The Greed

by Scott Bergstrom

  Twenty

  A new life for 7,000 francs—half now, half on delivery. Miriam bitches mightily that the specifics are too specific, that the new biometrics are going to take more time than I’m giving her, that 7,000 isn’t nearly enough, not for quality work like this. But Miriam is also an artist, and complaining about restrictions and deadlines and costs is what artists do. So come back in four days, Miriam tells me, and don’t bother showing up unless you have the second half of the money.

  So for four days I linger around the studio, helping Sabiha and Peggo and the artists who are a breed apart from Miriam. Their work is creating truth from the tools of imagination: paint, scrap metal, expression. Whereas Miriam creates lies from the tools of literalism: official stamps and fingerprint scans and the fetish objects of bureaucracy.

  My tasks—cleaning brushes, preparing canvases, tearing out the springs from old mattress frames—are pleasant, requiring just enough attention that I can lose myself in them for hours at a time. I even learn to handle an acetylene torch and how to talk about art: negative space, simulacra, juxtaposition, form, and material. With a little practice, and without my actually making anything, the artists accept me as one of their own.

  Late in the afternoon on the third day, I sit in paint-spattered coveralls with Sabiha and the others in the yard outside the Lego Village bar, drinking coffee. Sabiha is arguing about how the disparate shards that make up postmodernist art can’t really find an audience until they define themselves the way modernism did. The others take issue, arguing that postmodernism is defined precisely by its rejection of definitions.

  Peggo wanders into the firelight and takes the seat next to me, sipping a cup of tea and smoking a joint. “Have some, Judas.”

  I pinch the joint between my thumb and forefinger, take a puff for form’s sake. It was never my thing, but I tell him it’s good and pass it back.

  “So, does Judas have a manifesto?” he says, taking another drag, talking through a clenched throat.

  I look at him.

  “What is your philosophy? What guides your work?”

  “I’m not really political.”

  “No? Good for you. Myself, I used to be a Marxist-Leninist, until I discovered Anarcho-Syndicalism.”

  I nod, wondering how long before I can shake him. “I see.”

  “These days, though, I’m an Anarcho-Primitivist.” He coughs into the crook of his arm. “But I’m asking about your art. What’s your artistic manifesto?”

  I try to think of something to say. “Realism, I guess.”

  “Realism. We have a radical among us. And what’s your medium? You’re not a painter, that much is obvious. Not a sculptor, either.” He tries to pass me the joint again, but I wave it away.

  “I’m—a performance artist.”

  An arched eyebrow from Peggo. “Yes? Have I seen your work?”

  You’re seeing it now. “I’m still learning,” I say.

  Peggo eyes me. “My advice: don’t trust in abstract theory,” he says. “Go with what your bowels command.”

  * * *

  When I go back to her basement studio four days later, Miriam’s art—in the medium of paper and stamps and ink—is perfection. Lila Kereti’s Hungarian passport is now storied with visits to Seychelles and Panama and Macedonia exactly corresponding to the dates on the certificates I’d shown her. A Spanish driver’s license and Hungarian birth certificate and Barcelona library card and a beautifully creased and folded apartment lease in a nice, but not too nice, Barcelona neighborhood, all of it meticulously worn and scuffed and frayed, as if they’d lived in my possession for years.

  She’s reluctant at first, then succumbs to artist’s vanity and shows me her tricks. A little vinegar to damage the official ink—really, you wouldn’t believe what I have to do to get this—followed by fine-grit sandpaper rubbed over the documents just so. It precisely mimics the effect of being carried in the front pocket of a pair of jeans, she says.

  I pay her, gladly, the remainder of the 7,000 francs. She licks her finger and counts the money I lay out on the desk before her. When the transaction is done, she shakes my hand, wishes me luck, and tells me it would be best if I never mentioned her to anyone, lest her sons—big boys, all four of them—come looking for me. I don’t know whether it’s an idle threat or a very real one, but I agree and leave her shop a different person than when I came in.

