At some point Kennelly and Lister apparently approached a doctor who was on the board monitoring trials for this leukemia drug. It’s okay for portfolio managers to use doctors as consultants, but it’s not legal for a doctor to share confidential information or for anyone at a firm to accept it. But over time they corrupted the guy, paid him to tip them off about the findings.”
“And you learned all this how?”
“The doctor’s in his eighties and he’s losing it a little. One day in January he called the office and mistakenly ended up with me instead of Gavin Kennelly. Maybe the receptionist just heard him say the name wrong. But as soon as he started talking to me, it was clear that he was waiting for a final payment that was due him. He never realized he was talking to the wrong guy. I just played along.”
“How did you figure what the payment was for?”
“First I researched the doctor’s background and saw his connection to the drug. Then I started digging. I have a pretty strong tech background, and before I got promoted to portfolio manager I helped design the database and the user interface. I got into the system and saw that we’d dumped all the stock we had in the pharmaceutical company about a week before it was announced that the drug wasn’t going to pan out, which prevented about 150 million dollars in losses. I put what I found on the flash drive.”
It sounded credible on the surface but she’d believed Kelman in the past, and look where that had landed her.
“Kit, I deceived you in Florida, but this is the truth,” he added, knowing exactly what was in her mind.
“So where does Healy fit into this?”
“After I saw what had happened, I asked Matt about it. He’s a buddy of mine, and I thought he might have had his own suspicions since he was friendlier with Kennelly than I was. All he knew was that Kennelly had seemed preoccupied lately. The main thing we wondered was whether the CEO was involved because the numbers seemed too big for him and the compliance officer not to have noticed. I was on my way out the door at that point, so Matt said he’d do some of his own probing. Once we knew more, we could go to the authorities.”
“Funny you found time to slip off and get a tan in the middle of all of this.”
“My trip wasn’t about that. Right after I left Ithaka, my doorman tipped me off that for a couple of days he’d seen the same guy take off from across the street the minute I left the building. I figured that the firm might have gotten wind of my snooping and had hired a private detective to see what I was up to. Insider trading convictions mean big fines and long prison terms and the last thing they would have wanted is me blowing the whistle. Matt suggested I lay low and crash at his pad, which I did for a few days, but in the end I decided it would be smarter to leave town until we were ready to pull the trigger. I drove down south, paid cash for everything, and checked into the hotel with a credit card Matt loaned me for that purpose. When I met you, I gave you Matt’s name because that’s what I was going by at the hotel. After I called you, I figured I could explain the situation back in New York.”
“And you were really coming back the week we met?”
“Yup. I was going to ditch the rental car and fly this time—Thursday morning. Matt hadn’t had any luck, and I thought it was stupid to wait any longer. It was probably crazy to call you that day, but I wanted to see you again. At the time there didn’t seem to be any harm in having you come to his apartment.”
She stared at the table, not wanting to meet his eyes. If the comment about wanting to see her again was a tactic to make her lower her guard, she refused to bite.
“But when your plans changed, why not call me?” she demanded. “Why let me bungle my way through that encounter with Healy?”
“After I left the Keys, I rented an apartment for a couple of nights in Miami, an Airbnb thing. On the night before I was headed back, I woke to the sound of a prowler in the living