Numbered Account by Christopher Reich Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
    Nick returned to work the next day. His training schedule called for classroom instruction from eight to twelve. An hour into the first lecture — some dry cant about the underpricing of initial public offerings — his attention began to waver. He cast his eye around the auditorium, sizing up his fellow trainees. Like him, they were graduates of America’s leading business schools. Like him, they were pressed and coiffed and packaged into tailored designer suits and polished leather shoes. All managed to convey a slight insouciance in their postures while writing down every single word the speaker uttered. They regarded themselves as the chosen ones, and in fact, they were. Financial centurions for the new millennium.
    Why then did he hate them so?
    The afternoon saw his return to the trading floor. He took up his position at the elbow of Jennings Maitland, resident bond guru and avowed nail chewer. “Sit yer ass down, shut yer toilet, and listen up” was Maitland’s daily greeting. Nick did as he was told and for the next four hours immersed himself in the floor’s activity. He paid close attention as Maitland spoke with his clients. He kept dutiful track of the trader’s open positions. He even celebrated his boss’s sale of ten million bonds to the New York Housing Authority with an airborne high five. But inside him, his guts roiled and he wanted to throw up.
    Five days before, Nick would have flushed with pride at Maitland’s big score as if his own presence were responsible in some minor, inconstruable way for the sale. Today he viewed the commerce with a jaundiced eye, wishing to distance himself not only from his boss’s dumping of ten million bonds (“fuckin’ dogs,” to quote Maitland, “real bowwows”) but from the entire trading operation.
    He stood as if to stretch and peered around him. Row upon row of computer monitors stacked three high ran what looked like the length of a football field in every direction. A week ago he had gloried at the sight, thinking it a modern battlefield. He had relished his opportunity to join the fray. Today it looked like a technological minefield, and he wanted to stay the hell away from it. Lord pity the robots who passed their lives glued to bank upon bank of microwave-spewing cathode-ray tubes.
    During the long walk home, Nick told himself his disillusion was temporary and come tomorrow he would regain his