Authors: James Grippando
T
he black limousine passed a second time. Or was it a different one? Lilly wasn’t sure. They all looked alike. On any given workday, thousands of limos must have cruised down broadway in the financial district. That call from her source was making her paranoid. Or maybe she was just more alert. No, this was definitely paranoia.
Damn you, Patrick.
She shook off that thought. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Not everything her source had told her could be true. Not all the blame could be laid on Patrick Lloyd. Even though his name was really Peter Mandretti. And his father was in jail for murdering Gerry Collins. And he went to see Manu Robledo without any help from her.
“You’ve been played
,
”
her source had told her.
“First by Gerry Collins, then, even worse, by Patrick Lloyd.”
A pigeon waddled past her on the sidewalk. Lilly thought of its cousin in Singapore—the seagull that had swooped down from the sky and dropped a direct hit on Patrick’s head.
Allegedly
swooped down. The timing of it—right in the middle of her breakup speech—had been rather unbelievable.
Sunscreen.
What kind of jerk would slap himself on the head with fake bird shit to make it even harder for his girlfriend to dump him?
“Patrick played you from beginning to end
,” he’d told her, “
on
every
level.”
Loser. That’s what you are, Patrick: a lying loser.
A black limo with dark-tinted windows passed. Lilly stopped as it turned at the next block. Very similar to the last one that had turned off Broadway at the same cross street. It was hard to say if it was the same one she had seen before, but the mere possibility was making her so nervous that it felt like she had broken glass in her stomach.
This is all your fault, Patrick, Peter—whatever your name is.
She jaywalked across Broadway, avoided the piles of slush at the curb, and cut down the narrow side street at St. Paul’s Chapel. Changing course made for a little longer walk, but she could get the subway at the World Trade Center. She thought about grabbing one of the cabs outside the Hilton, but her cash was running low, and the station was only two minutes away. She stopped at the crosswalk for the red light, glancing again at the chapel. She hadn’t attended services in years, but she was suddenly back in elementary school and reciting the Golden Rule, guilting herself into being the bigger person and doing the right thing.
You have to call Patrick.
His lies were hurtful, no doubt about it. But that bizarre phone conversation had, in the end, come down to the question of whether Patrick should live or die:
“That’s entirely up to us
,
”
the caller had told her. Whatever lies Patrick had told her didn’t change that fact. She had to tell him.
The traffic light changed at Church Street as she reached for her cell, and she was stepping off the curb when the limo cut her off in the crosswalk. Lilly jumped back onto the sidewalk as the rear door opened. It startled her, but she recognized the man in the backseat. Even though she no longer worked at BOS, photographs of the new head of private wealth management at BOS/America had been all over the news lately.
“Get in,” said Joe Barber. He was alone on the bench seat, directly behind the driver.
Lilly was more confused than afraid—but fear was definitely part of the equation. For a moment she couldn’t move, her mind and body trapped between the eerie, urban silence of old St. Paul’s Churchyard behind her and the incessant buzz of construction at the World Trade Center site across the street.
“Get in the car,” said Barber.
Lilly froze, her eyes locking with Barber’s. To say that she didn’t know who to trust anymore was a gross understatement; she trusted no one. She certainly didn’t know Barber, except for what she’d read about him. But the newest addition to BOS/America’s top management—a former Treasury official who wasn’t even working for BOS when Cushman had come crashing down—seemed low risk. And worth a listen.
But how did he know how to find me?
“Lilly, get in the car, or the next sound you hear will be FBI handcuffs closing around your wrists.”
The broken glass was churning, clawing away at the inside of her stomach. Lilly’s war was being fought on too many fronts. Her legs didn’t have another run in them. She climbed inside and closed the door.
Barber signaled to the driver, and the limo pulled away.
C
onnie made me feel like the class bully as I dragged Evan Hunt to the nearest park bench and sat his ass down. She started screaming at me about taking the law into my own hands, but i told her to save it for her scout troop.
“Taking a picture is not a crime!” said Evan.
“Then why did you run?” I said, shoving him.
He looked stunned. “You’re assaulting me.”
I shoved him again. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“Patrick, stop,” said Connie. “I won’t be part of this.”
