MONEY TREE (5 page)

‘
Erin, you haven’t given me anything to dig into. So, he had a bad day in the office. So, he shouted at a few people and called a competitor names. But you can bet half the boardrooms in the USA are bloodbaths every quarter these days. I hear Apple’s no picnic. What’s different here? Show me how he got Burton Stacks to make that call to me. Show me how he suborned the World Bank. Bring me proof of how he corrupted the Indian government.’ 

‘Look mister, I don’t need this. Let’s just forget the whole thing.’

She sat back against the seat and waved her slim fingers at him in dismissal. Ted put on his long suffering face, the one he reserved for his lawyer when a new demand hit the table.

‘
Erin, I’d love to take this and run with it. But you need to help me some more.’

She was shaking her head. ‘I can’t. I just can’t. Look, forget we met. Forget we had this conversation. It was a crazy idea.’

She stood up, grabbed her purse, walked to the bar and asked for the check.

He thought she was going to walk out on him without even a goodnight.
Ted rubbed his face. Just beautiful. He’d handled her like a complete jerk. What the hell was happening to him? This could have been a hot story, could have earned him a breathing space with his boss. He felt people at the other tables staring at him, marking him down as a loser who’d upset his date. It wouldn’t be the first time lately. He opened his top button to cool down. His sightline to the bar was suddenly blocked. She was standing by his table again, a vibrating column of energy, her bag looped over her shoulder like an ammunition pouch. She took a deep breath.

‘
Ted, I just want to say thanks and sorry. That was rude. I wasted your time. I don’t have all the answers even if I wanted to give them to you. If you won’t or can’t play your part then I guess it goes nowhere.’

H
e’d seen that look before with women. Disappointed. Mary had used it more often towards the end. Erin left him there. He looked at his watch and decided he’d earned a real drink before he headed home. In a real bar.

Erin Wishart stood in the dark in her 10
th
  floor apartment. She gazed blindly down on 5
th
Avenue and the lines of cars as they crawled along, their lights blinking in and out under the black camouflage of the trees fringing Central Park. She’d come within a few indiscretions of losing all this, of screwing up her career. She could almost hear her girlfriends’ incredulity: what the hell was she thinking about? What business was it of Erin Wishart? Why throw away all the hard won gains for someone else’s take on morality?

And she
had to ask herself just how far her public-spiritedness took her before it ran into her less scrupulous motivations like personal advancement. But there would be no advancement – no bank – if Warwick continued his downward spiral. What was his poison of choice this time? Such a waste.

There was something else she hadn’t mentioned to Saddler. The conversation with
José Cadenza two days ago. She’d bumped into him in a local bookshop while she was looking for good reads for her long plane ride back to Hong Kong. He invited her to have a sandwich with him in the coffee shop. She’d liked José on sight but they’d only ever met on the executive floor of the GA building and conversation had been strictly business. José had joined GA from American Mart when Warwick had taken them over. They talked books for a while, then José got serious. His dark eyes grew troubled.

‘E
ver meet Bill Yeardon, Erin?’

‘
Once or twice. While we were in the takeover negotiations.’

‘My old boss. A good guy
.’

‘
I thought so. I’m glad you joined us. You seemed to have settled in.’

‘Until this People’s Bank thing.’

‘We’ll get over it.’

‘
And Yeardon’s wife? Meet her?’

‘
Veronica? A real Southern belle. Met over cocktails. I was sorry to hear about Bill. Just before last Christmas?’

José nodded. ‘Heart attack
. I went to the funeral. He was only 52.’

He looked as though he was going to say more, then thought better of it.
Erin let the pause grow. José leaned across the table, his voice down.

‘
Last week I had a call from Veronica. She was pretty upset. She’d finally got around to clearing out Bill’s desk at his home. She said she’d found a key to a safety deposit box at her local First County bank. Veronica didn’t know Bill used First County, far less owned a safety deposit box.’

‘Another woman?’

José shook his head. ‘She’d thought the same. She could have coped with that. No, it was material about the merger. She said it was horrible. That it confirmed her opinion about Warwick. She couldn’t speak about it on the phone. Wanted me to visit, or she’d come to New York.’

Erin
swallowed. What had Warwick done?

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘I don’t know anyone round the table. You’re all GA to the core.’

‘And it’s easier to talk to a woman?’ she smiled.

He grinned. ‘My wife’s always said I prefer women’s company to men.’

‘Good for you. As long as its platonic?’

He laughed. ‘Absolutely! Maria would kill me. And I’ve got two kids.’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘You know Warwick. What’s he capable of?’

‘
What’s anyone capable of in our business?’

His smile was rueful. ‘I’ll let you know how my meeting with Veronica goes.’

José’s question kept reverberating as she made her way back to the towering offices of the bank. At least until a year ago, she’d have said she knew Warwick better than most. But she’d never known quite how far he’d go to defend his beloved empire. His behaviour – with or without stimulants – was increasingly erratic, violent.

After this evening’s shambles
she wondered if she should have raised the issue with Ted Saddler, see if that got his old investigator’s engine going. But she still hadn’t heard back from José. Her mind swirled with the possibilities and she felt the warning pangs gripping her stomach like a pincer. She searched in her bag and dug out the pack containing the latest in a long line of treatments. She washed two tablets down with a swig of water. It was the usual story; no-one seemed ready to take responsibility for anything. It was always left to her. Sod Ted Saddler! She wasn’t going to end on the dump over some late developing conscience.

