Ride a Cockhorse (8 page)

“Never?” He affected surprise. “In all these years?”

As before, Mrs. Fitzgibbons allowed his remark to go unanswered, but in the interim changed her position in her chair, while consciously regulating her breathing and making a point of lifting her chin speculatively. She was studying him all the while, but had already concluded that this godlike man, in his exquisite cadet-size Italian silk suit, intended to please her in some way. Besides his having received her trenchant little memorandum of last Friday, she guessed that word of her more forceful behavior, not to mention the amount and quality of the mortgage loans amassed in her portfolio, had finally caught his notice. She couldn't help herself, but at the moment her estimation of the entire staff of bank employees working downstairs was that they were a collection of knuckleheads. Waiting no longer, Mrs. Fitzgibbons spoke up. She didn't beat about the bush. She put the question firmly.

“What do you want me to do for you?” she said.

Mr. Zabac reacted with a nervous laugh and got to his feet. His diminutive silhouette against the big plate glass window that looked out on the city hall struck Mrs. Fitzgibbons as both sinister and comic.

“I would like to get your impression,” said Mr. Zabac, making the point with nice precision, “of the Parish Bank's current position in the mortgage market.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons brushed a thread from her skirt. “We don't do enough business,” she said. “Some people ought to be fired.”

The chairman glanced round instantly. “You believe that?”

“You know it as well as I do.” The grimace that twisted Mrs. Fitzgibbons's lips bespoke a world of shared understandings.

“I am surprised.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons's manic capabilities here shifted into overdrive, enabling her to express herself without significant forethought. “I'm not happy with it,” she said, “and you're not, either. If you were, I wouldn't be here. It isn't like a few years ago, when Sam Cochran was cracking the whip downstairs. People came to work with clean fingernails and their hair brushed and combed. Everything went off like clockwork.” She reverted to the memory of the bank's most celebrated past employee. Her voice hardened. “Sam did business!”

As she grew accustomed to the daylight shining behind Mr. Zabac's head, she was able to make out the unworried smile on his face.

“Aren't you exaggerating?” he inquired gently, in a melodious tone of voice.

“Am I?” She had an impulse to stand up and give him some sound advice but checked herself. Instead, she offered Mr. Zabac an ironical observation. “Is our share of the market bigger than it was back then?”

Mr. Zabac lifted an instructive finger. His black silhouette against the white glare of the autumn light, with his finger up, was like that of a little mountain gnome cautioning a heedless traveler. “The nature of the business has changed since then, Mrs. Fitzgibbons. Your point is well taken, but remember, there has been a significant relaxation of controls upon us at the federal level. Today there are a lot of players in the business whose questionable loans are no less safeguarded by the government than our own solid investments. They take chances with their deposits that would have been unconscionable in the days of Mr. Cochran's tenure.”

“Would you have any coffee?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons's sudden interruption came out not as an avoidance of the chairman's considered opinion on changing bank regulations, but rather in the spirit of a trusted colleague settling in for a serious tête-à-tête. Sometimes she liked talking about banking; she was especially in the mood to do so right now, as she and the man before her had reached what seemed a proper appreciation of one another. She was quite used to the idea now that the remote chairman, with his austere ways and impeccable bearing, esteemed her satisfactorily. While he went to the door and told Jeannine Mielke to telephone the Phoenix Lunch, Mrs. Fitzgibbons had turned around attractively in her chair and was apprising him of certain timeless fundamentals in the business. She had decided that she would wait until Mr. Zabac had seated himself once more before getting up herself and speaking on her feet, as she did not want to embarrass the little man.

“No matter what takes place at the Federal Reserve, or the Federal Home Loan Board,” she said, “or in the back rooms of our unscrupulous competitors, there's no excuse for sloth and incompetence downstairs. In the end, efficiency makes the difference. That's always true, and you know it.” She liked the fine timbre of her voice as she articulated this truism. “Efficiency alone,” she stressed, “will win us back our share of the market.”

