Numbered Account Page 50

  Nick peered at the sad building. He didn’t know whether to ring the bell and wait for an answer or to hide in the shadows in the hope that Burki would come out and be somehow recognizable. Meanwhile Yogi Bauer’s words seeped into his mind.“Don’t look for him. Has to stay near the source, doesn’t he?”

  A commotion in the vestibule of Burki’s apartment building caught Nick’s eye. He made out two men grappling each other inside the glass doorway. It was impossible to tell what was going on, so he took a step into the alley to get a better view. Just then, the two men stumbled from the building. The taller of the two, a thin man with gaunt cheeks and sunken eyes, supported the short man, a wan figure in a dark Sunday suit. Jesus Christ, Nick whispered, the short one was Yogi Bauer. He could hear him swearing and cursing as he stumbled out into the alleyway.

  “Du kommst mit?You’re coming with me, right?” Yogi asked over and over.

  Nick retreated into the doorway of the antique shop and pretended to study a Louis XVI chaise. He watched out of the corner of his eye as the taller, gray-haired man, who he figured was Caspar Burki, led Bauer down the street. He bet he knew where they were going. Sure enough, they headed straight for the Keller Stubli. Nick followed at a safe distance, not wanting to confront Burki with Yogi Bauer present. But then a strange thing happened. When the two men reached the Keller Stubli, Burki refused to go inside. He stood there for a few minutes, hearing Bauer’s abusive epithets and vehement protestations until Bauer gave up and went inside alone.

  Caspar Burki adjusted his overcoat, gathering it tightly around him, then set off at a rapid pace down the Niederdorf. Destination unknown.

  CHAPTER

  58

  Caspar Burki had an appointment to keep. That much Nick knew for certain. The old man walked with his head bowed and his shoulders pressed forward as if fighting a rising wind. The rhythm of his feet assumed a perfect cadence, and Nick fell into his step, matching him stride for stride. He listened to the steady tap of his own feet on the wet cobblestones and remembered learning to march at Brown Field in Quantico, Virginia. He could practically hear the sergeant instructor’s strained voice yelling at him, even now.

  What are you, Neumann? A walkie-talkie? Keep your mouth shut and your eyes straight ahead. That’s right, troop. Hands cupped to the crease of your trousers, heels to the ground! Left, left, left right left.

  Nick maintained a cautious distance, imagining a taut fifty-foot rope strung between him and Burki. He followed the spindly man down the Niederdorfstrasse toward Central, and from there across the bridge toward the Bahnhofplatz. He was sure Burki was heading for the main station, but then Burki veered to the right toward the Swiss National Museum. His path skirted the Platzspitz, taking him north along the banks of the river Limmat. Nick had no idea where Burki was going.

  The city took on an unsettled feeling. Nick passed an abandoned factory, windows broken and doors boarded up, and a deserted apartment building wrapped in colorful graffiti. He hadn’t known Zurich hid such run-down neighborhoods. Clusters of kids, mostly in their teens, cropped up on the sidewalk. Some were headed in the opposite direction, and they stared at Nick, with his short hair and clean clothing, with undisguised contempt. The sidewalk grew dirtier, littered with empty candy wrappers, crushed soda cans, and a million cigarette butts. Soon, he wasn’t able to walk without stepping in a pile of refuse.

  “He has to be near the source,”Yogi Bauer had said.

  Nick slowed as he saw Caspar Burki cross a wooden footbridge that spanned the Limmat. A ragged assortment of lowlifes crowded the railing. Ill-shaven men wrapped in scarred leather coats, grubby women bundled in frayed sweaters. Burki hunched his shoulders, as if trying to make himself thinner, less obtrusive than he already was, and walked between them. Nick could hear the planks rattle under the old man’s tread, and in their staccato stamp he felt the fluttering of his own hollow stomach. He knew where the bridge led. Letten. The city’s public shooting gallery.Caspar Burki’s source.

  Nick crossed the bridge, working hard not to appear as anxious as he felt. A stubby, bearded man stepped in his path. “Hey, Johnny Handsome,” the man said to Nick, “you sure you’re in the right place? We don’t give manicures around here.” He smiled, revealing a dingy set of teeth, then stepped closer. “Fifty francs. That’s as low as I’ll go. You won’t find any better. Not today. Not when there’s a drought.”

