Ride a Cockhorse (24 page)

The color drained from the young woman's face. She was frightened out of her wits. She preceded Mrs. Fitzgibbons stiff-leggedly across the endless expanse of carpet.

Before following, however, Mrs. Fitzgibbons stopped to say something to Julie; she was certain that if the girl were guilty and given an opportunity, she would attempt to conceal the evidence. When Mrs. Fitzgibbons went in and closed the door behind her, the girl in the jumper stood as quiet as death before her. She had closed the flap of her tote bag, though, and had shifted the weight of it behind her back.

“Where were you going?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons inquired with a factitious airiness. Her musical tone of voice was belied by a narrowing of her lips and the penetrating glaze of her eyes.

When the young woman opened her mouth to respond, she revealed a gap between her front teeth. “To the store,” she managed to croak out. “For a bottle of aspirin.”

“And what is your name?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons asked in that same frightening, melodious pitch.

The girl was quaking visibly. “I'm Emily Krok.”

After a little silence between them, Mrs. Fitzgibbons turned with a grim look and pointed her finger. “Empty your bag onto my desk.”

Emily Krok's eyes shot up to the ceiling. “Oh God!”

“Go on,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons instructed her. “Do as you're told. I know what you're up to.”

In seconds, Mrs. Fitzgibbons had the object in hand, a little blue-and-white box containing a typewriter ribbon of the sort used by bank secretaries. The cellophane was still sealed. “Well, now,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, in a throatier tone, “you're just a little thief.”

“Oh, please,” the girl brought out. In her distraction, she looked mindless. “I've never stolen anything.”

“You just stole from me.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons refuted the claim.

“I've never stolen before.”

“What are you talking about? You've been stealing all your life.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons looked the quailing girl up and down. “What do you do with this property of mine?”

“Please, Mrs. Fitzgibbons. It's true. I swear it.” Emily begged to be understood. “I've never stolen before.”

“Where do you sell these?”

“
Sell them?
” Emily's voice climbed in horror.

“The things you steal. The umbrellas that have been disappearing, the scarves, Mrs. Lawrence's wallet, the stationery. You're going to spill your guts out. I have you red-handed.” She flourished the blue-and-white box. “Have you ever been arrested?”

“God, no.”

“I want to know,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, insisting, “what you've stolen and how you dispose of it. Because I know who you are. You're one of the ones who talk behind my back.” The thought of it set Mrs. Fitzgibbons's temples aflame.

“Don't have me arrested.” Emily's voice broke, and she started to sob. “Don't call the police. Do anything but that. I'm begging you.”

“You're going to confess.”

“I'll confess to anything if you don't have me arrested. I'll say anything. I'll do anything.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons was not moved by the young woman's pleadings, even though Emily Krok's want of good looks was rendered even more apparent in her distress. The girl looked very wizened and misshapen, with her head jutting forth, as she pleaded.

“You can start by admitting that you're a little kleptomaniac who can't keep her grubby fingers off my property.”

Emily, true to her word, nodded miserably.

“Come along.”

“It's true,” said Emily.

“If it isn't bolted down,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons insisted, “you walk off with it.”

“Yes.” Emily was clutching her head with one hand.

“You cheat and steal and tell lies about me behind my back.”

“No!” Emily replied. “I can't bear this any longer. What am I going to do? Help me. What am I going to do?” Her balled fists shook now.

“Why, I've had you on report for a month.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons drew attention to a pile of folders on her desk, as to the dossiers of criminals. “You and a dozen others, including your own boss. Elizabeth Wilson talks about me. I have it on paper, in black and white. Tell me I'm lying.”

“You would never lie, Mrs. Fitzgibbons.” Emily wiped her nose with the back of her fist.

“Then tell me what you heard.”

“It's true, Mrs. Fitzgibbons. She talks about you.”

“You heard it with your own ears.”

Emily nodded, the tears shining on her eyelashes. “Mrs. Wilson said you were too big for your own boots. I heard her say it one morning to Mr. Barrett, when he brought her her Danish and coffee. She said that somebody would cut you down to size. She said you were crazy as a bedbug!” Seeing the look of shock on Mrs. Fitzgibbons's face, Emily immediately excepted herself. “I couldn't believe my
ears!
” she said. “I thought I was dreaming.”

