Ride a Cockhorse (29 page)

“And that,” said Eddie, significantly, to Matthew at his side, “is not to be.”

“Indeed, it is not,” she said.

“Mrs. Fitzgibbons has waited day after day after day for them to come round,” Julie attested, thoroughly drawn into the spell of Mrs. Fitzgibbons's darkening mood.

Sitting bolt upright in her chair at the head of the table, Mrs. Fitzgibbons offered a very fetching picture of the dictatorial figure who is not reluctant to deal with malefaction and will not shrink from using whatever weapons come to hand.

“Tonight,” she said, “I'm ordering Dolores out to Hampton Ponds, to a certain lakeside cottage out there, where she'll begin to pave the way for the comeuppance of a man who has not only squandered millions of hard-earned dollars entrusted to his care, but who has been unrepentantly vicious toward me. Not just toward me personally,” she added, “but toward the dignity of my office.”

Perplexed by the sudden reference to his wife, Mr. Brouillette straightened in his seat. Dolores, equally bewildered, reacted with a foolish smile. “Where am I going?” she inquired amiably.

“Simple justice isn't enough,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons went on. “Up until now, I've played according to Hoyle. If you please me, I promote you. If you fail me, I fire you. Those are the rules of civilized behavior. They are not the rules for dealing with a slick, pompous mountain of flesh who exhausts the life savings of others in the hopes of pulling down a fat bonus every December.”

“I knew a man like that,” said Eddie.

“Keep quiet,” Julie scolded.

“Those aren't the rules for dealing with a high-ranking official whose salary I pay and whose office consists of three or four of the most disgusting, bootlicking brownnosers the world has ever seen. Playing by the book is out the window.”

“It's about time,” said Matthew, his face and eyes glowing from the alcohol.

“This is no small-time chiseler,” she said. “This is no downtown penny-ante Puerto Rican hustler working a street corner in Ward Two. This man was advantaged. I,” she reminded her friends, “came from nowhere. I spent years in the trenches. I started at the bottom. I know every dirty trick there is. I'll tell you a story. The day I took over total authority, that little man upstairs made me promise that I wouldn't act rashly—that I wouldn't hurt the feelings of the man I was replacing.”

Everyone laughed over the cynicism Mrs. Fitzgibbons employed in her remarks, as she smirked and opened her hands to signify a tolerance of naiveté.

“I gave him his lollipop. Why wouldn't I? I knew what I was going to do. I had the power. I went downstairs and in ten seconds flat took that sad sack by the neck and flung him out of his office!”

For the first time in many minutes, the table erupted boisterously. Emily thumped the tablecloth with the heel of her fist.

“I was expected to run that place, to manage the lives of all those people, with my hands tied behind my back. Not two days later, I gave that little man upstairs my solemn word that I wouldn't fire anybody. We all know what happened to that!”

Of those present, only Bruce showed an anxious reaction to Mrs. Fitzgibbons's egotistical outburst. He watched her fuming away at her imaginary enemies with a worried look on his face.

“I didn't call that meeting,” she was saying. “I didn't take a poll. I don't govern by committee!”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons spoke uninterruptedly for ten minutes, while the food turned cold on their plates. The only interruption came when the waiters appeared to clear the table. Just as dessert was about to be served, Dolores Brouillette paid Emily an unintended insult that set off gales of laughter. Dolores had just learned Emily's name, but thought that she was being kidded. She didn't believe that anyone was named Emily. “That's a little piggy name,” she said.

Emily, who was sitting next to Mrs. Fitzgibbons, with Mrs. Brouillette on her left, had turned to the prostitute and was gazing at her with a very hurt look. Next to Dolores, Emily resembled a creature of an inferior species. She was scrunched up in her chair, staring into Dolores's face as if it were an immense searchlight that had suddenly located her.

Dolores was blushing, as she believed she was being teased by her new friends. “Emily is a piggy's name,” she said.

“Not to me, it isn't,” said Mr. Brouillette, in an effort to release Emily from her agony.

“What are you talking about? Am I an idiot?” Dolores was beaming, enjoying the attention that Mrs. Fitzgibbons had drawn to her. She enjoyed being looked at. She turned her head and regarded Emily once more; her face was still heated from the sensation of being kidded along. Emily was transfixed. “What's your last name?” Dolores asked.

