Ride a Cockhorse (38 page)

She decided, at this point, that when Mr. Schreffler arrived, she would greet him not in her own office, but upstairs in the chairman's office. The decision came to her in an impulsive flash. Were Mr. Schreffler to come, he would be made to humble himself, first by climbing the narrow marble staircase to her office, like a schoolboy going up to the principal, then by being kept waiting in the outer office. By the time he was admitted into Mr. Zabac's spacious chamber, with its immense window looking out on the city hall, the president of the Citizens Bank would be softened up for the violent harangue to come.

There were those at the Parish Bank, however, who were not equally convinced that Mr. Schreffler would even appear that afternoon. Felix Hohenberger, for instance, merely shook his head, in puzzlement and disbelief, when word reached him that Mrs. Fitzgibbons had
ordered
the man to report to her. News of what was evolving on the executive level spread to the staff at large. When Mrs. Fitzgibbons went upstairs to occupy Louis Zabac's private office, and brought Julie Marcotte with her, she ordered Jeannine Mielke to vacate. Mr. Zabac's secretary resisted being replaced, saying that Mr. Zabac was due soon at the airport and would be upset to find her absent from her post. Jeannine sat behind her desk, looking pale and bloodless, her white-blond hair drawn back tight on her skull.

At that, Julie astonished even Mrs. Fitzgibbons herself with her reaction to the other secretary's obstinacy. “You'd better get moving!” she said, and advanced threateningly.

The expulsion of the Mielke woman from her desk was witnessed by Lionel Kim, who came in just as the anemic secretary departed. In his politeness, Mr. Kim gave no sign of having noticed the exchange or the drained face of Mr. Zabac's secretary as she hurried by him.

“I just received your message to report to you,” he said. “I was at the Shearson office in the mall.” He stood before Mrs. Fitzgibbons in his shirtsleeves. Mr. Kim was obviously in a guarded, if not suspicious, frame of mind. Mrs. Fitzgibbons didn't beat about the bush, however.

“You're my new treasurer,” she said.

Mr. Kim looked in wonderment from Mrs. Fitzgibbons to Julie, while Julie flushed a pleasant pink color, thrilling to the way the Chief could confer happiness and good fortune on anyone she smiled upon.

“I am?” he said.

“You're in charge of my capital markets desk.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons got a sexual kick from the way Mr. Kim's face mirrored, in quick succession, shock, thankfulness, and awe. Her nipples tingled. If Julie hadn't been present, Mrs. Fitzgibbons speculated that she might have grasped Mr. Kim between the legs. “I want a detailed report of four or five pages summarizing the condition of your department and all its accounts, and I want it by tomorrow.”

“I can't thank you enough.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons touched her fingers in citing her prescription for success. “Work like the devil, watch the company you keep, and don't think you can fool me.”

Appalled at the thought of deceit, Mr. Kim showed her a thunderstruck face. “I would never do that.”

Smiling with seductive malice, Mrs. Fitzgibbons set a pretty fingernail to his nose in the way of a cordial warning. “I'd flatten you.”

With her hand on his shoulder, Mrs. Fitzgibbons walked him out to the hallway, advancing a variety of views which all resolved to the importance of Mr. Kim realizing, now and forever, which side of the bread his butter was on.

On the floor below, however, no one was paying attention to what was transpiring at the top of the brass-banistered staircase at the back of the bank. For at that moment, at three minutes to one o'clock precisely, there emerged through the glittering revolving doors the figure of a beautifully postured man in an exquisite navy blue suit and burnished black shoes. The man entered the great well of the Parish Bank without once averting his eyes to the left or right. He carried an amber-handled umbrella as tightly rolled as a walking stick; his black hair was slicked down flat and gave a smooth anthracite sheen to his well-proportioned skull. Even the clocklike click of his built-up leather heels on the glassy surface of the floor, as he stepped along with elegant bearing, contributed to the impression of meticulosity that was evident in the dagger points of his pocket handkerchief, the immaculate white slash of his shirt cuffs, and the perfection of his tightly knotted red-and-blue-striped necktie. From the tellers' windows at the front, to the array of lamplit loan officers' desks situated athwart the marble columns, work came to a standstill, from stage to stage, as Mr. Curtin Schreffler, with his head up and shoulders back, came skimming by. To anyone who might have deplored the decline in formality in men's dress habits, not to say fastidious good taste, over the past generation, Mr. Curtin Schreffler of the Citizens Bank was a sight for sore eyes.

