Cash Burn (14 page)

Brenda didn’t answer.

He looked at her. Her face blushed. She hadn’t blushed when Rosie had made that remark about a secret between them, but now, as Jason’s eyes held hers, the pale rose-petal color of her cheeks flushed a darker shade.

She looked at her drink. Her hand went to it but didn’t move the glass.

“Hey.”

She brought her eyes back to his.

“That bother you, what she said? I can go smack her around if you want.”

Brenda looked back to her drink, and a smile perked her lips. She shook her head. “No.”

“Come on—you know Rosie. She’s just having some fun.”

She looked up and her color began to fade. “It’s just . . . never mind.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I . . .” Her lips tightened.

“It’s something personal. None of my business. You want to talk about banking? We can talk about debits and credits and general ledgers if that makes you more comfortable.”

“Oh, Jason, cut it out.” But she relaxed, shifting in her chair, and her face softened again.

“All right. You were asking about the wires earlier. You clear on why they call for my approval?”

“Yeah. You explained it really well. It seems like a lot of authority for one person, though. No offense.”

“None taken. They give different approval authorities for people at different levels. You won’t see Billy approving twenty-million-dollar wires. But the head of the home office needs to be able to keep things moving if the bank is going to serve its customers. You can’t have a bunch of committees signing off on every transaction. Nothing would ever get done.”

“So on your word, they’ll send a twenty-million-dollar wire? Even if the agreement with the customer is different from what’s happening?”

“Yeah, technically that’s right. But you don’t make mistakes on things like that and keep your job. I have to make judgment calls every ten minutes. I have to know the customers, judge the risks of what’s being asked. If there’s a question, I call time-out and get the answer, even if it means missing a deadline. Otherwise, I make the call and move on.”

Rosie balanced two plates on one arm and held fresh drinks in the other hand. Jason took the drinks, and Rosie set the sandwiches in front of them. “Anything else right now?”

They shook their heads, and she moved off.

“That was pretty tame. She must have somebody else to pick on.”

Brenda picked up a sandwich half. “It must be tough, having to handle all that responsibility with those wires.”

He took a bite of his roast beef on wheat. The yellow mustard pinched the glands at the back of his mouth. He swallowed. “There’s really no other way. The wire room doesn’t have staff with the seniority to make judgment calls like that, even if they could stay on top of what’s happening with every customer. Only the bankers on the accounts can do that. With the loans we have out to them, we’re in touch with our biggest clients all the time, so if we don’t know what’s going on, nobody at the bank does.”

“But what if somebody wasn’t as honest as you? Couldn’t they . . . never mind, it’s ridiculous.”

“No—it happens. But there’s a little club out there called the FBI, and they tend to get excited when banks are ripped off. You’re not in this business very long before you realize that the feds show a lot of interest in anybody who steals money from a bank.”

“It would probably be impossible to get away with it.”

Across the room, Mark Cornwall’s assistant approached the lunch counter. Rosie handed a bag over. Cornwall didn’t leave the building unless it was on business. If he ate at all, he sent out for it.

Thinking about Mark made the roast beef taste sour. Jason set the sandwich down on his plate and went for his iced tea. He looked back to Brenda. Her eyes didn’t blink.

“It could be done. But I don’t worry about that. I trust our people, and we have limits that keep things within reason. What I worry about in this economy is getting our loans repaid. We’ve got some challenges right now.”

She’d only eaten half of her Reuben. The other half cooled on the plate before her. “If there’s anything that can be done, you’ll do it, I’m sure.” Her hands were folded in her lap.

“Something wrong with the sandwiches, kids?” Rosie looked much more natural with the coffeepot clutched in her right hand.

“Could I take this with me?” Brenda gestured to the rest of her sandwich.

“Sure, sweetie. What about you, Jason? You need a doggie bag?”

“No, thanks.”

Rosie reached for Jason’s plate.

“I’ll take that too, if you don’t mind,” Brenda said.

Rosie paused. She looked at Jason. “Okay with you, hon?”

He shrugged.

Rosie took both plates. “I’ll bag these up. Be right back. Any coffee for you two?”

