The Moneychangers (58 page)

Managing a small branch bank ideally suited his ability and limitations. He had been happy at Tylersville, where only one crisis had marred his tenure until now. A few years ago a woman with an imagined grudge against the bank rented a safe deposit box.

She placed in the box an object wrapped in newspaper, then departed for Europe leaving no address. Within days, a putrid odor filtered through the bank.

At first, drains were suspect and examined, to no effect, while all the time the stench grew greater. Customers complained, staff were nauseated. Eventually suspicion centered on the safe deposit boxes where the awful smell seemed strongest.

Then the crucial qu
estion arose which box? It was F
ergus W. Gatwick who, at duty's call, sniffed his way around them all, at length settling on one where the matador was overpowering.

After that, it took four days of legal proceedings before a court order was obtained permitting the bank to drill the box open. Inside were the remains of a large, once-fresh sea bass.

Sometimes, even now in memory, Gatwick still sniffed traces of that ghastly time.

But today's exigency, he knew, was far more serious than a fish in a box. He checked his watch. An hour and ten minutes since he had telephoned Headquarters.

Though four tellers had been paying out money steadily, the number of people crowding the bank was even greater, with newcomers pouring in, and still
no help had come. "Mr. Gatwick
" A woman teller beckoned him.

"Yes?"

He left the railed management area where he
normally worked and walked over to her. Across a counter from them both, at the head of a waiting line, was a poultry farmer, a regular bank customer whom Gatwick knew well. The manager said cheerfully,

"Good morning, Steve." He received a cool nod in return while silently the teller showed him checks drawn on two accounts.

The poultryman had presented them. They totaled $23,000.

"Those are good," Gatwick said. Taking the checks, he initialed both. In a low voice, though audible across the counter, the teller said,

"We haven't enough money left to pay that much." He should have known, of course. The drain on cash since opening had been continuous with many large withdrawals.

But the remark was unfortunate. Now there were anew rumblings among those in line, the teller's statement being repeated and passed back.
"You hear that!
They say they don't have any money."

"By Christ!" The poultry farmer leaned
wrathfully forward, a clenched fi
st pounding.

"You just better pay those checks, Gatwick, or I'll be over there and tear this goddam bank apart." "There's no need for any of that, Steve.

Not threats or shouting either." Fergus W. Gatwick raised his own voice, striving to be heard above the suddenly ugly scene.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing a temporary cash shortage because of exceptional demands, but I assure you a great deal more money is on the way and will be here soon."

The last words were drowned by wrathful shouts of protest.

"How come a bank runs out of money?"… "Get it now!"… "Forget the bullshit! Where's the cash?"… "We'll camp here till this bank pays what it owes."

Gatwick held up his arms. "Once again I assure you

…. "I'm not interested in your sleazy assurances." The speaker was a smartly dressed woman whom Gatwick recognized as a newish resident. She insisted, "I want my money out now."

"Damn right!" a man behind her echoed.

"That goes for all of us." Still others surged forward, voices raised, their faces revealing anger and alarm. Someone threw a cigarette package which hit Gatwick in the face.

Suddenly, he realized, an ordinary group of citizens, many of whom he knew well, had become a hostile mob.

It was the money, of course; money which did strange things to human beings, making them greedy, panicked, at times sub-human.

There was genuine dread, too the possibility, as some saw it, of losing everything they had, along with their security.

Violence, which moments ago appeared unthinkable, now loomed close. For the first time in many years, Gatwick felt physical fear. "Plea
se!" he pleaded. "Please listen
"

His voice disappeared under growing tumult. Abruptly, unexpectedly, the clamor lessened. There seemed to be some activity in the street outside which those at the rear were craning to see.

Then, with a bravura flourish, the bank's outer doors flung open and a procession marched in.
–

Edwina D'Orsey headed it. Following her were Cliff Castleman and the two young women tellers, one of them the petite figure of Juanita Nunez.

Behind was a phalanx of security guards shouldering heavy canvas sacks, escorted by other protective guards with drawn revolvers.

A half dozen more staff who had arrived from other branches filed in behind the guards. In the wake of them all a vigilant, wary Lord Protector was Nolan Wainwright.

Edwina spoke clearly across the crowded, now nearsilent bank. "Good morning, Mr. Gatwick. I'm sorry we all took so long, but traffic was heavy.

I understand you may require twenty million dollars.

About a third of it just arrived. The rest is on the way." While Edwina was speaking, Cliff Castleman, Juanita, the guards and others continued through the railed management area to the rear of the counters. One of the newly arrived relief staff was an operations man who promptly took charge of incoming cash. Soon, plentiful
supplies of crisp new bills were being recorded, then distributed to tellers.

The crowd in the bank pressed around Edwina.

Someone asked, "Is that true? Do you people have enough money to pay us all?"

"Of course it's true." Eldwina looked over heads around her and spoke to everyone.

"I'm Mrs. D'Orsey, and I'm a vice-president of First Mercantile American Bank.

Despite any rumors you may have heard, our bank is sound, solvent, and has no problems which we cannot handle.

We have ample cash reserves to repay any depositor in Tylersville or anywhere else."

The smartly dressed woman who had spoken earlier said,

"Mayb
e that's true. Or maybe you're j
ust saying so, hoping we'll believe it.

