Need You Now

23

C onnie made me feel like the class bully as I dragged Evan Hunt to the nearest park bench and sat his ass down. She started screaming at me about taking the law into my own hands, but i told her to save it for her scout troop.

“Taking a picture is not a crime!” said Evan.

“Then why did you run?” I said, shoving him.

He looked stunned. “You’re assaulting me.”

I shoved him again. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Patrick, stop,” said Connie. “I won’t be part of this.”

“Then go back to work.”

She gnawed her lip, straining to find the perfect comeback, but in the end she settled for the standard sibling contrarianism. “Fine, you want me to leave? Then I’ll stay.”

She took a seat on the boulder behind me. Evan stared back at me like a scared rabbit, though he did seem relieved to have a strong woman around to control me. I grabbed him by the lapels of his trench coat, pushed him back onto the bench, and gave him thirty seconds to explain himself.

Five minutes later, he was still jabbering. To me, it was stream-of-conscious nonsense, but Connie seemed to be following it.

“Some people say I have a mind like a computer,” said Evan, “but to me, that’s an insult.”

“I feel the exact same way,” said Connie.

I shot her a look that said, Connie, please.

“You know anything about trading options, Mr. Lloyd?”

I was facing him, seated on the boulder beside Connie. “We trade thousands of options every day.”

“So, you know every once in a while you have to calculate a second derivative, called a gamma, which is the rate of change in the first derivative, delta.”

My knee was throbbing from my wipeout during the chase, but Evan was starting to make my head hurt even worse. Connie was totally with him, but it was like another language to me. “That’s what computers are for,” I said.

“No! That’s what you guys in the expensive suits don’t understand. There are still calculations in this business that are so math intensive that computers choke on them.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s true,” said Connie, chiming in. “He’s absolutely right about that.”

I was beginning to wonder if Connie’s boyfriend Tom was on the bubble. I threw her another look-this time something along the lines of Who asked for your help?

Evan continued. “When you’re in a situation where prices can move at an infinite rate, it’s time to throw out the computer and look at the price of a stock or the market and calculate your own option price. I can do it faster than any computer.”

“That’s impressive,” said Connie.

“That’s his job,” I said, making a rather easy deduction. “You’re a quantitative analyst, I presume.”

“Please,” he said, “I prefer ‘quant.’ Synonymous with nerd. And proud of it.”

It suddenly occurred to me that getting chased down in Central Park and tackled on the run was a minor skirmish compared to the bruisings Evan had undoubtedly taken in middle school. At least I hadn’t given him a wedgie.

“Enough with the mathematics double talk,” I said. “You need to answer my questions. Was that you at Puffy’s Tavern two days ago?”

“Yes. You and Lilly Scanlon.”

“You know her name?”

“Of course.”

“Were you the same guy who took our photo in Singapore last July?”

“Yup, that was me, all right.”

His response bordered on glib, as if he was showing off, seemingly energized by the interest Connie had taken in his impressive mathematics background. I rose, leaving Connie alone on the boulder. Evan watched warily as I came closer, leaned toward him, and placed my foot on the front edge of the bench beside him. I was merely tying my shoe, but he had nearly wet his pants. I was back in control.

“Why have you been following me around and snapping pictures?”

“You and Lilly Scanlon are a key part of the analysis.”

“What analysis?”

“My Abe Cushman analysis. See, when you’re a quant, all you have to do is look at the numbers in Cushman’s returns, and you can see he was running a Ponzi scheme.”

“It’s not exactly a secret that he was running a Ponzi scheme.”

“Sure, now it’s no secret. But I knew it ten years ago.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, you and all the other Wall Street geniuses who came out of the woodwork the day after Cushman confessed. Suddenly, everyone and his brother knew it five years ago, ten years ago. In fact, CNBC has an interview scheduled next week with an ob-gyn who figured out that Cushman was actually planning his scheme while still in his mother’s womb.”

“You’re making fun of me,” he said.

A bigger jackass probably would have told him that if he had a problem with it, he should cinch up the twenty-year-old trench coat and hide the bright orange dress shirt and the Mickey Mouse neck tie. But something about the guy made me pull my punches. Or maybe I was trying to avoid more flack from Connie.

“Sorry,” I said, “but I don’t give much credence to your after-the-fact analysis.”

“My analysis was not after the fact. I did my calculations before Cushman was exposed as a fraud. It’s only the pictures that came later.”

“I don’t get the point of the pictures.”

“People don’t look at numbers the way I do. They need pictures to help them connect the dots. When I had nothing but numbers to show them, nobody listened.”

“When you say nobody listened, you mean… who?”

“I mean the dickheads at the SEC.”

“You shared your analysis with the Securities and Exchange Commission?”

“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.”