Brenda wanted some, so Rosie filled her cup and moved off. Brenda emptied a plastic tub of cream into her cup and stirred it.

“Tell me if it’s none of my business, Brenda, but is everything okay? On the personal side?”

She glanced to the floor. “It’ll get better.” She blew over the surface of her coffee, took a sip, swallowed. She watched the cup carefully as she returned it to the tabletop. “I was seeing this guy. I thought it was going somewhere. He thought it was going somewhere different. I had to end it.”

“That’s tough.”

“It was the right thing to do. I need more than what he was ready to give. It’ll be okay.”

“I’m sure it’s not hard for you to attract attention. I guess just the right kind.”

Darker pink surged into her cheeks again. “From the right guy.” Her eyes wouldn’t budge from his.

The clamor in the room around them seemed to vanish as he stared into her eyes. They were caverns, green and cool. He could look into them for the rest of the afternoon if she would let him.

Rosie returned. “Here you go, sweetie.” She put the bag before Brenda and topped off the coffee cup. “Anything else? A little cupcake or something you two could share?”

“No, Rosie. That’s it.” Jason looked to Brenda, and her eyes darted from him. The blush in her cheeks hadn’t faded. He rubbed his sweaty palms on his slacks.

Rosie ripped the bill off her tablet and held it out to Jason. “The gentleman will pay.”

Jason took it from her and reached into his pocket.

“You kids have a swell afternoon. See you soon.” She turned her attention to the next table.

Jason held his wallet. He looked at Brenda. His mouth had gone dry. He wanted to drain his iced-tea glass but couldn’t seem to pull away from Brenda’s eyes. Where had he seen eyes that color before?

With an effort, he looked down at his wallet and pulled out a five for Rosie and counted out the bills he would need for the cashier. He sat back and felt those eyes reach into his chest. “Let’s go,” he said at last.

24

Night, and the perfect blackness overhead was interrupted only by a few stars and the moon, a glowing claw.

No clouds, no wind, no noise.

Empty street, sidewalks blank and pale, inhabitants chased inside to huddle in their boxes like rabbits as the darkness descended.

Flip stepped along the concrete carefully. The sidewalk needed work. It was buckled and cratered. Many of the houses had security bars gating their windows and iron mesh screening front doors. Not like this neighborhood used to be.

Twenty-five years ago, a kid might have appeared on this street—a kid who didn’t belong. A kid with a head shaped like a melting ice cube and arms too short for his torso, with clumsy feet and hands that couldn’t catch. A round, bouncing body. He might be running along and trip on a crack and fall and scrape his chin. Or he might be sneaking out of the house to wander at night when all the other kids were tucked in and couldn’t make fun of him.

This kid Flip used to be rose up inside him unwelcome, at once alien and familiar. These same sidewalks used to be slapped by his sneakers when he was chased by jeering neighborhood kids. Fear and self-loathing brought his neck into his shoulders as he remembered how he had fled, how he had hidden behind gates or bushes and hoped they wouldn’t stop. Sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn’t.

He turned the corner now, and up ahead squatted the motherless house of his childhood. He remembered it filled with heartbeats and tears, words unspoken or shouted, all pent up between those stucco walls. Its front lawn, nestled behind eucalyptus trees, was bordered by the low jasmine shrubs that were his father’s favorites. The leafy evergreen speckled by tiny white flowers spewed a fragrance the man loved. His father would bury his face in the jasmine and inhale and close his eyes. And turn to Flip, and that look of pleasure would harden.

One time his father had locked him out. When he found out the neighborhood boys bullied his son, disappointment had wrung his upper lip, and he had shoved Flip out the door. The clack of the bolt locking could have been the gavel of a death sentence.

Not long after that, Donny Briscoe and Paul Glenn had found him. Their names still caused Flip’s jaw to clench. They had chased him. But that time, he’d stopped. He could still remember the moment when he’d faced them, standing right over there beneath that willow tree—the tree was bigger now. They had circled around him, jeering, laughing, spitting the usual insults. But this time, he had grown very still inside, quiet encasing his pounding heart, joints tight. Ready.