Emily, of all people, was assigned the task of intercepting and greeting the man upon his arrival. The instant he appeared to view, she came darting out of her corner, as quick as a rat, to lead him upstairs. The dark, wet-lipped smile on her face, joined to the dynamic forward hunch of her body and swift, crablike gait, created an unforgettable impression on all who saw. It was a picture of the inspired imbecile, of the lustful, grinning, happy-at-heart envoy of the Devil, leading an innocent mortal—a man of the world, vain and unsuspecting—up the narrow staircase to his destruction. The sublime touch, if there was one, was the big hole in the unraveling elbow of Emily's charcoal gray cardigan, out of which protruded a puffy swatch of her faded Indian-print dress.

Thankfully, Julie Marcotte offered an entirely different impression; she sat very straight in her chair behind Jeannine Mielke's desk, her hands clasped before her, her smooth temples and cheekbones shining like something phosphorous taken from the sea. Had anyone studied Julie this past week, they would have discerned a subtle, day-by-day progression in her appearance, from that of a casual but businesslike refinement in hair and dress, to something smarter and more severe. On this day, she wore a black tailored suit, with a double row of silver buttons that started at her lapels and converged slightly toward the waist; her hair was pulled back from her face. The effect was military. She did not rise to greet Mr. Schreffler but directed him with a terse remark and a tilt of her eyes to the deep leather sofa at the opposite wall. Emily Krok lingered in the room. She couldn't stop peering at Mr. Schreffler, staring lasciviously with glittering eyes, while standing awkwardly just inside the door. Mr. Schreffler seated himself at once, with a smooth, effortless folding of his body. He crossed his legs; the toe of his swinging shoe gleamed lustrously. Perfectly controlled, he glanced up, however, when Julie told Emily to leave. “Get out of here,” Julie said.

A longish interval passed before Mr. Schreffler was actually summoned by Mrs. Fitzgibbons; but to the man's credit, he maintained a physical stillness and aura of imperturbability that would have dignified an ambassador to the Court of Saint James. When Mrs. Fitzgibbons finally buzzed Julie on the phone and told her to admit Mr. Schreffler, Julie conveyed word to him so brusquely, hanging up the receiver, and without even looking at him — “The Chief'll see you now” — coming round the desk to open Mrs. Fitzgibbons's door, that the man was unaware of the summons until, through the opened door, he actually spotted the silhouette of Mrs. Fitzgibbons herself, etched against the big fantail window of the inner office, waiting for him.

“My word,” he said, upon entering,” what an attractive view of city hall.”

With her back to the sunlight, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's features were unsettlingly obscured. She answered in an inflectionless tone. “We're not here to discuss the view, or city hall, or the price of winter apples, Mr. Schreffler.”

While it always came as a surprise, Mrs. Fitzgibbons still delighted each time she discovered herself capable of expressing herself in a smooth, spontaneous, loquacious way. Probably, in fact, nothing had given her greater pleasure the past fortnight than the facility of her tongue. She had never been so openly talkative, and guessed that it was an inborn talent that the world about her had stifled. Mrs. Fitzgibbons experienced momentary jubilation, a happy surge of energy. The fact that she cordially disliked the man only simplified the task at hand. Mrs. Fitzgibbons remembered Curtin Schreffler from the days of her parochial-school girlhood down on Mosher Street, in a district known as the Flats. Curtin and his chums were the favored ones, the sons and daughters of the old families on the hill; the youths who went away to smart boarding schools, who whiled away their summers playing tennis at the Canoe Club.

“We're here,” she reminded him, “to talk about your bank.”

“What puzzles me,” said Mr. Schreffler, revolving on his heel as he looked about for a place to sit, once it was apparent that the chief officer of the Parish Bank had no wish to shake his hand in greeting, “is the suddenness of your interest in us, Mrs. Fitzgibbons. The air of emergency. The speed of it all. I hope that my telephone call of a day or two ago was not —”

“Please.” She gestured him to a chair and paced importantly across the blue-and-cream Chinese carpet to Mr. Zabac's desk. She mocked him. “ ‘The speed. The air of emergency.' Your deposits are from money brokers. Your portfolio is packed with local mortgages. You can't meet your capital requirements.” Going past his chair, she showed him the knowing frown of a schoolmaster ridiculing the protestations of a pupil. “What do you think we are,” she put the matter more harshly, “simpletons?”

