Ride a Cockhorse (39 page)

Mrs. Fitzgibbons was staring at him, gauging the peril of his circumstance by his musical reaction to her sudden outburst. To prolong the pleasure, she nodded coldly and expressed a reasonable point of view. “I have my people to think about. I have my own agenda, my own concerns and priorities.” She sat far back in her chair, her legs crossed, her knee pointing upward.

The man nodded with polite understanding. “Naturally,” said he.

“I have a duty to preserve us from the hungry wolves of the world. I have every right to do this.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons savored her own words. “And I am expected to use every means at my disposal. If I didn't, who would? I have had to deal with serious challenges in my own house. With certain treacherous subordinates who would sacrifice everything that is good and sound just for personal enrichment, to put a little silver in their pockets. Or for sicker reasons, for the perverse fun of making life impossible for others. These are the people who urinate in the reservoirs.” She shrugged unconcernedly. “I knew who they were. I watched them for a day or two. Everyone who is hardworking and sane was behind me. I have their trust. They knew the sword would fall, and now it has. Who would have thought,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons inquired shrewdly, “just two weeks ago, that I would have consolidated my position this quickly? I'll tell you,” she said. “No one.”

“You've made striking gains.”

“I acted,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons agreed. “I didn't wait to be cudgeled about the ears just because I wanted what was best for everyone. Believe me,” she came forward smoothly onto her feet and paced to the big window, “I'm sustained by the devotion of my staff. To them, I'm a blessing. I have their confidence and I have their love.”

She might have gone on in this vein some while longer, but as she turned, the sight of the president of Citizens waiting impassively for her to reveal her intentions ignited her temper. An impulse to curse him out came and went. Color flashed into her face. She commenced marching to and fro. “I knew what you were up to,” she snapped. “I'm told everything. Did you suppose that you could telephone someone in this bank without my knowing? You knew I was chief officer. You knew who I was. You saw me in all the newspapers, you saw me on television, you knew I was chief.” Suddenly, Mrs. Fitzgibbons exploded in anger. The sight of the man sitting inertly on his chair inflamed her. “
Who do you think you are, Schreffler?
Lecturing me about Bertram Mannox. Where is your eleven million dollars? Where is my money?”

“I'm astonished by the extent of your unhappiness with us,” he remarked.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons had stationed herself behind the big desk, her hands flat upon it, leaning forward angrily. “You have been a thorn in my side for years. I mean to be done with this!”

Evidently, Mr. Schreffler decided to make a clean breast of his troubles at this point, for the expression on his face altered. He showed her a patient hand. “It's not untrue, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, that we might not survive the failure of Mannox Apremont at this time, but it is true, nevertheless, given a period of six months at the outside, and not one day more than that, our survival and future health would no longer depend upon Mannox. That is not conjecture. I can satisfy your accountants and lawyers on that score, down to the last decimal point.”

“You people.” For the first time since his arrival, Mrs. Fitzgibbons paraded herself past him, conscious of the disdainful oiliness of her voice and the imposing lift of her breasts.

“If you will delay initiating any proceedings against Bert Mannox until the month of April, I can promise you —”

“Your whole history is one of shameless money grubbing. Every generation of you. Going all the way back. Seize their collateral! Padlock their doors! Carry off their sofas and refrigerators! Throw them into the street!” She made an annihilating sweep with her arm. “You have never done anything good or useful for the happiness of anyone, not in a century, not once or anywhere, not from Windsor Jambs to Nichewaug. Now, the shoe is on the other foot. Your depositors are coming to me in droves. Your capital is gone. You're on the brink of extinction!”

“I must correct you, Mrs. Fitzgibbons,” he insisted, shocked by the sheer falsity of her charges. “Our contribution to the growth and welfare of this city and region is a long and distinguished one.”

“It is nothing, do you hear me?”

“Our two institutions have lived side by side in harmony for decades.”