“Then go back to work.”
She gnawed her lip, straining to find the perfect comeback, but in the end she settled for the standard sibling contrarianism. “Fine, you want me to leave? Then I’ll stay.”
She took a seat on the boulder behind me. Evan stared back at me like a scared rabbit, though he did seem relieved to have a strong woman around to control me. I grabbed him by the lapels of his trench coat, pushed him back onto the bench, and gave him thirty seconds to explain himself.
Five minutes later, he was still jabbering. To me, it was stream-of-conscious nonsense, but Connie seemed to be following it.
“Some people say I have a mind like a computer,” said Evan, “but to me, that’s an insult.”
“I feel the exact same way,” said Connie.
I shot her a look that said,
Connie, please.
“You know anything about trading options, Mr. Lloyd?”
I was facing him, seated on the boulder beside Connie. “We trade thousands of options every day.”
“So, you know every once in a while you have to calculate a second derivative, called a gamma, which is the rate of change in the first derivative, delta.”
My knee was throbbing from my wipeout during the chase, but Evan was starting to make my head hurt even worse. Connie was totally with him, but it was like another language to me. “That’s what computers are for,” I said.
“No!
That’s what you guys in the expensive suits don’t understand. There are still calculations in this business that are so math intensive that computers choke on them.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s true,” said Connie, chiming in. “He’s absolutely right about that.”
I was beginning to wonder if Connie’s boyfriend Tom was on the bubble. I threw her another look—this time something along the lines of
Who asked for your help?
Evan continued. “When you’re in a situation where prices can move at an infinite rate, it’s time to throw out the computer and look at the price of a stock or the market and calculate your own option price. I can do it faster than any computer.”
“That’s impressive,” said Connie.
“That’s his job,” I said, making a rather easy deduction. “You’re a quantitative analyst, I presume.”
“Please,” he said, “I prefer ‘quant.’ Synonymous with nerd. And proud of it.”
It suddenly occurred to me that getting chased down in Central Park and tackled on the run was a minor skirmish compared to the bruisings Evan had undoubtedly taken in middle school. At least I hadn’t given him a wedgie.
“Enough with the mathematics double talk,” I said. “You need to answer my questions. Was that you at Puffy’s Tavern two days ago?”
“Yes. You and Lilly Scanlon.”
“You know her name?”
“Of course.”
“Were you the same guy who took our photo in Singapore last July?”
“Yup, that was me, all right.”
His response bordered on glib, as if he was showing off, seemingly energized by the interest Connie had taken in his impressive mathematics background. I rose, leaving Connie alone on the boulder. Evan watched warily as I came closer, leaned toward him, and placed my foot on the front edge of the bench beside him. I was merely tying my shoe, but he had nearly wet his pants. I was back in control.
“Why have you been following me around and snapping pictures?”
“You and Lilly Scanlon are a key part of the analysis.”
“What analysis?”
“My Abe Cushman analysis. See, when you’re a quant, all you have to do is look at the numbers in Cushman’s returns, and you can see he was running a Ponzi scheme.”
“It’s not exactly a secret that he was running a Ponzi scheme.”
“Sure,
now
it’s no secret. But I knew it ten years ago.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, you and all the other Wall Street geniuses who came out of the woodwork the day after Cushman confessed. Suddenly, everyone and his brother knew it five years ago, ten years ago. In fact, CNBC has an interview scheduled next week with an ob-gyn who figured out that Cushman was actually planning his scheme while still in his mother’s womb.”
“You’re making fun of me,” he said.
A bigger jackass probably would have told him that if he had a problem with it, he should cinch up the twenty-year-old trench coat and hide the bright orange dress shirt and the Mickey Mouse neck tie. But something about the guy made me pull my punches. Or maybe I was trying to avoid more flack from Connie.
“Sorry,” I said, “but I don’t give much credence to your after-the-fact analysis.”
“My analysis was not after the fact. I did my calculations before Cushman was exposed as a fraud. It’s only the pictures that came later.”
“I don’t get the point of the pictures.”
“People don’t look at numbers the way I do. They need pictures to help them connect the dots. When I had nothing but numbers to show them, nobody listened.”
