Ride a Cockhorse (27 page)

Before addressing Mr. Brouillette, Mrs. Fitzgibbons signified with a nod that Alec Donachie could go. She waited for the door to close.

“I hope you don't mind my having had your desk taped,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons started in, while reaching and moving the big envelope of photos to one side on her desk in such a manner as to draw his attention to it. “It's just a precaution,” she said, “in the event that our interview doesn't turn out the way I'd like it to.”

Mr. Brouillette smiled crazily at that. A sticky white froth appeared on his lips. “Our interview?”

“Our talk, Howard,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons in a robust tone. “We're going to have a talk.”

“Oh,” he said, “I see.” He stood inertly before her desk; his spectacles glittered.

“I thought you should have your lunch first.”

“That was thoughtful of you.” Time and again, Mr. Brouillette's eyes flicked nervously to the envelope of photos on her desk. He reached up with a bony hand and adjusted his eyeglasses.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons sat forward at her desk. She looked quite beautiful, the lamplight glowing softly on her hair and illuminating the planes of her face. “The three of you,” she inquired, pleasantly, “did you meet at Schermerhorn's, or did you walk down there together?”

Howard shifted his weight nervously. “I believe we met there,” he said.

“I see. Did the conversation at lunch surprise you?”

Mr. Brouillette made as if to express his confusion over the question, then thought better of it. “Do you know, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, it did,” he replied.

“They're not your sort of people, Howard.”

Like a lost man descrying a point of light in the distance, Howard groped forward. “In fact,” he confessed, “I was very surprised.”

“I'm not going to ask you to repeat everything that was said, and I'll tell you why.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons rocked backward in her chair, if only to demonstrate to a hapless subordinate the ease and casualness that destructive power is capable of indulging without depreciating itself. “With the two of them, Howard, I'm just biding my time.”

“I'd be happy to tell you.”

“Not at all!” Her melodious response showed her to be supremely indifferent to gossip.

“But I would,” he insisted.

“You see,
I
,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons pointed out, “knew that you were there in my interests.”

“I was,” said Howard, whose moral condition by now was already that of a man in dread of being taken down to the dungeon.

“I knew it whether you knew it or not.”

Mr. Brouillette, an adept at chess, must have read Mrs. Fitzgibbons's move instantly, for he replied without hesitation: “But I
did
know it.”

For a moment, Mrs. Fitzgibbons regarded him with a soft, endearing expression.

“Why else would I have gone?” he cried, and laughed eerily. The pale eyes in his long, moribund face glittered; he wetted his lips at frequent intervals.

The sight of the angular, ill-dressed figure standing before her, in his seedy blue suit and cheap maroon tie, inflamed Mrs. Fitzgibbons's ego. “
These little mice!
” she suddenly exclaimed, and flung herself forward in her chair. “You people are going to harm me? You would have to be mental to pick a fight with me!”

Mr. Brouillette's face fell. He gaped at her with a fixated smile that creased his pocked face.

“Your wife is in show business, they tell me.”

“My wife?”

“Your wife! Mrs. Brouillette.”

“I don't think so.”

“I have it on sound authority that Mrs. Brouillette is a celebrity.”

“No,” he managed to reply. “I would not call her that.”

“Then my sources have failed me. Who would know better than you? How long have you and Dolores been married?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons waved at the envelope.

“Two years,” he replied drily, and coughed nervously into his fist.

“Don't misunderstand me,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons put in. “I admire people in the entertainment business. Do you manage her?”

“No.” He met that query with promptitude.

“From what I hear, Dolores is very talented. A rising star. Beautiful and photogenic. You must be very proud of her, Howard. I don't blame you for not trumpeting her successes around the bank, though. Some people have old-fashioned ideas about showgirls and movie actresses, and how you can't mix that sort of thing with business and finance. Does Dolores have her own automobile?”

The sudden changes of subject kept Howard off balance. “Yes, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, she does.”

“What model is it?” came the sonorous rejoinder.