“Then, it's true.”

“It was something about the Christmas bonuses. How the officers were going to get less money this year. We all love you, Mrs. Fitzgibbons!” Emily saw her opening and broke out in a spate of passion. She was clasping her hands together fervently. “You should hear the way the girls talk about you in the rest room — about your hair and makeup, and the way you stand up for us, and how wonderful it is to have somebody tough in charge of the bank. We'd die for you! We really would. You should hear them.”

“Go back to your job.”

“I'd do anything for you,” Emily added, not hearing. “You're fair to everybody. You're honest and beautiful. Ever since you changed, we're all behind you.”

“Since I changed?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons appeared puzzled.

“When you became different,” Emily explained. “When you changed. When you started talking out — scolding people for this and that. When you were in the newspaper. When you were on television. We were so proud of you. I was so proud of you. I could have killed Mrs. Wilson that day.”

Transformed by her own words, Emily Krok was left gazing abjectly at Mrs. Fitzgibbons. The light of reverence showed through her distorted features. She wanted to say more. “You ought to wring her neck.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons reached with a fingertip and brushed a tear-stain on Emily's cheek.

“You ought to break her back,” Emily said.

“Don't worry, sweetheart,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons soothed the girl. “I'll destroy Mrs. Wilson.”

“She should be chain-sawed. She should be killed in her sleep.”

“You'll work for Julie from now on. You're going to be Mrs. Fitzgibbons's little spy.”

“I'd like that. You're beautiful. In every way,” Emily added, in raptures.

“Julie is very loyal to me, and so will you be. You'll keep your eyes and ears peeled and report to me in secret everything that's going on. This afternoon, I want you to go up to my house and give the place a good cleaning.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons got her purse from her desk. “It hasn't been touched in a month. Make everything sparkle and shine. I'll be home at five.”

With Mrs. Fitzgibbons's house key in hand, Emily paused in the rear doorway of the office, her knees bumping and the toes of her sponge-soled shoes turned inward. She reminded Mrs. Fitzgibbons of an old painting she had seen of a knot-faced medieval peasant, stooped with hardship, her body afflicted with premature age. She was the exact opposite of how Mrs. Fitzgibbons saw herself, a stylish modern-day woman commanding the fortunes of a powerful institution. “Go along, darling,” she said, with charity for the pigeon-toed girl hunched in the doorway in her forest green jumper. “I know how miserable you are.”

Emily stared back with a fixated expression. “I'd do anything for you, Mrs. Fitzgibbons. Honest.”

“Start in the kitchen,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, “and work your way toward the front of the house.”

By closing time that Wednesday, when she called Leonard Frye into her office to brief him on his Hartford assignment, Mrs. Fitzgibbons had regained her confident outlook. The ghastly look of Mr. Frye standing in her doorway startled her. It did not occur to Mrs. Fitzgibbons that the man whom she had replaced and demoted half expected to be fired, or, for that matter, that Mr. Frye, in the interim, had developed a severe middle-aged crush on his boss.

“You look like you've donated a gallon of blood. Shut the door behind you. I have an important assignment for you.”

She regarded him across the lamplit, dark-grained surface of her big desk and shook her head in dismay at the notion that two weeks ago this fellow was overseeing her work and giving her orders. The impression was unsettling.

“You're not ill, are you?”

“Not at all.” Mr. Frye glanced about for a chair, but Mrs. Fitzgibbons had ordered Julie to take the chair out of her office following the episode with Desmond Kane. No other employees would abuse their welcome by remaining seated after she had finished with them if there was no chair for them to sit on in the first place.

“This will only take a minute,” she said, and instructed him then on the matter of his visit to the George Hitchings Corporation.

“You want me to do that?” Mr. Frye was clearly impressed by the size and reputation of the firm she was talking about.

“I think you can handle it.”

Ironically, of all the employees who had felt the impact of Mrs. Fitzgibbons's regime, it was Mr. Frye, her fallen predecessor, who appeared most convinced of the validity of her success. It showed in his face.

