Deep in the file was a brochure showing aerial photos of the site, an unimproved wooded valley around an oxbow lake and the slender, slow-moving Little Cheyenne River. Next to the photos was a map showing sixty-two homesites, space for a “central core” containing utilities, security and fire-fighting services, and common facilities such as a riverside marina, tennis courts, and a pool. But no photos of these, or any evidence of even the beginnings of construction of any kind.
Sixty-two building lots, and an average of $775,000 spent for “down payments” and “improvements.” Julia couldn’t believe the audacity of it, hidden away in an obscure file in a closely controlled bank. What should she do? Destroy the file? It wasn’t her responsibility and was probably illegal, and besides, might there not be copies? She never should have brought it home; she never should have looked at it, just spread the numbers and written the usual single-sentence memo on the Credit Department brown sheet: “Statements spread and reviewed, client in compliance with all requirements of policy and agreements,” and sent the file on to the lending officer.
But now she knew, and you can’t “unknow” something.
The phone on the kitchen wall rang loudly, and she jumped. She picked it up. “Julia Early,” an angry male voice said. “This is Reginald Hollis. Unless your illness is serious, it is imperative you come to the bank, my office, right away.”
“Mr. Hollis—”
“Bring any and all records you may have removed from the bank. All. I’m sending a car; it will be at your door in ten minutes.” Hollis abruptly hung up.
Julia’s heart raced. Fine, I’ll just give it back. But they’ll know I read it, even if I deny it. God, what to do?
She shoved the bulky file into her empty suitcase and locked it and shoved it to the back of the messy closet she shared with Hilda. She hurried to shower and dress.
REGINALD HOLLIS AND Monica Croft had found Julia’s desk locked. Hollis had a wild thought of getting a hammer and a screwdriver from maintenance and breaking the drawers open, but that would show panic. What did Old Man Thayer want with the damn file anyway? Ms. Schwartz hadn’t expressed any real urgency. “What do you want to do, Reginald?” Monica asked.
Hollis looked at his watch. Nearly eleven-thirty. “Please call Safe and Lock over at the Operations Building in Southeast. Try to catch them before they all knock off for lunch; get them to unlock the desk but then not let anyone near it until I get back.” He sighed. “I’ll call Ms. Schwartz and tell her we have a little problem, then I have a lunch myself; be back around two.”
It was after Hollis returned from lunch, a couple of martinis in him for courage, that he found the missing files in Julia Early’s desk that prompted his angry call to Julia that sent her scurrying into the shower and jumping into her clothes and down the stairs to the waiting black limousine.
3
ZEKE ARCHER SPENT the entire day wandering the gloomy halls of the Capitol, visiting committee chairs and other powerful senators of both parties. Zeke was indeed a fine horse trader, and he had every detail of each senator’s wants and needs, ambitions and embarrassments, committed to memory just like a man who practiced the art with real horses would know bloodlines, ailments, gaits, and temperaments. Zeke promised action on self-serving legislation, no use of the line-item veto on pet pork projects, federal jobs, just about everything he would like to have saved for later if he could get Justice to replace just a few of those white faces in blue suits with a woman or two, an African-American, and maybe at least one member of the growing and increasingly assertive Hispanic community.
Zeke finished his rounds at four-thirty and climbed wearily back into his limousine for the short trip to the White House.
JULIA HURRIED TO the eighth floor and to her desk. All the drawers were open and the files gone; her personal articles and files were dumped in a messy circle around the workstation. She booted up her computer, tried to log on, and received a message, “Code discontinued; access denied; contact Network Supervisor.”
She hung up her coat and went to Mr. Hollis’s corner office. His secretary, a pleasant and usually very helpful black woman named Tyra, frowned and beckoned Julia close. “Your tits are in the wringer, girlfriend. I’m to send you right upstairs to seventeen, the chairman’s office.”
“Jeez, Tyra, just because I didn’t return a file on time?”
“I don’t know. Hollis is jumping out of his skin. Good luck.”