Either way, I'm taking my money out today."

"That's your privilege," Edwina said. Fergus W. Gatwick, watching, was relieved at no longer being the focus of attention.

He also sensed that the ugly mood of moments earlier had eased; there were even a few smiles among those waiting as increasing amounts of money continued to appear.

But less obdurate mood or not, a purposefulness remained. As the process of paying out continued briskly, it was dear that the run on the bank had not been halted.

While it continued, once more like Caesar's legionaries; the bank guards and escort who had returned to their armored trucks outside, marched in again with still more loaded canvas sacks.

No one who shared that day at Tylersville would ever forget the immense amount of money eventually displayed on public view.

Even those who worked at FMA had never seen so much assembled at a single time before.

On Edwina's instructions and under Alex Vandervoort's plan, most of the twenty million dollars brought to fight the bank run was out in the open where everyone could see it.

In the area behind the tellers' counter, every desk was cleared; from elsewhere in the bank more desks and tables were moved in. Onto them all, great stacks of currency and coin were heaped while the extra staff who had been brought in somehow kept track of running totals.

As Nolan Wainwright expressed it later, the entire operation was "a bank robber's dream, a security man's nightmare."

Fortunately, if robbers learned of what was happening, they learned too late.

Edwina, quietly
competent and with courtesy to F
ergus W. Gatwick, supervised everything.

It was she who instructed Cliff Castleman to begin seeking loan business. Shortly before noon, with the bank remaining crowded and a lengthening line outside,

Castleman carried a chair forward and stood up on it. "Ladies and gentlemen," he announced, "I'd like to introduce myself.

I'm a loan officer from the city, which doesn't mean a lot except that I have authority to approve loans for larger amounts than are normally dealt with at this branch.

So if any of you have been thinking of applying for a loan and would like a fast answer, now's the time. I'm a sympathetic listener and I try to help people who have problems.

Mr. Gatwick, who is busy doing other things right now, has kindly said I can use his desk, so that's where I'll be. I hope you
’
ll come and talk to me." A man with a
cast on his leg called out, "I’ll
be right over, soon's I get my other money.

Guess if this bank's going bust I should grab a loan. I'd never have to pay it back"

"Nothing's going bust here," Cliff Castleman said. He inquired, "What did you do to the l
eg?" "Fell over in the dark."

"F
rom the sound of you, you're still in the dark.

This bank is in better shape than either of us.

What's more, if you borrow money you'll pay it back or we'll break the other leg."

There was some laughter as Castleman climbed down from his chair, and later a few people drifted over to the manager's desk to discuss loans.

But withdrawals continued. The panic eased, but nothing, it seemed neither a
show of strength, assurances or applied psychology voul
d stop the bank run at Tylersvill
e.

By early afternoon it appeared, to despondent FMA officials, that only one question still remained:

How long would it take for the virus to spread?

Alex Vandervoort, who had talked several times by telephone with Edwina, left for Tylersville himself in midafternoon.

He was now even more alarmed than this morning when he had hoped the run could be terminated quickly.

Its continuance meant that, over the weekend, panic among depositors would spread, with other FMA branches certain to be inundated Monday.

So far today, while withdrawals at some other branches had been heavy, nothing comparable to the Tylersville situation had occurred elsewhere.

But clearly that same luck could not hold for long.

Alex went by chauffeured limousine to Tylersville and Margot Bracken rode with him. Margot had concluded a court case earlier than she expected that morning and joined Alex at the bank for lunch. Afterward at his suggestion she stayed on, sharing some of the tensions by then pervading the tower's 36th floor.

In the car Alex leaned back, savoring the relaxed intenal which he knew would be brief. '`This year has been hard for you," Margot said. "Am I showing the strain?"

She reached over, running a forefinger across his forehead gently. "You've more lines there. You're grayer at the temples."

He grimaced. "I'm also older." "Not that much" "Then it's a price we pay for lining with pressures. You pay it too, Bracken."

"Yes, I do," Margot agreed. '
What matters, of course, is which pressures are important and if they're worth the part of ourselves we give to them."

"Saving a bank is worth some personal strain," Alex said sharply. "Right now if we don't save ours, a lot of people wi
ll be hurt who shouldn't be."

"And some who should?" "In a rescue operation you try to save everybody.

Any retribution can come later."

They had covered ten of the twenty miles to Tylersville. "Alex, are things really that bad?"

"If we have an unstoppable run on Monday," he said, "well have to close.

A consortium of other banks may then get together to bail us out at a price after which they'll pick over what's left, and in time, I think, all depositors would get their money.

But FMA as an entity would be finished." "The most incredible part is how it can happen so suddenly." "It points up," Alex said, "what a lot of people, who ought to, don't fully understand. Banks and the money system; which includes big debts and big loans, are like delicate machinery.

Monkey with them clumsily, let one component get seriously out of balance because of greed or politics or plain stupidity, and you imperil all the others.

And once you've endangered the system or a single bank and if word leaks out as usually happens, di
minished public confidence does
the rest.

That's what we're seeing now."

"From what you've told me," Margot said, "and from other things I've heard, greed is the reason for what's happening to your bank."

Alex said bitterly,

"That and a high percentage of idiots on our board."