“Curly Joe had been married for several years to a beautiful young woman, a former model, who he’d met at one of Nassouli’s parties. She was a little wild back then, a little too fond of champagne, a little too eager for a few lines in the powder room. But when they’d met she’d been ready to settle down, and so too had Curly. They’d married, and had a baby less than a year later. Curly was by no means a saint, far from it, but he did love his wife, Mr. March. Everyone who knew him knew that about him.
“Well, Curly was determined to go his own way, and after much tension, Gerard seemed resigned to it. In fact, Gerard even invited him out-a combination reconciliation and farewell. It was a pleasant enough evening, they’d made the rounds of all their old haunts, and finally ended up at Nassouli’s for a nightcap.”
Burrows’s voice was soft and rock steady, but his eyes were red and swollen-looking.
“He gave Curly some brandy and suggested, for old times’ sake, a private screening. Curly balked-those things made him a little ill-but Gerard insisted. Besides, he said, he had a good one from the old days, one Curly hadn’t seen before.” Burrows stopped. He breathed deeply.
“I think you see where this is going, Mr. March.” He was matter-of-fact now. “Suffice it to say, it was Curly’s wife on the tape, the mother of his child. She was with two other women, two of Gerard’s stripper friends, and a man. The man was someone Curly knew, another associate of Nassouli’s, a particularly brutal person. Curly didn’t watch much of it, but from what he saw they were drinking, and freebasing cocaine as well. There didn’t seem to be any coercion involved. Though intoxicated, Curly’s wife-actually his fiancee at the time, according to the time stamp on the video-was energetic and quite vocal, and she seemed to be the center of attention for the man and the other two women.” Burrows paused and cleared his throat. “Gerard had a point to make-about having made Curly what he was, and that Curly should have no illusions about that, should have no illusions about himself or any of the things in his life that Gerard had given him. He made his point.”
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 edgesprocuring 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.”