Read Online Need You Now by James Grippando - Free Book Online Page A

one of the park’s most popular destinations. True to an original John Tenniel illustration from the first edition of Lewis Carroll’s classic, the work depicts Alice perched on a giant mushroom reaching toward a pocket watch held by the March Hare. Peering over her shoulder is the Cheshire Cat, surrounded by the Dormouse and the Mad Hatter, and finally the White Rabbit. It is an unusual bronze, not just because of the magical subject matter, but also because the artist intended for children to play on it. Thousands have answered the call, their busy hands and feet polishing parts of the statue’s patina surface smooth. This was a place I had visited as a child, in one of the handful of trips my family made into Manhattan from Queens. Burned into my memory was the look on my father’s face as he approached the granite circle surrounding the sculpture and read the engraved line from “The Jabberwocky,” a poem by Lewis Carroll: “ ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.” Then he put his hands on his hips, faced my mother, and said exactly what you’d expect a native New Yawker to say: “What the fuck language is that supposed to be in?” It had sent a team of nannies from the Upper East Side hightailing it over to the carousel.
    Years later, when I was asked to create a list of public sites in Manhattan to serve as potential emergency meeting places—“Position One” through “Position Five”—Alice made the cut.
    The list was for FBI agent Andie Henning.
    “I got your message,” I said, my breath steaming in the chilly air.
    Henning turned at the sound of my voice. She was seated on the same bench that, years earlier, my mother had nearly fallen from in embarrassment. I sat at the opposite end. She was looking out toward the sculpture, her hands buried in her pockets, her leather jacket too short and stylish to be of much good in the long, cold shadows of a late afternoon in January. It was hard to tell in the twilight, but I would have bet that her lips were turning purple.
    “Next time we meet at the zoo,” she said, fighting off shivers, “in the nice, balmy rain forest. Let’s make this quick.”
    “Fine by me. Which they were you talking about in your message? And what exactly do ‘they know’?”
    “BOS Corporate Security. They know you haven’t always been Patrick Lloyd.”
    I froze. That was my biggest fear since I’d agreed to this assignment.
    It wasn’t a job I had gone looking for. Eight months earlier, Henning had contacted me on the premise that an inside view of BOS/Singapore could uncover millions—perhaps billions—for the victims of Cushman’s Ponzi scheme. That was a serious upside. The downside was obvious. Get fired. Get blacklisted in the industry. But there were even bigger risks.
    “How do you know they’re onto me?”
    “The assistant director of BOS security called one of our field agents in New York. They have some kind of relationship that goes back a few years. Our agent didn’t give up anything, but he was able to string out the conversation long enough to figure out that BOS is determined to find out who Patrick Lloyd really is.”
    My head rolled back, and the winter sky suddenly seemed even darker. “Shit,” was all I could say. “What am I supposed to do now?”
    “Stick to our agreement.”
    “Meaning what?”
    “So long as BOS hasn’t fired you, I want you to stay put.”
    “What happens when I’m called up to the executive suite to answer questions like ‘Who is Patrick Lloyd’?”
    “You can’t tell them about me; you can’t tell them why you went to Singapore; you can’t tell them anything about our agreement.”
    “So that’s your position—I’m on my own?”
    “We have too many positives working for us to bail out now. We know that Lilly is in New York. She followed you from Singapore, just as I predicted she would. It shows that she’s desperate, and that she trusts you. Expect her to make contact