“When you say nobody listened, you mean . . . who?”
“I mean the dickheads at the SEC.”
“You shared your analysis with the Securities and Exchange Commission?”
“I wrote it up and spoon-fed it to them. They ignored me. All they had to do was read the damn thing, and the SEC could have shut Cushman down five years before he admitted he was a fraud. I’d be a very rich man now.”
I studied his expression. He was deadly serious. “How would that have made you rich?” I asked.
“You don’t think I did this analysis and wrote up a report for nothing, do you?”
“Are you working for somebody?”
“No, it’s nothing formal like that. I’m talking about the whistle-blower statute. I was entitled to ten percent of the scheme if the SEC shut him down. Ten percent of sixty billion . . . probably even you can do that math.”
Technically, he was correct. By law, whistle-blowers were entitled to get paid for rooting out fraud. Reality was another matter entirely. “Do you realize that the SEC whistle-blower program doesn’t apply to Ponzi schemes?”
His expression tightened. I got the impression that he was fully aware of the program’s severe limitations, but he was still bitter about the fact that he hadn’t realized it until after investing countless hours into Cushman.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m done dealing with the government. Plenty of law firms will pay me a pretty penny for a road map to the Cushman money.”
“Is that why you’ve been following me and snapping pictures? I’m part of your road map?”
He flashed a clever smile. “Say cheeeez.”
He was gaining confidence as the conversation went on, even smug about himself.
Keep it up, and a wedgie is not out of the question.
“You said you could help me,” I said, reminding him of the promise he’d made while facedown in the snow and begging me not to slug him. “Exactly what did you mean by that?”
“Simple. Based on my analysis, I’ve come to the conclusion that you don’t know squat about Cushman’s money.”
I suddenly liked him better. “You’re the first person to say that. But there are others who seem to disagree.”
“Others don’t know what I know.”
“I’d be curious to get educated,” I said.
“Then you should read my report.”
He seemed proud of what he knew, or at least empowered by the fact that someone was actually interested in listening to him.
“Where is it?”
“My place. Ten minutes from here on the subway.”
“I honestly don’t have ten minutes to waste.”
“This will not be a waste of your time. I guarantee it.”
It was his sincere belief that he could help me; I would have bet money on it. The question was whether he was dealing with a full deck.
His smugness returned. “You should feel honored that I’ve made this offer to you. Other than the SEC, there’s only one person I’ve ever shown my report.”
“Is that so? Who would that be?”
“Three years ago. A guy named Tony Martin.”
It was clear that he expected me to know the name. It was not at all clear if he knew that Tony Martin was Tony Mandretti—or that Tony Mandretti was my father.
“How do you know Tony Martin?” I asked.
“I’ll be happy to tell you that,” he said, “right after you tell me how you know him.”
Connie and I exchanged glances. She looked wary, but I sensed a reluctant green light from her.
“First things first,” I told him. “Let’s take a ride on the subway and have a look at that report.”
M
anu Robledo unlocked the soundproof door to the church basement.
The workers had left for the day. Eventually, they might get around to restoring the two-hundred-year-old sanctuary to its former splendor. For the past month, however, the priority had been the basement. It was just days away from a complete rewiring, everything top of the line.
Robledo started down the stairs and switched on the handheld video camera. His tech team leader had assured him that encryption capabilities were in place to stream video safely across the Internet. Timely progress reports kept Robledo’s investors happy, and there was nothing like narrated video. He went to a section of the basement where the floorboards had yet to be laid, where the wires between joists were still exposed.
“We’ve run literally miles and miles of cable,” he said for the recording, “just like you see here. Think of it as a personal information pipeline that sucks in names, Social Security numbers, passport numbers, driver’s license numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and IP addresses. For basic searches we link one or more of those core identifiers to records on age, marital status, race, ethnicity, employment, home values, estimated income. But we can take it much further than that. We can break people down by the medicine they take, the books they read, the cologne they wear, the flights they’ve booked, the music they download—virtually any piece of personal information that is out there in cyberspace.”