  * * *

  The offices of Frau Doktor Sadik are across the river from the Altstadt, in a hilly neighborhood of winding, narrow streets where the buildings are worn with age and all the more elegant for it. Smart shops and little restaurants punctuate uptight offices of accountants and bankers and lawyers. I find her address in a building nearly identical to the others, but with gaudy curlicue brass railings on the stairs out front and tall windows divided up with complicated, swirly patterns.

  I approach the receptionist in the lobby with a smile, but it isn’t returned. “I’d like to see Frau Doktor Sadik, please. My last name is Perels, first name Judita. I don’t have an appointment.”

  It’s the name Terrance would have used to introduce me to her. However, just as I knew it would be, all is, in the favorite phrase of the Swiss, nicht in Ordnung. “Frau Sadik has no appointment today for anyone named Perels.” There’s no hostility from the chinless receptionist, just the tyranny of rules and schedules above all else.

  “I know, sir. As I said, I don’t have an appointment, but if I could make one…”

  “Frau Doktor Sadik is not taking new clients at this time.” He turns back to his computer as if I’d vanished.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I’m a friend of Terrance Mutai. She’s been his attorney since…”

  Then, a cheery voice from behind me: “A friend of Terrance? Of course, dear. I was expecting you.”

  I turn to see a petite woman in a canary yellow trench coat and a bright blue headscarf peering at me from above overlarge Audrey Hepburn sunglasses. She carries a bright red briefcase and red umbrella, rounding out the trio of primary colors.

  She removes her glasses and smiles. “Our friend mentioned you’d be ringing me up. How are you, by the way?” Her voice is like a perfectly tuned bell, with expensive, British-university English. There’s a professional warmth in her tone, the kind that’s paid to be there.

  I shake her outstretched hand. “Pleased to meet you, Frau Doktor Sadik.”

  “So formal,” she says through a smile. “You may call me Naz.”

  * * *

  Coffee is served in nearly translucent china cups, poured from a silver pot by a man in a suit wearing white gloves. Naz, in a cream-colored suit, sits on the opposite end of a leather couch from me and pushes a strand of auburn hair back under her headscarf. The attendant sets down the coffee service and brings Naz a crystal carafe of liquor.

  “Like whiskey with your coffee?” she asks.

  “Whiskey?” I say. “No. Thank you.”

  Naz catches me watching her as she pours some of the liquor into her own cup. “An observant Muslim drinking during the day,” she says, smiling as she reads my mind. “Do I have it right?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

  “You weren’t. You were observing. So tell me, what conclusions can you draw?”

  “I’m not drawing any conclusions, Frau Doktor—”

  “Naz. Please. No need to be so Swiss about it.” She sets the carafe down and takes a delicate sip, pinky out for show. “So—observant Muslim who drinks. Is she an alcoholic? Is she even a Muslim? Maybe she just likes headscarves?”

  It’s a test of some kind. Gauging me. Measuring me. I straighten my shoulders.

  “My assumptions are wrong,” I say. “Your actions don’t match your appearance, and now I have to reconsider. It leaves … whoever’s on the other side off balance. Wondering who you are.”

  A smile and a nod. “Correct.” She pulls out a notepad and a slender pen. “Now, how do you know Terrance?”

 
“We’re—friends. Since school,” I say.

  She gives a conspiratorial look. “Quite a young man now, isn’t he? I watched him grow from the time he was a baby. And all the troubles his father has been through lately, he showed himself to be quite strong.”

  “Yes. I’m very fond of him.”

  “In the e-mail, he said you were looking for very specialized services. Services that only I could provide. ‘Please treat Señora Perels as you would me or my father,’ is how he put it—tell me, am I pronouncing your name correctly?”

  This part is said differently, a cloying interrogation, delivered so sweetly I’m not even sure it’s really there.

  “I—I need to ask you something,” I say. “I’ve never used … an attorney before.”

  “No? Fortunate life.” She smiles.

  “I need to know—what I tell you, it’s all confidential, right? One hundred percent. Completely.”

  She gives me a very slight bow and the smile disappears. “Of course.”