“Look your best,” she told him. “Be personable down there. They know you're a good technical man because I told them you were. We're looking for bigger game,” she boasted. “Under me, Leonard, everyone on my staff is going to get an equal chance to show me what they can do. Everybody starts at go. And don't think I won't be cracking the whip.”

“You're doing a fine job,” he put in quietly.

“I'm going to increase the spread between costs and yields if it kills me.” Her spine tingled. “Everything rides on my ability to do that.” She touched off essential points on the fingers of her left hand. “Unprecedented publicity, lower operating costs, low-cost funds in volume, low-risk loans with a solid yield, and a lean, hard-hitting staff underneath me.”

For the first time, Mrs. Fitzgibbons detected the distinct look of romantic infatuation that left Mr. Frye's temples tinged with pink. The realization embarrassed her and led her to address Mr. Frye in a manner quite different from her earlier suggestion about his career possibilities in New York.

“You're not twenty-five years old, Leonard. I have to be shown that you can still cut it. This is your retirement job. You can't pack up and run off to Hawaii. You can't decide overnight to become an oceanographer or a pineapple grower. You're over fifty,” she said, “and you've got yourself a hard-driving boss.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons could restrain her tongue no longer. For two hours, the compulsion to mouth an obscenity had been building within her. “Don't think for a second that I can't be one motherfucker,” she said.

Mr. Frye swallowed hard over that one, but succeeded at maintaining his balance and an unruffled expression.

“I'm your future.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons swung round to face the door, as Julie entered with a folder in her hand. “What is it, sugarplum?”

Across the face of the manila folder, in bold black letters, was the legend, “Background Report on Laurence and Morris De Maria. Confidential to Mrs. Fitzgibbons, from J. Greaney.”

“What have we here?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons peeled open the folder and regarded its contents with a self-satisfied smirk.

“Has something happened with the De Marias?” Mr. Frye had caught sight of the lettering on the folder and spoke up instinctively.

She ignored him, as she turned a page of the carefully typed report and began scanning the section titled “Current Activities, Employers, Organizations, Social Acquaintances.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons felt a voluptuous thrill over her power to commission such a detailed document on such short notice. She liked, too, the way Jack expressed some of his findings in the secretive language of undercover intrigue. The last sentence of the first paragraph read, “A ‘friend' of this institution reports that the latter, Morris De Maria, was refused employment at the firm of the Nicholson Wire Co. over his inability to explain the cause of his dismissal from his previous post. Our ‘friend' reported further that Mr. M. De Maria and his wife, Marie, later engaged in a vicious shouting match in their car outside the wire plant.”

“This is exactly what I wanted!” Mrs. Fitzgibbons slammed shut the folder and rapped on her desk for Julie. “Tell Jack I'm pleased. Tell him I'll thank him tomorrow. Tell him to get in here in the morning.” She turned to Mr. Frye. “I'm going to put Laurence De Maria in jail. I'm going to put him in state prison. I'm sending him to trial,” she said, “and he's going to jail.”

To Mr. Frye, the woman behind the big lamplit desk looked genuinely scary. The flesh of her face was drawn back with mask-like tautness. Her blue eyes flared and sparkled.

“He'll rot in there,” she said harshly. “And don't think I won't have a couple of million-dollar lawyers pressuring the district attorney. I can afford the cream of the crop. I'm going to lock him up. I'll put him away for years.”

“But what did he do?”

“He can beg for mercy till he's blue in the face,” she said.

When I come into the room,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons instructed Emily in a kindly manner, “always step to one side. It's impolite to stand in my way.”

Emily Krok watched as Mrs. Fitzgibbons glanced cursorily about the kitchen at the gleaming floor and appliances and stepped on into the next room. Outside, darkness had fallen, and a cold autumn rain was coming down. The rain increased in intensity, hitting the bedroom windows, while Mrs. Fitzgibbons changed clothes. She wanted something sporty for a change, and settled on a black turtleneck and black pants. Both Matthew and Julie were waiting outdoors in the Buick. Mrs. Fitzgibbons didn't want to eat alone tonight. She had made plans to meet Bruce for supper out at the Monarch Club, a rustic gin mill three miles north of town, but then decided to invite the others, as well. She wanted to be surrounded by her intimate circle.