MONEY TREE (7 page)

‘I used to be your obsession. But I know when I’m beat. We don’t go out, we don’t talk.’ Her voice hardened.  ‘We don’t
fuck
.’ She let the word tarnish the air. ‘Besides…’

‘Besides what?’

‘Nothing. Doesn’t matter.’ She started to put her coat on.

He strode over, put his great paws on her upper arms.

‘Tell me.’

She sighed. ‘You’d better know. You’ll know soon enough.’

She gazed straight into the eyes that were already screwed up -  a kid knowing it was about to get smacked. The truth guessed long ago.

‘There’s somebody waiting for me. Downstairs.’

It was almost a relief. He dropped his hands, dropped his shoulders like he was going in for one of the tackles he was famous for at high school.

‘I knew it.’

‘What did you expect?’

‘Support? Loyalty?’

She took a long look at him.

‘
Ted, I used to find it attractive. What you did. Your journalism was a fine thing. But you could have been chief editor. Taken that job with CNN. Fox even. Made decent money. Moved out of this pit. But that wasn’t enough. The day you won that goddamn Pulitzer, you thought you were the next Updike. Journalism wasn’t enough.
I
wasn’t enough.’ She paused for breath. ‘Well, I found someone who does think I’m enough. We have fun!’

Her voice softened. ‘I haven’t had fun in. . . oh shit, you know,
Ted. I want a life.’

Her bullets drove home, leaving him paralysed and bleeding in his comfortable chair. Hearing her last words long after she’d gone. Long after the night fell. Long after the ball game was over. It wasn’t even about losing Mary. Sitting in his dark room, lit intermittently by passing cars that swung their beams through his
first floor window searching for a man of substance, and not finding one. Sitting, thinking that a man could do something about his anger or his laziness or his habit of getting drunk with the boys on a Friday night. But this wasn’t fair. What could a man do about his dreams?

Ted’s sartorial efforts found favour with the patron of the eponymously named Giovanni’s Room, a tile-floored Italian where the pasta was home-made and the Chianti came in chipped stone pitchers. Every time he’d seen the macho, happily married owner, Ted wondered if he’d ever read Baldwin’s novel, far less identified with the gay barman.

T
ed had arrived early and described his date to Giovanni. Maybe he overdid it. Instead of Ted’s usual bare table for one, near the back, a table
à deux
was set up in the window. The rough wood top was camouflaged with fresh linen and crowned with a vase holding a single rose. Giovanni clearly hoped to draw in more customers when they saw the quality of the diners. Or at least half of them.

As the restaurant filled,
Ted pretended to be engrossed in his phone, wishing he could ditch the rose and praying she wouldn’t stand him up. When he saw the cab draw up he shot to his feet. Giovanni beat him to the restaurant door and glad-handed Erin Wishart into his parlour, only just refraining from kissing her hand. The awkward couple were shepherded to their table, Ted trying – and failing - to look nonchalant, as if Erin was simply one of a long line of top drawer dinner dates. In truth she was the first – of any sort - in months, and Ted could only hope this would turn out better than the night of the stalker from Accounts.

T
here was no doubting her presence. He was aware of other diners checking her out. The soft brogue was an aural magnet. That and the poise that comes from wearing Armani. Or just knowing you can afford Armani. Erin Wishart displayed the firm arms and shoulders of a woman who worked out but managed to keep her feminine curves. Ted appreciated that. He was old school. Another point of departure with Mary who’d fought a permanent war against anything above size zero.              

‘So what changed your mind?’ she was asking.

Her question reminded Ted why they were here, and that his job probably depended on getting something juicy out of this.

‘A little guy with a big title. It was put to me that maybe I should be looking harder at this story.’

‘Sounds like we both know pressure.’

‘
This came from the top. Possibly from a certain Martin Lanesborough, chair of our holding company, and –’

‘- one of our board directors.
You noticed.’

Ted
tried to ignore the irony in her voice; tongue-lashed by the Queen of Scots.

‘
The Tribune wants a bigger spread on this bank.’ He made quote marks in the air. ‘A clash of banking cultures post Crash’. Stan Coleman – my boss – even suggested I go to India. Thinks it’ll give the story zing. Can you believe it?’

He waited for the shared laughter. It didn’t come.

‘Why don’t you?’

‘We don’t
do that sort of stuff nowadays. It’s why we invented the phone and the internet. Anyway, what am I going to get out of it other than heat rash and malaria?’

‘
Zing? You’ll survive. I do it all the time. Seen one of these?’

Erin
dug into her purse and pulled out a slim black card. It said Concierge Key, American Airlines. Ted’s eyes widened.

‘My God. How many air miles?’

‘They don’t say. It’s invite only. But minimum seems to be 3 million.’

‘
So, I’m a wuss. I’m willing to get under the skin of this story, but I need your help. I’m even ready, God help me, to go to Delhi or Kolkata or whatever they’re calling them now, if that’s what it takes. I need substance.’

He sat back and waited.
Her face showed a dashed hope, then a kind of resignation. They broke off and made a fast pass at the menu. Ted had forgotten when he’d last seen one. His habit was a pitcher of red and the steaming pasta special. Tonight, Ted broke with tradition, and ordered the veal and a bottle of Barolo. Giovanni smiled. Erin went for fish, broiled plain, no sauce and mineral water. During all this he could see her mind sizing things up. Then came resolution. She pushed back, clutching the table edges with both hands, about to address the board.

‘OK,
Ted. Look, I had a bad night and a bad day for that matter. If you hadn’t called me I would have called you. I’m willing to do what I can - within reason.’