Julia went into the ladies’ room and straightened her skirt, tried to brush some order into her damp hair, and reapplied her makeup. She rode the elevator up to the executive floor, lofty seventeen, a place she had never before been. She asked the uniformed security guard for the chairman’s office. He made a call from his console and asked her, quite courteously, to wait. After about three very long minutes, a young woman, also in uniform but, unlike the seated guard, unarmed, came and got her and led her to another reception area, where a hard-eyed woman of middle age with improbable red hair sat at a computer. The page departed. The red-haired woman did not look up from her work for another long three minutes as Julia fidgeted. “There,” she said, ending whatever she was doing with a flurry of keystrokes. “You must be Ms. Early. I’m Ms. Schwartz, the chairman’s executive assistant.”
Julia bobbed her head. The Dragon Mother was a legend, a destroyer of careers, even those of senior vice presidents. Julia could think of nothing to say.
Ms. Schwartz frowned. Oh shit, Julia thought, I haven’t shown proper respect, or whatever it was. The Dragon Mother snatched a white phone off her console. “Ms. Early is here.” Julia gritted her teeth. Ms. Schwartz gave her a smile that looked more like a grimace. “You’re to go right in,” she said, pointing to double doors of solid oak.
The secretary made no move to open the doors, so Julia drew herself into an erect posture, marched to the door and gripped the brass handle. It failed to yield. “The other door, dear,” Ms. Schwartz said with ill-concealed malice. Nearing panic, Julia fumbled for the other handle, and almost fell into the room as the heavy door swung silently inward, balanced by counterweights.
Julia expected to be impressed by the office of the Chairman of Capital National Bank, but instead she was awed. The corner room must have been fifty feet on a side, with panoramic views up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Capitol in the east to the Treasury, the chimneys of the White House, the Mall, the Lincoln Memorial, and even the Arlington Mansion backlit by low sunlight to the west. The walls were paneled with rich dark wood, decorated with portraits of old white men, the carpet was a rich blue with a fine Oriental rug over it. The chairman’s huge desk, the size of a Buick, was in the corner of the window walls. The man himself was silhouetted by the setting sun. He looked small and old, with a fine head of silver hair. Reginald Hollis stood next to the desk, at rigid attention. Another man, younger, languid, with a bored look on his face, sat in a low leather couch. Alongside the paneled wall to Julia’s right as she entered was a polished conference table that matched the dark paneling. The files from Uvalde County Savings and Loan and Little Cheyenne Development were stacked neatly on the table, and Monica Croft, the credit librarian, sat poring through them, apparently counting pages. The Correspondence File was, of course, missing. Julia’s heart raced.
To her left was a group of chairs and couches around a low table that looked like what Julia imagined a gentlemen’s club in London might appear. The room smelled of lemon-oil wood polish and old cigar smoke. No one spoke as Julia advanced halfway across the thick carpet and stopped, her hands clutched in front of her crotch, her heart pounding.
The chairman rose slowly. “Ms. Early, I’m Alfred Thayer. Would you be so kind as to have a word with Mr. Hollis, over there?” he gestured at the club chairs to her left. “I’ll be just a few minutes, then I’ll join you.”
Now I’m going to get it, Julia thought grimly as she turned to the chairs and waited for Hollis to march over. He looks like he’s had a broomstick rammed up his ass,
she thought irreverently. Maybe he had.
ZEKE REACHED THE OVAL Office and was told by Mrs. Carradine to go right in. Jenna Carradine had been Governor Tolliver’s executive secretary in Austin, and onetime mistress. Now in her mid-forties, with the strawberry-blond dyed “big hair” popular in Texas, the early-lined face of a heavy smoker, and the loud voice and laugh of a good ol’ girl, she didn’t fit in with Washington’s quieter tones and Zeke thought her something of an embarrassment.
Zeke found the president sprawled on a leather easy chair in front of the marble fireplace. A fire blazed cheerily and made the office stuffy. Since the president was in shirtsleeves, Zeke shucked his overcoat and suit jacket. “Make yourself a drink, and refresh mine,” Tolliver said without looking up from the yellow legal pad he was scribbling on.
