Cash Burn (12 page)

Next to his shoulder, he saw what had been in his mouth. The ankle monitor. Flip had cut it off and stuffed the end of one of the straps in Tom’s mouth.

Nice touch.

He lay unmoving, taking inventory of his body, listening but hearing no sound beyond the cymbals in his ears. One by one he tested his limbs and found them functioning, felt for injuries in places other than his head but discovered none.

He tried to lift his head. It rang, throbbed in pain. The apartment swirled around him, tilting, walls flying. He lowered his head back to the carpet. The ceiling gradually slowed its spin, easing into a stained blur.

His eyes wouldn’t focus.

He went for his cell phone and felt for the number one key, pressed and held it for a 911 emergency call.

The operator came on and he struggled through the conversation, digging the address out of his scrambled mind. He set the phone down, and the operator stayed on, her voice drifting through his ringing ears, distant.

He wondered how he could have been so stupid. Old and lazy, that’s how. Show up at the home of a high-control parolee just a few weeks after he gated out, put yourself at his feet. . . . Gun or no gun, he should have had backup, should have called Flip into his office. Something.

But why didn’t he kill me?

20

Jason stopped.

“I tried to keep him out, Jason.” Brenda leaned over her keyboard to see around the corner. Her necklace dangled forward. “He said he had some calls to make and, since you weren’t in, he’d use your office. I couldn’t stop him.”

His ankles crossed to perch his Florsheims on Jason’s desk, Vince’s fat rear end filled Jason’s chair. He had his neck bent to wedge the phone among the folds of his neck so his hands were free to flip through a report.

“I hope he doesn’t break my chair.” Jason stepped away from Brenda’s desk and into his office. He sat in a corner chair and slid his laptop out of his briefcase, powered it up. A pot of coffee at his breakfast meeting hadn’t done much to clear out the muck in his mind. He hadn’t slept after Philip’s visit last night.

Vince chatted into the receiver. “That’ll be okay. I’ll talk to Scotty and get it waived. I want that loan funded today. Six million in new outs will look good in our numbers at quarter-end. How’s that Cal Distributors deal coming?”

The screen on Jason’s laptop lit up, and he accessed the bank’s wireless network and typed in his password to get to the bank’s intranet. While it cycled, he glanced up. Vince looked away.

Online now, Jason checked his profit center’s results from yesterday. Loans were down. Deposits too. He toggled to the large transactions report and saw that Howe Brothers had paid off and the company’s deposits were down to fumes. It looked like they were leaving the bank. He logged out and set his laptop on the chair and stood. There’d better be a good explanation for this.

Vince hung up. With a grunt, he brought his feet down from the desktop. It must have been an exhausting maneuver with all that weight padded onto his midsection. Jason wondered if he’d have to call in a forklift to get him out of that chair.

Vince swiveled Jason’s chair to face him. “You weren’t in yet, and I needed to make some calls before committee.”

A stack of loan reports littered Jason’s desk. Vince’s reading for committee. “Anytime. We’re real hospitable around here.”

Vince didn’t budge. His white, coiffed hair was styled into a sharp wedge over his forehead.

Jason went to the door. Brenda looked up. “Have Dan come over,” he said.

Back to Vince. With careful concentration, Vince was putting his committee reports in order, checking the agenda before putting each one in the stack. Such an important responsibility, this committee vote.

“I see your numbers took a dive.” Vince didn’t take his eyes off the reports. He had half of them stacked before him.

“Temporary. Our pipeline’s pretty packed.”

The last of the reports made their way to the stack. Vince let his eyes wander up to meet Jason’s. “I just hope our little branches can keep up.” A grin. Still he didn’t move out of that chair.

“You about done, Vince? Because I’d really like to get to work.”

Vince looked at his watch. A Rolex. He must have found it in a pawn shop or repossessed it. “I still have a couple minutes before committee.” He leaned back and managed to get his hands up behind his head. It stretched the limits of his shirt over his walrus belly. “It’ll be good to have Patricia back on my team again. Tell me about the rest of the group.”

Jason took a step toward his own desk. “You really think she’ll report to you again? Or anybody else here? Forget it, Vince. You’ll have to be happy out in the country.”

