James Grippando - Need You Now

“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.