We were quiet for several minutes, while the world seemed to restart itself around us. Burrows looked up at me, a single tear track drying on his cheek. He didn’t seem to notice or, if he did, to care. Finally, he spoke.
“I hope that’s of some help to you and your client, Mr. March.”
I nodded. I was full of questions, and I wasn’t sure how much longer Burrows would be willing to provide answers. I plowed ahead. “Okay, Nassouli’s game was to manipulate people into involving themselves in something illicit, and then use that involvement to blackmail them.” Burrows nodded as I spoke. “But that would require that Nassouli have some incriminating evidence, some proof of each person’s participation in whatever illicit thing had gone on.” More nodding.
“Oh, yes,” Burrows said, “Gerard was quite meticulous in his record-keeping. He maintained a file, a detailed audit trail, for every ‘specimen’ in his garden. Records of every meeting he’d had with a person, what was discussed, copies of documents, recordings, even videotapes—the whole history of their corruption. I think the cataloging was part of the pleasure for him.”
He kept files. He kept files. He kept files. I took a moment to get my heart rate under control. I didn’t want to pant.
“Wasn’t that risky for him?” I asked. “Anything incriminating to his ‘specimens’ would be incriminating to Nassouli too, right? That taped conversation with Moe, for instance.” Burrows nodded.
“Gerard was a huge risk-taker,” he said. “And hugely arrogant. He’d take massive chances, as he did with Moe, but to him they were calculated. I’m sure there was no doubt in Gerard’s mind about how Moe would react in the end, and he was right. He usually was about things like that. By the same token, he would never believe that his records would be in any hands but his own.”
“Do you know where he kept them?”
“I know where he kept them fifteen years ago. In his office. There used to be a big credenza behind his desk, with lots of locking drawers. It was almost a safe.”
“Who besides you knew the kinds of things Nassouli did, and knew about his files?”
“In New York, a very small circle—basically the rest of Gerard’s management team—a handful of people.”
“Who?”
He hesitated, then gave me three names. I recognized them all, and all, like Nassouli, were fugitives. “Those were the New York people. One or two people in London may have had some idea what he was up to, but they wouldn’t have known the specifics. But bear in mind, my information is fifteen years old.” Burrows paused again, as if deciding something. His face darkened. “There was another person, not an MWB employee technically, but someone very close to Gerard. Trautmann, Bernhard Trautmann. He and his company provided security for the New York branch, and anything that was rough around the edges— procuring girls from the strip clubs, for example, or the videotaping at the apartment—he took care of for Gerard. He knew a lot of what was going on. He probably knew some things that I didn’t.”
I read Burrows a list of company names, including Textiles Pan-Europa and Europa Mills U.S.A., the companies referred to in Pierro’s fax, along with others mentioned in the Economist article.
“There were so many companies, Mr. March . . . they all run together. All nice businesses, with lots of receivables, and lots of invoices too— plenty of cash flowing across squeaky clean accounts, preferably in multiple currencies. Just right for bringing money into the system in nice, careful chunks, and just right for moving it all around afterward, through money transfers, loans, foreign exchange deals, what have you. Placement and layering, the authorities call it. The newspapers wrote a lot about it a while back.” Burrows paused and looked beyond me, remembering. “Maybe those names are familiar . . . I just don’t know. Frankly, my memories of that time are spotty and probably selective. I drank quite a bit then and for a long time afterward, and did other things too, none of which were very good for my gray cells.” I wondered what his gray cells would do with my next question.
“Moe is dead, and you’ve said that Larry is in Florida, out of the business.” I paused, and his eyes met mine, then slid away again. “Can you give me the names—the real names—of any other of Nassouli’s ‘specimens ’ from back then?” Burrows sat up straight and started to shake his head, started to withdraw. I hurried on. “Mr. Burrows, I don’t want to know about their indiscretions. I could care less. But I need to talk to other people who Nassouli had on file. I need to know if they’ve had the same kind of trouble that my client is having.”