Robledo could have gone on to explain the significance of that function, but his investors were smart people. They understood that purchase behavior and lifestyle data were invaluable in the perpetual quest to identify new recruits.
The camera continued to roll as he opened another door and entered a separate room of stacked computers.
“This is our grid,” said Robledo, “a state-of-the-art network of supercomputers. Lightning fast, and they hold more information than you can fathom. In just a few weeks’ time, we’ll be operating twenty-four/seven to analyze and match the information we gather, which will allow us to create a detailed portrait of hundreds of millions of adults—and, more important, young adults.”
He switched off the camera. Enough video. Tonight he would have his tech guy—an expert in steganography—embed it into a presentation on cookware or some other benign subject matter that would mask its true content. Then Robledo could transmit the file securely to the investors.
If I still have investors.
Robledo was all too aware that their patience was thinning. Three years was a long time to wait. Periodic reminders that most of Cushman’s victims had given up hope of recovering all of their losses had done absolutely nothing to reduce their expectations. That was his fault, really. He had promised them too much, raised their hopes too high. It wasn’t that he’d misled them. There had been good reason for Robledo to believe that his investors would get their money back, even if others lost every penny.
Gerry Collins had given him that assurance.
Robledo put the video camera away and pulled up a chair. Long days and too little sleep had left him drained and exhausted, but that didn’t stop the anger from rising. Years of networking and hard work were at stake. A loss of funding now would be disastrous. He was so close to becoming operational—would have been entering his third year of operation, if not for Gerry Collins. It was bad enough that Collins had steered him toward Cushman in the first place. Robledo had actually trusted him a second time.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
The worst part was that Robledo was still paying for that second mistake, unable to get it out of his mind. It was especially bad at times like these—when the investors demanded to know when they were going to see the money they’d lost and why the recovery was taking so long.
He closed his eyes to suppress his anger. It wasn’t working. The ghost of Gerry Collins came back to haunt him—taunt him—as that last meeting in Miami replayed in his mind’s eye. It had gone down on the last day of November, just weeks before Cushman confessed his massive fraud, jumped off his balcony, and left feeders like Gerry Collins to fend for themselves.
R
obledo reached the Coconut Grove Marina just after nightfall. A cool breeze blew in from the bay, making it cold enough for a cotton turtleneck and a peacoat. Each puff of wind brought the ping and twang of taut halyards slapping against the tall, barren masts of countless sailboats. Hundreds of yachts slept silently in their slips, side by side. Somewhere in the distance, a diesel engine rumbled toward home, a lonely growl in the darkness. Robledo walked alone to the very end of the long, floating pier, where he boarded a forty-six-foot Hatteras Convertible.
Technically a fishing boat,
Easy Money
was more like a floating lap of luxury. The salon had been entirely redesigned for parties and entertainment, complete with club chairs, a wet bar, hand-crafted teak cabinetry, and even a flat-screen television. Eight months earlier, on this very yacht, Robledo had first met Gerry Collins, introduced by the owner Niklas Konig, a wealthy German businessman. Tonight’s reconvening had been at Robledo’s request, and Konig had graciously offered his boat.
“Bienvenido, mi amigo
,” said Konig. His Spanish wasn’t terrible, but it bugged Robledo that the man who had introduced him to Gerry Collins would call him a “friend.” Konig led him into the salon.
“Something to drink?” asked Collins, standing at the bar. He made the offer with a smile, but it seemed strained. The bags beneath his eyes were new, and they made him look much older than he was. His skin, too, had taken on an unhealthy ashen hue since that first meeting, before the entire financial world had turned upside down. Clearly, this was a man under enormous pressure.
“Nothing for me,” said Robledo.
Collins took another stab at congeniality and small talk, but Robledo wasn’t biting. “I’m here to talk money.”
Money was what most of Cushman’s investors wanted to talk about. Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Saxton Silvers, Cushman’s clients had requested $7 billion in redemptions. Cushman had stopped honoring them.
“My favorite subject,” said Collins, taking a seat on the couch. “Let’s talk.”
Konig joined him, seating himself in the club chair. Robledo remained standing.
“Take your coat off,” said Collins, “have a seat.”
Robledo did neither. He reached inside his peacoat, removed a thick envelope, and tossed it onto the cocktail table before his hosts.