“She has a new Toronado.”

“That's wonderful. Toronados are very pretty. I hope she financed it with us,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons teased.

Mr. Brouillette hesitated. “Do you know,” he concluded, with uncertainty, “I don't think it ever was financed.”

“You do understand,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons got to the point of her interview, without lifting her voice, “that I'm in a position to ruin you.”

“You said?” Howard's jaw dropped.

“You understand,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons repeated for emphasis, in a louder voice, “that I can smash the life out of you.”

“Oh, absolutely.” Mr. Brouillette reacted at once to her clarification.

“That I could have my guard come in and drag you out of here by the seat of your pants.”

“I know that.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons stood now and showed Howard Brouillette a very stern expression. “You do know what's coming for your friends.”

“I can imagine.”

“They'll be waiting tables at the Puritan Diner. They won't know what hit them. I'm in the newspapers,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “I'm featured on television. The calls are backed up on my phone lines for an hour and a half. The question now is what I'm going to do with you. Isn't it?”

Howard showed her a penitential expression. “We all know you're fair.”

“It isn't a question of being fair.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons went past him in a little gust of perfume. “If I were fair, I'd send you and your movie-actress wife to jail. I'd have you beaten with a broomstick. I'm not trying to be fair. The banking business,” she said, “isn't fair. If life were fair, you'd be working for yourself. You people don't work for yourselves. You work for me.”

“I'm behind you foursquare, Mrs. Fitzgibbons.”

“Some stupid skills picked up in a night school someplace mean nothing to me. You business grads are a dime a dozen. I need specialists who are personally devoted to me.”

“Makes sense.” Howard rewetted his lips.

“Who would go to the wall for me. That's how people get ahead here.”

In the way of illustrating her authority, Mrs. Fitzgibbons turned on her heel and snatched up her telephone. “Julie,” she said, “put me upstairs to the chairman.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons waited importantly for Mr. Zabac to come on the line, while relishing the way that Mr. Brouillette was gaping at her.

“Louis!” she said, and launched into one of her spur-of-the-moment promotional ideas. “I'm going to ask Nate Solomon of the Shawmut to come to lunch one afternoon next week, to give an informal talk to our loan officers about changes going on in the marketplace. I'm certain he'll come. In fact, he'll be flattered. I'll have the news people here in force! It's important you be here.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons's manner was clearly that of the executive in charge. “We'll aim for Friday,” she said, and hung up the telephone.

“That's banking,” she explained, and snapped her fingers rapidly, five or six times, to show the accelerated pace of the new regime. She reached then and took up the envelope containing the thick stack of pornographic pictures of Mrs. Brouillette, and with an indifferent flourish, tossed it to him. “Where is Dolores performing?” she said.

The suddenness of the gesture left Mr. Brouillette thoroughly addled. He was holding the envelope.

“You can talk to me. I'm not the Pope,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “What sort of engagements does she have? Stage shows? Private parties?”

“Mostly,” Howard managed to answer, “she's free-lancing.”

“House calls?”

Howard grinned sickishly over that one. “Outcalls,” he croaked, “yes.”

“Outcalls? Is that how you put it? Well, it all sounds very lucrative. I'd like to meet this film star.” Again, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's eyes went to the envelope in his hands. “Why don't you bring Dolores to dinner at the Canoe Club tonight at eight o'clock. Ask for me at the reservations desk.”

“That would be wonderful,” he said.

“I like your work, Howard. I've been watching you carefully. Since taking over here, by cutting out some deadwood, I've trimmed our total annual salary outlay by a hundred thousand dollars. Those funds are now available to me, you see, to reward people who march to the new music. I have the resources to reward loyalty.”

The light on Mrs. Fitzgibbons's phone flashed repeatedly. On this occasion, she took up the receiver.

“What is it, lamb?”

“Mrs. Fitzgibbons, your daughter wants to see you.”

“You tell Barbara I'm not to be bothered. I'm discussing wages with my financial officer.”

