“You suffered a serious manic disorder, Mrs. Fitzgibbons. You lost control.”
“What if I did?” she challenged him at close range, her head tilted to one side, her eyes drilling into his. “Do you want to pick a fight with me?”
“Somebody’s cruising for a bruising,” said Eddie.
“I could close this place down in a week.”
“No one is holding you against your will, but you can’t be released on a Sunday.”
Twenty minutes later, before Bruce and the others arrived, Mrs. Fitzgibbons called Mr. Frye on the public telephone. She phoned him at home. Eddie stood beside her, holding her canvas tote bag in one hand and her address book in the other, while she dialed the number. Growing clearer in mind, Mrs. Fitzgibbons had recalled her scheduled luncheon appointment in Sturbridge the following day with the man from the Shawmut Bank in Boston.
“You’ll go in my place, Leonard,” she instructed the man on the other end.
“What happened?” he asked, suspiciously.
Surmising that news of her hospitalization had reached him, Mrs. Fitzgibbons raised her voice in a way designed to forestall skepticism. “Never mind about me. I fell on the ice. It’s nothing.”
“Where are you?” he persisted, insidiously.
“Listen,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons stated, while gripping the phone to her ear and staring vacantly at her son-in-law, who was staring then at the soft contour of her bosom, “I didn’t call to file a medical report. A car will come for you at noon.”
“Will I see you before I go?” Mr. Frye’s suspicions persisted in a maddening fashion. Had Mrs. Fitzgibbons been fully herself of recent days, she would have exploded. For now, she obeyed the urge to explain herself.
“No,” she said, “you will not. Why are you asking me? Why should I see you? I’ve spoken to Zabac,” she lied. “I’ve explained to him why I want this. You’ll give Nate Solomon every encouragement. Do you understand?”
Still, the man on the other end of the line hemmed and hawed. She could picture him sitting in front of a televised football game, blinking and grimacing, a portrait in middle-aged pathos.
“I’m only worried that we’re going off half-cocked,” he said.
That did it for Mrs. Fitzgibbons. For the first time since the previous evening, when she lost her temper about Mr. Curtin Schreffler, she employed the big, thrilling voice that Providence had conferred on her a couple of weeks ago. “YOU’RE NOT PAID TO WORRY!” Her hand shook as she shouted.
Eddie stifled a laugh, clapping a hand to his temple and lurching to one side. Mrs. Fitzgibbons was white with fury. Patients, shuffling past, stopped and stared in wonder.
“I’ll send Felix!” she bawled. “I’ll send Mr. Kim! I’ll send Connie McElligot! Worry? When you’re licking stamps in the mailroom, you’ll have reason to worry!”
“I wasn’t disagreeing, Frankie,” Mr. Frye objected ghostily.
“YOU BE READY AT NOON!” The voice was simply indescribable.
“Noon,” Mr. Frye repeated.
“You be ready at twelve sharp, and sign anything that man puts in front of you. I don’t expect you to understand me. I expect you to carry out my orders.”
After hanging up, while still fulminating, she allowed Eddie to crouch before her and help her on with her heels.
“These Lilliputians!” she said.
She strode toward the sun room. Eddie came sniggering along behind her, carrying her tote, his eyes fixed on the vibration of Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s calves.
“He’ll do what you told him, Mom.”
She gestured angrily. “Well, I’m going to be their big boogums from now on, mark my words.”
NINETEEN
Mrs. Fitzgibbons was discharged from the hospital by Dr. Cauley late on Monday morning. At the time of her release, she was in an unexpectedly becalmed state of mind, however, despite her refusal these past forty-eight hours of her medication. By now, Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s reputation among the hospital staff was such that her departure created a stir. She was looked upon by the help as something of a local force, a phenomenon, someone who had begun dominating the news in a way that portended even bigger things. Earlier, Mrs. Fitzgibbons had telephoned Julie at the bank, and instructed her to contact Mr. Curtin Schreffler and notify him that she wanted to see him in her office at one o’clock. She was not feeling especially resentful that morning toward the president of Citizens, but was acting on the information furnished her by Mr. Brouillette of her competitor’s grave condition regarding the Mannox Apremont Company. That is to say, Mrs. Fitzgibbons saw nothing extraordinary in treating the president of a sovereign institution as though he were nothing more important than a book-keeper on her staff; in her quiet state of mind, she saw the matter in its essentials; in Felix Hohenberger’s portfolio, she held a delinquent note on a company whose failure would prove ruinous to the other bank, and was therefore ordering its leader to report to her. If Mrs. Fitzgibbons had stopped to think about her rise to prominence, she would have seen this brash, theatrical rejection of protocol and of the social niceties as the hallmark of her success.