Emily's eyes were on a level with Mrs. Brouillette's breasts and the delicate rope of pearls that draped forward on the soft upswelling of her white cashmere sweater. She gaped at the wine glass in Mrs. Brouillette's fingers. Emily moved her jaw from side to side before replying. “Krok,” she said.

Dolores's face came alive instantly, as she reached and set down her glass. “Is somebody tweaking me?” she cried gaily.

Even Mrs. Fitzgibbons enjoyed the merriment, in particular the picture of Emily's face twisted into a knot of misery.

“
Crock?
” Dolores let out with a shriek. “Wouldn't you just kill yourself?”

Over dessert, Mrs. Fitzgibbons detailed the part that Mr. Brouillette's wife was expected to play in the unfolding drama. Dolores was game for the plan right off the bat, but was slow at divining what precisely was expected. Matthew tried to clarify it for her.

“Mrs. Fitzgibbons wants you to compromise someone,” he explained.

“Oh, I'd like that,” replied Dolores, sitting up and straightening her torso, conscious of the admiring looks and attention of all.

“You'll be remunerated,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons.

“I couldn't take money!” Dolores was clearly put off by the offer, but after a moment of stunned silence, during which interval everyone looked round at everyone else in disbelief, she modified her objection. “I mean, for this job,” she said.

“You'll take what I decide to give you.”

As Mrs. Fitzgibbons instructed Mrs. Brouillette in the particulars of her assignment, Howard revealed some obvious symptoms of discomfort. He was hunched forward over the table, his hands pressed flat between his knees, and had taken to scraping his feet back and forth on the floor. His face was sweaty; he was smiling insanely.

“He won't be expecting you,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, “so you'll have to inveigle your way in.”

“What is inveigle?” Dolores inquired.

“Show him some leg,” said Eddie.

“Matthew will drive you out to the lake house. It's Thursday night. I know he won't be going home from there till nine or ten o'clock.”

“Can
I
drive Dolores?” said Eddie.

“All right.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons acceded to her son-in-law. “You drive.”

“Will the rest of us follow them?” Matthew inquired.

“Not tonight. Let him have some rope.”

“This is exciting,” Julie said, as Dolores and Eddie stood up and went for their things. Eddie made an elaborate act of helping Mrs. Brouillette into her coat.

“As for you,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons instructed Eddie, “you'll park about a hundred yards back on the road and get out of the car. That way, if Hooton is not alone in his cottage, Dolores can say she's having motor trouble and lead him out to the car.”

Dolores was tying a silk kerchief about her throat. “Do you want him to score?” she asked bluntly, evidently reveling a little in her cool professionalism.

“Whatever it takes,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “I want him primed for tomorrow night.”

“That's my specialty.”

“I'm sure it is.”

“It really is,” Dolores repeated, happy to cite her strengths. “I'll have him climbing the wall.”

“
Didja hear that?
” Eddie smacked his head with the palm of his hand.

Long after Eddie Berdowsky and Dolores had gone out to the parking lot, Howard Brouillette continued to sit forward in his chair, sweating freely and rubbing the flats of his hands between his clenched knees. He shivered from time to time. No one paid him any mind, though. Soon Emily had found her voice again, and it was apparent that her feelings of adulation toward Mr. Brouillette's call girl wife exceeded any rancor she might have felt over the fact that her name struck Mrs. Brouillette as being appropriate only for a piglet; and she joined Julie Marcotte in remarking on Howard Brouillette's good luck in finding such an accomplished and exciting wife.

“Isn't she something else?” Julie observed.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons nodded agreeably. “She's very attractive. Your wife is very pretty, Howard.”

“Thank you.” Howard's eyes twinkled moistly behind the fogged lenses of his glasses, and he continued to scrape his feet mechanically back and forth under the table.

Emily cupped her hands before her. “They stand up like this!” she said.

“That's vulgar,” Julie chided her.

