a year. Owns a condominium on Brickell Avenue in Miami.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Gerry Collins’ office was in the Financial District on Brickell.”

“You’re thinking maybe Collins handled the finances of his so-called church?”

“Or his own finances. His condo on Brickell has to be pricey. That’s where you’ll find all those glamorous high- rises on the bay in the opening credits for CSI: Miami .”

“He wasn’t born rich, I can tell you that,” said Connie. “He’s from a little town called Puerto Iguazu. That’s in the Tri-Border area where Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil meet.”

“That may explain the bizarre accent he was able to patch together when I was at his church.”

“Could be. It’s an interesting part of the world.”

“You know it?”

“The zoo has a couple of endangered armadillos from that region. Ciudad del Este in Paraguay is right in that same neck of the woods. My supervisor went there on research three years ago. Said she felt safer in the jungle with the pumas and jaguars. It can be pretty lawless.”

“What about our friend Robledo-any problems with the law?”

“Nothing in this country or as an adult. He did get into some kind of trouble as a juvenile in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s, but Tom says he couldn’t tell anything about it from the computer entry.”

“Could be worth exploring.”

She looked like a nervous scout again. “We agreed that I would ask Tom this favor just once .”

“I meant I would explore it,” I said, but my words were drowned out by a piercing scream. My gaze shifted to the snow monkeys, where Boo-Boo was standing atop a boulder and throwing a hissy fit at Yogi.

“You tell him, Boo-Boo,” said Connie. We shared a laugh, but my sister was suddenly serious. My back was to the red panda exhibit, and Connie was gazing past me in that direction. “Don’t turn around,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.