“Last week,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons moderated her manner in a quietly cynical fashion, “you and I might have sat down to a pleasant lunch together and discussed your crisis like two human beings. I would have listened to you. I would have sympathized and offered advice, and if push came to shove, I'd have helped you. There is no question about that,” she cited categorically, as she strutted out from behind the desk. “I'm not unfeeling. I'm not a brute,” she said. “I would have seen your side of things. I would have taken you at your word. I'd've extended the Mannox note, and it would have been business as usual. Now,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, “all that has changed.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons picked up her phone and buzzed Julie. “Do you have the agreement from Maloney and Halpern?”

“It came two minutes ago,” Julie said, then swiftly lowered her voice. “Chief,” she said, “Mr. Zabac is on the other line.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons switched lines. “What is it, Louis?”

The chairman's voice on the wire was thin with anxiety. “Mrs. Fitzgibbons, I've heard news this morning that has distressed me more than I can say!”

“I'm in an important meeting, Louis.” She gazed blankly at Mr. Schreffler, who was paying the most acute attention to the call.

“I insist,” Mr. Zabac commanded with obvious stress, “that you do nothing further today until I arrive. Do you understand me? I'm going directly home, and from there straight to you. I can't believe that you dismissed Elizabeth Wilson. After all we said on the subject.” He was beside himself with frustration. “You broke your word. I'm very, very unhappy.”

“I'm talking to Curtin Schreffler, Louis. I haven't time for one of these chats. Leonard Frye is at a meeting in Sturbridge with Nate Solomon from the Shawmut in Boston, discussing the Worcester proposition — which is pure gold. While I,” she said bitterly, her voice grown hoarse with determination, “am putting an end to a grievance that has me at my wit's end!”

This angry pronouncement left Mr. Zabac speechless. Mrs. Fitzgibbons held the receiver away from her ear, glanced at it bitterly, then hung up.

Witnessing the way that Mrs. Fitzgibbons had just treated the venerable Louis Zabac, Mr. Schreffler's face grew pale. After that, he sought to appease her. He complimented her on her successes and on the wealth of publicity she had won for herself and her institution. Cutting him short, Mrs. Fitzgibbons then launched into a fabulous description of several lucrative deals, all imaginary, into which she was steering her bank. She boasted of a February ground-breaking for a twenty-two storey office tower in Hartford in which the Parish Bank was a principal lender. Waving to the north, she cited an industrial park that she had on the planning boards with Wang Laboratories. Westinghouse, she said, was on the line over the weekend inquiring about the availability of skilled labor in the region. Mr. Schreffler listened to Mrs. Fitzgibbons's megalomaniacal boasting without stirring in his chair. There was not a grain of truth in what she was saying, and she knew it, but intuited correctly the usefulness of associating herself with stupendous projects. She was preparing the man for the savage onslaught to follow. When Julie came into the room with the preliminary takeover agreement hastily prepared by Maloney and Halpern, Mrs. Fitzgibbons was marching to and fro in front of the quiet, seated Citizens executive, who was holding forth magisterially. “We have the size, the weight, the assets. And I have the will. When I make up my mind to act, nobody on God's earth is going to stop me.”

Mr. Schreffler was soon holding the ominous sheaf of papers from Maloney and Halpern in his hands, murmuring perplexedly as Mrs. Fitzgibbons paced before him. Sometimes she enjoyed uttering the man's name, the sound of which was like the gathering of a mouthful of saliva. “Nothing has been left to chance, Schreffler.”

“Your achievements are the talk of the season. We all know that Mr. Zabac has the fullest confidence in you.”

“Zabac?” That made her laugh. Mrs. Fitzgibbons ridiculed the chairman's importance. “You must be pulling my leg. I have the confidence of everyone, of every soul under this roof, as well as of the army of depositors rushing in to join us. What a mentality! You and Zabac. Who knows who you people are? Ask the man in the street.”

“I concede you your popularity, Mrs. Fitzgibbons. All I am asking is that you set forth your specific complaints against us, so that we can correct them, and that we might then go on living side by side, just as always — our smaller bank,” Mr. Schreffler conceded modestly, “next to yours.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons was wonderfully pleased with herself and could imagine a time very, very soon when Louis Zabac would be staying at home, in a sort of obligatory retirement, while she occupied this magnificent executive office. The room suited her vanity. The gray Gothic pile of the city hall looming ponderously before her, with its iron roof fence and towering spires, the somber walls of which deadened the power of sunlight itself, mirrored something equally grand within her soul.

