Numbered Account (25 page)

Joseph could be trusted.

Mevlevi stared at Abu Abu’s head. His eyes were open, his mouth twisted in agony. Hardly a fitting death for a servant of Islam.
Rest in peace
, he said silently.
Your death will be avenged ten thousand-fold
.

Nick stepped into his apartment and was immediately struck by an odor that hadn’t been there that morning. It was a faint smell, not far from the lemon wax he had used to polish mess tables in the Corps.
Not far —
but not it, either. It had a milder flavor, its own distinct signature. He shut the door behind him and locked it, then walked to the center of his one-room palace. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his nose. He caught the elusive scent again but could not recognize it. All he could say was that it was foreign. It didn’t belong here.

Nick willed himself to move slowly, to examine every inch of his apartment from carpet to ceiling. His clothing was untouched. His books were in place. If anything, the papers on his desk were stacked too neatly. Still he knew. He could feel it, sure as if they’d slid a calling card under the door.

Someone had been in his apartment.

Nick lifted his nose into the air and sniffed several times. He caught the foreign smell dead on. A waft of men’s cologne, something thick and sweet, something expensive. Something he’d never worn in his life.

Nick walked to the dresser where he kept his shirts and sweaters, and opened the bottom drawer. He reached beneath a sweatshirt and feeling the comforting heft of his side arm, allowed himself to relax a little. He had brought his service-issue Colt Commander with him from New York. It had been easy enough. He’d disassembled it and stashed its components in the corners of his suitcase to smuggle it through airport security. The bullets he’d purchased in Zurich. He pulled the holster from the drawer and tossed it onto the bed, then sat down next to it. Drawing the pistol, he checked to see if a round was still chambered. He drew back the slide and peered into the firing breech. The brass jacket of a .45-caliber hollow point smiled back at him. He released the slide and guided his finger inside the trigger guard. His thumb fell to the safety. It was off. Nick stood abruptly. Through habit long ingrained, he kept his pistol “cocked and locked.” Hammer back, safety on. He brushed his finger up and down against the safety, seeing if the pinion had loosened, allowing the safety to move to the off position of its own accord. But the switch was firm. Only an intentional flick downward would disarm the safety.

Nick replaced the pistol in its holster, stuck it back in the bottom drawer, then moved to the doorway. He tried to visualize the motions of the person who had been inside his apartment. He could see a phantomlike shape moving from one side of the room to the other. Who had sent him? Thorne and his friends in the U.S. government? Or was it someone from the bank? Maeder or Schweitzer or one of their underlings assigned to check up on the new man from America? Nick crossed the room and sat on his bed. A picture of the green mountain guide’s hat and the spare, olive-skinned man wearing it came to him. Had his stalker been the one who’d broken into his apartment?

Nick had no answer to any of his questions. He shuddered as a profound sense of insecurity overcame him. He felt an irrational need to check on the few treasured items he had brought with him from the States. He knew everything would be in its place, but he needed to see them and to touch them. They were the outermost extremities of his own self, and he had to be sure they had not been violated.

Nick hurried into the bathroom and picked up his shaving kit. He unzipped it and looked inside. A small blue box with the words Tiffany & Co. embossed on its lid occupied one corner. He removed the box and opened it. A chamois pouch of the same robin’s egg blue rested on a bed of puffed cotton. He picked up the pouch and turned it upside down. A sterling silver Swiss army knife fell into his palm. Engraved on it were the words “Love Forever, Anna.” Her good-bye present, delivered on Christmas Eve. Under the bed of cotton, folded into a tight square, was the letter that had accompanied it. He unfolded the letter and read.

