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a client roster that read like a social register of south Florida—professional athletes, Grammy-winning singers, all high-net-worth individuals. You have to remember that Cushman was very clever. One reason his operation didn’t look like a Ponzi scheme was that he didn’t accept every client who threw money at him. Gerry was able to draw in heavy hitters with guaranteed access to the Cushman fund, but not all of them wanted to be a hundred percent in Cushman. Gerry was too busy networking to manage the non-Cushman part of the investment portfolios, so he needed someone else to do it. I was someone he trusted not to steal his clients away. The fact that I was on the other side of the world and would never meet his clients was actually a plus. I handled the non-Cushman part of the portfolios from BOS in Singapore.”
    “So Collins matched you up with clients you never met?”
    “There was always an introductory conference call.”
    Like most banks, BOS abided by the KYC rule: “know your client.” But in this business, KYC didn’t require anything nearly so onerous as actually knowing your client. Perfunctory conference-call introductions—“intro-functories,” we called them—made Lilly no different from any of the other private wealth managers in the Singapore branch.
    “But if you were helping these clients invest outside Cushman, how does that connect you to the Ponzi scheme?”
    “That came later. Gerry had other clients. Super-high net worth. Some with numbered accounts in Zurich, some with funds in other systems. I don’t know all the details, but over time, the relationship with Gerry was working very well for me and BOS. That was when he asked me to arrange for one of his super clients to meet with the head of our numbered account services in Singapore.”
    “Surprise, surprise. The link to Cushman is bank secrecy.”
    “The flag wasn’t nearly so red at the time.”
    A burst of cold air brushed my face, and I looked past Lilly to see who had entered the tavern. Puffy’s wasn’t exactly a Wall Street hangout, but you could never be too careful when discussing bank secrecy. The guy making a beeline to the bar seemed harmless enough. He actually looked ridiculous, a little fortysomething white man wearing one of those flat-billed rapper caps.
    “Who was the client Gerry wanted you to assist?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “I arranged for the meeting, but the identity of the account holder was known only to Gerry and the manager of numbered accounts.”
    “You had no other involvement?”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    Our drinks arrived, and the waitress left us alone. Lilly sipped her soda. I belted back my tequila, but I should have known better than to order without specifying a brand. The man at the bar pretended not to notice, but he was clearly amused by my reaction to Puffy’s firewater. Lilly waited for my face to unwind, then continued.
    “After the account was created, Gerry wanted me involved. We had to jump through some administrative hoops in the bank, but we finally got it approved so that I could deal directly with his client.”
    “A client with no name.”
    “Or face,” she said. “Only the top brass knew who he was. To me, he was just a voice on the phone with a personal identification code. I was getting a glimpse into the private banking business that had put BOS on the financial map. I was excited, actually, but after a while it was fairly routine. Gerry’s client would call me, identify himself through the proper codes, and tell me what to do with the money.”
    “So you moved funds from a numbered account at BOS/Singapore to Cushman Investment.”
    “I didn’t physically push the buttons to make it happen, no. I filled out the transfer-of-funds paperwork and personally walked it over to one of the guys in Payments Traffic. They did the actual wire transfers.”
    “But the wiring instructions had your name on them?”
    “Yes.”
    “And the transfer slips showed that