Need You Now

“Like I said: let’s leave.”

“He could be hurt.”

“We could be next.”

I took one step inside and flipped the wall switch. A ceiling light brightened the apartment, and our shadows stretched from one end of the room to the other. Lilly was peering around my shoulder. I’d told her about the flowcharts on Evan’s walls, but she still seemed taken aback.

“Don’t be alarmed. The place always looks like this.” I left the door open and entered the room. Lilly came with me, and we stopped in the middle of the room.

“He lives here?” she said. “How bizarre.”

My gaze swept the room, though my focus was not on the boxes, arrows, and photographs that had drawn Lilly’s attention to the 360-degree flowchart on the walls. There was no sign of Evan; however, the curtain that separated the main living area from the kitchenette was drawn shut. Lilly clung to my arm as I approached, and I feared the worst as I flung it open.

There was nothing askew, no body on the linoleum floor.

“Patrick, I really want to go,” she said.

“Let me check the bathroom real quick.”

“I don’t like this at all. Can’t you put in a call to the FBI agent you’ve been working with?”

I could have, I supposed. But if Evan had wanted the FBI to see his prize project, he would have shown it to them long before now. I crossed the room, peered into the bathroom, and switched on the light. The brightness against white tiles assaulted my eyes. But again, there was nothing out of the ordinary, no sign of Evan. I turned, took another survey of the room, and then stopped.

“His computer’s gone,” I said.

“What?”

I went to the center of the room, where Evan had kept his desktop computer, next to the television.

“It was right here,” I said. “Now it’s gone.”

“Is that the computer that had all the encrypted files on it?”

“Yes.”

“Would that include the BAQ file?” she asked, with even more trepidation.

“That would be correct,” I said, equally concerned. “Probably right along with whatever decryption algorithms he created.”

A shrill scream from the alley gave me a jolt. Lilly and I ran from the apartment, out the open door, and through the gate. I looked out the small window that was at the top of the stairs, down toward the alley below, where several people had gathered around the Dumpster. Earlier, when Lilly and I had arrived, the lid had been closed, but someone from the kitchen had flipped it open to dump the trash. Two men dressed like waiters were consoling the young woman who’d made the discovery. Inside the Dumpster, atop heaps of trash, a man’s body lay faceup.

Even from the top of the stairs, dusk settling in, I knew that orange dress shirt and Mickey Mouse tie.

I knew it was Evan Hunt.

38

B y nightfall Evan’s apartment and most of the narrow alley behind Dim Sum Lose Some was a busy crime scene.

My first move had been to phone Andie Henning. I was able to answer her first question-“Are you sure he’s dead?”-simply by looking into the open Dumpster. The crimson hole between his eyes, where the bullet had entered Evan’s amazing brain, was confirmation enough. Andie had told me to touch nothing and to stay put until she got there, which had taken about ten minutes.

An hour later, Lilly and I were among the onlookers on the sidewalk, standing at the yellow police tape, beyond the outermost perimeter of crowd control. I counted eleven police officers, their uniforms transitioning from dark blue to shades of orange in the swirl of police lights. Portable vapor lights from NYPD turned the buzz of investigative work behind the restaurant into a glowing hive of activity. A second perimeter of yellow tape surrounded the Dumpster, where the medical examiner’s van waited to receive Evan’s body. Two male officers stood guard at the foot of the stairway that led up to the apartment. They looked formidable even from a distance. If ever they lost their jobs with the NYPD, they could easily have found work as bodyguards for rappers.

“What do you think will happen to Evan’s flowchart?” asked Lilly.

“Don’t know, but I wouldn’t count on those two dudes to tell us,” I said.

I spotted Andie coming down the stairs behind the restaurant. She spoke briefly to someone near the Dumpster, presumably a member of the forensic team, and then she started up the alley toward Lilly and me. A cold wind from the street funneled between the buildings and hit her squarely in the face as she approached. She cinched up her coat, ducked under the yellow tape, and told me to walk with her. I followed, and Lilly didn’t seem to know whether to stay or come with me. Andie made herself more clear.

“You, too,” she said.

Andie took us down Mott Street to a Chinese cafe called Tearrific. I’d heard of it before but had never gone. The name had always struck me as too gimmicky-like heading into Little Italy for real Italian and eating at the Ciao Hound or some such place. A waiter recommended a pot of bubble tea with sesame dumplings and then left us alone at a small table in the corner where we could talk.

“I’m very sorry about your friend,” said Andie.

I thanked her, then asked, “Who is going to tell my dad?”

“I spoke to him by phone already,” said Andie.

“How did he react?”

“Angry. Upset.”

“I meant, who does he think did this to Evan?”

“He doesn’t know.”

Andie poured herself a cup of tea, breaking eye contact, as if she knew the next question I was about to ask.

“Who do you think did it?”

Andie shrugged and tasted her tea.

Lilly had been quiet thus far, but she was suddenly annoyed. “Oh, come on,” she said. “How many more people have to get killed before you arrest Manu Robledo?”

“He’s definitely a person of interest,” said Andie.

“Of interest ?” said Lilly, incredulous. “He was cloaked in bank secrecy, thanks to his numbered account, but we all know that it was Robledo who was giving me the anonymous orders to move his money through BOS/Singapore.”

“Actually, you’re the only one who has confirmed the voice recognition, Lilly.”

“Are you saying I’m wrong?”

“I’m just saying: you’re the only one who heard the voice of the account holder on a daily basis, so there’s no way for me to verify whether you’re right or wrong.”

“It’s not just the voice. Who else but the account holder would have threatened to kill Patrick and me if we don’t find his money?”

“You’ve hit the problem on the head,” said Andie. “The entire case against Robledo is based on the allegation that he was the holder of numbered account 507.625 RR at BOS/Singapore. The Bank of Switzerland has never confirmed that it was, in fact, Robledo; and, according to my contacts at the Department of Justice, nothing short of a court order is going to make the bank budge. It takes time to pierce bank secrecy.”

“Can’t the FBI arrest him and hold him until the court order is issued?” asked Lilly.

“That’s not the way things work in this country.”

“But we were attacked,” said Lilly. “The bank should be required to release that information if its own bankers