One of the nurses who was most admiring of Mrs. Fitzgibbons was Ellen Montcalm, a stoutish young woman with brilliant bottle-green eyes and frizzy hair. Nurse Montcalm had just heard a news item on her car radio. Mrs. Fitzgibbons, she said, had been selected over the weekend by the Massachusetts State Council of Women as recipient of one of its highest achievement awards, along with five other women from the state. Of everyone present, Bruce was demonstrably the most excited by the news; he hugged Mrs. Fitzgibbons. The nurse asked for her autograph.
After tying her scarf about her throat, Mrs. Fitzgibbons took the ballpoint and sheet of paper in hand. News of the award generated interest among staff members and patients alike.
“My father knew your husband,” the nurse remarked.
“Knew Larry?”
“He knew him from their days at the Chestnut Street School. He said that when Larry Fitzgibbons died, it was the saddest day of his life.”
Mrs. Fitzgibbons handed the woman the paper and pen. “Larry didn’t die,” she said. “He just slowed down terrifically.”
Matthew and Dolores, who were standing by the door waiting to be joined by Bruce and Mrs. Fitzgibbons, shouted with laughter. Others joined in. Even Dr. Cauley could not restrain himself.
Mrs. Fitzgibbons and her friends waited then as Ellen unlocked the outer doors. Mrs. Fitzgibbons was not smiling, nor did she even look back from the elevators to acknowledge the salutations called to her from behind. The prospect of freedom and fresh air, and of her return to duty, set all else at naught. She waited solemnly on the gravel walk as Matthew Dean brought the car round. The sky above the distant river was the color of a wet bed sheet. As she did not invite anyone to join her in the back seat of Matthew’s black sedan, Bruce and Matthew rode up front, with Dolores between them.
At the outskirts of the city, Eddie Berdowsky was spotted coming the other way in his mud-spattered hatchback. Eddie pumped his horn and swung around on the highway. He fell in behind them. The sight of the filthy compact following Matthew’s gleaming, highly polished Buick down Dwight Street toward the business district was curious to the eye. It looked as though the Buick had snagged something under its wheels and was towing it to the city dump.
Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s entry into the Parish Bank that morning produced a momentary hush, as she darted across the glassy floor toward her office. Had anyone credited the whispered rumors about her mysterious hospitalization Friday night, or wondered about her physical or emotional soundness, one look at her this morning put an end to it. In all her years at Parish, she had never looked more fit or adequate to her tasks.
“Look! It’s the Chief!” Deborah Schwartzwald was the first to give voice to her feelings. Deborah’s jewel-like eyes gleamed fanatically. “I knew it! I knew she’d come.”
To Mrs. Fitzgibbons, the grand interior of the bank with its spectacular dome was more welcoming th
an home itself. Her spirits were bounding. Julie Marcotte came running to take her coat. “It was like death without you here this morning,” she exclaimed. She carried Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s coat like a sacred vestment to the closet.
“Get me Lionel Kim.”
“Right away!” Julie snapped.
“I want coffee, the mail, the morning paper, any telephone messages—”
“Mr. Zabac called from Falmouth. He sounded really upset, I thought. He asked what time you were coming in.”
Mrs. Fitzgibbons brushed Julie’s remark into oblivion. “Get moving.”
“He said that Mr. Hooton had resigned over the weekend. He was speaking in a loud, high-pitched tone of voice. He said he’d call you from the airport. Did you know that Mr. Hooton resigned?”
Mrs. Fitzgibbons had no patience for persons in responsible positions who flew off to Cape Cod when a competitor was all but begging to be plucked from the bough. Mrs. Fitzgibbons worked on her feet. She tore open her mail.
“Call Maloney and Halpern,” she said. “Tell them I want a preliminary agreement drawn up for the takeover of the Citizens Bank. You tell them I want a document on which a signature means something. And I want it in an hour!”
“I haven’t heard back from Mr. Schreffler,” Julie interjected, remarking on the president’s failure so far to agree to Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s summons.
