Mortal Bonds

by Michael Sears

  I turned to Guelli. “You need to get someone on those,” I said. “Herr Gassner, would anyone be allowed in those doors? Could we have come in that way today?”

  He was on firmer ground now and looked relieved. “No. Only employees and regular clients. Frequent visitors. All others would have to come through the main door.”

  I nodded. It was what I had expected. “Last question, and then I’m out of your hair. One of your clients died some six months ago. A lawyer by the name of Serge Biondi. He had offices here in this neighborhood.” I took my apartment keys out of my jacket pocket and removed Mistletoe’s key from the ring—what better place to hide a single key? “My question for you is this. Is this the key to his safe-deposit box?”

  Gassner was floored. For a moment he stared at me, then at Guelli. His mouth wasn’t exactly hanging open, but his lips were parted.

  I took my time, holding it up to the light for display. I was loving it. Beneath their smug superiority, these two were caught flat-footed. The evidence of money laundering and the uncovering of Von Becker’s stolen billions wouldn’t sink the bank. They’d survive. But not without considerable embarrassment. And some heads would roll. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one of them belonged to the smug Herr Gassner.

  He reached over and took the key in his hand, examining it with the thoroughness of an entomologist with a new species of butterfly. Then he gave a sad chuckle.

  “Excellent! Excellent, Mr. Stafford. Maigret could not have done better. Wonderful.”

  Guelli wasn’t laughing at all. He looked like he was trying to bore a hole in my head with his eyes.

  I plowed on. “You haven’t answered the question.”

  “As the inspector can explain,” Gassner began, “the death of Serge Biondi was a minor news event in our country. Speculation went on for weeks. The police froze his account here until the investigation is done. We are allowed to make payments to his widow for expenses, but nothing more.” He looked at Guelli. “At least for now.”

  “And it might be quite some time,” Guelli interjected. “Despite the cooperation of everyone who knew him, his partners, staff, family, clients, even”—he and Gassner shared a manly look of understanding—“even the escort service he employed for evening trysts in his office, the case is at a standstill. Herr Biondi died of a heart attack in his office after closing hours. He was discovered by the sole cleaning person. The only information that was initially withheld from the press was the cause of the heart attack.”

  I felt a change in the weather—a little dark cloud was coming over the horizon.

  “He was murdered, you see. Two men came into his office, tied him to his chair with duct tape and began to beat him, either to torture or to terrorize. If they meant to question him, they failed. He died almost immediately.”

  The votes were in—I was an idiot. Castillo hadn’t exactly lied to me, but he had held back the most important information. Information that I could have checked for myself. Should have checked. He hadn’t blindsided me; I’d done it to myself. From Maigret to Clouseau.

  “Forgive me for my initial response,” Gassner was saying. “Your presentation was somewhat melodramatic. This is all very old news—much discussed many months ago. Once the details leaked out, there was a flurry of speculation in the press. It came to nothing.”

  “All we can say with certainty is that the men were looking for something. They searched his office and all of his current files, leaving at least one extremely valuable item behind. It is a puzzle.”

  “And the key?” I made one last attempt at salvaging my point of view.

  “I’m sorry. We have done business with the Biondi family for three generations, but none of them have ever had a safe-deposit box here. If they had, the contents would have been already in the hands of the police.”

  “I see. Thank you.”

  “And,” he said, taking enjoyment from his news as he handed me the key, “that is not a key we would ever have used. We did away with mechanical locks almost ten years ago. We use electronic cards and randomly generated digital passwords. What you have there looks like the key to a bicycle lock.” He chuckled. “Or possibly an elevator key.”

  There was a connection—I was sure of it. The laws of probability were stretched too far for coincidence. But I couldn’t quite make all the pieces fit. Yet.

  Guelli rose. “I believe we are done here, Herr Gassner. Thank you for your time and your cooperation. Mr. Stafford?”

  I wasn’t done, and I looked up at Guelli to tell him so. Something in his eyes made me change my mind. I still gave him a hard look back, just to let him know there was unfinished business, but I stood up also.

  Our guide was waiting for us back in the gray hallway. She showed us to the main door, thanked us for considering Doerflinger for our investment needs, and tried not to give the impression that we were one step shy of being ejected from the building.

  “Would you care to join me for lunch, Mr. Stafford?” Guelli said as the door closed behind us. “I assume you are not in too much of a hurry to get back to the airport. Your flight is not for another five hours.”

  “Why did you let him off the hook? He may have had me on the ropes, but I wasn’t done with him by a long shot.”

  Guelli shook his head. “Either he knows nothing or he is confident that no one can prove that he does know something. Either way, he was going to prevail. You and I, however, have much to talk about. I believe that you know a lot more that you haven’t told me.”

  I thought about it for a minute. Guelli still might be able to open doors for me. He was never going to be my ally, but I didn’t need to treat him like an enemy.

  I pointed across the street. “I think that café right there would be an excellent place to sit and talk and have a meal.”

  | 29 |

  I chose a table that faced directly across at the bank. We ordered and made polite small talk until the waiter ceased hovering. The background noise of the street and the café gave us a small cone of privacy.

