The Moneychangers, Page 2

  “I’m certainly grateful …”

  “Of course, in return I may ask an occasional quid pro quo.”

  “That’s reasonable.”

  “Good! Then we understand each other.”

  The conversation, Roscoe Heyward decided as he hung up the phone, had been eminently satisfactory. Harold Austin was a man of consistent loyalties who kept his word.

  The preceding phone calls had been equally successful.

  Speaking with another director soon after—Philip Johannsen, president of MidContinent Rubber—another opportunity arose. Johannsen volunteered that frankly he didn’t get along with Alex Vandervoort whose ideas he found unorthodox.

  “Alex is unorthodox,” Heyward said. “Of course he has some personal problems. I’m not sure how much the two things go together.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “It’s women actually. One doesn’t like to …”

  “This is important, Roscoe. It’s also confidential. Go ahead.”

  “Well, first, Alex has marital difficulties. Second, he’s involved with another woman, as well. Third, she’s a left-wing activist, frequently in the news, and not in the kind of context which would be helpful to the bank. I sometimes wonder how much influence she has on Alex. As I said, one doesn’t like to …”

  “You were right to tell me, Roscoe,” Johannsen said. “It’s something the directors ought to know. Left-wing, eh?”

  “Yes. Her name is Margot Bracken.”

  “I think I’ve heard of her. And what I’ve heard I haven’t liked.”

  Heyward smiled.

  He was less pleased, however, two telephone calls later, when he reached an out-of-town director, Leonard L. Kingswood, chairman of the board of Northam Steel.

  Kingswood, who began his working life as a furnace melder in a steel plant, said, “Don’t hand me that line of bullshit, Roscoe,” when Heyward suggested that the bank’s directors should have had advance warning of Ben Rosselli’s statement. “The way Ben handled it is the way I’d have done myself. Tell the people you’re closest to first, directors and other stuffed shirts later.”

  As to the possibility of a price decline in First Mercantile American stock, Len Kingswood’s reaction was, “So what?”

  “Sure,” he added “FMA will dip a point or two on the Big Board when this news gets out. It’ll happen because most stock transactions are on behalf of nervous nellies who can’t distinguish between hysteria and fact. But just as surely the stock will go back up within a week because the value’s there, the bank is sound, and all of us on the inside know it.”

  And later in the conversation: “Roscoe, this lobbying job of yours is as transparent as a fresh washed window, so I’ll make my position just as plain, which should save us both some time.

  “You’re a topflight comptroller, the best numbers and money man I know anywhere. And any day you get an urge to move over here with Northam, with a fatter paycheck and a stock option, I’ll shuffle my own people and put you at the top of our financial pile. That’s an offer and a promise. I mean it.”

  The steel company chairman brushed aside Heyward’s murmured thanks as he went on.

  “But good as you are, Roscoe, the point I’m making is—you’re not an over-all leader. At least, that’s the way I see it, also the way I’ll call it when the board convenes to decide on who’s to follow Ben. The other thing I may as well tell you is that my choice is Vandervoort. I think you ought to know that.”

  Heyward answered evenly, “I’m grateful for your frankness, Leonard.”

  “Right. And if ever you think seriously about that other, call me anytime.”

  Roscoe Heyward had no intention of working for Northam Steel. Though money was important to him, his pride would not permit it after Leonard Kingswood’s biting verdict of a moment earlier. Besides, he was still fully confident of obtaining the top role at FMA.

  Again the telephone buzzed. When he answered, Dora Callaghan announced that one more director was on the line. “It’s Mr. Floyd LeBerre.”

  “Floyd,” Heyward began, his voice pitched low and serious, “I’m deeply sorry to be the one to convey some sad and tragic news.”

  3

  Not all who had been at the momentous boardroom session left as speedily as Roscoe Heyward. A few lingered outside, still with a sense of shock, conversing quietly.

  The old-timer from the trust department, Pop Monroe, said softly to Edwina D’Orsey, “This is a sad, sad day.”