Although she was eager to act, Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s thinking was very agitated. It took Julie’s remark to concentrate her mind. “You get them on the phone,” she said.
Blanching, Julie hurried back to her desk.
“Because if I have to go over there,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons called after her, “they won’t like it. I want that man in my office.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s frustration escalated to the point where she rushed to the door to repeat her instructions about her lawyers. Julie, who wrote down everything, scratched away at her pad before picking up the telephone. “You tell Maloney and Halpern I want a binding document. A preliminary agreement with murderous penalties built in for welshers.”
“Yes, Mrs. Fitzgibbons.”
Coloring angrily, Mrs. Fitzgibbons returned to her desk. “He’ll just be a number in my computers,” she said.
She decided, at this point, that when Mr. Schreffler arrived, she would greet him not in her own office, but upstairs in the chairman’s office. The decision came to her in an impulsive flash. Were Mr. Schreffler to come, he would be made to humble himself, first by climbing the narrow marble staircase to her office, like a schoolboy going up to the principal, then by being kept waiting in the outer office. By the time he was admitted into Mr. Zabac’s spacious chamber, with its immense window looking out on the city hall, the president of the Citizens Bank would be softened up for the violent harangue to come.
There were those at the Parish Bank, however, who were not equally convinced that Mr. Schreffler would even appear that afternoon. Felix Hohenberger, for instance, merely shook his head, in puzzlement and disbelief, when word reached him that Mrs. Fitzgibbons had ordered the man to report to her. News of what was evolving on the executive level spread to the staff at large. When Mrs. Fitzgibbons went upstairs to occupy Louis Zabac’s private office, and brought Julie Marcotte with her, she ordered Jeannine Mielke to vacate. Mr. Zabac’s secretary resisted being replaced, saying that Mr. Zabac was due soon at the airport and would be upset to find her absent from her post. Jeannine sat behind her desk, looking pale and bloodless, her white-blond hair drawn back tight on her skull.
At that, Julie astonished even Mrs. Fitzgibbons herself with her reaction to the other secretary’s obstinacy. “You’d better get moving!” she said, and advanced threateningly.
The expulsion of the Mielke woman from her desk was witnessed by Lionel Kim, who came in just as the anemic secretary departed. In his politeness, Mr. Kim gave no sign of having noticed the exchange or the drained face of Mr. Zabac’s secretary as she hurried by him.
“I just received your message to report to you,” he said. “I was at the Shearson office in the mall.” He stood before Mrs. Fitzgibbons in his shirtsleeves. Mr. Kim was obviously in a guarded, if not suspicious, frame of mind. Mrs. Fitzgibbons didn’t beat about the bush, however.
“You’re my new treasurer,” she said.
Mr. Kim looked in wonderment from Mrs. Fitzgibbons to Julie, while Julie flushed a pleasant pink color, thrilling to the way the Chief could confer happiness and good fortune on anyone she smiled upon.
“I am?” he said.
“You’re in charge of my capital markets desk.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons got a sexual kick from the way Mr. Kim’s face mirrored, in quick succession, shock, thankfulness, and awe. Her nipples tingled. If Julie hadn’t been present, Mrs. Fitzgibbons speculated that she might have grasped Mr. Kim between the legs. “I want a detailed report of four or five pages summarizing the condition of your department and all its accounts, and I want it by tomorrow.”
“I can’t thank you enough.”
Mrs. Fitzgibbons touched her fingers in citing her prescription for success. “Work like the devil, watch the company you keep, and don’t think you can fool me.”
Appalled at the thought of deceit, Mr. Kim showed her a thunderstruck face. “I would never do that.”
Smiling with seductive malice, Mrs. Fitzgibbons set a pretty fingernail to his nose in the way of a cordial warning. “I’d flatten you.”
With her hand on his shoulder, Mrs. Fitzgibbons walked him out to the hallway, advancing a variety of views which all resolved to the importance of Mr. Kim realizing, now and forever, which side of the bread his butter was on.
