“Joe, that’s your new bank they’re talking about!”
Barber raised the volume. A further expected drop in the price of BOS stock in tomorrow’s markets was the lead story on Financial News Network. “Investors are clearly wary,” the FNN reporter stated, “seemingly unconvinced that the bank’s settlement with the Department of Justice marks the end of the assault on bank secrecy.”
“Oh, my God,” Vanessa said as she stepped off the treadmill. “I told you not to take that job.”
Barber shushed her, and the report continued: “This is just more bad news for Switzerland’s largest bank, which last quarter reported a fifty-three percent drop in earnings, due to a slowdown in its trading and investment banking businesses.”
“Damn it, Joe. You could have written your own ticket. Goldman, JPMorgan. They all wanted you. What the hell were you thinking?”
“Will you please just listen,” he said.
The telephone rang. The “news” had digressed into pointless speculation and rumor, the raison d’être of real-time financial reporting. Barber lowered the volume with the remote control and took the call. It was the general counsel of BOS/America.
“Yes, I’m watching FNN,” said Barber.
“That’s not what I’m calling about. I have an update on Patrick Lloyd.”
“Anything of interest?”
“Yeah. Patrick Lloyd is not his real name.”
Barber’s wife had reverted to treadmill mania, and the noisy machine forced him out of bed and into the bathroom, behind a closed door, where he could hear.
“What are you talking about?” he said into the phone.
“The bank’s normal prehire background check goes back to college. Everything on Patrick Lloyd checked out that far. But when I asked Corporate Security to take it back earlier, there’s nothing on this guy.”
“There’s nothing,” said Barber, “or they just couldn’t find it?”
“Swiss banks are nothing if not secure. Trust me: if it existed, our security department would have found it. The Patrick Lloyd who went to work on Wall Street simply didn’t exist before he enrolled as an undergraduate at Syracuse University.”
“Then who the hell is he?”
“We don’t know. Security has just scratched the surface.”
Barber fell silent, thinking. His general counsel asked, “Do you want me to prepare the paperwork to support his termination?”
“No,” said Barber. “We stick to the plan.”
“I still don’t agree. You know my view from this morning’s meeting: we should have fired him on the spot. Keeping him around now is playing with fire.”
“He’s a snot-nosed junior FA. Not for one minute do I believe that he and his girlfriend cooked up this kind of trouble alone. They’re working for someone. Lilly Scanlon is gone, but Patrick Lloyd-or whatever his name is-is still under my thumb. Let him run, and see who he leads us to.”
“The lack of clarity as to his true identity makes me very uncomfortable.”
“Then we’ll get some clarity.”
“I’ll instruct Corporate Security to continue looking into it.”
“Things can get really dirty when you dig deep, and I don’t want BOS fingerprints on the shovel. Let in-house security try its usual contacts, but if nothing pans out, outside security is the way to go here.”
“Do you have someone specific in mind?”
“I do.”
“Who?”
Barber returned to the bedroom. His exhausted wife had collapsed on the bed, and the treadmill was silent. The FNN assault on BOS continued, working in file footage on the “billions in bailout money” that the troubled Bank of Switzerland had received just two years earlier “in order to avert financial disaster.”
“Someone who will give the boy just enough rope to hang himself,” Barber said into the phone.
8
T he Holland Tunnel was less than two miles from my apartment, and luckily for me there was a flight out of Newark, just on the other side of the river. I was in Raleigh/Durham in time to catch the late news coverage of the “continuing plummet of BOS stock.”
My visit to Tony Martin was all the more timely, but a decent night’s sleep had been impossible. I couldn’t stop wondering what those stock analysts would have said if they had heard rumors that BOS/Singapore was directly connected to the disappearance of billions of dollars tainted by the Cushman scheme. If they had known about my ride through Times Square with a gun to my head. If they had known what I was doing in North Carolina.
“Turn here,” I told the taxi driver.
“That’s the road to the prison.”
“That’s where I’m headed,” I said. “Central Prison Hospital.”
Tony Martin was one of the lucky ones. His plea of guilty to the charge of murder in the first degree had landed him in the custody of the Florida Department of Corrections, where he would have been treated just like any of the other 800,000 inmates nationwide who suffered from chronic illness that required regular medical attention. Two years into his sentence, when the disease progressed, strings were pulled for transfer to a facility that could better treat his cancer. Central Prison in North Carolina had a 230-bed hospital and an even bigger one under construction, and it was just minutes away from the Duke University Medical Center in Durham for more specialized treatment. It was about as good as it got for inmates who required maximum-security confinement. It was the best deal around for a seriously ill mobster who was without health insurance and had lost his entire life savings to Abe Cushman’s Ponzi scheme.
The taxi stopped at the entrance gate to the prison grounds. Directly ahead was a sprawling redbrick building that looked like a multilevel office complex, but for the guard towers, sharpshooters, and double perimeter of chain-link fence topped with razor ribbon. The corrections officer at the checkpoint was telling the cabdriver how to get to the hospital on the other side of the parking lot when my BlackBerry rang. It was Lilly.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Atlanta.” I lied. It was getting to be a habit, and I didn’t like it. But the truth was not an option.
“You need to come back to New York.”
“I’ll be back tonight,” I said.
“Come as soon as you can. Everything’s changed.”
The guard at the gatehouse allowed my taxi to pass. I wasn’t entirely comfortable talking in a cab, but the driver was having a heated cell phone discussion about his fantasy football “mock draft”-whatever that was-and seemed sufficiently distracted. I spoke as softly as I could.
“What do you mean everything’s changed?”
“I was so sure I was right.” She was talking fast, which was what Lilly did when she got nervous. “Tony Martin was Tony Mandretti, Mandretti worked for the mob, the mob killed Collins for losing their money with Cushman, and now the mob is after me to get its money back. Now that’s all out the window, and I don’t have a clue who is trying to get back the two billion dollars that Gerry Collins funneled through me.”
The cab stopped, and my heart thumped. It was freaky the way Lilly had mentioned Mandretti’s name the moment I had arrived at Central Prison.
“Slow down, Lilly. Why is that out the window?”
“I was lying in bed, going over in my mind everything the guy in Times Square said to you. His exact words. He said: ‘It’s time to see the money. Cough it up, or you will both end up like Gerry Collins.’ ”
“Right, I remember.”