The Banker’s Wife
Page 9
“Thank you,” she mouthed, and then nodded her chin toward the front, where an organist had begun to play a somber strain of processional music.
“We need to speak after this,” Owen whispered, his shoulder knocking against hers. “Somewhere private.”
Marina nodded, glancing around to make sure no one could hear them. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“My place or yours?”
She shot him a look.
“What?” Owen blinked his eyes innocently. “We’re both uptown now. That’s all I meant.”
“Owen, I’m engaged! I can’t come home with you in the middle of the day.”
“What am I supposed to suggest? The Carlyle? We can’t exactly go sit in a coffee shop. And my office is down in Tribeca. I can come to your place.”
“My fiancé will not be thrilled.”
“Oh, the fiancé.” Owen rolled his eyes. “Where is he now? Off swimming laps in a pool of money?”
Marina turned and scanned the back of the church. “There he is.” Grant stood behind a cluster of mourners who had aggregated behind the pews. When he saw Marina, he smiled and waved and made a gesture that indicated that he was trying his best to make his way to her.
“Would you please be quiet,” the woman in the pew in front of them hissed. “This is a funeral.”
Owen and Marina dropped their heads in prayer.
“We’ll talk after,” Marina whispered, in the faintest voice she could muster. “We’ll find somewhere.”
“Good. Because there’s something I need to show you. It’s from him.”
“From him?” Marina nodded her head toward the altar.
“Yep.”
“For us.”
“Yes.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Jesus Christ indeed,” Owen said, and crossed himself as the congregation stood and the processional began down the aisle.
* * *
• • •
AFTER THE FUNERAL, Grant headed back to his office. Marina waved good-bye as his car pulled away from the curb. Once he was around the corner, she and Owen quietly agreed to meet at his apartment. Marina said hello to colleagues while Owen disappeared. If anyone had seen them leave together, they probably wouldn’t have thought much of it. But still, it was better to be safe than sorry.
Owen Barry lived on the upper floor of an old town house on East Sixty-ninth Street. As they rode the rickety elevator up to his apartment, Marina wondered why they had never run into each other. She and Grant lived just one block away. Their apartment, a sprawling three-bedroom in a fancy Park Avenue building, was far grander than Owen’s. But that was the funny thing about New York. Cramped studios were available for rent across the street from $50 million penthouses. Marina and Grant might live in a different world than Owen Barry, but they still probably shared a dry cleaner. They took the same subway stop. They bought their groceries from the same small bodega on the corner of Lexington and Sixty-eighth.
“Sorry about the mess,” Owen said, as he opened the door. He offered Marina a hand as she stepped over a stack of old newspapers. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
Marina surveyed the apartment. It looked to her as though Owen had had company, as recently as last night. An empty bottle of wine sat on the coffee table. Two glasses—one with a stain of lipstick on the rim—had found their way to the floor in front of the fireplace. Marina pretended not to notice. For a moment, she wondered if Owen was actually living with someone. But she dismissed the idea quickly. The Owen Barry she knew wasn’t exactly a believer in commitment. And no woman she could imagine would live in such a pigsty.
“You want a beer or something? Or coffee?”
“Coffee would be great,” she said. “Thanks.”
Owen nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. “Have a seat anywhere,” he called out. “Or if you want, take the stairs up to the roof. I’ll meet you up there.”
Marina opted for the roof. She followed the twisty metal stairs up to what looked like a trapdoor in the ceiling. When she pushed it open, she felt a rush of cold air and heard the sounds of traffic from the street below. After Owen’s apartment, she wasn’t expecting the roof deck to look like much. But instead, she found herself in what felt like a secret garden, filled with potted plants and enough wrought iron furniture to host a small dinner party. A panoramic view of Central Park unfolded in front of her.
“Wow,” Marina murmured to herself. The leaves were mostly off the trees, but there was something elegant about the muted color palette of browns and grays set off against the West Side skyline and the roofs of the other town houses along Sixty-ninth Street. It wasn’t quite the view from the balcony of Le Meurice, but it wasn’t too far off.
“It’s nice up here, right?” Owen emerged. He had a laptop under his arm and was gripping two mugs of coffee in one hand. “The apartment is kind of a shitbox, but it’s worth it for this view. I work up here whenever I can. It’s where I do my best thinking.”
“This is all yours?”
“Yep. The only way to access it is through my apartment. Nice trade-off for the crappy air-conditioning and the crazy landlady, who lives on the first floor. She’s a piece of work. She has a shih tzu named Zsa Zsa Gabor.”
Marina snorted.
“She’s always pissed at me for one reason or another. I think I’m the resident problem child in this building.”
“One too many overnight guests?”