‘
Why? What’s really behind this? I’m struggling with your democracy needs the People’s Bank thesis. And you’re too young to be having a midlife, Erin.’

She nodded. She knew she had to give him more.
But she wasn’t ready to talk about the deeper fears stirred up by her intimate knowledge of Stanstead and what José had told her. She played her first card.

‘
Ever been to Scotland?’

‘
Nope. Always meant to. Heard you’ve got neat golf courses. All those links.’

‘None in Drumchapel, I can assure you. It’s a high rise housing estate north west of Glasgow. They
flattened the old central slums like the Gorbals and moved the people out to new tower blocks.’

‘I’ve heard of the Gorbals
.’

‘L
ovely red sandstone tenements. Once. For a population of ten per cent of the numbers in the ‘30’s. An ant hill of refugees and unemployed. No plumbing, no care. But plenty of heart. Rather than do them up, the council tore them down and built new slums outside the city - without shops, pubs, playgrounds or soul.’

‘Smart
work.’

‘
Blame Corbusier.’

‘This Drumchapel
– it’s where you grew up? Slum kid, eh?’

‘Not exactly. M
ore a riches to rags story. My folks had a nice wee house in a Glasgow suburb. Let’s just say things went off the rails. We ended up in a crumbling tower in the middle of nowhere. I was six when we moved.’

‘
Culture shock?’

She nodded. ‘
Slums, gangs, drugs, the stink of urine in the lifts – when they worked.’ She shuddered. ‘The whole bit. I’ve put as much distance between me and that life as I possibly could.’

‘
You’re living the American Dream. So what?’

‘
I travel a lot in the Far East. Outside the five star hotels, down among the ordinary folk, it’s just Drumchapel or Castlemilk or Easterhouse. Only warmer. You don’t forget. Have you ever had to pawn something to buy food? Ever taken a pay day loan to pay the gas bill? Outfits like People’s Bank are needed. Otherwise the sharks will get you.’

For the briefest of moments he caught a look on her face; yearning came closest to describing it. The first crack in the corporate veneer. He really needed to reset his compass on this lady and this situation. Bring him proof of time travel or God, and he’d believe it.

‘I thought People’s Bank
were
the sharks.’

‘That’s because you haven’t done your homework.’

Ouch. ‘So this is banker’s guilt.’

‘Sarcasm runs off me
. I’m not embarrassed to have a conscience. How about you?’

The blue eyes bored into his
. He emptied his glass and poured some more.

‘How about your colleagues. Get
‘em together and mount a boardroom coup or something.’

‘
We never get the chance. I’m only here for a couple of weeks during quarterly meetings. And we never have downtime. To be honest, I’m not sure I trust any of the others. One of Warwick’s ways of controlling us is to keep each of us in the dark about what the others are doing. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be afraid of your boss?’

Ted
sucked at his teeth. ‘Some idea maybe.’

‘He picks us off one by one. Makes each of us think we’re his right hand ma
n and swears us to secrecy. Bribes us with promises and bonuses. Then he makes an example of one of us at meetings. An uncanny knack of picking on whoever’s got something to hide. We’re all spineless. I’m disgusted with myself and with my colleagues if you must know.’

Ted
emptied the bottle and caught her look. Teetotallers were so prissy.

‘
Fine, gimme facts, evidence; documents, emails, tapes. If you’re going to be a whistle blower, you need to do it properly.’

Erin
snorted. ‘Like Mission Impossible? Burgle Warwick’s office at midnight? That kind of thing. Seriously?’

‘
I didn’t say it was easy.’

‘Our
office is thick in security measures. Everything is in silos and covered in passwords and need-to-know measures.’

Ted
had been thinking about this all day and weighing up the odds.

‘
Erin, there’s a guy I know. He’s got special talents around computers. He makes them talk, sing – hell, sit up and beg. He’s weird and operates on a very fine line between legal and deserving of twenty years in the pen. I don’t know if he’s still around, nor on which side of the bars, but it’s worth a call.’

‘
A hacker? Christ. None of the Wikileaks crew, I trust?’

He
smiled and shook his head.

‘
No loose cannons here. I’ll give him a call and then you go meet him and see what you can come up with. That is, if he’ll take a call from me.’ Ted looked guiltily at her. ‘After our last outing, once the excitement died down, I kind of let things drift. And before you know it ten years goes by. What do you think?’

A frown was gathering across her eyes. She l
ooked down at her barely touched fish and then straightened her shoulders.

‘What
would I have to do?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe slip him a password or something.’

‘How could I trust him not to milk us?’

‘Meet him and decide.’

‘As an officer of the bank I could get twenty years.’

‘
You have to decide how much this matters to you.’

He said nothing, just waited.
She nodded her head a couple of times as though she was agreeing with something inside herself.

‘What skin are
you
putting into this game, Mr Saddler?’

He sighed.
‘I’ll see if I can find my passport and go check out People’s Bank on their home turf. God help me. I’ll also put out feelers to see who knows what in the market. GA can’t do it all without bumping into other folks.’ He paused and held her eyes.

Her voice took on her customary confidence and certainty. The thinking was done, the decision taken. Next came execution. That’s how she operated.

‘It’s the least you should do. OK, Ted, I’ll talk to your hacker friend. No promises. But you and I shouldn’t meet anymore. I’ll have him set up untraceable email addresses for you and me. Private cell phones. I’ll text you a number. Anything he finds, I’ll have him send directly to you.’

Ted
agreed, perhaps a little more enthusiastically than he felt. Despite her pressure tactics, he wouldn’t have minded a return match at Giovanni’s Room. Especially if he could guarantee approbation from her questioning eyes. It had been a while since he cared what a woman thought of him.