Authors: Belva Plain
He entered his office. Mr. Hendricks was already at the conference table with papers spread out and a full leather briefcase on the floor beside him. He stood up and the two men shook hands.
“Sorry I’m late, Hendricks. The cab got caught in traffic on the way back from Wall Street. It would be a great thing if they could pick up Wall Street and move it uptown. A lot easier for people like me.”
This flat attempt at a friendly relaxed approach brought no response. Hendricks sat down again and bent to open his briefcase.
Eddy went to his desk. Its glossy, broad expanse, its tidy piles of papers ready for his signature, its diagonal placement that gave him views on the one hand of Manhattan’s towers and on the other of his handsome room, his control room, the command room of an army or an empire, had the effect of lightening the gloom that he had brought to this meeting.
“What happened to Abner?” he inquired pleasantly. “Not that I mind seeing you. I meant, I’m used to Abner. We’ve been friends for years.”
“I know that. Abner thought it advisable to get another opinion. Sometimes friendship can confuse things.”
These words, although delivered without emphasis, almost without inflection, were ominous. Hendricks’s eyes, enlarged by thick lenses with wide black rims,
made him look like a raccoon. But a raccoon was a friendly beast. Or maybe it wasn’t. Eddy knew he was not thinking straight. So he pulled himself up, bracing his spine against the high-backed chair. This chair had sometimes felt a little bit like a throne when he presided over meetings and all the faces were turned up toward him. That was another ridiculous thought.
“Would you mind coming to the table,” the raccoon inquired, “so we can look over these together?”
Eddy became alert. “Of course. No problem.”
“I have here,” Hendricks began, “our worksheets for the firm and also your personal tax returns.” The glasses were bent on Eddy. “I don’t like to say it, but frankly, Mr. Osborne, some of this material is very distressing.”
Distressing! A two-bit number shuffler. There’s a roomful of men down the hall sitting at their faxes and computers, and they all work for me, producing numbers you’ll never come within a hair’s breadth of—
Eddy raised his chin and met the man’s somber gaze. “Well? Fire away.”
“You know, of course, that we’ve had a rather suspicious feeling for the last few months that things are not altogether in balance here.”
“Suspicious? I don’t like the word, Mr. Hendricks. I don’t like it at all.”
“I’m sorry. Perhaps I should have said ‘doubtful’ instead.”
“Okay. Just get to the point. Give me the bottom line.” His head had begun to throb. Quick darts of pain, needle pricks, ran down his arm.
“The bottom line is this: Osborne and Company is
too highly leveraged. You haven’t got enough cash to tally with your investments. In short, your liabilities exceed your assets.”
“All right, all right, I know that!” Eddy exclaimed. “A couple of big investors happened to take their money out a short while back, and that played a little havoc with the cash flow, that’s all. Don’t you think I know, every minute of every day, where I am? This is a temporary situation, and nothing to worry about.”
“I wouldn’t say that. If any more of your clients decide to pull out, you’ll be facing disaster.”
“Listen, if every depositor in the country decided to take his money out of the banks at the same time, the whole system would collapse,” Eddy retorted.
The other persisted. “This is different. If these people want their money, it won’t be there. What then?”
“It’ll be there. You don’t know what you’re talking about. But why should they want their money? There’s no reason in the world why they should.” And Eddy’s mind ran through a list of names, the glittering names of stage and screen stars, artists and real estate investors; his mind recounted his whole familiar, so-often-quoted galaxy of stars. For a moment these names fortified him. “No, there’s no reason in the world.”
Hendricks sighed. “I don’t like being the bearer of bad news, Mr. Osborne.”
“What bad news?”
Hendricks hesitated and sighed again. “One thing piles up upon another. There’s been a commingling of funds—”
Eddy’s pains grew sharper. He should have obeyed his
instincts, pretended to be sick, canceled this appointment, and given himself a few days to straighten things out before seeing this watchdog.
“What are you talking about?” he cried.
“Your personal checkbook.” Hendricks looked away. “There are entries that don’t match, or rather they do match up to withdrawal from general funds. For example, on June seventeenth—here, if you’ll take a look—”
“I don’t need to look. Just say it.”
