Need You Now

deputy secretary of the Treasury, the department’s number two post. Government service required him to liquidate his holdings, which meant that he had cashed out at the height of the market. He took $28 million out of Wall Street, and a year later he orchestrated a government bailout that pumped billions of taxpayer dollars back into the disaster that he and others like him had created. It still wasn’t clear what indictments might come out of the Saxton Silvers collapse. But there he stood, handpicked by the top executive in the world of bank secrecy: Joe Barber, our new leader, the power-drunk pilot who had put Wall Street on autopilot, headed straight for the side of a mountain, only to watch the crash from Treasury’s ivory tower.

“Gee, I feel better already,” my boss muttered.

“Me, too,” I said, joining in the lukewarm applause.

I left the conference room quickly, as soon as the meeting broke, before anyone could ask what the heck I was doing there.

My palms were sweating as I hurried down the hall to the elevator, but I tried to keep things in perspective. I wasn’t the first junior advisor in BOS history to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Any number of my predecessors had surely crashed a meeting of top producers. In the hallowed Paradeplatz Conference Room. With the chief executive from Zurich, the managing director of U.S. operations, and the new head of private wealth management in attendance.

Good God, what was I thinking?

The chrome elevator doors parted, and a man wearing a black suit was already inside. I entered and pressed a button, but the man froze the control panel with a turn of his passkey.

“Patrick Lloyd?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He looked like a Secret Service agent, and my impression wasn’t far from the mark. “BOS Corporate Security,” he said as he punched the button for the executive suite. “I need you to come with me.”

My jaw dropped. I expected some good-natured ribbing from colleagues about the mix-up, perhaps even a brief reprimand from a divisional manager. But calling in security was over the top.

“It was a mistake,” I started to say, but he wasn’t interested. We rode up to the executive suite, and he escorted me into the lobby. I was hoping the receptionist would recount our earlier conversation and clear things up, but she was away from her desk. My escort from Corporate Security directed me to a leather couch by the window, and he sat in the armchair facing me, as if keeping guard. The expression on his face was deadpan, even by Swiss banking standards. Had I still been in Singapore, I would have thought I was in line for a public caning.

I surveyed the lobby. A Jasper Johns original oil painting hung on the wall opposite the van Gogh. Fresh-cut flowers were placed tastefully around the room in crystal vases. A table by the window displayed a small vase so priceless that there was actually a plaque to identify it as being from the Ming dynasty. A row of Swiss clocks on the wall caught my attention, each set to the time zone of a different trading market. New York. London. Frankfurt. Tokyo. Hong Kong. Singapore.

Singapore. I thought of Lilly. She worked with BOS/Asia. Our relationship had been purely business at first, but we ended up dating for six months. Arguably the best six months of my life.

I looked away, then checked the clock again, and a song popped into my head. In Singapore, it was a quarter after one, and I had a sudden vision of Lilly, all alone, and listening to that megahit by Lady Antebellum that seemed to be playing nonstop on the radio since our breakup. Need you now.

Yeah, right.

It was four weeks, exactly, since Lilly and I had gone for our last swim at Changi Beach. Anyone who worked at a place like BOS understood that “lose” was a four-letter word, but Lilly and I tried not to let that competitive spirit spill over to our personal relationship. I was better about it than she was; or it could be said that Lilly was better about it than I was. It depended on whom you asked-not that we were competitive about not being competitive. Swimming, however, was where the gloves came off. We did a mile every Saturday morning. This time, as we headed down to the ocean’s edge, Lilly broke custom. She didn’t snatch my goggles from my hand, pitch them deep into the seaweed, and shout her usual “Loser buys breakfast” as she hit the water with a good three-minute head start. Rather, she led me over to a large piece of driftwood, sat me down, and delivered the solemn words that no man in the history of the world has ever seen coming: “We need to talk.” The way she looked on that day would never leave my memory-the sad smile, her honey-blond hair blowing in the gentle breeze, those big eyes that sparkled even in the most dismal of circumstances. She didn’t exactly say, “ It’s not you, it’s me , ” but she might as well have. I couldn’t find words, just like the first time I’d laid eyes upon her, only this time there were no violins playing. I was about to speak, and then it had started to rain. At least I’d thought it was raining. I felt a drop on my head, and Lilly promptly lost it right before my eyes. She was embarrassed to be laughing-not at me but at the absurdity of the situation. It was then that I heard the shrill screech in the sky, saw the winged culprit swooping down from above the coconut palms to mock me. A seagull had shit squarely on my head.

Some signs should not be ignored. I transferred back to New York, and Lilly and I said good-bye for life.

An executive assistant entered the waiting area. “Ms. Decker will see you now.”

Great. More shit to fall from the sky.

I still couldn’t believe the big deal this had become. The assistant showed me into the office, and it wasn’t just the managing director inside. Joe Barber, who’d been head of private wealth management for all of one hour, was with her. So was the general counsel. Executives at this level traveled like international diplomats, and it was rare indeed for three of them to actually be in New York at the same time. For the holy trinity of BOS/America to be in a meeting with a junior FA was preposterous.

“There is a perfectly benign explanation for what happened,” I said.

“Sit down, Mr. Lloyd,” said Decker.

The managing director returned to the leather armchair between Barber and the general counsel, neither of whom rose to greet me. This had the feel of an inquisition, not a meeting. I took the hot seat opposite them.

“This has nothing to do with this morning’s meeting in the Paradeplatz,” said Decker. “I told my assistant that I wanted to see you this morning, and she put you on the list of FA’s for the ten o’clock meeting. An honest mistake on her part.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, but it didn’t last. The purpose of this meeting clearly wasn’t to show me the BOS secret handshake.

“Is there some kind of trouble?” I asked.

The general counsel spoke. “As I’m sure you’re aware, Lilly Scanlon’s employment at BOS/Singapore has been terminated.”

I caught my breath. “No, I was not aware of that. When did that happen?”

“Ten days ago.”

“I haven’t spoken to Lilly in… I don’t know, exactly. Longer than ten days. Can you tell me what happened?”

“To the extent that it pertains to you, yes. Broadly speaking, it has to do with the Abe Cushman Ponzi scheme.”

“Cushman?” I said. “I can’t believe Lilly would have anything to do with that. I can assure you that I didn’t.”

Barber took over. “Mr. Lloyd, why did you go to Singapore?”

His body language made the question anything but innocuous. I tried not to become defensive.

“It seemed like a good career move,” I said. “I saw the writing on the wall for Swiss banks. It’s no secret that the BOS strategy is to shift to super-high net worth and Asia.”

“Why not Hong Kong or Tokyo?” asked Barber.

I could have recounted my decision-making process; instead, I took the offensive. “Is that what this is about? You think my transfer to BOS/Singapore has something to do with Cushman?”

Barber ignored my question. “How well did you know Lilly Scanlon?”