On the floor below, however, no one was paying attention to what was transpiring at the top of the brass-banistered staircase at the back of the bank. For at that moment, at three minutes to one o’clock precisely, there emerged through the glittering revolving doors the figure of a beautifully postured man in an exquisite navy blue suit and burnished black shoes. The man entered the great well of the Parish Bank without once averting his eyes to the left or right. He carried an amber-handled umbrella as tightly rolled as a walking stick; his black hair was slicked down flat and gave a smooth anthracite sheen to his well-proportioned skull. Even the clocklike click of his built-up leather heels on the glassy surface of the floor, as he stepped along with elegant bearing, contributed to the impression of meticulosity that was evident in the dagger points of his pocket handkerchief, the immaculate white slash of his shirt cuffs, and the perfection of his tightly knotted red-and-blue-striped necktie. From the tellers’ windows at the front, to the array of lamplit loan officers’ desks situated athwart the marble columns, work came to a standstill, from stage to stage, as Mr. Curtin Schreffler, with his head up and shoulders back, came skimming by. To anyone who might have deplored the decline in formality in men’s dress habits, not to say fastidious good taste, over the past generation, Mr. Curtin Schreffler of the Citizens Bank was a sight for sore eyes.
Emily, of all people, was assigned the task of intercepting and greeting the man upon his arrival. The instant he appeared to view, she came darting out of her corner, as quick as a rat, to lead him upstairs. The dark, wet-lipped smile on her face, joined to the dynamic forward hunch of her body and swift, crablike gait, created an unforgettable impression on all who saw. It was a picture of the inspired imbecile, of the lustful, grinning, happy-at-heart envoy of the Devil, leading an innocent mortal—a man of the world, vain and unsuspecting—up the narrow staircase to his destruction. The sublime touch, if there was one, was the big hole in the unraveling elbow of Emily’s charcoal gray cardigan, out of which protruded a puffy swatch of her faded Indian-print dress.
Thankfully, Julie Marcotte offered an entirely different impression; she sat very straight in her chair behind Jeannine Mielke’s desk, her hands clasped before her, her smooth temples and cheekbones shining like something phosphorous taken from the sea. Had anyone studied Julie this past week, they would have discerned a subtle, day-by-day progression in her appe
arance, from that of a casual but businesslike refinement in hair and dress, to something smarter and more severe. On this day, she wore a black tailored suit, with a double row of silver buttons that started at her lapels and converged slightly toward the waist; her hair was pulled back from her face. The effect was military. She did not rise to greet Mr. Schreffler but directed him with a terse remark and a tilt of her eyes to the deep leather sofa at the opposite wall. Emily Krok lingered in the room. She couldn’t stop peering at Mr. Schreffler, staring lasciviously with glittering eyes, while standing awkwardly just inside the door. Mr. Schreffler seated himself at once, with a smooth, effortless folding of his body. He crossed his legs; the toe of his swinging shoe gleamed lustrously. Perfectly controlled, he glanced up, however, when Julie told Emily to leave. “Get out of here,” Julie said.
A longish interval passed before Mr. Schreffler was actually summoned by Mrs. Fitzgibbons; but to the man’s credit, he maintained a physical stillness and aura of imperturbability that would have dignified an ambassador to the Court of Saint James. When Mrs. Fitzgibbons finally buzzed Julie on the phone and told her to admit Mr. Schreffler, Julie conveyed word to him so brusquely, hanging up the receiver, and without even looking at him — “The Chief’ll see you now” — coming round the desk to open Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s door, that the man was unaware of the summons until, through the opened door, he actually spotted the silhouette of Mrs. Fitzgibbons herself, etched against the big fantail window of the inner office, waiting for him.
“My word,” he said, upon entering,” what an attractive view of city hall.”
With her back to the sunlight, Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s features were unsettlingly obscured. She answered in an inflectionless tone. “We’re not here to discuss the view, or city hall, or the price of winter apples, Mr. Schreffler.”
While it always came as a surprise, Mrs. Fitzgibbons still delighted each time she discovered herself capable of expressing herself in a smooth, spontaneous, loquacious way. Probably, in fact, nothing had given her greater pleasure the past fortnight than the facility of her tongue. She had never been so openly talkative, and guessed that it was an inborn talent that the world about her had stifled. Mrs. Fitzgibbons experienced momentary jubilation, a happy surge of energy. The fact that she cordially disliked the man only simplified the task at hand. Mrs. Fitzgibbons remembered Curtin Schreffler from the days of her parochial-school girlhood down on Mosher Street, in a district known as the Flats. Curtin and his chums were the favored ones, the sons and daughters of the old families on the hill; the youths who went away to smart boarding schools, who whiled away their summers playing tennis at the Canoe Club.
Ride a Cockhorse Page 29