That grin warped Vince’s face again. He leveraged off the desk to get out of the chair, then brought his tent of a jacket from where it had been draped over the back and slipped his arms through the sleeves. “Famous last words.” He brought his meaty fingers down to Jason’s desk to dig underneath the stack of loan presentations. “You can always tell quarter-end’s coming. Volume on committee picks up.” The bundle in his hands straightened his arms. He came around the desk, his cologne drifting toward Jason like a plague. “I haven’t seen your team in committee this week. I sure hope you can pick up the pace.”

The Howe payoff simmering in the back of his mind, Jason took a breath before answering. “Don’t be late. Your vote’s important.”

Vince snorted. He leaned in. Coffee breath and the reek of his cologne made Jason want to turn away. But he didn’t back down.

“Nice little piece you got out there.” Vince kept his voice low and gestured with his eyes to the doorway. The percussion of Brenda’s keystrokes outside the door didn’t pause.

“Get out.”

The grin returned, and Jason’s palm itched to slap it off Vince’s face.

“Touchy.” He turned and went to the door. Jason followed and toyed with the idea of tripping him or maybe planting his foot in that wide backside.

Vince paused at Brenda’s desk. “Thanks, Brenda.” He used his syrupy voice. “I appreciate it. You have a good day.”

“You too.” Her keyboard clacked uninterrupted.

Vince winked at Jason and turned. He maneuvered like an ocean liner toward the chairman’s suite.

Brenda stopped typing. Her hands slid from the keyboard and onto her lap. “That guy is so creepy.”

Looking from Vince back into the jewels of Brenda’s eyes, Jason’s anger drifted. “You’re talking about one of the bank’s senior executives, Ms. Tierney.”

“I don’t care if he’s the grand pooh-bah of the Federal Reserve. I wouldn’t want to be stuck in an elevator with him, I can tell you that.”

Laughter ballooned in Jason’s chest, but he held it back. “You find Dan?”

“He’s out on an appointment. I told Angie you wanted to see him.” She kept her eyes on him.

Her phone rang. She checked the readout. “It’s Francine Jugger for you. You want her?”

“Always.” He turned and peeled off his jacket on the way to his chair. Francine was nearly seventy years old and had been running BTB’s wire room when Jason was bumbling through his first date. With the housecoats she wore and makeup as thick as waffle batter, she was the last person you’d want to stand in front of a client, but for efficiency you couldn’t find anyone better.

“Here she is,” Brenda called.

His phone rang. “Francine, how you doing?”

“I’m good, doll. How’s by you?”

“Not as good as you, but nobody is.”

“You sweet boy. You got a PIN for me?”

“You know my rules.”

“Come on, honey.” She always tried this. But Jason knew she was just testing him to see how careful he was with his authority.

“No details, no PIN.”

“Oh, if you insist.” She recited the particulars. Nearly five million, leaving Northfield’s main operating account with insufficient funds. As usual, Randy Sloan wanted the money to automatically sweep from their interest-bearing account so he could earn interest on it until the last second. The wire room couldn’t process it without authorization from a senior executive, even though they could see the money in the other account.

Brenda stepped into the room. Her eyes seemed to drill into him.

“Hold on a second, Francine.” He put his hand over the receiver and asked Brenda for his laptop. She found it on the chair and handed it to him. He docked it and got into the system and found Northfield’s balances. Plenty in their concentration account.

“Is this a fax request, or did he send it over online?”

“Fax this time. The signature looks good. You want to see it?”

“No. If I can’t trust Francine Jugger, I can’t trust anybody. You ready for me to enter my PIN?”

“Whenever you are.”

He pulled out his lower left drawer and fingered through the file tabs until he found the one with his PIN. They changed it so often, he never bothered committing it to memory. He punched in the six digits on the phone’s keypad.

Silence for a moment while the system worked through the code. A moment later, she said, “Got it. Money’s flying, honey. Talk to you tomorrow.”

“Be good.”

“I always am.” She clicked off.

He shoved his drawer closed.

Brenda stood with her hands behind her back. She shifted her weight onto one leg, cocking her hip. “Mark wants to see you.”