Mr. Zabac could not conceal the charm he felt at Mrs. Fitzgibbons's surprisingly hard-nosed views and obvious good horse sense, as well as the results of her glamorous grooming. While he was returning to his desk, stepping blithely across the carpet on the balls of his feet, Mrs. Fitzgibbons smiled to realize how the sight of their coffee being carried up the hallowed staircase would impress those working below. She pictured Connie McElligot staring stupidly before her, the alarm writ big on her face.

“I would not have guessed, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, that you held such firm views on these matters. Is it your belief,” he inquired in a soft, musical voice, “that the Parish Bank is on the slippery slide?” Mr. Zabac smiled pleasantly, his furry eyebrows going up, as he seated himself once more behind his big shiny desk.

She didn't mince words. “You know what's going on better than I do. There are some people here who ought to be fired.”

Each time she expressed her hard line, Mr. Zabac's features contorted, and he stared at her acutely.

“I wouldn't fire them all in one day,” she conceded. “You wouldn't want a panic down there. But I'd certainly frighten them into getting some work done.”

Truth was, in all her years at the bank, Mrs. Fitzgibbons had never once adjudged the staff of the Parish Bank to be anything but typical of a firm of its size and type, nor certainly did it occur to her that Mr. Zabac might himself have harbored some worries of this very sort. Her next remark was inspired. “When everyone,” she said, “is underperforming, no one notices it. How could they?” She waited with a frozen visage and set lips for Mr. Zabac to respond to that unanswerable conundrum before elaborating. “They all think they're doing wonderfully well down there.”

Two or three times, Mrs. Fitzgibbons had mouthed the expression “down there,” characterizing the workers toiling below as beings of a lesser dispensation than herself and Mr. Zabac. The soft colors and spaciousness of Louis Zabac's daylit office, with its racing prints and luxurious cream-and-blue Chinese carpet, only further emboldened her. She could understand why the natty little chairman never invited any of his tasteless fellow employees to join him up here; she imagined Leonard Frye standing as limp as a dishrag in front of the boss's big tulipwood desk, trembling in his shoes. As for herself, after only ten minutes in his company, she couldn't have felt more comfortable.

“I'd start with the tellers,” she said, “the two De Maria brothers. I'd let them go first thing.”

Mr. Zabac, after gaping momentarily, nodded sadly, as he acknowledged the wisdom in Mrs. Fitzgibbons's choices.

“We do have two or three tellers,” he confessed, “whose tardiness, errors, and resultant late hours are costly.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons's confidence mounted apace. “I'd throw them both out.” She was tempted to call Mr. Zabac by his first name but thought better of it. “Incompetents like that spoil our good name.”

“Both of them?” said Mr. Zabac, unsure of himself.

“If you keep one, he'll only be bitter over our axing the other one.”

Mr. Zabac winced at the word
axing
but could not dispute the woman's insight into the matter of sibling loyalty.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons added to the increasingly violent mood of their discussion, saying, “They should be sacked today, at three o'clock.”

The little chairman took a deep breath, then laid his two hands flat on the desk before him. He looked regretful. He loved his employees. “I've been very patient with the De Marias,” he said, “patient and forbearing. But when I asked you to come up here, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, it wasn't to discuss firing people.”

“I'm not suggesting a reign of terror,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons tossed out lightly, although, in truth, she would have liked nothing better than striking dread in the hearts of everyone in the place, “just some selective dismissals.”

“At the moment,” Mr. Zabac continued, recovering his smooth presidential manner, “while the home mortgage climate is robust enough in this region, I feel we may not be writing our share of the business.”

“We're not.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons reacted with characteristic certitude. Her instincts counseled a brutally frank manner. “Five years from now, when we're flat on our backs, we can blame this past year for it. Why,” she snapped, “we're losing business left and right!” For the first time, a note of anger appeared in her voice.

When Jeannine Mielke entered the bank president's office, bearing a carton with their coffee containers, the luscious look of Mrs. Fitzgibbons sitting slantwise in her chair near the center of the room startled her noticeably. What was more, Mrs. Fitzgibbons was staring at her.