  I took a long drink of water and began. “Some of this I have been told and some of it is surmise and some of it is straight fiction. But the tale is true. You with me?”

  Guelli gave a very European shrug that could have meant anything. It didn’t matter; he was listening.

  “Serge Biondi sat right here once a month or so, usually in mid-afternoon when the New York markets had just opened. He had to wait for confirmation that funds had been posted to the appropriate accounts. He met with another man—I have no idea who, or even if it was a man. It could have been a woman. It could have been someone different every time. I don’t know. Sometimes he would have a file with him, which he would leave on the table as he left. Other times he would collect one.”

  Guelli just nodded. He had questions, but he let me get the story out my own way.

  “When he left, he would walk across the street and through the main door of Doerflinger Freres et Cie. But as we have just learned, that was not his destination. It was a blind. He could not be followed inside, but he could leave by either of two other exits. It would have been very difficult to set up a tail.”

  “Only once a month?”

  “That’s a guess. But not a bad one, based on my guy’s take on the money trail. You and the FBI can match up the money transfers and see. More often wasn’t needed. They could afford to let smaller transactions accumulate, then execute a big trade only when they had a large amount of money to move.”

  Lunch arrived. Schnitzel with roesti for me, a spinach salad for Guelli.

  “You are lucky,” Guelli commented, looking longingly at my plate. “I still carry the weight of every plate of roesti I have ever eaten.”

  “If I lived here, I would eat roesti every day and the hell with my cholesterol. Life is short, and one of the few things in life that you can’t find better in New York is
real roesti.”

  Roesti is an elegantly simple dish—grated potato, fried in butter. But it is to hash browns what risotto is to rice cakes. You can tell both had the same origins, but their paths diverged dramatically. I vowed to bring Skeli to Zurich sometime—if only for the roesti.

  “You are not going to share with me who told you this story, are you?”

  Castillo would have me gutted, grilled, and served up churrasco for speaking his name aloud. “That would not be in my best interest,” I said.

  “Or what was in the file folders?”

  “Oh, that I can give you.” Castillo had been open, almost dismissive, about the financial details. “Honduran government bonds. Mostly. Dollar-denominated. There’s probably some triple- and double-A corporate bonds mixed in as well. All in bearer form. No other sovereign debt—there’s too little of it still in circulation. Too easy to trace ownership when the coupons are tendered.”

  “Herr Biondi was a highly respected lawyer. His client list included both some of our oldest and most powerful families. He was on the board of directors of one of Switzerland’s largest banks. Why would such a man be involved in something like this?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. He worked for Von Becker.”

  Guelli bristled. “So that makes him dirty as well? You are too smart for that.”

  “In the last two weeks I’ve talked to some very smart people who got sucked in by Von Becker. He was a con man. An evil, manipulative son of a bitch, who deserved to suffer a lot longer than he did. But there’s one thing every con knows—the mark cons himself. The pitch can be perfect, flawless, ripe, and easy, but if the mark doesn’t want to buy in, there’s no sale.”

  “But you are speaking of drug money, are you not? Biondi would have to have known. Why would he take such a risk?”

  “Maybe he didn’t know at first. I don’t know. You’re asking me to speculate.”

  “Isn’t everything you have said speculation?”

  “No. It may not be evidence, but I believe it all to be true. I’m still fitting it all together.”

  “Still.”

  “All right. Like I say, maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he knew and didn’t care.” A thought occurred to me. “Or maybe he thought he had his own scam running. Look, Von Becker could have spun a very convincing line. The guy was a master. Look at all the supposedly very smart people all over the world who fell for his spiel. You think Biondi was different because he was Swiss?”

  Guelli had the grace to chuckle. “Yes?”

  “By the time Biondi figured out the real game, he was locked in. He couldn’t back out. The kind of people we’re talking about do not take no for an answer.”

  My roesti was already more than half gone. I drank more water to slow myself down.

  “Von Becker laundered money for anyone who asked,” I continued. “I don’t know how the cash side worked. They could run it all through the Feast of San Gennaro for all I know. But once the cash was in the system—anywhere in the world—he would move it. He and his partners—the FBI knows who I’m talking about—would settle up once a month or so. They’d wire a large block of money—upwards of fifty mil at a clip—to one of Von Becker’s banks. As soon as the funds cleared, he would get word to Biondi and a meet would be set up. Biondi would deliver the securities, or pick them up, if that’s the direction the deal was going that time around.”

  “These other messengers—carriers—they would be lawyers as well, correct?”

  “Lawyers, bank employees—they’d have the access. But it could have been government regulators, or even policemen. You live in a society that rarely questions authority, as long as all the fees are paid up. Though they’d have to be fairly senior. You’d want respectable burghers who weren’t going to take your bearer bonds and do a runner.”

  “Biondi wasn’t running.”