  Edwina nodded, not ready yet to speak. Ben Rosselli had been important to her as a friend and he had taken pride in her rise to authority in the bank.

  Alex Vandervoort stopped beside Edwina, then motioned to his office several doors away. “Do you want to take a few minutes out?”

  She said gratefully, “Yes, please.”

  The offices of the bank’s top echelon executives were on the same floor as the boardroom—the 36th, high in FMA Headquarters Tower. Alex Vandervoort’s suite, like others here, had an informal conference area and there Edwina poured herself coffee from a Silex. Vandervoort produced a pipe and lit it. She observed his fingers moving efficiently, with no waste motion. His hands were like his body, short and broad, the fingers ending abruptly with stubby but well-manicured nails.

  The camaraderie between the two was of long standing. Although Edwina, who managed First Mercantile American’s main downtown branch, was several levels lower than Alex in the bank’s hierarchy, he had always treated her as an equal and often, in matters affecting her branch, dealt with her directly, bypassing the layers of organization between them.

  “Alex,” Edwina said, “I meant to tell you you’re looking like a skeleton.”

  A warm smile lit up his smooth, round face. “Shows, eh?”

  Alex Vandervoort was a committed partygoer, and loved gourmet food and wine. Unfortunately he put on weight easily. Periodically, as now, he went on diets.

  By unspoken consent they avoided, for the moment, the subject closest to their minds.

  He asked, “How’s business at the branch this month?”

  “Excellent. And I’m optimistic about next year.”

  “Speaking of next year, how does Lewis view it?” Lewis D’Orsey, Edwina’s husband, was owner-publisher of a widely read investors newsletter.

  “Gloomily. He foresees another big drop in the value of the dollar.”

  “I agree with him.” Alex mused, “You know, Edwina, one of the failures of American banking is that we’ve never encouraged our clients to hold accounts in foreign currencies—Swiss francs, Deutsche marks, others—as European bankers do. Oh, we accommodate the big corporations because they know enough to insist; and American banks make generous profits from other currencies for themselves. But rarely, if ever, for the small or medium depositors. If we’d promoted European currency accounts ten or even five years ago, some of our customers would have gained from dollar devaluations instead of lost.”

  “Wouldn’t the U. S. Treasury object?”

  “Probably. But they’d back down under public pressure. They always do.”

  Edwina asked, “Have you ever broached the idea—of more people having foreign currency accounts?”

  “I tried once. I was shot down. Among us American bankers the dollar—no matter how weak—is sacred. It’s a head-in-sand concept we’ve forced upon the public and it’s cost them money. Only a sophisticated few had the sense to open Swiss bank accounts before the dollar devaluations came.”

  “I’ve often thought about that,” Edwina said. “Each time it happened, bankers knew in advance that devaluation was inevitable. Yet we gave our customers—except for a favored few—no warning, no suggestion to sell dollars.”

  “It was supposed to be unpatriotic. Even Ben …”

  Alex stopped. They sat for several moments without speaking.

  Through the wall of windows which made up the east side of Alex’s office suite they could see the robust Midwest city spread before them. Close
st to hand were the business canyons of downtown, the larger buildings only a little lower than First Mercantile American’s Headquarters Tower. Beyond the downtown district, coiled in a double-S, was the wide, traffic-crowded river, its color—today as usual—pollution gray. A tangled latticework of river bridges, rail lines, and freeways ran outward like unspooled ribbons to industrial complexes and suburbs in the distance, the latter sensed rather than seen in an all-pervading haze. But nearer than the industry and suburbs, though beyond the river, was the inner residential city, a labyrinth of predominantly substandard housing, labeled by some the city’s shame.

  In the center of this last area, a new large building and the steelwork of a second stood out against the skyline.

  Edwina pointed to the building and high steel. “If I were the way Ben is now,” she said, “and wanted to be remembered by something, I think I’d like it to be Forum East.”

