The search services had provided date-of-birth information for most of the names, along with last-known and previous addresses. Using the birth dates, I culled from my list anyone too old or too young to have dealt with MWB during the time that Alan Burrows was there. Ten names came off my list. That left me with two Whelans, three Bregmans, five Welches, and a single Michael Lenzi.
I then did an online search of publications for the four names, including in my survey the major dailies in the tristate area, a bunch of the suburban weeklies, several banking and finance trade rags, and Who’s Who. I cross- referenced the results with my remaining list, and was able to pare it down some more. I turned up a two-year-old feature in a New Jersey paper about a Nick Welch who was a riding instructor, training aspiring Olympians out near Gladstone. According to the article, he was a Jersey boy, born and bred, and lived in the same house that he’d grown up in. There was a Nick Welch with a Gladstone address on my list, who seemed to have no prior addresses. I crossed him off. I was similarly able to eliminate another Welch, who’d been convicted of torching his tire business in Stamford, Connecticut, a year ago, and a Bregman, whose obituary three years back noted his long career with Con Ed.
I found some likely candidates this way, too. The latest Who’s Who listed a Kenneth Whelan of Summit, New Jersey, who was a senior executive in corporate finance for a big Swiss bank. A brief piece in the Wall Street Journal, nearly three years ago, and a longer article in a trade rag from around the same time, reported that Steve Bregman was leaving his post at a big asset management firm to start his own hedge fund. The trade rag mentioned that Bregman made his home in Pound Ridge, New York. And Nick Welch of New Canaan, Connecticut, had received a two-paragraph obituary in his local paper eighteen months ago. He’d died in a boating accident on Long Island Sound, and had been head of fixed income sales at one of the largest broker-dealers on the Street. My list had a Whelan in Summit, a Bregman in Pound Ridge, and a Welch in New Canaan, and I’d put stars by each one.
First thing this morning I’d placed a call to the one Michael Lenzi left on my list, in Brooklyn Heights. A young-sounding woman had answered and given me an office number. I’d called it and found him. I’d told Lenzi the truth-or at least a version of it. His name had come up in the course of a confidential investigation, I’d said, and I wanted to meet with him. No, the investigation had nothing directly to do with him, but I was hoping that he could provide some background information. Lenzi had been wary, and curious. I’d cited my employer’s concern with confidentiality and assured him that I could elaborate when we met. He’d finally agreed to fit me in tomorrow afternoon.
I’d taken a run at Kenneth Whelan of Summit, New Jersey, this morning too, but with less luck. None of the search services or online directories had a phone number for this Whelan, and the reverse directories showed someone else now living at the Summit address. I’d called the main New York number of the Swiss bank that Who’s Who had given as Whelan’s employer. I’d bounced between a dozen departments before finding a pleasant woman with a lilting Jamaican accent who’d informed me that Kenneth Whelan had relocated to the bank’s Singapore office.
I’d called the other Kenneth Whelan on my list, in Rockland County, on the off chance that he too was a banker. No luck-he was in plumbing supplies. Singapore Whelan was likely my man. That was too bad, because I wanted to talk to these people face-to-face; I wanted to hear what they had to say, and to watch them as they said it. But for Whelan, the phone would have to do. Given the time difference, I’d try him tonight.
After my Whelan calls, I’d opened up the file Neary had given me on Trautmann, and dug out a phone number and an address for his company, Trident Security Consulting. Trautmann, it seemed, was running a new-economy outfit. The phone number got me an answering service, with an operator who could barely spell Trident. A reverse directory search revealed that the company’s address belonged to a commercial mail drop on Hillside Avenue, in Bellerose, Queens. According to the file, Trautmann’s home address was in Bellerose, too. A trip to Queens was in my future, then, but I wouldn’t be calling for an appointment first. I’d surprise Trautmann-after I’d had a chance to look him over.
My last calls this morning were to Mr. and Mrs. Pierro. I’d found Rick in his office, and he’d squeezed me into his calendar for tomorrow morning. I’d found Helene at home. She hadn’t seemed surprised by my call, or by my request to meet. She hadn’t seemed concerned or curious, either. Her only question was if one o’clock this afternoon would do. I’d said that it would.