Owen laughed. “Something like that.” He took a seat at the table and opened up his laptop. “Okay. So here it is. About a month ago, Duncan called me up out of the blue. He said he needed my help with a story. He made me drive all the way out to Connecticut to see him. He was holed up out there, said he wasn’t sure when he’d be back in the city. Thought he was being followed or something crazy. Honestly, you know I love the guy, but he could be kind of a drama queen.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So I get out there and my first thought is that he’s off the wagon. The shades were all drawn, the house was a mess. He looked like shit. Unshaven, exhausted. Fat.”
Marina frowned. “That’s not good. He usually stops drinking when he’s on a story.”
“He wasn’t drunk while I was there. Just looked like hell. He said this was his big break. Claimed to have a source inside a financial institution with access to mountains of confidential data. He wanted me to show him how to set up encrypted channels so they could communicate.”
“So did you?”
“Yeah, but the source freaked out. Said he wasn’t sure it was safe. Wanted to hand over the information to Duncan personally.”
Marina nodded. “I think that’s where I come in. I met a source when I was in Paris. He gave me a USB to give to Duncan.”
“What’s on it?”
“I have no idea. I’ve been too scared to open it. Anyway, I don’t have the password.”
“Well, then, I’ve got the key to your lock, babe.”
“God, you’re such a child.”
“I’m serious.”
Marina raised an eyebrow. “Do you really have the password? How?”
“The day before Duncan died, he called me. He told me he was going to send me something, and that you had the other half of it, and that if anything happened to him, I needed to find you and give this to you. A few minutes later, he sends me a string of numbers and letters over BlackBerry messenger. Honestly, at this point I didn’t know if the guy was losing it or what. But then, less than twenty-four hours later, he’s dead.”
Marina shivered. “It could be a coincidence,” she said, pulling her coat tighter around her. “It is possible it was a home invasion. Right?”
Owen shot her a look.
“Right.” She dug into her purse. “Here,” she said, producing the USB. “Let’s do this.”
“You sure? I can just give you the password if you want. It’s your story.”
“Are you scared?”
Owen laughed. “I feel like if your life isn’t in danger, you aren’t reporting the right story.”
Marina stuck the USB into Owen’s computer and typed in the password Mark had given her. A few nondescript folders appeared on the screen. “Okay,” she said. “Here we go. He said that there’s more information, buried somewhere. But damned if I know how to find it.”
“You’re in the right place.” Owen pulled the laptop toward him, and after maneuvering around the screen, a second window popped up, prompting him to enter another password. From off his BlackBerry, he entered the series of letters and numbers Duncan had sent to him.
The screen went black.
“Uh-oh,” Marina said, biting her lip.
“Just wait. It’s thinking.”
Suddenly, a folder appeared. It was labeled “Morton Reiss.”
Owen clicked it open. The first document was a bank statement from Caribbean International Bank.
Marina gasped when she saw the balance: $73,542,980.11.
Owen let out a whistle. “I don’t know who Client 437-65-9881 is, but damn,” he said. “He’s done well for himself.”
Marina frowned at the screen. “That’s weird. There’s no name attached. It’s just a statement from a numbered account. There must be something else on here that proves that Reiss is Client 437-65-9881. Maybe that’s his Social Security number?”
Owen shook his head. “No way. These accounts are set up so that no one can trace them back to their actual owners. What do you know about offshore accounts?”
“Not much.”
“Well, here’s how it works, more or less. Morton Reiss takes his money to some shady law firm. The shady law firm acts as an intermediary between him and a global bank. It sets up a shell company—let’s call it Dinero & Co. Then, the shady law firm makes sure there is a protective screen around the Dinero & Co.’s real owner. They appoint nominee directors to Dinero & Co.—who are really just straw men, paid by the law firm—who just sign anything the law firm puts in front of them. The law firm goes to the bank—in this case, CIB—and says, We represent Dinero & Co., here are the company’s directors, and they’d like to open a numbered account. And so this account exists in the CIB system—but there’s no link to Morty Reiss.”
“But then how does Morty Reiss access his money? He must need to make periodic withdrawals, no?”
“Usually the real owner gets a power of attorney from these nominee directors so that he can access the bank account or safe that Dinero & Co. sets up. Or the law firm does it for him.”
“And that’s legal?”
“It’s a gray area. In the case of someone like Reiss, no. It’s illegal for a law firm to deal with Reiss. They can’t knowingly assist a criminal in hiding his assets. But in the case of your run-of-the-mill CEO? It’s not exactly kosher, but it’s not illegal, either.”
“And the bank? They’re comfortable doing business with companies that just have these fake directors? Aren’t they required to know who their clients are?”
“Yes. In theory. But banks like CIB do business with criminals all the time. It doesn’t bother them, as long as they are making a healthy fee to do it. They just want there to be a protective screen in place so that if the authorities come knocking on their door, they can pretend they didn’t know who was on the other side of the shell company.”
“But someone at the bank must know. When Morty Reiss shows up with a power of attorney to access Dinero & Co.’s bank account—someone at CIB must be interfacing with him, right?”
“Right. Yes. Typically a private banker.”
“So Duncan must have found a banker at CIB who was willing to talk.”
