Read Need You Now for Free Online Page B

the money was routed to Cushman Investment?”
    “Usually to offshore accounts, and then it went to Cushman.”
    “How do you know it actually went from the offshore accounts to Cushman?”
    “The transfers were done in a very compressed time frame, usually the same business day. I spoke to Gerry every day to make sure there was no glitch in the pipeline. He gave me verbal confirmation when the money hit Cushman Investment.”
    “How big were the transfers?”
    “On average, about ten million dollars. A day.”
    “For how long?”
    “Like I said: It came out to just over two billion. You do the math.”
    Math was something I was good at. Two hundred days. “And that’s the same two billion that my Times Square tour guide wants back.”
    “That would be correct.”
    “So the two-billion-dollar question is . . .”
    “Who was Gerry’s client,” she said, finishing for me. “The bank, of course, won’t divulge that information. The secrecy laws in Singapore are just as tight as Switzerland’s. Unless there’s evidence that the client used a secret account to assist in the commission of a crime, the bank itself violates the law by revealing any information about the account. Bankers in Singapore actually face more jail time than bankers in Switzerland for violations of bank secrecy. As far as BOS is concerned, their client isn’t a criminal. He’s a victim of Cushman’s fraud.”
    “I’m guessing that’s how you got yourself fired—trying to attach a name to the numbered account?”
    “I was desperate. With the threats I was getting, I wanted to know who I was up against.”
    I looked down into my empty shot glass, thinking. “What if we went up to the BOS executive suite right now and told the general counsel that we’ve both been threatened?”
    “First of all, we can’t prove that it’s a BOS client who is threatening us.”
    “Who else would it be? It’s either him or someone working for him.”
    “It’s him,” she said. “I heard his voice every day on the phone. There’s no doubt in my mind that I heard the same voice when he had the gun to my head, and when he called to tell me you were in the back of that SUV.”
    “Then we have to go to the bank,” I said.
    “Forget it. I’ve already taken it all the way to the Zurich headquarters. I flew six thousand miles from Singapore to meet with two stuffed shirts in Finanz Kundenbetreuung Abteilung,” she said, mangling her pronunciation of the German equivalent of Financial Client Management. “It was like talking to the wall. Trust me, Patrick: the bank is never going to help on this.”
    “Maybe you just didn’t find the right set of ears.”
    “Listen to what I’m saying. Eight figures a day moved into that secret account in Singapore. It was my job to execute the transfer orders going out, but I never knew who put the money there in the first place, or where it came from. It’s clear to me that if we go through the proper institutional channels,” she said, using her fingers to put proper in quotation marks, “the bank will do everything in its power to make sure that no one ever finds out.”
    I rested on my elbows, running my fingers through my hair. “How did you allow yourself to be put in this position?”
    “What was I supposed to do—forget where I worked and become one of those people who automatically assumes that anyone who’s rich and has a Swiss bank account is a criminal? I respected the lines of authority at the bank. You would have done the same thing, and you know it.”
    She was right. I would have—with the exception of sleeping with Gerry Collins, of course. “Have you . . .”
    I stopped without even realizing I was in midsentence. That guy at the bar was pretending not to notice me again, but this time I hadn’t choked on my tequila or done anything else to draw his attention. What’s so damn interesting over here, buddy?
    “Have I what?” asked Lilly.
    I regained my train of thought. “Have