This last remark sent a pale flash of alarm through Curtin Schreffler's face. He was not used to being talked to in this way.

“A word from me,” she added, “and the regional examiners will be crawling all over you.” She shivered involuntarily, then felt a hardening of her leg muscles and an electrical impulse that left her fingertips tingling. In some indefinable way, she was even aware that her womanhood was itself a delicate bludgeon, an intimidating refinement, which, as the hour passed, would be employed with impunity.

Mr. Schreffler had no desire to argue. Seated opposite Mr. Zabac's desk, with a bar of sunlight suddenly igniting his shoe, he looked for all the world like a store-window mannequin. “We're just a small to moderate-sized bank, which,” he began to admit, “recently —”

“You're nothing,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, seating herself. Time and again, she strove to hold down the strain of exultant paranoia rising inside her. She saw herself clutching the knot of his necktie in her fist and elevating his head, while disabusing him of some very outdated ideas on banking theory, but held her temper in check by presenting him with a cool picture of the female executive.

“When you're insolvent, you're nothing. You're not
even
a bank. How is an insolvent bank different from an insolvent fast-food chain or some little company” — she gestured — “that makes choo choo trains?”

“I assure you on that point, Mrs. Fitzgibbons —”

“Of course, we all have our troubles.” She struck an ameliorative note. “We swim in the same ocean. We dine on the same diet. We endure the same storms. No one is free from runs of bad luck. I am no different from you in that way.” She conceded the man that, as she rocked back in Mr. Zabac's chair and employed one of her favorite lecturing devices, holding a long yellow pencil between the tips of her forefingers. “I'm not an idiot. I'm not unreasonable.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons paused to see if he would interrupt her, so that she could jump on him. As he remained silent, however, content just to sit and listen now as she waxed generous with maddening condescension, she adopted a more relevant line of thought.

“A smart-talking developer with promises of profits untold comes sashaying in the door and charms you out of millions of dollars. The rate spread narrows. The developer is a shyster. And you,” she said, “are left sitting on an iceberg headed for the equator.”

Both Mr. Schreffler and she laughed pleasantly over her witticism. If the expression emerging on Curtin Schreffler's face was an honest mirror of his emotions, he was a trifle relieved.

“The lending business is touch and go,” he contributed lightly, with a sigh of modesty.

“I know the Mannox Apremont Company.” She ignored his remark as she broached the name of the firm whose ill health threatened Curtin Schreffler's lending institution, if only to dispel any doubt as to her own secure position. “They're so far delinquent with us — with me — it would take an act of God to rescue them.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons's egomania focused itself on the delinquent developer. “I'm tired to death of bothering with them.”

The phone on her desk flashed. Guessing it was important, she picked it up. It was Julie. “Mr. Zabac called. I connected him with Jeannine Mielke,” she whispered secretively. “He's at the airport.”

“Thank you, darling.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons hung up, and reiterated what she was saying. “I'm disgusted with them, with their wheedling and lying and making promises they can't keep. And I get nothing!”

Truth was, Mrs. Fitzgibbons knew precious little about the note in question. She had never dealt with a Mannox representative or even examined the account; but it pleased her to play the part of the patient, long-suffering creditor. “I wait, and I wait, and I wait,” she said. “They know what their failure will do to you. They know the strength of my position. They know I'm sitting here behind the scenes with their fate in my hands.” For the first time, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's voice achieved a penetrating timbre. She flung down her pencil. “I get nothing!” she shouted.

Startled by the woman's rancor, and the sight of the yellow pencil rolling chaotically across the tulipwood desk, Mr. Schreffler sought at once to salve her spirits. “Bert Mannox isn't a bad fellow. You may have developed an unfair impression of the man. No one has ever accused him of dishonesty.” Mr. Schreffler went on with growing confidence. “I have it from reliable experts that Bert needs nothing more than six months to a year to stabilize his situation. Frankly,” Mr. Schreffler added on a rising tone, in the way of one professional confiding in another, “I believe the man.”