“If he did, my hat’s off to him. I’ve been trying to get into the pants of an offshore bank—or a banker—for years. So far, no luck.” Owen rocked back on his chair, far enough to make Marina nervous. “Hey!” he said, snapping back suddenly. “CIB sued Duncan, right? Because he said they were housing Reiss’s money?”
“I think they just threatened to sue. He issued a retraction and they backed off.”
“Do you remember when that was?”
“Six months ago?” Marina frowned, thinking. Then she nodded. “Yeah, that sounds right. Duncan spent a few weeks at Silver Hill. You know, the rehab place in Connecticut. It was part of his mea culpa. He was supposed to go back there, but now I’m wondering if he ever did, or if he was using his sabbatical to work on this story.”
“Look at this.” Owen tapped the corner of the document. Marina focused on the date: April 1, 2015. “So if this is Morty Reiss’s account, Duncan was right. He did have money stashed at CIB.”
He clicked it closed and opened the next document. “Here’s an email chain, from inside some firm called Schmit & Muller. Any idea who they are?”
Marina shook her head. “Sounds like a law firm. But I’ve never heard of them.”
They both looked at the screen, reading through the emails in silence.
April 2, 2015
From: Peter Weber
To: Hans Hoffman
Subject: CONFIDENTIAL: Internal Use Only
CIB is no longer comfortable holding assets for Mr. Reiss. We need to find another bank for him. CIB has requested that he transfer all of his holdings out of the bank by the end of the month.
April 2, 2015
From: Hans Hoffman
To: Peter Weber
Subject: Re: CONFIDENTIAL: Internal Use Only
Understood. I will speak to my contact at Swiss United. I think it’s best not to use Mr. Reiss’s name in external communications. Tell Swiss United this is a valuable client of ours who will bank with them only in complete anonymity. When they see the size of his account, I imagine they will be flexible.
April 4, 2015
From: Peter Weber
To: Hans Hoffman
Subject: Re: CONFIDENTIAL: Internal Use Only
I’ve spoken to Julian White at Swiss United. He is quite pleased to take on a new client. He understands the condition of anonymity and is comfortable with it. I assured him that we did our due diligence before banking with this client. He has set up a numbered account at Swiss United and it will be ready to receive a transfer from CIB by Close of Business on Thursday. Please inform Mr. Reiss of Swiss United’s rates for this size account, and our commission for this transfer. If he is comfortable, we should proceed immediately.
April 4, 2015
From: Hans Hoffman
To: Peter Weber
Subject: Re: CONFIDENTIAL: Internal Use Only
I’ve spoken to Mr. Reiss. He is comfortable with both the rate and the commission.
There is an American journalist named Duncan Sander who arrived in the Cayman Islands last night. Apparently, he has been trying to track down Mr. Reiss for years. There is concern that he has a source within CIB who is feeding him information on Mr. Reiss and potentially other clients of the bank as well.
Mr. Reiss asks that the funds be transferred tomorrow. I have assured him that this will be done and that once it is, there will be no record of him ever banking at CIB. As far as CIB is concerned, client 437-65-9881 is a Panamanian widow named Alicia Marcos. As of tomorrow, her account will be closed.
April 5, 2015
From: Hans Hoffman
To: Peter Weber
Subject: Re: CONFIDENTIAL: Internal Use Only
Is something being done about this leak inside of CIB? That would be bad for business, for them and for us.
April 6, 2015
From: Peter Weber
To: Hans Hoffman
Subject: Re: CONFIDENTIAL: Internal Use Only
The leak has been contained.
“Holy shit,” Owen murmured when he reac
hed the end of the email. He clicked it closed and opened the next document. There it was: a numbered account at Swiss United, with the same amount: $73,542,980.11.
Owen tapped the screen. “A couple of weeks after this, Duncan did that interview, claiming that Morty Reiss was storing his money at CIB. But by then, Reiss had already transferred his money to Swiss United.”
“Right. So the bank threatened to sue and Duncan came off looking like a crazy conspiracy theorist. What do you think he means when he says, ‘The leak has been contained’? That’s ominous.”
“I don’t know, but my guess is if we start digging, we’ll turn up a CIB banker who died under mysterious circumstances right around that time.”
Marina stood up and started pacing. Grant’s friend, Matthew Werner, had died in a plane crash the same day as Duncan. He was a private banker, wasn’t he? But not at CIB. A Swiss bank, she thought. Had it been Swiss United? She couldn’t remember. She stopped and looked up. “You think bankers go around murdering one another in cold blood?”
“Offshore banking is a dirty business. These guys aren’t bankers; they’re cowboys. They operate by a completely different set of rules.”
“So do you think it’s possible they killed Duncan? These people at CIB?”
“I don’t know who killed Duncan. Maybe CIB. Maybe Schmit & Muller. Maybe some monkey who works for Morty Reiss. Your guess is as good as mine. But we’re going to do our best to find out.”