  Nick jabbed two fingers into the man’s chest, ready to take him down. “I’m already taken care of. Thanks anyway.”

  He retreated easily, lifting his arms in surrender. “When you come back, it’ll be seventy francs. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Nick walked past him, concerned that he might lose sight of Caspar Burki. He asked himself what he was doing here. What could he expect to learn from a junkie? He inched by a teenage girl squatting on her haunches at the top of the far steps. She held a syringe in her hand and had just found a vein to slide the needle into. Drops of blood fell from her arm, spattering the cement. He descended the steps at the far side of the bridge and took his first look at the abandoned station.

  It was a picture as foreign as the surface of the moon.

  A restless tide of shabby men and women ambled back and forth across a wide cement platform. There were around a hundred of them, maybe more, and they were arranged into small encampments of five or six persons. Here and there, fires burned from rusted oil barrels. A swamplike haze hovered between platform and ceiling. Above his head, spray painted in cheap black Krylon, were the words“Welcome to Babylon.”

  The place was squalor. It was death.

  Nick saw that Burki had reached his destination—a circle of doddering addicts his own age at the far end of the station. A scrawny hen of a woman was preparing a dose of heroin for a man who didn’t look much different from Burki. Shorter maybe, but just as thin and with that same starved look to his eyes. The “nurse” rolled up the man’s sleeve and laid his bony arm across a slapdash wooden table. She tied a short length of rubber tubing around his arm, snapping at his veins to make them stand out more prominently. Satisfied, she popped the needle into his arm. She pulled back the syringe to allow his blood to mix with the opiate, then patiently pumped the drug into his arm. With maybe an eighth of the bloody payload remaining, she withdrew the syringe from the addict’s arm, balled her fist, then jabbed the needle into her own arm. A second later, she pressed the plunger, mixing the addict’s opiated blood with her own. Finished, she tossed the used needle into a white plastic bag with a Red Cross decal on it. The “nurse” raised her forearm to her bicep, as if she had just received her annual flu shot, said a few words to the addict, then leaned over and gave him a polite peck on each cheek. Decorum. The addict lurched away from the makeshift table, and Caspar Burki stepped forward to take his place.

  Nick hung back for a long second. He realized that it wouldn’t be any good talking to Burki after he’d gotten his dose and fixed. His only hope was to move quickly and get ahold of the old man before he shot up. He wasn’t sure how to intervene. He’d figure it out when he got there.

  Nick crossed the platform as quickly as he could. He tried hard not to look at the hollow-eyed men and women combing their bodies for veins firm enough to fix in. Still, with a fascination he could only label macabre, he was unable to shut his eyes. A teenager had tapped out a vein on his lower neck and was showing his buddy where to put the needle. A middle-aged woman had lowered her pants and sat legs splayed on the cement floor while she shot up in the crook of her thigh. A waifish girl of five or six sat next to her. Helluva place to bring your kid on a Sunday afternoon.

  A squad of policemen loitered at the far end of the station—Sondercommandos,by the blue riot gear they sported. They smoked, arms resting easily on the butts of their submachine guns, backs turned to their charges. This wasn’t their battle. The city preferred to gather its addicts in one place where it could keep an eye on them. Containment without confrontation: the Swiss way.

/>   Nick reached the unsteady table just as Burki was taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeve. He took a hundred francs from his wallet and handed it to the wrinkled woman administering the shots. “This is for my friend Caspar. That should be good for two fixes, right?”

  Burki looked at him and said, “Who the hell are you?”

  The woman snatched the bill from Nick’s hand and said, “Are you crazy, Cappy? The boy wants to buy you a present. Take it.”

  Nick said, “I need to talk to you for a few minutes, Mr. Burki. About some mutual friends. It won’t take long, but I’d prefer to speak with you before—” his hands searched the air for the right words, “before you do this. If you don’t mind.”

  Burki hesitated for a moment. His eyes shifted between Nick and the scraggly woman. “Mutual friends? Like who?”

  “Yogi Bauer, for one. I had a few drinks with him last night.”