  “Then let’s just—start with this,” I say, sliding the packet of documents down the table, along with the list of account numbers. Naz doesn’t touch them.

  “These accounts, they’re at a bank here in Zurich,” I say. “I want what’s in them.”

  “And are they your accounts?”

  I lean back, bite the inside of my lower lip. There can be no lying with her, not if she’s to do her job. “They’re—owed to me,” I say. “What’s in them is a debt owed to me.”

  Naz’s head tilts ever so slightly to the side, then picks up the packet of documents and pages through them. “The account numbers are associated with the, let’s see, seven entities?”

  “I was told they are,” I say. “Or—that’s what I assume.”

  Naz sets one document aside, then another, and another, studying them for a painfully long few moments. “It looks like someone named Lila Kereti has full fiscal authority over—all of them.” She looks up. “If you believe she owes you something, we should get in touch with her. I can help with that.”

  I take the passport from my pocket, slide that down the table, too.

  Naz opens the cover, then slowly, almost without my noticing it, her lips pull back into a smile. “I see,” she says. “And did Terrance know this is what you were asking me to do?”

  “No,” I say. “He knew it had to do with the money, but not this.”

  Naz looks at me gravely, folds her hands together. This is the part where she rises, tells me to get out before she calls the police.

  “Do you know what I do?” she says. “What my profession is?”

  “You’re an attorney.”

  “I’m a magician, actually. The best magician. That’s why your friend, why his father and his father’s colleagues, rely on me. Do you know what’s required for magic to work?”

  I shake my head.

  “Complete trust,” she says. “Total trust. And an hourly rate. Tell me, Ms. Perels, do you know what I charge?”

  “I know it’s a lot.”

  Naz writes a figure on a piece of paper and slides it toward me. I don’t look at it. Instead, I fish the last diamond from my pocket and set it on the table.

  “Is that enough?” I say.

  Naz picks it up, holds it to the light. “Enough to get started, at least.”

  * * *

  For another hour, the story unfolds. It feels like therapy, more than anything, or confession. And only a few thousand dollars an hour. The difference is, though, I only have to give her the relevant bits. No backstory necessary. No feelings. She never even asks why I want the money. It is, for her, a matter of paperwork, not morality, not even reasons. As I speak, however, I find the weight lifting from me, and the heat dissipating. I watch her every expression, every movement of her hand as she writes down something I’ve said, searching for a sign that what I’m asking her to do is impossible. But I never see it.

  “Dormant accounts. Abandoned. That’s what we’re talking about,” she says when I’ve told her all the parts she needs. “If they’re actually abandoned. If they contain anything at all.”

  I look at her. “So—now what?”

  “First step, we see who Lila Kereti is.” She clicks the pen closed, rises to her feet. “Second step, we visit the bank.”

  All of this is thrown out there with a note of hope, but not fear. All of this is routine, doable—nothing to worry about. It’s clear she’s finished with me for today, but I remain seated.

  “Does—does any of this…?”

  “Bother me,” Naz says, finishing my thought.

  “Yes,” I say.

  She takes a seat by my side, so close I can smell the soap she used this morning and the scotch she had an hour ago. “Strange thing, money. People start wars for it. People fall in love for it.”

  “I know. But how can—how is this permitted?”

  Naz sighs deeply, pats my thigh. “Say it. Go ahead.”

  “Say what?”

  “The system is corrupt. It’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

  I nod.

  “What you see as a corrupt system, I see as a system functioning exactly as intended. It isn’t broken; it was made this way.” She stands, rolls her shoulders like a boxer, and gathers up the documents. “It was made this way so that people like you, and people like me, can do things like this.”

  “I see. Thank you.” I rise and shake her hand stiffly.

  “Stealing and taking what you’re owed. The difference is all in having a good lawyer.” Naz gives me a wink. “Make an appointment with my secretary for tomorrow. I’ll look these papers over tonight.”

  We say our good-byes, and I head toward the door. Only when my hand is on the knob does she say from across the room:

  “And pick up a suit, will you? This is Zurich, not a farm.”