My dearest Nicholas,
The holiday season finds me thinking more and more about all that we had together and all that we could have had. I can’t imagine that you’re no longer a part of my life. I can only hope that your heart doesn’t feel as empty as mine. I remember when I first saw you dashing across Harvard Yard. You looked so funny with that patch of hair on top of your head, walking everywhere as if you were in a race. I was even a little scared of you the first time you spoke to me in front of Dr. Galbraith’s econ class. Did you know that? Your beautiful eyes were so serious and your arms were wrapped so tightly around your books I thought you’d crush them. I guess you were nervous, too.
Nick, know that I never stop wondering how it would have been if I went with you to Switzerland. I know you’ve convinced yourself I didn’t go only because of my career but there was so much more than that. Friends, family, lifelong aspirations. Most of all, though, there was YOU. Our relationship ended when you came back from your mother’s funeral. You weren’t the same anymore. I’d spent a year prying you out of your cocoon, making you open up and talk to me like a normal human being. Teaching you to trust me! Convincing you that not every woman was like your mother. (I’m sorry if that still hurts.) I remember seeing you sitting with Daddy at my birthday party in June, you two big lugs drinking beers and swapping stories like old buddies. We loved you, Nick. All of us. When you came back after Thanksgiving, you’d changed. You didn’t smile anymore. You retreated into your own little world. Back to being a stupid soldier on a stupid mission that will never change anything about today and tomorrow and what we could have had. We could never have a future together until you stopped living in the past. I am sorry for what happened to your father, but that’s over and done. You’ve got me going on this all over again. You do that to me, Nicholas Neumann.
Anyway . . . I saw this in Tiffany and thought of you.
Love forever,
Anna

Nick folded the letter. Running his fingers over its soft creases he could hear her whispering in his ear as they made love in his third-floor walk-up in Boston. “
We’ll take Manhattan, Nick
.” He could almost feel her legs wrapped around his back, her teeth biting down on his ear. He could see her under him. “
Fuck me, Marine. We’re going to the top. You and me, together
.”

And then the picture changed.

Nick is grasping Anna’s slender arms outside his apartment. It is the last time he will see her, and he is fighting to explain himself, frustrated at the insufficiency of words to translate his emotions. “Don’t you understand that I wanted everything as much as you, maybe more. I don’t have a choice. Can’t you see? This has to come first.”

Now as then, Anna stared back at him mutely, understanding but not comprehending. His memory faded and he wondered whether he had really said those words. Or if he had just wanted to.

Nick put the knife away and set it inside the shaving kit. Continuing on his tour of bittersweet memories, he left the bathroom and walked the few steps to the bookshelves. He’d only brought his favorites with him, books he’d had for a long time, stories he’d read four or five times. He selected his copy of Homer’s
Iliad
, German text, and reading the title on its spine, smiled. Every time he picked up the book he had the same thought: What kind of asshole actually reads this crap? It was just that kind of thinking that had made him attack this book, and dozens of others like it, in the first place.

Nick turned the paperback upside down and shook it. A small photograph fell to the floor. He picked it up and stared into his past. Squad 3, Echo Company at Jungle Warfare school in Florida. He was standing on the far left, twenty pounds lighter, face greased with jungle cammie. Next to him, a head shorter, stood Gunny Ortiga, skin painted so dark you could only see his pearly whites. And next to him Sims, Medjuck, Illsey, Leonard, Edwards, and Yerkovic. They’d all been with him in the P.I. He wondered what sea they were floating on tonight.

Nick replaced the paperback and drew a volume from the shelf above it. It was a leather-bound book, taller and slimmer than the rest. His father’s agenda for 1978. Nick placed it gently on the desk, then went into the bathroom and found an unused double-edged razor blade. He returned to the desk, sat down, and opened the front cover of the agenda. He slid the razor under the upper left-hand corner of the yellow paper lining the inside cover and sawed it slowly back and forth. After three or four passes, the razor cut through the epoxy bond, and the yellow page came free. He folded it back and extracted a wrinkled piece of paper lying under it.

Nick held the police report concerning his father’s murder in one hand, the razor blade in the other, and sighed gratefully. His secret admirer hadn’t found the report. Thank God for that. He threw the razor blade in the wastebasket and laid the report down so he could take a good look at it. One ear was ripped and there was a perfect brown halo staining the lower half of the paper where a detective had rested his coffee mug. Still, all the facts were there, and Nick was reading them for the thousand and first time before he could even think of stopping himself.