  “Poor Yogi. Pity what alcohol will do to you.” Burki squinted his eyes. “You’re Neumann’s boy. He warned me about you.”

  Nick said yes, he was Alex Neumann’s son, and in a calm voice introduced himself. “I work at the United Swiss Bank. I have a few questions about Allen Soufi.”

  Burki grunted. “Don’t know the man. Now run along and get out of here. Be a good boy and go home to your mommy. It’s nap time.”

  The “nurse” laughed hysterically. Nick told her to give him his money back and when he had it, grabbed Burki by the arm and backed him up a few steps. “Listen, you either talk to me now and take advantage of my goodwill, or I’m going to drag you over to the boys in the blue and tell them you’re a thief.” Nick crumpled up the hundred-franc note and stuffed it into Burki’s hand. “Understand me?”

  Burki spat in his face. “You’re a bastard. Like your father.”

  “Believe it,” said Nick, and wiping the saliva from his cheek, he took his first close look at Burki. The man’s skin was a decaying parchment, dotted with open sores and stretched tight across his skull. His eyes were sunken blue orbs. His upper lip was split, and a tooth black with rot shone beneath it. He was a long way down the track.

  Suddenly, Burki relaxed and shrugged his shoulders. “Give me a little taste now and I’ll talk to you. I’m afraid I can’t wait much longer. Wouldn’t be any good to you then, would I?”

  “You’ve got your hundred. You can wait. Maybe I’ll throw in a little extra because I appreciate what a good memory you have. Deal?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Sure, go home, take a hot shower, and curl up with a good book. I’ll walk you back to make sure you get there safely.”

  Burki swore under his breath, then grabbed his coat from the wooden trestle and put it on. He motioned for Nick to follow him and led the way to the back wall of the station. He cleared away a spot with his feet and sat down. Stifling his every survivor’s instinct, Nick cleared his own small patch and sat down.

  “Allen Soufi,” Nick repeated. “Tell me about him.”

  “Why do you want to know about Soufi?” Burki asked. “What brought you to me for God’s sake?”

  “I’ve been checking some of the papers my father wrote just before he was murdered. Soufi figures prominently in them. I saw that you recommended him as a client to the Los Angeles branch of USB. I thought that you might have known him pretty well.”

  “Mr. Allen Soufi. That goes back a ways.” He reached into his jacket and took out a pack of cigarettes. His hand shook as he lit one. “Smoke?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Burki inhaled for a full five seconds. “You’re a man of your word, are you? You’ll keep your end of the bargain?”

  Nick took out another hundred-franc note, folded it, and slipped it into his own breast pocket. “Your reward.”

  Burki hesitated, eyeing the bill, then began talking.

  “Soufi was one of my clients,” said Burki. “Kept a good-size chunk of his fortune with us. Around thirty million francs, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “What do you mean he was one of your clients?”

  “I was Allen Soufi’s portfolio manager. Of course, he held a numbered account—but I knew his name.”

  Nick thought back to the list of portfolio managers attached to Mevlevi’s file. He could not recall having seen the name Burki, or the more distinctive Caspar.

  Burki said, “One day my old boss comes in and asks me to recommend Soufi to your father. Told me Soufi wanted to do business with the Los Angeles branch.”

  “Who was your boss?”

  “He still works at the bank. His name is Armin Schweitzer.”

  “Schweitzer told you to recommend Soufi to my father?”

  Burki nodded. “Right away I knew not to ask why. I mean, there could only be one reason for Armin to call me.” He spread his hands in a great arc. “Distance. Separating the old man from the client.”

  “The old man?”

  “Kaiser. I mean, who else got him out of the mess back in London town? Schweitzer was Kaiser’s boy. He got all the nasty jobs.”

  “You’re saying Schweitzer asked you to recommend Allen Soufi to my father just to distance Wolfgang Kaiser from the entire affair?”

  “Benefit of my superb hindsight. At the time I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I just found it a little strange that Soufi hadn’t asked me for the introduction. He never said a word about Los Angeles.”

  Of course, he didn’t, thought Nick. The big plans went through Kaiser.