Burrows pursed his lips and crossed his arms on his chest, still shaking his head. “I know the damage Nassouli did to these people, the hell he put them through—deservedly or otherwise. I had my own small part in that, and I have my own hell to deal with as a result. I’m not going to play a part in making them relive those nightmares.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do, Mr. Burrows. Someone is putting my client through that same kind of hell. It’s possible that whoever is victimizing my client is victimizing some of these people, too. It’s possible they could use some help. I’ll be discreet, I’ll be quick, and I won’t be heavy-handed, but I need to talk to some of these people.”
“You’ll forgive me if, at this point in my life, I find altruism slightly harder to believe in than the tooth fairy,” Burrows said.
“I’m not claiming to be altruistic. I’m trying to act in my client’s best interests. If I can establish that other people from Nassouli’s files are being victimized too, it reduces considerably the avenues I need to pursue. If I find whoever is doing this, I will discourage him from bothering my client. If he is victimizing others, and I can offer a more general discouragement, I will.” I paused for a bit and watched Burrows as he teetered again on some internal cliff edge. I said, softly, “If you’re looking to make amends . . . to make something right . . . maybe this helps.”
We stared at each other for what seemed like a long time. Burrows shook his head a little and rubbed his eyes. Then he gave me four names. I wrote them down.
“Thank you,” I said. “This helps. I won’t mention your name to any of these people.”
Burrows shrugged, indifferent. He looked exhausted. I’d taken him about as far as I could, but I wanted to know one more thing. “Did you talk to the feds about any of this?” I asked.
“As I told you, the questions they asked had to do with Nassouli’s whereabouts. They never asked anything else.”
“And if they had?”
He shrugged. “I would probably have told them.”
“No concern about legal action?”
He gave a little snort and shook his head. “According to my lawyer, the federal people are interested in what they can prosecute, which apparently means more recent events—those still within the statute of limitations. He tells me that the time has long since passed on activities they might have wished to discuss with me. Though I’m not sure I’d care in any event.” Then he stood, and so did I, and I thought it was time to leave. But he had some questions of his own.
“Will you be looking for Nassouli, Mr. March?”
“I don’t think so. A lot of people, with a lot more money and time than I’ve got, have spent nearly three years looking for him, with nothing to show for it. Right now, that doesn’t look to be a productive use of my time.”
“And Bernhard Trautmann . . . will you be speaking with him?”
“If I can find him, yes.”
Burrows pursed his lips again. “I suspect you will. But be careful when you do, Mr. March. Be watchful. Trautmann is . . . a very brutal person, and violent—really quite the psychopath. But he is not stupid, not at all. I’ve seen him laughing and smiling with men who, the next moment, he was beating nearly to death. He seemed to enjoy putting them so at ease before almost killing them. He and Nassouli were well matched in that respect.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” I said, and I left Alan Burrows to his strange penance.
Chapter Eleve
n
“ ‘Satan is my banker.’ It has a certain ring to it, don’t you think? Get you noticed at a party,” Mike said.
“Depends on the party,” I said.
I was sitting in Mike’s office at ten-thirty a.m. on the day before Thanksgiving, slouched in one of his sleek leather chairs, with my feet up on his sleek glass desk, drinking espresso from one of his demitasse cups. I’d just taken him through my meeting the night before with Burrows. Mike was cleaning off his desk, sifting through papers, tossing some, stacking the rest, and periodically calling his secretary, Fran, to carry off the stacks. She muttered darkly as she took them away. Like offices all over the city, Paley, Clay’s were quiet and thinly staffed today, and a relaxed, preholiday mood prevailed. Even Mike had bowed to the informality of the day, wearing not a suit, but natty olive slacks and a tweed jacket. I was more casual still, in jeans and a gray turtleneck.
“But that’s what Burrows was saying. That Nassouli was some sort of Mephistophelean mastermind sadist . . . ,” Mike said.
