Numbered Account

Then came the "Fall": a downward spiral through the curdled underside of southern California: Redondo Beach, El Segundo, Hawthorne. Another marriage came and went, this one briefer, less expensive- by then there was nothing left to split, settle, or divide. And finally, mercifully, at seventeen, the split from his mother. His own "new beginning."

The day after the funeral, Nick drove downtown to a storage facility his mother had filled with reminders of her past. It was a grim task, sorting through her affairs. Box after box filled with souvenirs of a mundane and failed existence. A chipped piece of china he recognized as his grandmother's gift to the newlyweds; a manila envelope stuffed with grade cards from elementary school; and a box of record albums containing such gems as Burl Ives' Christmas Favorites, Dean Martin Loves Somebody, and Von Karajan Conducts Beethoven- the scratched soundtrack of his early childhood.

At day's end, Nick came upon two sturdy cartons well sealed with brown electrical tape and marked "A. Neumann. USB- L.A. " Inside were his father's effects taken from his office in Los Angeles days after his death: a few paperweights, a Rolodex, a calendar showing scenes of Switzerland, and two calfskin agendas for the years 1978 and 1979. Half the agendas' pages were stained a muddy brown, swollen with the Mississippi floodwater that on two occasions had risen high inside the corrugated tin shed. But half were unharmed. And his father's looping script was easily legible almost twenty years after he had written it.

Nick stared, transfixed, at the agendas. He opened a cover and skimmed through the entries. Nervous energy coursed through his body like a weak current. Hands that had mastered the buck of a sawed-off twelve gauge trembled like a schoolboy's at his first communion. And for one quicksilver flash, his father was alive again, holding him on his lap in the downstairs study while a fire burned in the grate and a November rain pelted the windows. Nick had been crying, as he often did after hearing his parents argue, and father had taken his son aside to console him. Nick laid his head on his father's chest and, hearing the heart beating too fast, knew that his father was also upset. His father hugged him tightly and caressed his hair. "Nicholas," he said, his voice barely a whisper, "promise me that you'll remember me all of your life."

Nick stood motionless in the dank shed. The words echoed in his ears and for a second longer he swore he was staring into those cold blue eyes. He blinked, and the apparition, if it had been one, faded.

Once, that memory had been an important component of his daily life. For a year after his father's death, he had replayed it endlessly, hour after hour, day after day, trying to assign some deeper meaning to the words. Tortured by his futile curiosity, he had arrived at the conclusion that his father had been asking for his help, and that somehow he had failed him and was thus himself responsible for his murder. Sometime in his teens, the memory had faded and he had forgotten it. But he never quite absolved himself of his role in his father's death.

A decade had passed since that memory had taunted him. His father had been right to worry. He could hardly remember him.

Nick stayed in the shed for a while longer. He had given up the idea of learning more about his father. To have the opportunity from Alex Neumann's own hand was almost too much to believe. An unexpected gift. But his joy proved short-lived. A receipt acknowledging acceptance of his father's possessions signed by a "Mrs. V. Neumann" was tucked inside the front cover of one of the leather-bound books. His mother had known about the agendas. She had purposely hidden them from her only son.

Nick spent the return flight to New York examining the agendas. He read both from cover to cover, first perusing the daily entries, then, alarmed, slowing to read each page carefully. He found mentions of a slippery client who had threatened his father and with whom, despite this, he had been pressed to do business; a shadowy local company that had merited the attentions of the Zurich head office; and most interesting, one month before his father's death, a note providing the phone number and address of the Los Angeles field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Taken singly, the entries constituted only small worries. Taken together, they demanded explanation. But when set against the backdrop of his father's unsolved murder and his own guilty memories, they ignited a fire of doubt whose flames cast ill-defined shadows on the inner workings of the United Swiss Bank and its clients.