“There are two teacups in my desk downstairs, Jeannine. Get them for us, will you,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons instructed.

Visibly shocked at being told what to do, and so arrogantly, by anyone other than the exalted chairman himself, Miss Mielke flashed Mr. Zabac a protesting glance. But the man behind the desk, mulling over Mrs. Fitzgibbons's last comment, was lost in reflection. Jeannine Mielke left the room with burning cheeks. As the door closed, Mrs. Fitzgibbons stood up. She wanted Mr. Zabac to understand that the views she was expressing were not the issue of an abstract mentality, but of her whole flesh-and-blood person. She stepped to the window where she shifted the heavy curtain sideways to kill the light on his desk. “I'm willing to do whatever's necessary,” she said.

As before, Mr. Zabac attempted to steer the interview back to his original purposes. “Your own department,” he said, “under Mr. Frye, has had, it is true, only a marginally successful year.”

The sudden introduction by Mr. Zabac of her own boss's name prompted a spontaneous reaction from Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “Leonard is a nuts-and-bolts man.”

“Nuts and bolts?” Mr. Zabac followed her with his eyes as she strode past his desk to her chair.

“He's good with numbers. Banking procedures, paperwork, back-room details.” Sitting, Mrs. Fitzgibbons went further. “Leonard is good at overseeing stuff that is already in the pipeline.”

The look of sad resignation that passed like a shadow across the little gentleman's face at this instant told Mrs. Fitzgibbons all she needed to know. “I'm not saying he should be let go,” she conceded importantly, “but something drastic is in order.”

“That,” Mr. Zabac admitted, and he nodded, “is why I asked you to come up here.”

“I know that.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons made a face to signify the needlessness of overt explanations. At this time, anyone else would have kept silent in anticipation of the employer revealing his intentions, but Mrs. Fitzgibbons felt no such need to be tactful. “What are we going to do?” she said.

The exchange that followed evidenced Mrs. Fitzgibbons's capacity to cope with fast-moving developments:

“He is a loyal and capable officer,” said Mr. Zabac.

“He should be kept,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, nodding her instant agreement and showing her willingness to accept a quid pro quo.

“I've been thinking along the lines of giving our various loan officers greater autonomy. A freer hand,” he continued.

“It won't work.”

“Mrs. Fitzgibbons”—the chairman smiled pleasantly—“you haven't heard me out.”

“They need a boss down there.”

“May I?” He smiled patiently once more. “What I foresee is a greater sharing of authority.”

“It won't work.”

Lifting a diminutive pink hand, the chairman signaled once more for patience. “It might be preferable to certain alternatives. These, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, are the questions I've been pondering for a month.”

“You can't demote a man by just a little bit, and then hope for the best.”

“Am I imagining it, Mrs. Fitzgibbons,” said the other, “or do you suppose that I asked you up here this morning to offer you Mr. Frye's post?”

“I know why you asked me.”

“You do?”

“You're not happy. You want some results.”

“For a week or two, I considered interviewing possible candidates from the outside.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons discharged that possibility with a sweep of her hand, knowing that he would surely not have told her that if he still intended to do it. She also guessed that he was enjoying the frankness of her opinions; her determination to make changes reassured him. He had not realized that he had such a knowledgeable and resolute figure downstairs. The look of satisfaction on the chairman's rather sallow face convinced Mrs. Fitzgibbons that all she needed to do now was to reach out and take what he had in hand for her—which she proceeded to do.

“This is my suggestion,” she said. “Leonard and I will exchange posts. He'll go to my desk, and I to his. I'll do my best to cushion the shock by explaining that his technical skills aren't matched by anyone in the department, and so on, and so forth.”

Louis Zabac was gazing across his desk in silence at the apparition of Mrs. Fitzgibbons sitting before him; he looked genuinely relieved to hear his new vice president taking such an empathetic attitude toward her fallen predecessor.

“I'll talk to him,” Mr. Zabac added compassionately.

“Naturally.” She sat back in her chair.