  “No. I think in his case it was just bad timing. Von Becker surrendered to the good guys late in the afternoon when Europe was already shut down for the day. He had no choice. If he’d tried to wait until the next day, they’d have been out looking for him, and he would have lost any leverage he might have had.” I signaled to the waiter for more water. “But the money was already in the system, waiting to clear. The bad guys couldn’t get it back. By the next day, all accounts were frozen and Von Becker was in custody. The Feds paraded him out in front of his office, his perp walk—or in his case, maybe a victory lap. But Von Becker was never out of sight of federal agents from the time he came in. He never got to make the call to Biondi.”

  “Von Becker couldn’t get a message out?”

  I was sure that Castillo knew more about that than he had been willing to share, but I wasn’t prepared to make a guess at that point.

  “That’s the thing with the guy. He never trusted anybody, so he had no backup. But as long as he was alive, nobody was in a panic. Eventually he would get word out and Biondi would make his meet. The bonds would change hands and everybody would go home happy.”

  “But someone did panic. Biondi was murdered—beaten—before Von Becker died.”

  “Two days before. And someone is in a panic again now. Two more people were killed this week. Others were threatened. I was threatened.”

  “But why? Why not just wait?”

  “I don’t know. The interested party who pointed me in this direction had no reason to rush things, but I don’t think he’s in control. The people he represents have their own agenda. And for all I know, there are other players involved.”

  Guelli pushed the remains of his salad away.

  “And why wouldn’t Biondi just pay them? Hand over the bonds and be done with it. The man was beaten to death.”

  “According to you, he didn’t last long enough to tell anybody anything.”

  “I still don’t see why he would have involved himself in this.”

  I savored the last bite of roesti before answering. “Are you inviting me to speculate again?” I shrugged. “Money, love, sex, fear, and guilt. Pick one. I think that covers your choices. And why did Von Becker kill himself?”

  Guelli nodded. “Just two days after his money man dies.”

  “If he killed himself. He was being held at Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center on remand. At MCC they lump everybody in together. Bad guys and really bad guys. I spent one horrific night there waiting to be arraigned. It’s a zoo. I’d say just about anything could have happened there. So I don’t know what I believe about Von Becker dying. I’ve been told a lot of things.”

  “Have your friends at the FBI heard all this?”

  “No. I had to come here to see these connections. And remember, my interest here is limited. I’m not hunting down a murderer. I’m just trying to track down the money.”

  “But you still don’t know where the bonds are.”

  “Well, one last try on that score. What do you say?” I checked my watch. “I’ve still got time. Hours. Care to bring me by Biondi’s offices? Let’s see what shakes out when a senior Interpol officer stops by.”

  Guelli’s eyes lit up. “Get the check.”

  | 30 |

  The offices of Kuhn Lauber Biondi were less than a block away—a few steps down from the side entrance to the bank. The building was an unremarkable four-story redbrick structure built sometime between the Reformation and the First World War. The street-level entrance was a simple glass-paned white wooden door. I followed Guelli into a comfortable sitting room. The door chimed behind us, announcing our presence, but there was no one to greet us. Guelli seemed to take this as quite normal. He sat, shuffled through a pile of Swiss newspapers, and began to read. I set my briefcase on the floor and paced. We waited.

  There was a single door on the far wall—locked from this side, I found—and a small elevator built into the adjoining wall, a comparatively new feature, probably added to the building no more than
thirty or forty years earlier. The fireplace and a bare mantel occupied the fourth wall. A couch, two high-backed armchairs, a pair of matching end tables. No paintings or other artwork. The only windows were the glass panes in the door we had entered. A space to wait in, but not comfortably. The room was a sensory-deprivation chamber. The only sound was the crackle of the newspaper as Guelli turned pages. After ten minutes there, conversation with a lawyer would feel stimulating. I could feel my claustrophobia beginning to play tricks on me. Much longer and the walls would start moving.

  I sat down. “How long do we wait?”

  Guelli gave a small sigh at my impatience. “The receptionist is behind that door and is able to see us through that camera.” He looked pointedly at a tiny hole in the crown molding. “Though she will have been alerted by the door chime, she may be involved in some other work-related activity. She will eventually check her monitor and then come and check up on us. Such an arrangement is not uncommon here.”

  The door in the rear wall opened.

  “Et voilà.” Guelli smiled.

  A small gray-haired woman came in. Her face was all angles, but her body was all curves—like a snowman. Thick ankles peeked out from beneath a long gray skirt. Her shoes were black and sensible.

  She looked me over. “Welcome. Good afternoon.” She turned to Guelli and made another appraisal. “Buonasera, dottore. Come posso aiutarla?”

  Guelli rose from the chair and introduced himself in English. “We wish to speak with one of Herr Biondi’s colleagues. A senior partner.” He handed her one of his cards. “This is Mr. Stafford, an American who is assisting in our investigations.”

  If she was surprised or flustered, she hid it well. I couldn’t imagine that a visit from Interpol was an everyday occurrence.

  “One moment, gentlemen.” She turned and went back out the same door.