Zeke took the president’s glass from his hand, went to the sideboard and filled it with bourbon and ice. He mixed a light scotch and soda for himself; he was too tired to trust himself with anything stronger. He went over and took a chair opposite the president, as far from the fire as possible. “How’d the trading go today?” Tolliver asked.
Zeke sipped his drink before answering. The trading was just beginning. “In order to get your cabinet list approved, you’ll have to give nearly every committee chair and ranking minority member his or her pet project. Do that and you’ll never get a budget passed.”
The president looked up from his writing. Zeke had expected anger, but Tolliver looked merely calculating. “What if we turn it around? Give them some minor cabinet posts, some number-two jobs? Make them owe us.”
Zeke thought about it. “President Blythe insisted one of the ‘big four’ cabinet posts be a woman. There are now over a hundred women in Congress, and they and the women’s groups would like that seen as a precedent.”
“Look what he got for his trouble,” Justice sneered. “A prominent liberal lawyer and a New York judge thrown out because they hired illegal aliens to watch their kids, and finally a cracker county prosecutor from some awful place in the Everglades. Zeke, that was a mistake not worth repeating.”
“True, but we Republicans have many better qualified woman candidates, some of whom are bulletproof in the Senate.”
“Like who?”
“Carolyn White. A professor of history at Stanford, advised both the Reagan and Bush administrations, considered a top foreign-policy mind. Put her in State or Defense.”
Justice leaned back, sipped his drink. “She’s black, right?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Two points. But Jesus, Zeke, do you think a college professor could run State? Those career diplomatic service assholes would eat her alive.”
“Better Defense. We’d get her a strong number two to run the day to day.”
Tolliver pondered. “I intend makin’ some serious changes in foreign and military affairs. You know that, Zeke.”
“All the better you have a Secretary of Defense the Congress can’t beat up on.”
“Well, I’ll think on that. That be enough to get the rest of the list?”
“What I’d recommend,” Zeke said carefully, “is toss a few bones in some of the lesser departments. I have a list of safe Republicans, some Hispanic, some black, that you might appoint to head departments like Education, Health and Human Services, Housing, Transportation.”
Tolliver slapped his knee and guffawed. “You know what I got in front of me? My first major piece of legislation to throw at those squirrels up yonder in the Capitol as soon as we get a budget agreed. My Reorganization of Government Act.”
Zeke was startled. “That’s heavy lifting, Juss. Second-term stuff. You don’t have the votes, the mandate.”
“I ran on a platform of cleaning the stables, and clean them I will. No pussyfooting, Zeke. We’re not going to close a few pissant agencies and eliminate the honey-bee subsidies, we’re gonna ax whole departments.”
Zeke shook his head. “Which ones first?”
“You just named all of them. Education, Health and Human Services, Housing, and Transportation. So go ahead, Zeke, give those jobs to minorities, women, spies, whatever. They won’t be around long enough to do any harm.”
“This isn’t Austin, Juss. The system will stop you at every turn.”
The president stood up and stretched. “Zeke, old buddy, people, including you, been telling me that my whole damn life. I’ll get it done.”
“What about Professor White?”
“Call her. I’ll set with her, see how it feels, see if we can do business.”
“I’ll do that, but I want to sound her out first. If we propose her, we can’t have her turn us down.”
“Yeah, go see her, whatever,” Justice said, sitting and going back to his notes. “She’s said to be pretty.”
REGINALD HOLLIS SAT opposite Julia across the low table. His body language indicated extreme anxiety; legs clamped together, arms tight across his chest. He leaned forward. “I have to know what you were doing with that file,” he said in a strangled whisper.
“I first saw it shortly after I started training,” she said carefully. “It was incomplete, a mess. The lending officer instructed me to request a complete update from the correspondent bank and to re-review in six months. A couple of months ago I got a reminder from the lending officer, so I began a normal review.”
Hollis thought about it. “How much analysis did you complete? Have you sent your report to the lending officers?”