They had run, bleeding from their noses and mouths, and had never chased him again.

But Flip hadn’t gone home. He couldn’t face the bolted door. Instead, he had gone to the park and found a place in the trees off the paths and spent the night there shivering, peering into the darkness to see what bogey men or wolves scuffled in the leaves. At some point, he had fallen asleep and only woke when the sun reached through the tree limbs to warm his face.

Now Flip stared at his father’s house. He could almost imagine it breathing.

His father still lived here. The return address on his letters was this one. Flip had read them before tearing them to shreds and flushing them down the toilet in his cell.

The front door would be bolted.

Would he unlock it for him? What would he think if he saw him—tattooed, hardened by the hours pumping weights in the yard?

Flip turned his back. He let the memories of this place go brittle inside him and hoped they would crumble and not harass him anymore.

As a teenager, he had parked his truck at this curb. He had eased to a stop right here every day after school. He might be the only one home, or Jason might be inside and it would be the two of them until Dad got home from work and they’d figure out which cans to open for dinner. They’d argue over whose turn it was to wash the dishes or clean up after the dog. It seemed Jason and their father always sided together against Flip. But it wasn’t so bad, mostly.

A latch clicked, and a door creaked, and light spilled out.

Flip turned. The front door to the house where he had grown up stood open. The shape of an old man emerged against the light, and as he leaned back inside to draw the door closed, a dog circled past him with eager steps. Flip recognized the thin head and tall ears of a Doberman pinscher, brown and black. The colors of both man and dog faded into shadow as the door closed. The dog glided at the old man’s side, steady. The master’s authority appeared to be the only leash joining them. It had always been that way with his dogs. He had wanted it that way with his boys, too, but couldn’t have it.

The years apart drained away. Manhood vanished. Suddenly Flip was a boy again, uncertain, resentful of the older man’s power over him.

He suppressed an urge to run.

The dog noticed him. Its head rose and seemed to narrow as the snout pointed at him. Still, it remained at its owner’s side, its steps a steady, restrained gait.

The old man’s neck was hunched, his face pointed straight down the walkway dividing the lawn. He moved toward the sidewalk, the dog heeling relentlessly. Flip’s father had gotten so thin that his jacket could have been dangling from a wire hanger instead of bony shoulders.

Flip held his ground.

At the sidewalk, the old man turned to walk in the opposite direction. Flip’s mouth opened. He snapped it shut.

The dog halted, snout still pointed in Flip’s direction. This disobedience caused the old man to stop, and he turned his head and his hand came around as if he was about to utter a command. Then he followed the dog’s eyes.

Flip stared through the darkness at his father. The forty feet between them could have been miles. But a connection like a distant radio signal bristled, charged with the static of anger and resentment.

His father peered at him. No lights shone. A growl rose to Flip’s ears. From the dog, probably.

The old man snapped his fingers once, and the quiet of the street returned. Seconds dragged out, and still neither man spoke or moved.

Finally Flip’s father straightened. “You lost?” His voice had the confident volume of a man protected. The Doberman held steady at his side.

Flip considered his answer. He could turn and walk into the dark night and evade all this. Instead he spoke. “No, Dad.”

No movement. No acknowledgement from the old man. It was as if the bolt had been turned between them again.

Flip’s father sniffed. It was what he had always done when he was going to say something but was still forming the words. A hand went to the Doberman’s head, and he said something to the dog too low for Flip’s ears to catch. The dog’s head turned, and suddenly its posture relaxed, its snout poked at the old man’s leg, and he patted its head twice before he stepped toward his son. “I wrote you.”

“Yeah.”

As if they were stitched together, the old man and the dog moved closer to Flip. The shape of his father’s head detailed into a face, dim eyes reflecting distant light, a semaphore blinking at him. A nose like a longer version of Jason’s, pocked and drooped by time and drink. Thin-lipped mouth like an unintended crack. A word of encouragement was so rare from that mouth.

He smelled of bourbon and rags. “I kept hoping you’d write back.”

“Well, I’m here now. You need to walk that dog?”

The old man looked down as if he’d forgotten this appendage. “He’ll be all right. Let’s get you inside.”