  “I suppose so.” Alex’s gaze swung to follow Edwina’s. “For sure, without him it would have stayed an idea, and not much more.”

  Forum East was an ambitious local urban development, its objective to rehabilitate the city’s core. Ben Rosselli had committed First Mercantile American financially to the project and Alex Vandervoort was directly in charge of the bank’s involvement. The big main downtown branch, run by Edwina, handled construction loans and mortgage details.

  “I was thinking,” Edwina said, “about changes which will happen here.” She was going to add, after Ben is dead …

  ‘There’ll be changes, of course—perhaps big ones. I hope none will affect Forum East.”

  She sighed. “It isn’t an hour since Ben told us …”

  “And we’re discussing future bank business before his grave is dug. Well, we have to, Edwina. Ben would expect it. Some important decisions must be made soon.”

  “Including who’s to succeed as president.”

  “That’s one.”

  “A good many of us in the bank have been hoping it would be you.”

  “Frankly, so was I.”

  What both left unsaid was that Alex Vandervoort had been viewed, until today, as Ben Rosselli’s chosen heir. But not this soon. Alex had been at First Mercantile American only two years. Before that he was an officer of the Federal Reserve and Ben Rosselli had personally persuaded him to move over, holding out the prospect of eventual advancement to the top.

  “Five years or so from now,” old Ben had told Alex at the time, “I want to hand over to someone who can cope efficiently with big numbers, and show a profitable bottom line, because that’s the only way a banker deals from strength. But he must be more than just a top technician. The kind of man I want to run this bank won’t ever forget that small depositors—individuals—have always been our strong foundation. The trouble with bankers nowadays is that they get too remote.”

  He was making no firm promise, Ben Rosselli made clear, but added, “My impression, Alex, is you are the kind of man we need. Let’s work together for a while and see.”

  So Alex moved in, bringing his experience and a flair for new technology, and with both had quickly made his mark. As to philosophy, he found he shared many of Ben’s views.

  Long before, Alex had also gained insights into banking from his father—a Dutch immigrant who became a Minnesota farmer.

  Pieter Vandervoort, Sr. had burdened himself with a bank loan and, to pay interest on it, labored from pre-dawn until after darkness, usually seven days a week. In the end he died of overwork, impoverished, after which the bank sold bis land, recovering not only arrears of interest but its original investment. His father’s experience showed Alex—through his grief—that the other side of a bank counter was the place to be.

  Eventually the route to banking for young Alex was a Harvard scholarship and an honors degree in economics.

  “Everything may still work out,” Edwina D’Orsey said. “I presume the board will make the choice of president.”

  “Yes,” Alex answered almost absently. He had been thinking of Ben Rosselli and his father; his memories of the two were strangely intertwined.

  “Length of service isn’t everything.”

  “It counts.”

  Mentally, Alex weighed the probabilities. He knew he had the talent and experience to head First Mercantile American but chances were, the directors would favor someone who had been around here longer. Roscoe Heyward, for example, had worked for the bank for almost twenty years and despite his occasional lack of rapport with Ben Rosselli, Heyward had a significant following on the board.

  Yesterday the odds favored Alex. Today, they had been switched.

  He stood up and knocked out his pipe. “I must get back to work.”

  “Me, too.”

  But Alex, when he was alone, sat silent, thoughtful.

  Edwina took an express elevator from the directors’ floor to the main floor foyer of FMA Headquarters Tower—an architectural mix of Lincoln Center and the Sistine Chapel. The foyer surged with people-hurrying bank staff, messengers, visitors, sightseers. She acknowledged a security guard’s friendly salute.

  Through the curving glass front Edwina could see Rosselli Plaza outside with its trees, benches, a sculpture court, and gushing fountain. In summer the plaza was a meeting place and downtown office workers ate their lunches there, but now it appeared bleak and inhospitable. A raw fall wind swirled leaves and dust in small tornadoes and sent pedestrians scurrying for indoor warmth.