Julie dropped her voice to a whisper. “She looks very distressed, Mrs. Fitzgibbons.”

“Tell her to wait.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons returned her attention to Howard Brouillette, who, in the preceding five minutes, had begun to show his superior an expression of the most intent fascination. He reached up many times with his index finger to wipe the perspiration from his hairline. Mrs. Fitzgibbons went on with her recital without missing a beat. “Money talks. I have the wherewithal. I have the power. With this fund, I'll put an end, once and for all, to any final pockets of resistance.” She couldn't help preening as she boasted. “I can't offer you a new title, Howard, but I can increase your salary by an appreciable margin.”

Mr. Brouillette was genuinely stunned by the sudden turn in his fortunes. “I wouldn't even know what to say to that.”

“Oh, it's going to happen. I'm putting you in for it today. Why do you think I called you in here? To discuss Regulation Q? To pass the time of day?” She waved her hand at Howard's clothing. “Buy yourself a couple of new suits. You look like an immigrant. You're one of my vice presidents, not some carnival shill trying to guess people's weights. Have Dolores select something for you. I'm sure she has lovely taste.”

“Dolores has wonderful taste.”

“Something conservative and expensive. And, remember,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons cautioned him, “if I catch you so much as talking to those two luncheon companions of yours, I won't just take away your rattles and teddy bears. I'll chop your spine off.”

“I don't associate with people like that.”

“I mean it,” she promised, with a narrowed eye. “I'll put you in prison.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons showed him to the door. Outside her office, on a metal chair next to Julie's desk, Barbara sat waiting for her. Mrs. Fitzgibbons's daughter wore a plaid lumberjack coat and faded blue jeans. No two women could have been more dissimilar in appearance and bearing. As soon as she admitted her daughter and closed the door behind them, Barbara started in.

“You perfect bitch,” she said, in a thin, suppressed wail of a voice. “You're ruining my life. What are you doing to me?”

“Barbara.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons showed her daughter the face of reason. “I have a world of work to do. I haven't time for infantile temper tantrums. This is a bank. I'm chief executive officer here. I'm not Sigmund Freud,” she said. “I'm not Captain Kangaroo.”

Barbara mimicked her mother's repetition of the first-person pronoun. “
I
—
I
—
I!
” she shrieked.

“I have a dozen appointments. I have money market calls to make. I have loan proposals to study.” She gestured about herself. “This is the actual world. There is no hole in the ozone layer here, or baby seals being murdered, or anything like that. We're not African killer bees. We make loans to people to buy things.”

“You're sick,” Barbara shot back. “You don't know what you're talking about. You've lost your mind. You can't afford those clothes. That awful makeup, that hair! Who told you you could be glamorous? I'm dying inside. Are you listening to me? Eddie stayed out half the night. He's in love with you! He's infatuated with you!” Barbara put her hands over her ears. “It's sordid and disgusting. Who ever heard of a man talking to his wife about the shape of her mother's breasts?” Barbara turned this way and that; her eyes flew about distractedly.

“He said that?”

“Why are you doing this to me? Why is this happening? Why?” She clenched her fists. “Why?”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons grimaced. “He was talking to you about the shape of my breasts?”

Barbara was staring with blank gray eyes at the wall behind her mother. “I tell you, I can't bear it anymore.”

“Is he demented?” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “You have the gall to come in here, in the middle of the day, to tell me a story like that? I warned the two of you not to marry. I said it at the time. One of the two of you had to find someone better.”

“You said nothing. You're raving.”

“Look at you. You look like a forest ranger.”

“Everyone but you knows what's happening,” Barbara cried. “You've gone crazy. You're destroying people. Don't you realize that? Desmond Kane stopped me in the street —”

“That one-armed bandit—”

“You,” Barbara hollered, “
fired him!
He hasn't a job now. What's he supposed to do? Where is he supposed to turn? All because of you. He said you've become a lunatic. He recognized the symptoms. You're out of control.”