21

Mark’s face flushed violet. “Do you think we sit around and dream up policies for fun? They’re there for a reason, Jason. And this one . . . we can’t have lenders winging commitments out in the market without any oversight from the credit side of the bank!”

Jason stared at the wording of the letter and searched for the right thing to say. How could he have missed this? “These commitment letters look just like our proposal letters. We’ve got to change the format.”

“Oh, come on.” Mark shot out of his chair. “You’re running the biggest profit center in the bank, and I have to explain this to you?” He wrenched his tie loose and unbuttoned his collar. “What don’t you understand about the word
commitment
? And ten million—on these terms?” He turned his back.

Scotty, sitting in the other chair before Mark’s desk, didn’t say a word. He just sat there, eyeing Jason, tapping together the tips of the arms of his reading glasses like pincers. No emotion registered on his face.

Mark snatched the commitment letter off his desk and reread it. He snorted, shook his head, and flipped it back onto his desk.

“Listen, I’ll explain to them—”

Mark drilled his finger at him. “No. No. You’re not even
talking
to them again. I’ll handle this. This conversation has to happen CEO to CEO. I just hope I can control the damage in the market.” He plopped into his chair.

“Jason,” Scotty said, “how did this happen?”

Jason couldn’t look at him. Outside the window, the fall air had taken on a gloomy cast. The bright days of summer felt long gone. Jason had authorized a proposal on these terms, but how could Billy have used the commitment-letter format instead? Proposal letters had outs; they were subject to extensive due diligence. BTB wouldn’t be blamed for shifting the terms issued in a proposal letter. Not much, anyway. But a commitment was different. It was legally binding. The only negotiating point was the form of the loan documents.

Scotty waited for an answer, but Jason couldn’t throw Billy under the bus. A mistake like this could ruin a young career. Jason would have to take this whipping like a man.

Mark fidgeted in his seat as if it was on fire. “And to think Scotty wanted to put you on loan committee.”

Scotty glanced at Mark and back to Jason. The eyeglasses went into his shirt pocket and he leaned over in his seat and crossed his legs.

Jason had a vision of sitting at the boardroom table, a pile of loan reports before him, with Vince waiting across the table to be voted down.

Scotty shrugged. “It was supposed to be a rotating membership. Ninety days on, then off. You were going to be next in line after Vince. Maybe I should have told you.”

“Well, Jason’s not going on loan committee. Not with stuff like this flying around.” Mark shook the commitment letter in the air and flipped it down again.

“All right, guys. I get it. It won’t happen again. Give me a chance to make it right. Don’t cut me out of the process with the company, Mark. It’ll look awful.”

“You get it? That’s good. You get it.” Mark came out of his chair again. “This is not something you should have to
get
. Not in the position you’re in. You should be the one enforcing this stuff, not violating it.” Mark stood over him. “I don’t think you do get it. This is about more than this loan commitment, Jason. I might be able to fix that. This is about who you are in this organization.”

“No, it’s not.” Jason rose to face him. “It’s one mistake, Mark. One. In the five years I’ve been in this position, we haven’t had one conversation like this. You can’t—”

“It’s not a ‘mistake.’ This was a willful violation. I will not have the head of our home office intentionally ignoring bank policy. If you’re doing this kind of thing yourself, I can imagine what your team’s doing under your leadership.”

“What are you saying?”

“What am I saying? I guess I have to spell this out for you too. I’m saying I’m going to make some changes. Clearly you need more oversight.”

“Now hold on just a minute.”

“No. No, I’m not holding on. I will not have this. You’ve got a new boss. Effective immediately. You need supervision, and I don’t have time to babysit you.”

Vince.

“And this isn’t going to be some passive thing, either. I’m going to make sure he’s on you like a cheap suit. Every solicitation. Your pipeline of new deals. All your major clients.”

“You can’t do this.”

Mark’s face reddened even deeper. It looked as if it might erupt. “What?
What?
This is grounds for termination, boy. You put this bank’s reputation at risk. I always knew you were a loose cannon, but I never thought you were dumb enough to do something like this.” He turned away.

Jason watched him round the desk and sit. “You wanted to put Vince in charge all along, didn’t you?”