“What’s this?” asked Collins.
“An analysis,” said Robledo.
“Of what?”
Robledo’s eyes narrowed. “The biggest fraud in the history of Wall Street.”
Collins’ phony smile evaporated. “Surely you don’t mean Mr. Cushman.”
Robledo jerked his arm forward, and the .22-caliber pistol that was strapped to his forearm beneath his coat slid into his hand. His next move was like lightning, giving his victim no time to react. The silenced projectile slammed into Konig’s chest, dropping him to the floor.
“Don’t!” shouted Collins.
Robledo took aim at his forehead.
“Please, I can fix this!”
Robledo hesitated, his finger poised to pull the trigger. He hadn’t come to listen, but there was poetry in watching a scumbag beg for his life.
“I can get the money back for you,” said Collins. “And more.”
“How stupid do you think I am?”
“Your funds never went to Cushman.”
“What?”
“You’re right,” said Collins. “Cushman is a Ponzi scheme. I figured that out eight, maybe ten months ago. But that’s good news for you.”
Robledo took sharper aim.
“No, please! Listen to me. I was one of Cushman’s biggest feeders for three years. After a while, it was obvious to me that he was a fraud, but here’s the thing,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “My clients didn’t want to hear it. I think half of them even knew it was smoke and mirrors, but nobody wanted the bubble to burst. So I kept taking their money, and I kept telling them that I was investing it with Cushman. But I lied. I haven’t sent money to Cushman in over six months.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s the truth, Manu. The last three quarterly statements I sent out showing investments with Cushman were all fakes. And here’s the best part. When Cushman blows up—which is right around the corner—all my clients will think they lost their money. They have no idea I’ve been stashing it away.”
“You’re lying.”
“It’s absolutely true! Not a single penny of what I funneled through BOS/Singapore ever reached Cushman. It’s all safe in offshore accounts. It won’t go down when he goes down. Get it? When Cushman blows up, the big winner is
me
.”
The scheme made too much sense to have been made up on the spot by a coward staring down the barrel of a gun. Robledo asked, “How much are we talking about?”
“Ten figures. Almost a third of that is yours.”
“A third?” he said, scoffing. “Wrong, my friend.
All
of it is mine.”
Collins stared back at the gun, which was still aimed at his face. “Let’s talk,” he said. “All I have to do is get my banker to unwind everything, and then everybody will take his fair share.”
“What banker?”
“Put the gun down so we can talk.”
“What banker?
”
“Please, I’m begging you. Don’t throw this opportunity away. Don’t pull that trigger.”
R
obledo’s encrypted telephone line rang. It was the weekly call he dreaded. The one that made him wish he had ignored Collins’ pleas and pulled the trigger. It was from Ciudad del Este—from his investors. Robledo swallowed his anger and answered with the respect that was due his chief funder.
“I’m very sorry,
Doctor
,” he said, using the Spanish pronunciation. The “doctor” wasn’t a medical doctor. He claimed to hold a
doctor en derecho
, though Robledo had never verified his law degree.
“Sorry for what, Manu?”
“I need a little more time.”
“Time has run out.”
“Please. I have upped the pressure. I should see results soon.”
“Upped the pressure how?”
Robledo paused, not sure if he should even mention Patrick Lloyd. True, he had threatened the boyfriend with the intent of doubling up the pressure on Lilly, but somehow Patrick had found the church, and Robledo wasn’t convinced that his overly affected accent had kept Patrick from realizing that the Reverend Robledo and the gunman in the back of the SUV were one and the same. He confined his remarks to Lilly.
“I made it clear to her today: no more stalling, or I put a bullet in her head.”
There was silence, then a chilling reply: “Don’t make me call you again, Manu.”
“No, of course not,
Doctor
.”
More silence, and then a final warning. “If I have to make just one more phone call, then take my advice, Manu. Put that bullet in your own head. It will be much more pleasant for you that way.”
The call ended, but Robledo continued to hold the phone to his ear, absorbing the threat, even after his funder had disconnected.
“Don’t worry,” he said, thinking aloud, “I have plenty of bullets.”