She looked out across the park. Far to the West, and down by the Hudson,
stood the hotel she’d stayed in fifteen years ago when she’d transferred from the London office. She’d vowed then to live by the park. It would be the benchmark of how far she’d travelled from the despairing towers of Drumchapel on the outer fringes of Glasgow. Even when she was appointed head of Asia Pac, it still made sense to keep a base in the West. She’d held her nerve during the housing crash and pounced on an apartment in one of the best blocks, on one of the finest streets in Manhattan. Prices had then rocketed post-crash. A smart investment and a tangible seal on the past.

So why
does it seem such a bloody anti-climax? What now? What’s the next target? Is it the man thing again? Who needs it – him? I’m not looking. I’ve got all the freedom and space I want. If I fancy a temporary wee arrangement, my pals always know someone. Fun without strings. I’ve got it made, everything I want. Why question its worth?

From her window she could just see the start of her
jogging track when she was in town. She recalled another window in another city and a very different view. She snapped the memory shut. An early morning blast through the park would calm the stomach and clear the confusion.

T
he morning after the car crash with Erin Wishart, Ted sat gazing out his 23
rd
story office window at the drizzle sweeping in across the East River and drifting through the steel and glass obelisks. He was nursing a mild hangover and wondering if the Ted Saddler that used to inhabit a lesser mound of flesh would have let last night’s opportunity go like that. Maybe not, but then he was smarter now. He didn’t tilt windmills for a living any longer. A pity though. For a while there he was getting interested, and not just in a pair of laser blue eyes.

He
checked her entry online. Older than she looked: 44 last February. But still pretty young to hit the upper echelons of a top bank. She’d had stints in other divisions, gaining plaudits every time. A top computer science degree from Edinburgh University capped with an MBA from Wharton. This girl was smart. Fizzing with energy. A result of the fitness regime? Or was that where she dumped the surplus? He patted his stomach. Maybe he should give it a try.

He was still sceptical about her reason
s for approaching him; a banker with a conscience? Was she using him to get back at her boss? Some political manoeuvring to stage a coup? Maybe she was worried about the Fed finding out. Losing her banking licence for being associated with underhand activities? Nah, she could just claim innocence. This guy Stanstead seemed to keep a close lid on his shady dealings.

For the rest of the day he managed to milk something out of
the looming scandal in the Japanese banking sector. Normally it wouldn’t rate a mention – corruption being ‘ten a yen’ in his jaundiced eyes – but this one had sex and suicide to spice up the takeover of boardrooms by the Yakuza mob. He made calls, dug through badly translated web sites and hacked out a lively-enough column.

Come 6pm he had his jacket in one hand and was heading to the elevator with a growing thirst when
Stan Coleman, City Editor, pitched up out of nowhere with his hands in his pockets. He was trying to look casual, so Ted knew there was a problem. Stan was short, but his fuse was shorter.

‘
Ted, got a minute?’ He looked up at Ted, expecting a yes.

‘Sure Stan.
Is there a problem with the Japan story? I was just pushing off, you know?’

‘Nope.
Absent any real news, that is. I’m running a book on how long before the first public denials from their Ministry of Finance. I’m betting the mail box will be full by the morning.’

‘No takers here.’

Stan rocked gently on his toes, inspecting Ted from under lowered brows, as if he were peering over half moon glasses. ‘We need to talk.’

He took
Ted’s arm like a child steering a grown up, and walked him back to Ted’s cubby hole. Ted dropped back into his seat and Stan took the position of power on the edge of the desk.

‘So
Ted, how’ve you been?’ His legs swung nonchalantly.

‘
Stan, I’ve been fantastic. What’s the problem?’

‘It’s this People’s Bank of yours.’

‘It’s not my bank Stan. I only write about the damned thing. And if you’ll recall, you pointed me at the story six months ago.’

‘Sure, sure. I’m getting some heat from on high.
This is big. The People’s Bank philosophy has gone viral. They’re saying could be a new model for banking in the West. Like a new diet, for chrissake. Our top guys think we’ve got the right angle on it. Striking the right tone with healthy scepticism. They think there’s a lot more to come, and they want us to make the most of it. Fact is they think this could be a rocky few weeks for the outfit and they want the story in depth.’

‘
One of those ‘top floor’ things, huh?’

‘It smells like a rerun of the Credit Crunch.’

‘Fortunes being built on the back of flaky loans to folk that can’t afford to repay them? Yeah, I see that.’

Stan nodded.
‘The trial is going to be messy. Dirty linen washed in public. Blood on the walls. We want to be in at the kill. We’re going to do a spread. You know the kind of thing; we check out its track record, interview the boss and some of the staff. Get a view from the regulators and some of the competitors. Get some unhappy customers lined up.’ He tapped Ted’s screen. ‘It’s getting a lot of attention. Emails, twitter feeds, YouTube mash-ups, etc.’

‘
OK Stan. So you want me to do some more digging? Call up our guys in Delhi?’

Stan
looked down at Ted for a second or two longer than the question really demanded.

‘
Ted, you need to get really on the pulse with this one. This outfit claims it’s solving world hunger and making a profit. Mutually exclusive I think we’re agreed? Right? And they’re making waves in the West. We want you to go out there and have a look. Get beneath the skin, soak up the local aromas. Get over to India for the build-up and the conclusion of the trial. Give it some real feel you know?’

Ted
flipped his seat back so he was half reclining.

‘Sorry Stan, I just thought I heard you say I should go to
India. You’re joking right? I mean that’s why we have local correspondents right? Our man in Delhi or Karachi or Timbuktu for chrissake. It’s why we invented Skype. You don’t really want to send me? Think of the costs. I mean we can do the studio shots, make me look like I’m there. Right?’ He was frankly incredulous.