Peter Spiegelman - Black Maps

Vetter had swiveled around to look at me with the beginnings of curiosity. He drummed his fingers slowly on the desk, waiting for more questions and wondering. But before I could ask anything else, Neary suggested that we let them get back to work. He got up and thanked them and headed for the door.

“Too many questions?” I asked, when we were back in the hallway. Neary nodded.

“Vetter’s antennas were starting to wiggle,” he said.

“Sorry. I liked that system, though. Seems like it could tell me a lot about what I’m interested in. Documents written by Nassouli, documents found in his office, everyone who’s asked to see them.”

“We’ll get there, don’t worry. Besides, I can answer some of those questions, without any system,” Neary said. “You want all the documents found in Nassouli’s office? It’s a real short list. Nothing, not a scrap of paper-not unless you count a yellow sticky pad and a box of tissues.” I must have looked puzzled.

“We think he had himself a little shredding party before he hit the road,” Neary explained. “Some of the other execs did the same, and it didn’t make Shelly and her crew very happy when they figured it out. Speaking of which, you want to know who’s been asking for Nassouli’s documents? The feds will top that list. Until a few months ago, they were all over anything that had to do with him. They got copies of everything he wrote or was copied on or that made reference to him.”

“And what happened a few months ago?”

Neary shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly. Five, six months ago, it just stopped. No more requests. No more noise about him at all from the feds. And they get a little prickly on the topic. Not that I press.”

“So… what, you think they found him?” I asked.

“You never know with those guys,” Neary said, and raised his eyebrows. “Maybe we should call Freddy and ask. He’ll be happy to share. Come on upstairs. You can have a look at the Parsons people, and then we’ll poke around on the system.” I followed him back through the metal door to the reception area and the elevators.

The fourth-floor reception area was identical to the third, except for the guard behind the desk. This one was a heavyset white guy in his middle fifties, with a florid face and reddish hair that was going fast to white.

“Hi, Tim,” Neary said. “He’s with me-signed him in downstairs.” Tim nodded, and Neary opened the metal door with his card key. Four had the same square doughnut layout as three. It had the same forest of shelves and the same abandoned feel, too. I followed Neary to another corner, and another cluster of offices. He gave me some more background as we walked.

“Like Cheryl said, Parsons mainly does the liquidation work. The committee brought them on first thing, even before we got here. They’ve got forty-plus people here in New York, and probably another sixty or seventy in the other offices around the world. The partner running the engagement shows up here for an hour or two every month, and spends most of that time schmoozing the management committee. The real guy in charge is Evan Mills. Sort of an asshole, but a bright guy, once you get past the aging preppy thing.” Neary gave a little laugh. “Hey-you two might have a lot in common. He should be around here somewhere.”

We walked into a conference room. It was long and windowless, painted white and very brightly lit. Half a dozen computers had been set up on the metal and plastic conference table, and three men were gathered around one of them, peering at the monitor. They looked at us but gave no greeting.

“Mills?” Neary asked.

“Project office,” one of the men answered and gestured with his thumb. The three heads bent again to the monitor.

I followed Neary next door, to a room that was more walk-in filing cabinet than office. It was about eight by ten feet and fluorescent-lit, and nearly all the wall space was covered by shelves. Most of the shelves were filled with big, white loose-leaf binders labeled “Time Sheets” and “Expenses.” Some bore the Brill logo, but most were stamped with the Parsons and Perkins chop. A small metal desk was jammed into the back of the room. Its top was crowded with a computer, a telephone, a fax, in and out trays, stacks of blank forms, and, just now, a pair of worn deck shoes.

The shoes belonged to a young man sprawled in the chair behind the desk. He had a telephone handset propped on his shoulder, and a big white binder in his lap. He was listening to someone, and he rolled his slightly bulging gray eyes at us in exaggerated boredom. He ran a hand over a broad forehead and through a tangle of blond hair. Then he smiled and made a “yackety-yak” hand gesture and shot Neary with a thumb and forefinger. Besides the deck shoes, he wore baggy khakis and a navy blue sweater over a blue striped shirt. His sleeves were pushed up over wiry forearms, and on his wrist was a thick metal watch that looked like it had been carved from the instrument panel of a fighter jet.

On closer inspection, the man aged a dozen years. There were streaks of gray in the blond hair, and a web of fine lines around his eyes and his wide, almost lipless mouth. The hint of color on his sharp nose was from broken capillaries, not sunburn. I put him at forty, plus or minus. He ran a hand through his hair again and spoke into the phone.

“Yes, Mrs. Cleaver, we’ll get that over right away,” he said with mock sincerity. “And then will you let the Beav come out and play?” He listened some more and sat up quickly. His hand tightened around the phone, and he answered back with venom, “You think this is a bad attitude? Come down here and talk to my people. They haven’t had expenses reimbursed in over two months because you and your fucking bureaucrats can’t get the paperwork right. My attitude is nothing compared to theirs. I’ll resend the damn file, but-trust me-this is the last time we’re going to have this conversation. The next time I’m taking it up with the engagement partner, and you can explain to him why you keep fucking this up.” He slammed down the phone, and as soon as he did all traces of anger disappeared.

“What clowns. Trying to get accounts to process expenses, it’s like dealing with the fucking IRS,” he chuckled to himself. He put the binder on the desk and stood, stretching. He smiled at Neary and put out his hand. “It’s J. Edgar himself. How’re you doing, Hoov?” They shook. Hoov?

Neary smiled, with only a trace of strain, and made introductions. “Evan, this is John. John-Evan Mills. I’m giving John a little tour of the operation, and I was hoping you could give him a quick overview of what Parsons is doing.” Mills gave me a surprisingly strong handshake.

“Anything for you, Hoov, you know that. You another fallen G-man?” Mills asked me. I smiled but said nothing.

“Not saying, huh? Eyes only, need to know, you could tell me, but then you’d have to kill me-I get it.” He laughed and moved past us, into the corridor. Neary and I followed. Mills walked, and reeled off a practiced chatter as he went.

“I assume Hoov has given you the basics of who does what, right? So you know that Parsons is focused on the liquidation work. That’s meat-and-potatoes forensic accounting. But what does that mean, really? I always say that forensic accounting is like archeology, but not as messy, and you don’t get to camp out. They’re both about collecting a million tiny, unremarkable pieces of dirt, to build a picture of something from the past. In this case, the thing we’re rebuilding is MWB’s balance sheet.” Mills liked the sound of his own voice, and didn’t pause or even glance back at us as he spoke.

“I’m guessing you have no accounting background. No one does, except accountants, and even they’re not happy about it. So I’ll keep the jargon to a minimum. A balance sheet is basically a tally of a firm’s assets and liabilities. The assets are what it owns; the liabilities are what it owes. Creating this takes some sweat, but it’s not usually rocket science. For a bank, tallying the assets is a matter of adding up the outstanding loans that it’s made, plus cash or securities due to the bank from trading activity, plus whatever it has in its vaults-that could be cash, or stocks and bonds, or gold, or any number of things. And then you add in any cash or securities it has in accounts at other banks or custodians.