After that, I’d worked out the kinks with a quick four miles along the Hudson. Then I’d showered and shaved, dressed in black corduroys, a pale yellow turtleneck, and a black leather jacket, and headed uptown to meet Helene.
“He’s on his last legs, really,” Helene said as she trailed after Alex. He was headed for the slides now. “Could you catch him at the bottom?” The slides were for bigger kids too, but Alex was undaunted.
“Sure,” I said, and followed. Helene spotted him on the ladder while I waited below. He made it to the top alright, but the slide was wet and slick, and his feet slipped out from under him as he was sitting down. He slid down fast on his back, with his feet in the air, and shot off the end of the slide. I caught him in midair and hoisted him up high, and he squealed with laughter. Helene came over, shaking her head.
“Thanks,” she said to me. She took Alex from me. “That’s enough for you, big man. You need a rest, right? How about a binky for you?” Alex rubbed his eyes.
“Binky,” he agreed. In short order, Helene had him in the stroller, chewing on a pacifier. She slipped a cap on his head and mittens over his hands, and adjusted the seat so that he was lying flat. She put on her coat and took a pair of chocolate-colored gloves from her pocket.
“Let’s walk a little, till he’s asleep. Then we can eat,” she said. We left the playground and followed a path south, toward the boat pond. By the time we got there, Alex was out cold.
The boat pond had been drained for the winter and there were plenty of empty benches around it to choose from. We picked a west-facing one. Helene opened the diaper bag and took out two paper-wrapped sandwiches on French bread, a couple of Granny Smith apples, a large bottle of water, paper cups and napkins. “I hope this is alright. I had some cookies in here, somewhere,” she said, still digging in the bag. She looked up at me. “You didn’t want a big sit-down lunch, did you?” I shook my head. “You pick-mozzarella with prosciutto or with tomato. Either one’s okay with me.” Her southern accent seemed more pronounced today.
“Tomato,” I said. She handed me a sandwich and started unwrapping hers. It wasn’t exactly the usual circumstance for conducting a sensitive interview: over a picnic lunch in the park, with the subject’s toddler sleeping nearby. Not what I would’ve chosen. If Helene had meant to disarm me, she’d made a fine start of it. She opened the bottle of water and poured us each a cup. It was probably a good idea to cut to the chase, before she started knitting me socks.
“You know what I’m working on for your husband?” I asked.
“That fax he got. Somebody’s trying to blackmail Rick because he did business with MWB way back when,” she said, and handed me a cup. I nodded.
“Does he know you’re talking to me today?” Her eyebrows went up.
“Of course. He told me to do all I could to help you.” I nodded again.
“I was down at what’s left of MWB last week, in Gerard Nassouli’s old office. I saw a photo you’d taken of him, some years ago.” She peeled off her gloves and took a bite of her sandwich. No response. Okay. “How long ago did you take it?”
“What did it look like?” she asked. I described it to her, and she nodded as I spoke. “That was a very long time ago. Let’s see… it must be thirteen… no, fourteen years back.” She took another bite of her sandwich.
“Before you’d met Rick?” She nodded. “When did you meet Nassouli?”
“Not long after I first came to town. About fifteen years ago.”
“How did you meet him?” She thought for a moment.
“I’m not really sure. It was at a party, I know that. I think one of my roommates knew him. I was living with about a half-dozen girls back then, in a real ratty place in the East Village. Third-floor walk-up, bathroom in the kitchen, that kind of thing. The oldest girl was maybe twenty-two, and not a one of us had been in town longer than a year. I think one of them maybe dated him for a while.”
“And you-did you date him too?” She looked up at me, with only the faintest smile on her face.
“Yes, I did. I dated him too, for a while.”
“How long a while was that?”
“Three or four months, I think.” We were quiet for a minute, working on our sandwiches. I drank some water. Alex sighed heavily and settled into some deeper level of sleep. The wind rippled puddles in the bottom of the boat