“You must be feebleminded,” she answered him rudely. “You're not listening to me. I intend to put an end to this charade. Do you suppose you could stop me? One day,” she promised, lifting her voice musically, “I'll come blowing in at your front door like a winter wind. And then, Curtin Schreffler, you and your sleepy little staff will see what I've been talking about. I do not bluff. Trust me. It will be unpleasant!”

She stopped before him in imposing fashion. “I'm giving you this last opportunity to join your little bank to mine. I can promise that you will receive a respectable position in the resulting organization, and that everyone will know what an important part you played in the merger. I can promise you that.... I promise!”

As Mr. Schreffler appeared more confused than convinced by her words, Mrs. Fitzgibbons continued to cajole him.

“I swear it.” She waved her hand as though to dismiss the contrary. “You have my solemn word. My sacred pledge.... You'll be happy here. I, personally, will look after your interests. I'll make the appointment on the six o'clock news!” she cried, showing her generosity. “We'll go on television together. I'll name you my executive vice president in charge of everything. Everyone will report to you. When you put your name on those papers, the Mannox Apremont nightmare will be over for you. Think of that. Think what it will mean, too, to be second in command here. You have my sacred word. May God strike me dead!” she shouted. “I'll look out for you.”

“I'm not empowered to sign such an instrument as this,” Mr. Schreffler objected finally, and looked down in dismay at the document on his lap.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons waved aside his remark as an irrelevancy and indicated the document. “Do as you're told.”

“I will need to read it, then others, too, would have to read it. This is more than unusual.”

“Turn to the last page,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons instructed in a firm voice, “and sign your name.”

“Also,” Mr. Schreffler protested quietly, “if it should happen one day that we do merge, will the Citizens name be incorporated in the formal title of the surviving bank? My associates and family would be very curious on that point.”

“What family?” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “What surviving bank?”

“The new bank,” said he.

“What new bank?”

If Curtin Schreffler were a man who had ever experienced even a dash of fear while in the presence of an infuriated woman, the escapade to follow could only have frozen the blood in his veins. Her voice climbed to an incredible pitch. She was apoplectic.

“There is no new bank! At three o'clock this afternoon, you will cease to exist! I'm going to expunge,” she hollered, “that name and everything it stands for from every wall and billboard in this city! I'll beat it into the mud! I'll obliterate it, so help me God. In the weeks to come, I promise you, Schreffler,” she leveled at him, “as Providence guides my hand, there won't be as much as an envelope or letterhead left anywhere on the face of the earth to suggest that you and your family, and that sorry collection of yahoos working for you, ever sat together under one roof. I'm going to
smash
your bank!” Her voice soared out of control. Mr. Schreffler clasped the arms of his chair. “I'll smash it with my bare hands and scatter the bricks and mortar from here to Lake Champlain.
Julie!
” Mrs. Fitzgibbons ran to the door. “Get me my lawyers!”

At fifteen minutes to two o'clock, when Mrs. Fitzgibbons came out to the head of the stairs, Curtin Schreffler was left behind in Mr. Zabac's office to stew over the preliminary merger agreement. Mrs. Fitzgibbons had allotted him fifteen minutes to sign the formal instrument. Assured that he would do so, she called Howard Brouillette upstairs to witness the signature. If Mr. Schreffler failed to sign, Howard was to telephone their lawyers to start proceedings against the Mannox firm. Downstairs, Mrs. Fitzgibbons collected her coat, bag, and gloves, and signaled for Emily to join her. Jeannine Mielke was sitting at Julie's desk by Mrs. Fitzgibbons's door. She spoke up in a facetious tone as Mrs. Fitzgibbons came out.

“I spoke to Mr. Zabac,” Jeannine let fall in a prim, gloating manner. “He instructed me to tell everyone that he's going to address the entire staff this afternoon at four o'clock.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons, pulling on her gloves, had already decided to put an end to Mr. Zabac's interference with her administration. “He did, did he?” she said.