“Well, you made out a check to the Winterheim Galleries for six hundred eleven thousand dollars that you didn’t have in the account on that date. But on the eighteenth you deposited an exact amount to cover the check and withdrew it from the account of Mr. Sidney—”
Eddy’s heart pounded, and he jumped up. “All right! I did a damn fool thing, I’ll admit it. I got in deeper than I expected to. I go a little crazy sometimes, mostly buying art. But everything I buy, securities, real estate, whatever, is all prime stuff, investment quality. I never fool with junk. You know that. That’s how I’ve achieved what I have. Look, I know it wasn’t right, but I got in a little over my head, that’s all. It’s not the first time this has happened to the biggest people in the country. It’s just cash flow, for God’s sake! I need a couple of months to straighten things out, that’s all I need, and I’ll take damn good care not to let this sort of thing happen again.”
“It’s more than a question of time. I’m afraid you’d need a good deal more than a couple of months, anyway.” Hendricks’s monotone was mournful. You would
think he was consoling somebody at a funeral. “There are questions that have to be answered. How to explain, for instance, why you opened a separate personal account with another stockbroker, in which you deposit money that you’ve taken—borrowed—from your own customers?”
The floor seemed to rise and walls seemed to tilt inward. Eddy grasped the arms of his chair.
“For Christ’s sake,” he said, “you’re talking like an IRS man or somebody from the SEC.”
Hendricks said gently, almost kindly, “But this is the way they will talk when the time comes, Mr. Osborne.” He picked up the briefcase and began to put papers away.
“Is that all you have to say?” asked Eddy. “What about doing my income tax? Isn’t that what you came for?”
“You see, we really wanted you to look over these records so you’d understand why we can’t file this return.”
“Can’t file? Why can’t you? Who’s to do it, then?”
“Please. Please think. You can’t expect us to put our name to these declarations when they are not true, can you?”
And Eddy now heard, as if he were a witness to his own plight, a frantic cry. “What am I supposed to do?”
“I think you should get a lawyer. And a very good one. And waste no time about it,” Hendricks said. “I’m truly sorry, Mr. Osborne,” he added.
As Hendricks went to the door, Eddy called to his back, “Why didn’t Abner come and tell me himself?”
And from the doorway the mournful voice replied, “He’s been trying to tell you all along, but you haven’t been hearing him.”
Only once before in his life had he been so humiliated, when, in the first grade, after wetting his pants he had been called to the blackboard, and the whole class had seen the dark stain. He had never forgotten their laughter, or the tingle and prickle of shame as it ran up his back, as it lumped itself in his throat and stung the back of his eyes. Now, standing at the window among a forest of stone towers, he felt it all over again.
From behind him came the solicitous voice of Mrs. Evans. “Is there anything special you want me to do, Mr. Osborne?”
“No, nothing. I have a few calls to make, and then I’ll go home.”
“You’re not feeling well?”
For the first time Eddy resented the woman’s manner, which he had always admired. It occurred to him that perhaps her solicitude was not well meant after all, that this was merely prurient curiosity and that people in the outer offices were already talking.
“Just a slight cold coming on. I want to nip it in the bud,” he replied with a formal smile.
Alone again, he slumped into the wing chair beside the fireplace and tried to think. There had to be a solution. There was a solution to everything, as long as you didn’t panic. That little raccoon might not even have known what he was talking about.… He got up and went to the telephone on his desk.
“Hey, Abner, what’s wrong? Sending substitutes—are you running out on me?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Abner said.
“Well, I would. That Hendricks—I didn’t like him.”
“Didn’t like him, or didn’t like what he told you?”
“Well, what he told me, I guess. I have a sense that he was dramatizing, exaggerating the situation. Granted, I’ve messed up a little here and there, but—”
“Eddy, he didn’t exaggerate. I’ve warned you before about things I didn’t like, but this now is critical. This is a very dangerous situation. Believe me.”
“If you’re so worried, why didn’t you—”
“Why didn’t I come myself? Partly because I thought a stranger might shock you into seeing reality, and partly because I’m cowardly. I didn’t have the heart for it.”
“Son of a bitch! After all these years, all the fees you’ve earned through me and—and I thought we were friends! Yes, when the going gets rough, you find out who your friends are, all right. You sure as hell do.”
“Eddy, don’t be bitter. I understand that you’re worried and scared.”
“Scared? You still don’t know me, do you? It’ll take a lot more than this to throw a scare into me, Abner. A lot more.”
“Well, good then. Will you finally, calmly, listen to me, listen to my advice? Go home and see what you can liquidate. You’ve a fortune in that apartment. Then get a top-notch lawyer and work it out with him, plan for the day when the IRS or the SEC, or both, come knocking.”