  It was the time of year, Edwina thought, she liked least of all. It spoke of melancholy, winter soon to come, and death.

  Involuntarily she shuddered, then headed for the “tunnel,” carpeted and softly lighted, which connected the bank’s headquarters with the main downtown branch—a palatial, single-story structure.

  This was her domain.

  4

  Wednesday, at the main downtown branch, began routinely.

  Edwina D’Orsey was branch duty officer for the week and arrived promptly at 8:30, a half hour before the bank’s ponderous bronze doors would swing open to the public.

  As manager of FMA’s flagship branch, as well as a corporate vice-president, she really didn’t have to do the duty officer chore. But Edwina preferred to take her turn. Also it demonstrated that she expected no special privileges because of being a woman—something she had always been careful about during her fifteen years at First Mercantile American. Besides, the duty only came around once in ten weeks.

  At the building’s side door she fumbled in her brown Gucci handbag for her key; she found it beneath an assortment of lipstick, wallet, credit cards, compact, comb, a shopping list, and other items—her handbag was always uncharacteristically disorganized. Then, before using the key, she checked for a “no ambush” signal. The signal was where it should be—a small yellow card, placed inconspicuously in a window. The card would have been put there, minutes earlier, by a porter whose job was to be first in the big branch each day. If all was in order inside, he placed the signal where arriving staff would see it. But if robbers had broken in during the night and were waiting to seize hostages—the porter first—no signal would be placed, so its absence became a warning. Then, later arriving staff not only would not enter, but instantly would summon aid.

  Because of increasing robberies of all types, most banks used a “no ambush” signal nowadays, its type and location changing frequently.

  On entering, Edwina went immediately to a hinged panel in the wall and swung it open. In sight was a bell push which she pressed in code—two long, three short, one long. The Central Security operations room over in Headquarters Tower now knew that the door alarm, which Edwina’s entry had triggered a moment ago, could be ignored and that an authorized officer was in the bank. The porter, also on entering, would have tapped out his own code.

  The ops room, receiving similar signals from other FMA branch banks, would switch the building’s alarm system from “alert” to “stand by.”

  Had either Edwina, as duty officer, or the porter fa
iled to tap out their correct code, the ops room would have alerted police. Minutes later the branch bank would have been surrounded.

  As with other systems, codes were changed often.

  Banks everywhere were finding security in positive signals when all was well, an absence of signals if trouble erupted. That way, a bank employee held hostage could convey a warning by merely doing nothing.

  By now other officers and staff were coming in, checked by the uniformed porter who had taken command at the side door.

  “Good morning, Mrs. D’Orsey.” A white-haired bank veteran named Tottenhoe joined Edwina. He was operations officer, in charge of staff and routine running of the branch, and his long, lugubrious face made him seem like an ancient kangaroo. His normal moodiness and pessimism had increased as compulsory retirement neared; he resented his age and seemed to blame others for it. Edwina and Tottenhoe walked together across the bank’s main floor, then down a wide, carpeted stairway to the vault. Supervising the vault’s opening and closing was the duty officer’s responsibility.

  While they waited by the vault door for the time lock to switch off, Tottenhoe said gloomily, “There’s a rumor that Mr. Rosselli’s dying. Is it true?”

  “I’m afraid it is.” She told him briefly of the meeting yesterday.

  Last night at home Edwina had thought of little else, but this morning she was determined to concentrate on bank business. Ben would expect it.

  Tottenhoe mumbled something dismal which she didn’t catch.

  Edwina checked her watch. 8:40. Seconds later, a faint click within the massive chrome steel door announced that the overnight time lock, set before the bank closed the night before, had switched itself off. Now the vault combination locks could be actuated. Until this moment they could not.

  Using another concealed pushbutton, Edwina signaled Central Security ops room that the vault was about to be opened—a normal opening, not under duress.

  Standing side by side at the door, Edwina and Tottenhoe spun separate combinations. Neither knew the combination setting of the other; thus neither could open the vault alone.