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 Eleven
“ ‘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.”