Need You Now

time to turn out the lights or even lock the doors. He stopped himself, however, just before pressing the call button for the elevator. The image from FNN flashed in his mind: swarms of irate clients gathering in the ground-floor lobby of Cushman Investment in New York. On second thought, he headed for the stairwell.

He tried to control the pace of his descent, to be careful not to trip and tumble down the stairs, but he gained momentum with each passing floor. Thirty-nine. Thirty-eight. Thirty-seven. Soon his feet were moving like Gregory Hines on too much caffeine. His pulse pounded, and he could hear his own breathing, but he’d found his rhythm and was flying down the stairwell. He was taking two steps at a time as he rounded the landing on the tenth floor. Thirty seconds later he reached the parking entrance on level four. He pushed through the metal door to the garage and stopped to catch his breath. His BlackBerry vibrated yet again, which he ignored, but the call triggered a thought. There was one item of unfinished business. He dialed as he walked quickly down the ramp to his car, but the call went straight to voice mail. No surprise there. It was the middle of the night in Singapore. He left a quick message for his banker.

“It’s blown up,” he said into the phone. “I’ll call you when I can. Talk to no one until I reach you.”

He tucked the phone into his pocket and climbed into his Bentley. It felt good to slide into the driver’s seat and get the weight of the travel bag off his shoulder. He pulled the door shut and buckled his seat belt, but as he reached for the ignition, his head snapped back against the seat-pulled by a wire around his neck.

“What?” he started to say, but he had no voice. His legs churned with kicks and stomps to the floorboard. His spine arched. His whole body twisted in desperation as he tugged at the wire around his neck, unable to pry away the death grip. It only drew tighter against his throat-so tight that he could feel the heat of his own blood on his skin. The noose around his neck wasn’t smooth like piano wire. This thing had the teeth of a piranha.

Stop!

He banged on the horn, but he heard nothing. His head pounded with congestion, like the worst sinus headache imaginable. His temples throbbed. His vision blurred, and in the struggle, his eyes allowed barely a glimpse of his attacker in the rearview mirror.

I’ll tell you anything! Anything!

The silent reply came quickly: a quick jerk from left to right, and the wire slid against his throat, those tiny teeth ripping into his skin like a cable saw.

Did they not believe him? He really would tell all, give them whatever they wanted-if only they would let him. A final jerk of the wire sliced even deeper, cutting through his vocal cords and into the carotid artery. The trickle of blood down his neck was suddenly a fountain that sprayed across the dash, soaked his shirt, and stained the saddle-leather seats with pools of crimson.

In his mind’s eye Collins could see himself falling like Abe Cushman, the streets of New York racing up to meet him. Collins screamed, but the sound was only in his head. No one could hear him.

No one was even listening.

Three Years Later New York 2

It was too good to be true: a Wall Street whiz whose performance was the statistical equivalent of a baseball player with a career batting average of.962. For years, critics had voiced their skepticism. Whistle-blowers had laid out dozens of red flags for the Securities and Exchange Commission. Yet no one would listen. The entire law enforcement arm of the U.S. government-tireless teams of federal agents and prosecutors who had dedicated their careers to fighting sophisticated financial crimes-was just a bunch of incompetent, bumbling fools who couldn’t spot a massive Ponzi scheme that had unfolded right under their regulatory nose for more than a decade. It was the Wall Street version of the Keystone Kops.

Or so the world was led to believe.

I sure bought into it, hook, line, and sinker. Perhaps a financial advisor-even a relative newbie in his twenties- should have been more skeptical.

I worked in private wealth management at the Midtown Manhattan office of the International Bank of Switzerland-that’s “BOS,” mind you, as the German-speaking founders of this century-old juggernaut were quick to appreciate the unfortunate English-language connation of bankers with business cards that read “IBS.” Over the decades, bright minds and bank secrecy had swelled the bank’s total invested assets to $2 trillion. I was the junior member on a team of high-net-worth specialists who managed a nice piece of that pie. Clients counted on us to know fraud from legit. I never steered a dime of their money toward Cushman, but it wasn’t because I knew anything. My reaction to Cushman’s scheme was like everyone else’s. I was stunned as the estimated losses climbed ever higher-$30 billion, $40 billion, $60 billion. I felt sorry for the innocent victims. I wondered if I knew any of them. I wondered who else was a crook. I joined in speculation around the watercooler as to where in the world all that money had gone. And then I went home at night, switched on cable news, and nodded off as politicians debated whether Wall Street needed tighter regulation. I was convinced that nothing would really change-until somebody did something from the inside. So I did something. Something a little crazy. I’m still not sure I learned the truth. But I did learn something about the truth, especially where unimaginable sums of money were involved. The truth can get you killed. Or worse.

The epiphany came right after my return from Singapore.

I’d been away from New York longer than planned-months longer. Asia was a BOS stronghold, even stronger than Europe. Our weakness was in the United States, where the bank was generally regarded as a mere shadow of itself. “Uncertainty” had been the market watchword before my gig in Singapore. A new management team was about to change all that, if the BOS press releases were to be believed. Wall Street wasn’t exactly whistling with optimism on the day of my return, but the fact that the bank’s managing director wanted to meet with me-a junior financial advisor-put a spring in my step. I rode the elevator to the executive suite, breezed into a lobby that showcased museum-quality art- Is that a van Gogh?- and announced my arrival to the receptionist.

“I’m here for a meeting with Ms. Decker,” I said.

The young woman at the desk smiled pleasantly. “And you are?”

“Patrick Lloyd. I’m an FA here in New York.”

“Oh, my. You’re in the wrong place. The meeting for financial advisors is in the Paradeplatz Conference Room.”

Paradeplatz was one of Switzerland’s famous squares, near the end of the Bahnhofstrasse and Lake Zurich, home to BOS headquarters. BOS/America was filled with such reminders of whom we answered to.

“But the message said to meet Ms. Decker in her-”

“You need to hurry,” she said. “You don’t want to be late.”

Apparently, my one-on-one meeting with the managing director was a group session. The message from Decker’s assistant had made it sound more personal, and I had spent half the night pondering what it could be about. A promotion? The recognition of “rising stars” in the new world of BOS/America wealth management? It had been silly to let my imagination run wild. I picked my ego up off the carpet and rode the elevator down to the seventeenth floor.

It was straight up on ten o’clock, and the last of the latecomers were filing into the Paradeplatz Conference Room at the end of the hall. I caught up as the carved mahogany doors were closing. It was packed inside. The room could comfortably seat about fifty, but the head count was easily double that number. The meeting was about to begin, and all chatter had ceased-which meant that the door closed with an intrusive thud behind me. Like a reflex, heads turned toward me, the only guy still looking for a seat.