“A record-keeping Mephistophelean mastermind sadist,” I reminded him.
“. . . a record-keeping Mephistophelean mastermind sadist,” Mike continued, “who corrupted unsuspecting innocents in the worlds of finance and fashion . . .”
“I don’t know how many actual innocents there were, at least among the financial types,” I interrupted again.
“We can debate the fine points later. According to Burrows, the guy was the devil. And you found him credible?” I nodded yes.
“Why?” Mike asked. I thought about that. I was getting good at it by now, having spent much of last night mulling over what I’d seen and heard.
“It’s a few things. First, I can’t see what lying to me buys him. If he had something to hide, about his own participation in Nassouli’s games, even—worst case—about involvement in squeezing Pierro, the simplest thing for him to do would be to brush me off. Just refuse to talk to me or, better still, talk to me but give me nothing. Bore me to death. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he talked to me about bad acts that occurred fifteen, twenty years ago, and he implicated himself in those acts—at least to the extent that he was one of Nassouli’s confidants. Unless he’s a serious crazy, looking for attention, I don’t see what he gets out of that.
“Second, he wanted to talk, he needed to. He gives off that vibe, like he’s carrying some sort of heavy load. I don’t know what it is—if it’s about what he did while he was with Nassouli, or what happened with his wife, or something else—but whatever, he’s working off a big karmic debt. Talking to me was part of that somehow.
“And there’s that picture. The face I saw in Helene’s photograph at MWB—that’s the Gerard Nassouli that Burrows was describing.”
Mike chewed on that for a while. “Any thoughts about the Pierros, in light of all of this?” he asked finally.
“No good ones,” I answered. “Burrows said it was theoretically possible for someone to have done legitimate business with Nassouli, so I guess Pierro could be as clean as he claims to be. But my faith is being tested, Mike.” He chuckled a little.
“As I’ve said, clients lie. Still, he is our client,” Mike said.
“Yes, he is,” I said. “And I need to talk to him again—to see if those names Burrows gave me ring any bells. I’d also like to know what he thinks about Burrows’s portrait of his pal Gerry. And I’ve got to have that talk with Helene, too. What Burrows said about Nassouli and his string of girlfriends makes me wonder all the more about her.” Mike nodded and added more papers to a growing stack.
“So now what?” he asked.
“Now I look for Trautmann, and for the four guys Burrows named. Shake the trees, see what falls out,” I said.
“Trautmann sounds promising,” Mike said. “Burrows said he was privy to Nassouli’s doings, especially the seamy stuff. And it doesn’t sound like blackmail would be an alien concept to him.” I nodded.
“Of course,” he continued, “the most promising person in all this might be Nassouli himself. Being on the run can get pretty expensive. And no one would know better how to use those files.”
“He’s hard to ignore,” I said. “But it would be awfully risky, running a blackmail business while you’re hiding out from the feds. And there’s a local aspect to this thing that doesn’t quite fit with that scenario. Pierro’s fax was sent from Ninety-eighth Street, not Brazil. Somehow, I don’t think of Gerard Nassouli as hiding out in the Bronx for the last three years.”
“Maybe he has local help,” Mike said. I shrugged.
“A partner can be a dangerous thing for a guy on the run,” I said. “Anyway, the feds haven’t found him in three years of looking. How much better am I going to do in four weeks?”
“That’s a different issue. How about Trautmann as his local partner?” Mike asked, and dumped a pile of journals in the trash.
“Maybe. Could be Nassouli, Trautmann, Alger Hiss, and Gordon Liddy, all in it together,” I observed.
“You know, I always thought that Tim Russert was a shifty-looking bastard too. Let’s not forget about him,” Mike said, smiling. He turned his attention to another pile of paper.
“What about Brill and Parsons—have you given up on the idea that this could be an inside job?” he asked. I shook my head.