“You call that vulgar?” Emily retorted, not understanding. “If I were Mr. Hooton, I'd pay through the wazoo for something like that. He'll be begging for mercy. That's what I'd make him do. I'd make him beg for it. On his knees! He'd buy me diamonds and jewels until he was flat broke on his back, and I'd run over him with my five-speed Nissan Sentra!”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons tried to speak up, but Emily interrupted her passionately. “I wish I were a man. I'd like to buy something like that for an hour or two.”

Swiftly, Mrs. Fitzgibbons reached and dealt Emily a noisy clout on the ear. “What's the matter with you?”

“What'd I do?” Emily howled in pain and jerked backward.

“Are you deaf?” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons.

“Mrs. Fitzgibbons was trying to talk,” Julie chimed in.

“I was talking,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons.

Julie scolded Emily. “You'd better watch your mouth.”

“
But I didn't mean it!
” Emily clutched her ear.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons was leaning forward with her hand in the air, contemplating the merits of a second slap. Emily cowered and held up her arm.

“The Chief was talking,” Howard attested. At the sound of his voice, Emily burst into tears.

“How was I to know if I didn't hear her?” Emily whined.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons, who had not struck anyone in years, not since childhood, appeared fully prepared to continue to do so now. She looked angry.

“Please.” Bruce pleaded for an end to the fighting. “What's going on?” The sudden violence at the table upset him.

“I'll never talk again!” Emily blurted tearfully.

“You'd better not,” Julie said.

“People who insult me go to the hospital,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons.

“I love you more than any of them!” Emily protested.

“That's probably true,” said Bruce, trying again to conciliate the dispute.

“It is,” Emily cried.

“Finish your dessert,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons.

“I'd do anything for you. You know I would. There's nothing I wouldn't do. I'd commit murder. I'd rob and kill. I'd chain-saw somebody.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons continued to point at Emily's dessert, until Emily stopped talking and picked up her fork.

The tension at the bank the following morning was palpable from the moment Mrs. Fitzgibbons came darting in at the front door and knifed her way through the lines of customers at the windows. No one on the job was insensible to the cold electricity she generated. Her features were drawn and masklike. She looked like someone who had agonized for days over a question of great consequence. The fact that Mrs. Fitzgibbons had not slept more than four hours a night for more than a week contributed to her edginess. She couldn't sit still at her desk for prolonged periods and often snapped at people in a way that intensified the spreading alarm, as when she interrupted Leonard Frye in mid-sentence and told him not to bore her with a detailed account of his Hartford business trip.

“It seemed to me a success,” he protested politely.

“Summarize your views on paper. Prepare me a written report,” she told him. “If I like the terms, I'll sign off on it. If I don't, I won't.” She scowled at him then from behind her desk. To talk to her former boss in such a peremptory fashion sent a stab of sexual excitement up and down her legs. She shivered at the pleasure of it. “Do your homework, Leonard. Don't come to me unprepared. You've been in this business long enough to know that.”

Her rudeness pained Mr. Frye. “It could be a feather in your cap,” he suggested softly.

“Please, spare me the blandishments.” She patted her desk rhythmically then with the flat of her hand and repeated her instructions in the pedagogical style of a grade school teacher. “Type it on a sheet of paper and give it to my secretary.”

Before departing, Mr. Frye lingered a moment, betraying his infatuation.

“Go along back to your work,” she said. “You can beat off later.”

This parting obscenity sent Mr. Frye twitching and blinking back to his desk. Mrs. Fitzgibbons couldn't help herself. In no time, she was exacerbating the general nervousness of the place by railing on the telephone about the competitor banks in the area. Her rising voice penetrated the surrounding quiet. Jack Greaney, making his way to Julie's desk, thought better of it and returned to his post.

At the same time, no one was indifferent to the steady surge of new business. The number of interest-bearing checking accounts had practically doubled in a week. Savings deposits mounted by the hour. No one on the staff could question seriously the triumphs of their new chief. If her manner was chilling, it only nourished the impression of her invincibility. However, to aggravate matters, it was during this same morning that Mrs. Fitzgibbons learned about the graffiti someone had scribbled in the men's room, a slanderous slogan to which she reacted with textbook paranoia. Mrs. Fitzgibbons summoned her guard and marched him straight in. There, above the porcelain urinals, was scrawled in black spray paint the legend: “
Frankie Fitz Is a Fascist Pig!
”