  “Well, I didn’t make a stink of things. I did what I was told and forgot about it. Wrote a letter: “Dear Alex, following individual is a client of mine, someone who has worked with the bank in the past, please extend your full services to him. Any questions or references please revert back. Sincerely, Cap.’ End of letter. I was happy to be of service. Loyal soldier, that’s me.”

  “And that was the end of it?” Nick asked, knowing full well it wasn’t.

  Burki didn’t answer. His eyelids closed and his breathing slowed. Suddenly, he jerked violently and his eyes opened. He brought his cigarette to his mouth and inhaled desperately.

  Nick looked away, seized by a profound sense of the absurd. His entire world was off-kilter. Sitting in a decrepit shooting gallery, freezing his ass off, talking to an aging junkie, and actually entertaining hopes that he might get a measure of truth from him. Anna had been right, hadn’t she? He was obsessed. How else could he explain bringing himself to this place?

  “If only,” Burki snorted, unaware of his lapse. “Six or seven months passed. One day your father rings me up directly. He was curious if I knew more about Allen Soufi than I had mentioned in my introductory letter. “What’s the problem?’ I asked. “He’s doing too much business,’ said your father. I wondered, “How could anybody dotoo much business?”’

  Nick was puzzled, but only for a moment. “My father was referring to Goldluxe?”

  Burki smiled queerly, as if displeased that Nick knew so much. “Yes, it was about Goldluxe.”

  “Go on.” Dusk was falling. More people streamed into the abandoned station.

  “Allen Soufi owned a chain of jewelry stores in Los Angeles: Goldluxe, Inc. He wanted USB to be his bank of record. Take deposits, pay his bills, establish letters of credit to finance imports. Alex asked me what exactly I knew about Soufi, and I told him everything—well, almost everything. Soufi was a Middle Eastern client with around thirty million francs on deposit at the bank. Not a man to toy with. I told your father to do as he says. But, Alex, him listen? Never! It wasn’t long before Schweitzer called and started pounding me for information about your father. “What did Alex Neumann say about Soufi? Did he mention any problems?’ I told Schweitzer to get off my back. I said your dad had called once, that was it.”

  “What was Goldluxe up to?”

  Burki ignored the question. He took out his pack of cigarettes and tried to extract one. He couldn’t. His hand was shaking too violently. He dropped the pack of cigarettes, then looked at Nick. “Kid, you c
an’t keep me waiting. Now’s the time. Understand?”

  Nick picked up the pack of cigarettes, lit one, and put it in Burki’s mouth. “You’ve got to stay with me a little longer. Just till we get to the end of this.”

  Burki closed his eyes and inhaled. Buoyed by the blast of nicotine, he went on. “Next time I was in Zurich, Schweitzer and I went out for a night on the town. Armin didn’t have anyone to go home to—that washis choice. My wife had divorced me long before. We started at the Kronenhalle, ran down to the Old Fashioned, and ended the night at the King’s Club, totally bombed, a couple of fancy women on our arms. It was November 24, 1979, my thirty-eighth birthday.”

  Nick looked at Burki more closely. The man was only fifty-eight years old. My God, he looked seventy if he looked a day. Despite the cold, a sheen of perspiration matted his features. He was starting to hurt.

  “We’d already had a couple drinks when I brought up Soufi. “Whatever happened between him and Alex Neumann?’ I asked. I wasn’t really curious one way or the other, just making conversation. Well, Schweitzer turned red, and then green, blew a fucking gasket. Alex Neumann this, Alex Neumann that, arrogant bastard, elitist, above the rules, doesn’t take orders from anyone, out of control. On and on, for an hour. Jesus, did he have a hard-on for your father! Finally, I calmed him down and got the whole story out of him.

  “Seems your father met with Soufi once, thought he was okay—no more crooked than the next guy—and set him up with a numbered account. A little later he took on Goldluxe as a standard commercial account. Goldluxe sold gold jewelry, mostly small stuff—chains, wedding rings, pendants, cheap crap. For a while, everything went swimmingly. But soon Alex noticed that these four stores were generating over two hundred thousand dollars a week in sales. That’s eight hundred grand a month, near ten million if they kept it up for the year. I guess your dad went down to the stores, introduced himself, and had a look around. After that, the jig was up PDQ.”