“Liquidate? Sell the art? Everything I’ve worked for? You’re crazy, Abner.”
“I don’t think I am. Listen, Eddy. I’m still your friend, I still like you, you’re a smart man, and what’s more important you’re a generous one. But you’re a gambler too. Don’t gamble anymore. Straighten yourself out. That’s why I’m recommending a lawyer.”
“In the meantime, what about my taxes? That guy Hendricks refused to do them for me. Will you come over tomorrow so we can go over them?”
“Eddy, I can’t. I can’t risk my name. Surely you can see that, can’t you?”
Abner’s patient voice was infuriating. And Eddy said stiffly, “So if that’s the case, I’ll get another accountant. It’ll be a nuisance, but not insurmountable.”
The voice, still patient, came back. “You won’t find any who’ll take the risk either.”
“Then to hell with them all. I’ll go to work and prepare my own.”
“You’d be signing a false return,” Abner said gravely.
Eddy shouted into the telephone. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll solve this somehow, damned if I don’t.”
“I hope you can. I wish you luck, Eddy.”
They had a dinner date that night with another couple at a neighborhood bistro. The four were intimate friends, accustomed to frank speech.
“You look awfully tired, Eddy,” the wife said.
“Wrung out,” the husband added. “You should have told us. We’d have had it another night.”
This was the second time that day that he had been
told how tired he looked. He must look awful. And he tried unobtrusively to glimpse himself on the mirrored wall, but caught only a blur.
“You were so silent tonight!” Pam exclaimed during their short walk home.
“They did enough yapping to make up for it,” he replied.
“Why so cross?” she asked.
“I am not cross, Pam. Do you hear? I am not cross!”
In their bedroom she undressed very slowly, taking her good time to walk around in her white chiffon chemise. Then she went to a drawer and drew out the black lace nightgown that, laughing at the very vulgarity of the thing, they had once bought together in Mexico City; afterward they had gone back to the hotel room, where Pam had given a belly dance exhibition, and they had rolled on the bed, laughing some more until they had stopped laughing.
Now she stepped out of the chemise, and gave him a double view, one through the mirrored door, and the other of her long, white, tapering back. Languidly she stretched, raising her arms and lifting her small, round breasts, then with a pretty gesture shook herself like some graceful animal, just awakened from a nap. When she picked up the slithering black gown and slid it over her head, he now saw nakedness even more provocatively covered by a thin black veil. And he understood that hers was a well-meant effort to cajole him out of his mood, even more than just a signal of her usual desire. But sex was the last thing he wanted this night.
He dropped onto the bed and gave a deep groan. “I’m awfully tired!”
She got in beside him and touched his arm. “You’re sure you’re not sick?”
“Tired, I said.”
“It’s so unlike you. I thought maybe you’d seen a doctor and found out something awful.”
“I’m not sick,” he repeated.
“The truth, Eddy?”
“The truth. Now will you let me sleep?” he asked, not ungently.
But he was sick, truly, with a rising fear that ran like ice water through his blood and bones. All during the casual chatter at dinner he had been reliving the scene in the office.
You withdrew from the account of So-and-So and So-and-So.
… Actually, it had been only juggling, moving dollars that could easily be replaced, when you considered the firm’s assets. Small potatoes. Cash flow, that’s all it was. Sometimes the flow dried up a little, but only temporarily. His mind strove, but when you were handling so many accounts, investments, and clients, it was hard to recall each separate transaction, each in itself so relatively insignificant when one looked at the overall picture. He could recall, to be sure, the day he’d seen the Maserati in the showroom; he had always really desired a red car from the time he’d bought his first Mercedes, but all his cars had been a conservative gray or navy blue. Then Pam had said that day, “Oh, let’s let our hair down! The red is gorgeous.” So they’d gone tooling up to the Vineyard in it and down to Palm Beach, attracting admiration all the way. Yes, and he
could recall the Fragonard, the excitement of the frenetic bidding, and then taking it home, the treasure, fine as any Fragonard in any museum anywhere. Yes, and Fifth Avenue in Christmas week when the rubies, glistening like dew on roses, had beckoned from their black velvet bed in the window. So the millions flew, millions upon millions, before you knew it.
Your separate brokerage account … This is a very dangerous situation, believe me.… The IRS, the SEC … A first-rate lawyer …