“I was almost finished. It’s on my computer.”
No, it isn’t, Hollis thought triumphantly. He’d seen to the erasure as soon as he found the files locked in Julia’s desk. “Nothing printed?”
“No. I wasn’t finished. I—” She almost said she hadn’t finished with the Correspondence File. “I would have finished today if I hadn’t got sick.”
“Mr. Hollis? Ms. Early?” the chairman called in his low but carrying voice. “Could you both come over here, please?”
Hollis leaped to his feet like a scalded dog and hustled to the chairs in front of the chairman’s desk. Julia followed more slowly. Thayer smiled benignly and waited until both were seated. “What have we discovered, Mr. Hollis?”
“Ms.—Ms. Early became ill and fell asleep yesterday,” Hollis explained, trying to breathe normally and failing. “The Credit Library closed early because of the holiday. The clerk on duty apparently did not close out her log—retrieve all files—before she went home.”
Alfred Thayer looked across his vast office at Monica Croft. “Monica?”
Monica stood, and approached the huge desk, bobbing her head as though approaching a king on his throne. “Mr. Thayer.”
“Is the file complete?”
“It appears to be. Even a draft Brown Sheet from Ms. Early, in longhand.”
“All accounted for? The Correspondence File?”
Monica shifted uneasily. “The Correspondence File is not here, nor is it in the library.” Julia’s heart seemed to stop and she struggled to breathe through clenched teeth. “But the Correspondence File was never signed out,” Monica concluded, looking at Julia. “It’s just missing.”
“Missing.” Thayer directed his icy gaze at Hollis, who shuddered. “Ms. Early?” Thayer asked, his voice kindly.
No guts, no glory, Julia thought. It was her father, a retired Texas Ranger’s favorite expression. “I did my review based on the numbers. I don’t recall seeing a correspondence file.”
Thayer seemed to ponder that for a very long minute. “How far along were you with your analysis?” he asked Julia.
“Pretty well along,” she stammered. “The computer stuff: balance sheet, income statement, cash flow.” Account history, she should have added, money transfers, she should have added, but didn’t.
Thayer smiled thinly. “Perhaps we’re making too much of this. But confidentiality and security of clients’ information is of the highest priority in this bank, Ms. Early. Ms. Croft. Mr. Hollis.”
“Yes, Mr. Thayer,” Ho
llis and Croft chorused. Julia said nothing.
“Lessons,” Thayer said, his bony index finger touching the side of his ample nose, “will be learned, I trust?”
“Yes, sir,” chanted Hollis and Croft. Julia intoned the same, a moment later.
“Good,” Thayer said with another bloodless smile. “Ms. Croft, find the missing Correspondence File. Mr. Hollis, find useful work for young Ms. Early.” Thayer looked to his left, toward the White House. “That will be all.”
ALFRED THAYER WATCHED his terrified subordinates scurry from his large office. He liked his people afraid; he paid over the market at all levels to buy loyalty, and loyalty was best maintained by fear.
Thayer motioned to the man from the White House, who had remained seated behind the conference table, a commanding gesture that got the too-relaxed young man out of his couch and across to one of the chairs in front of the great desk. “Sit,” Thayer said, and the man sat. Duane Callendar worked for Zeke Archer, who worked for the improbable new president, Justice Tolliver. It was Archer who had called early in the morning of this very long day and asked for whatever records the bank held on Uvalde County Savings and Loan and “any affiliates” that had caused all the scurrying around after the credit files. “Well,” Thayer said. “There you have it. A minor breach of bank confidentiality, quickly contained.”
“I’ll so report,” Callendar said skeptically. “Although some concerns remain about what may have been filed as correspondence.”
“The file will turn up,” Thayer said wearily. “They always do.” He looked at the smooth young man who looked to have been polished and buffed to a hard, arrogant shine.
“What do you think might be in the file that is of concern to the White House?”
Callendar waved the thought away, an exaggerated gesture. “Who knows? Loose lips, all that. Perhaps something a reporter could inflate into a story.”
Behold a Pale Horse Page 11