Administrative facts were typed in a series of rectangular boxes across the top of the sheet. Date: January 31, 1980. Detective in charge: W. J. Lee, Lieutenant. Criminal Violation: Code 187 — Homicide. Time of death: approx. 9:00 P.M. Cause of death: multiple gunshot wounds. The box marked “Suspects” held the initials N.S.A. — no suspect apprehended. Below these facts was a large blank area, about a quarter of a page in size, where Detective Lee provided a description of the events. At 9:05 P.M., Sergeants M. Holloway and B. Schiff responded to a call of shots fired at 10602 Stone Canyon Drive. Sergeants Holloway and Schiff found the victim, Alexander Neumann, age 40, lying prone in the entryway to the home. The victim had been shot three times in the upper abdomen by a high-caliber weapon at close range (powder marks visible). Victim was deceased at time of officers’ arrival. The front door to the residence was open. The lock was intact. No other individuals were present. No sign of struggle. No determination yet made as to the state of articles in the home. Call requesting immediate dispatch of homicide detectives was made to West Los Angeles police headquarters at 9:15 P.M. Case forwarded to above filing detective.

A red stamp bearing the letters N.F.A. — No further action — and the date July 31, 1980, was emblazoned across the report. Nick had found it among his mother’s possessions in Hannibal. He’d called the L.A.P.D. to request a copy of the investigating detective’s final report and the coroner’s inquest but learned that both had been destroyed in a fire at Parker Center ten years earlier. He even tried calling Detective Lee but found he’d retired and left no forwarding address, at least none for disgruntled relatives of unsolved murder victims.

Nick examined the page for a while longer, reading his father’s name over again and again, and the word that followed it: homicide. He recalled the picture of him at his going-away party in 1967, twenty-seven years old, happy as hell to be going to America. His first big step up. He could practically hear the laughter and the revelry. He could feel his father’s joy in his own heart. He thought back to those nightly homework reviews, his father cradling his hands. He saw himself hugging his father on that mountaintop in Arosa. He had never felt closer to him than at that moment.

A flashbulb burst and he was standing in the rain looking down at his father’s dead body, staring into the pool of blood.

Suddenly, Nick sobbed. A great choking explosion from deep in his gut. He slammed his hand on the desk and held his breath, hoping to rob himself of the very air he needed to give vent to his emotions. But after a moment, he relented, sucking in a deep breath and expelling it just as quickly. “I’m sorry, Dad,” he managed to whisper in a voice as wounded as his soul.

Tears fell from his eyes, and for the first time since his father died seventeen years ago, he cried.

The time was eleven P.M. and for the second time that day, Nick stood in front of an unfamiliar apartment, waiting for the buzzer to sound that would grant him admittance. He had called ahead and was expected — if that’s how you could term a halfhearted response to a plea for company late on a Friday night. He pulled his overcoat close around his neck, fending off the insistent cold. Open the door, Sylvia. You know it’s me. The poor slob who called an hour ago saying that if he didn’t get out of his grim apartment and see a friendly face he’d go crazy.

The buzzer rang and he was inside, tripping over himself to get down the stairs leading to her doorway. The door was ajar. He could see the outline of her face checking if he was shit-face drunk or hopped up on drugs. But it was only him. Nicholas Neumann, eager bank trainee, feeling more tired, more uncertain, and more alone than he could remember.

The light went on inside the hallway, and the door swung open. Sylvia Schon stood back and with a wag of her head motioned for him to enter. She was wearing a red flannel bathrobe and heavy woolen socks that drooped low around her ankles, as if ashamed to cover up such gorgeous territory. Her hair was loose around her face, and she had on the heavy eyeglasses that he hadn’t seen since his first day at work. The look on her face said she was not amused.

“Mr. Neumann, I am hoping you have something very important to discuss. When I said I’d be happy to do anything for you, it was in reference to . . .”

“Nick,” he said softly. “My name is Nick. And you said that if I ever needed anything, to give you a call. I realize this is an odd time to visit and right now I’m standing here asking myself why exactly I’m here, but if we go inside and have a cup of coffee or something, I’m sure we can get this straightened out.”