“No, but without help from Neary, I can’t go anyplace with it. And Neary’s got no reason to do more than he already has, not unless I can convince him that something’s going on in his shop. So far, I’ve got nothing to convince him with.”
“You talk to him about Burrows?” he asked.
“Not yet. I called him this morning and offered to buy him lunch. Asked him for anything he had on Trautmann, too.” I downed the last of my coffee and stood. Mike looked up from a pile of junk mail.
“Let me know how it goes,” he said. “And, happy turkey.”
It was a crisp day, in the middle forties. A few chunky white clouds slid across the dark blue sky and threw small, fast-moving shadows on the buildings and the quiet streets. I caught a cab in front of Lever House and headed downtown.
Another Green World is a high-end Chinese vegetarian place. It’s all pale blues and greens and frosted glass and brushed steel—the trendiest thing on Mott Street. Downtown was even quieter than midtown had been, and Neary was one of only a handful of patrons.
“This is right up your alley,” he said, and handed me a menu. “It’s got about ten thousand kinds of tofu.” We looked over the choices and agreed on dishes to share—noodles, dumplings, spring rolls, various veggies, and lots of tofu. After the waitress had come and gone, I took Neary through the highlights of my meeting the night before, omitting Burrows’s name.
He listened in silence, and when I was finished he ran a hand through his short, wavy hair and was silent some more. Finally he spoke. “Nassouli was seriously bad. Okay. I’ve heard that before. He’s a wanted man, after all. We knew about his conference room being wired for sound—almost all of them were at MWB. And we knew about the apartment playpen, too, though we hadn’t come across any tapes.”
“He was seriously bad, and he kept detailed records,” I emphasized.
“Yeah, okay, he kept records. And from what your source had to say, it sounds like he’d have every reason to destroy those records before he split, either that or take them along,” Neary said.
“And if he didn’t do either?”
“Then that would be bad. And if I won the lottery, that would be good. But they’re both big fucking ‘ifs,’ and right now I have no reason to believe in either one.” Neary drank some tea and continued. “If I were you, I’d be looking to establish a pattern among Nassouli’s other victims, and I’d be all over Trautmann.”
“Gee, thanks for the pointers, Mr. Neary,” I said testily.
“Hey—remember who’s asking for the favors around here, and who’s doing them, and don’t get your drawers in a knot. I’m just saying, maybe you’ve got hold of something, maybe not. But eve
n if you do, I haven’t seen anything yet that connects it to my people. Show me that, and you’ll have my undivided attention, believe me.” Neary gestured toward the platters that had come. “Don’t let this get cold.” I started with noodles, Neary with spring rolls.
“I got some stuff on Trautmann for you,” he said, after he’d had a couple rolls. “It came out of the file my predecessor put together when Brill took over security on MWB. There may be more, but it’ll have to wait till Monday.” He took a thick yellow envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to me.
“This guy sounds like a real piece of work. He used to be on the job. Worked plainclothes, narcotics and vice, up in the Bronx, and he was a real comer for a couple of years. Lots of arrests, a bunch of commendations, everybody expected great things. But then he flamed out. A pimp and two of his girls got themselves beat nearly to death, and there was a big excessive-force complaint against Trautmann. And on the heels of it, a bunch of questions about some of his earlier cases. Allegations of coercion, evidence tampering, talk about protection payments. Ultimately, no charges were pressed—no one willing to testify, apparently—and Trautmann ended up resigning. That was twenty-five years ago.
“A couple of months after he leaves the force, he gets himself a PI license, starts working security at some clubs in Manhattan, basically a well-heeled bouncer. Then he opens a rent-a-cop outfit, Trident Security Consulting, doing more of the same—clubs, crowd control, that kind of stuff. After a while he moves up-market, starts specializing in security services for banks—specifically small branches of foreign banks. He got himself a handful of banks for clients, including MWB. As MWB New York grew, so did Trautmann’s business with them. Eventually, he gave up the rest of his clients and worked exclusively for them.”
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