  * * *

  Mostly, among Peggo and the others, I stay quiet and listen. But to the artists’ credit, they don’t ask many questions. People come and go from here all the time, I’ve learned. Lego Village is simply a stopping-off point for a night or a week or a year. No one ever presents anything new, and when there’s nothing new, there’s nothing worth asking about. So when we gather around and drink in the evening, the talk is about art—one’s work—or about things outside the self. Personal background, stories from growing up, all of it is banal bullshit. If it’s because they’re haunted by violent fathers and memories of not enough to eat, it doesn’t matter. The net effect is that Lego Village is an excellent place to hide.

  I ask them where I might buy a suit without spending too much money. This is met with much laughter, the idea of a suit being inherently funny. After a time, one of them gives me the name of a mall—a “bourgeois playground,” is the term he uses—a long tram ride away.

  I go there the next morning, and the sales clerk shows me a pantsuit in the same dark gray everyone but Naz seems to wear. It’s conservative and dull, and I give it a little scowl. So she shows me something else, something, she says, that will appeal to a younger woman with a wild streak. It’s the same suit in a slightly lighter shade of gray.

  I choose the first one—best to look as conservative as possible—and pair it with the least expensive blouse and pair of shoes I can find. Still, when she rings it all up, I realize that in Zurich, dull is expensive. It’s a little loose and a little long, but I wear it out anyway and take the train to Naz’s office.

  She looks up from beneath a lime-green headscarf as I enter and smiles because that’s what she’s paid to do. “Mm,” she says. “Well—I did say a suit. And that’s what you got.”

  I hold out my arms, give her a twirl. “Like it?”

  “Very—summer intern,” she says. “Remind me to give you the name of my tailor. Now sit.”

  She nods to a chair in front of her desk, a silk-upholstered monstrosity. The seat is overstuffed, nearly rigid, and the arms are carved with sharp little curlicues that dig right through the fabric into my skin.

&
nbsp; Naz remains seated behind her desk and holds up a thin packet of paper in a file folder. “She was, as far as we can tell, never real.”

  “She?”

  “Lila Kereti. A birth certificate and passport, which you have copies of. But there are no school transcripts, no arrests, no electric bill, no credit rating.”

  I squirm in my chair, trying to find a comfortable position. “So—a ghost?”

  Naz looks out the window, where the rain is coming down softly. “A bureaucratic glitch. Set up by someone like me. A paper person to hide the real people behind the transactions.”

  In other words, don’t feel guilty.

  “That’s good,” I say.

  “It’s ideal,” she says. “As for the accounts, they’re held by Hindemith & Cie. Small, private bank, family-run since sixteen-whenever. Their client list, it looks like an index from a history textbook.”

  “So what do we do next?”

  “Hindemith & Cie is popular because they provide—certain things. One of them is poor record keeping, when it’s convenient for the client.”

  “Poor record keeping?”

  “According to the paperwork you gave me, Lila Kereti is what’s called the ‘beneficial owner’ of the accounts. Meaning, she has control over the money. In theory, all banks in Switzerland are supposed to keep copies of the beneficial owner’s passport.”

  “In theory,” I say.

  “But in practice, clients sometimes prefer to have the account under an alias. It’s illegal, and the bank can be fined, but to Hindemith & Cie, it’s just a cost of doing business.” She leans back, bites the end of her pen. “So what do you say, Frau Kereti of Budapest? Time to pay them a visit?”

  Twenty-One

  Hindemith & Cie occupies a sand-colored mess of a building just off the Paradeplatz, a fifteen-minute walk from Naz’s office. Columns, capstones, corniches, friezes, ivy, cherubs, gryphons, all packed together like a three-dimensional glossary of architectural bullshit. Inside, we’re greeted by a trim man with pursed lips in a suit that is precisely the same shade of gray as mine. He exchanges a few words with Naz, then—and this, I may have imagined—he clicks the heels of his polished black shoes together as he turns to fetch someone.