The Moneychangers

by Arthur Hailey

  Conversely: If he severed all ties with Avril decisively and at once, and expunged her from his thoughts, would God forgive him? Would He, in acknowledgment, restore strength to Supranational and thereby revive the fortunes of His servant, Roscoe? Remembering Nehemiah … Thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness … Heyward believed He might.

  The trouble was, there was no way to be sure.

  Also, weighing against severance from Avril was the fact that she was due in the city on Tuesday, as they had arranged last week. Amid his current mélange of problems, Heyward longed for her.

  Through Monday and early Tuesday morning in his office, he vacillated, knowing he could telephone New York and stop her. But at mid-morning Tuesday, aware of flight schedules from New York, he realized it was too late and he was relieved that no decision could be taken.

  Avril phoned in late afternoon, using the unlisted line which rang directly on his desk. “Hi, Rossie! I’m at the hotel. Suite 432. The champagne’s on ice—but I’m hot for you.”

  He wished he had suggested a room instead of a suite, since he would be paying. For the same reason, champagne seemed needlessly extravagant and he wondered if it would be ungracious to suggest sending it back. He supposed it would.

  “I’ll be with you shortly, my dear,” he said.

  He managed a small economy by having a bank car and chauffeur take him to the Columbia Hilton. Heyward told the man, “Don’t wait.”

  As he entered Suite 432, her arms went around him immediately and those full lips hungrily ate at his own. He held her tightly, his body reacting at once with the excitement he had come to know and crave. Through the cloth of his trousers he could feel Avril’s long slim thighs and legs, moving against him, teasing, shifting, promising, until all of him seemed concentrated in a few square inches of physique. Then, after several moments, Avril released herself, touched his cheek, and moved away.

  “Rossie, why don’t we get our business arrangements out of the way? Then we can relax, not worry any more.”

  Her sudden practicality jolted him. He wondered: Was this the way it always happened—the money first, before fulfillment? Yet he supposed it made sense. If left until afterward, a client—his urgency gone and appetite sated—might be disinclined to pay.

  “All right,” he said. He had put two hundred dollars in an envelope; he gave it to Avril. She took the money out and began counting it, and he asked her, “Don’t you trust me?”

  “Let me ask you something,” Avril said. “Suppose I took money to your bank and paid it in, wouldn’t someone count it?”

  “They certainly would.”

  “Well, Rossie, people have as much right as banks to look out for themselves.” She finished counting and said pointedly, “This is the two hundred for me. As well as that, there’s my air fare plus taxis, which comes to a hundred and twenty; the rate on the suite is eighty-five; and the champagne and tip were twenty-five. Why don’t we say another two hundred and fifty? That should cover everything.”

  Staggered by the total, he protested, “That’s a lot of money.”

  “I’m a lot of woman. It’s no more than Supranational spent when they were paying, and you didn’t seem to mind then. Besides, if you want the best, the price comes high.”

  Her voice had a direct, no-nonsense quality and he knew he was meeting another Avril, shrewder and harder than the yielding, eager to please creature of a moment before. Reluctantly, Heyward took two hundred and fifty dollars from his wallet and handed it over.

  Avril placed the full amount in an interior compartment of her purse. “There! That’s business finished. Now we can attend to loving.”

  She turned to him and kissed him ardently, at the same time moving her long, deft fingers lightly through his hair. His hunger for her, which had briefly flagged, began to revive.

  “Rossie, sweetie,” Avril murmured, “when you came in, you looked tired and worried.”

  “I’ve had a few problems lately at the bank.”

  “Then we’ll get you loosened. You’ll have champagne first, then you can have me.” Dexterously she opened the bottle, which was in an ice bucket, and filled two glasses. They sipped together, this time Heyward not bothering to mention his teetotalism. Soon, Avril began to undress him, and herself.

  When they were in bed she whispered to him constantly, endearments, encouragement … “Oh, Rossie! You’re so big and strong!” … “What a man you are!” … “Go slow, my dearest; slow” … “You’ve brought us to Paradise”… “If only this could last forever!”

  Her ability was not only to arouse him physically, but to make him feel more a man than ever before. Never, in all his desultory couplings with Beatrice, had he dreamed of this all-encompassing sensation, a glorious progression toward fulfillment so complete in every way.

  “Almost there, Rossie” … “Whenever you tell me” … “Yes, darling! Oh, please, yes!”

  Perhaps some of Avril’s response was acting. He suspected that it might be, but it no longer mattered. What did, was the deep, rich, joyous sensuality he had discovered, through her, in himself.

  The crescendo passed. It would remain, Roscoe Heyward thought, as one more exquisite memory. Now they lay, sweetly langorous, while outside the hotel the dusk of early evening turned to darkness and the city’s lights winked on. Avril stirred first. She padded from the bedroom to the suite living room, returning with filled glasses of champagne which they sipped while they sat in bed and talked.

  After a while Avril said, “Rossie, I want to ask your advice.”

  “Concerning what?” What girlish confidence was he about to share?

  “Should I sell my Supranational stock?”

  Startled, he asked, “Do you have much?”

  “Five hundred shares. I know that isn’t a lot to you. But it is to me—about a third of my savings.”

  He swiftly calculated that Avril’s “savings” were approximately seven times greater than his own.

  “What have you heard about SuNatCo? What makes you ask?”

  “For one thing, they’ve cut back a lot on entertaining, and I’ve been told they’re short of money, and they aren’t paying bills. Some of the other girls were advised to sell their shares, though I haven’t sold mine because they’re trading at a lot less than when I bought.”

  “Have you asked Quartermain?”

  “None of us have seen him lately. Moonbeam … You remember Moonbeam?”

  “Yes.” Heyward was reminded that Big George offered to send the exquisite Japanese girl to his room. He wondered how it would have been.

  “Moonbeam says Georgie has gone to Costa Rica and may stay there. And she says he sold a lot of his own snatch shares before he went.”

  Why hadn’t he sought out Avril as a source of information weeks ago?

  “If I were you,” he said, “I’d sell those shares of yours tomorrow. Even at a loss.”

  She sighed. “It’s hard enough to earn money. It’s harder still to keep it.”

  “My dear, you have just enunciated a fundamental financial truth.”

  There was a silence, then Avril said, “I’ll remember you as a nice man, Rossie.”

  “Thank you. I shall think of you in a special way too.”

  She reached out to him. “Try again?”

  He closed his eyes in pleasure while she caressed him. She was, as always, expert. He thought: Both of them accepted that this was the last time they would meet. One reason was practical: He couldn’t afford Avril any more. Beyond that was a sense of events stirring, of changes imminent, of a crisis coming to a head. Who knew what would happen after?

  Just before they made love, he remembered his earlier concern about the wrath of God. Well, perhaps God—the father of Christ who acknowledged human frailty, who walked and talked with sinners and died with thieves—would understand. Understand and forgive the truth—that in Roscoe Heyward’s life a few sweet moments of his greatest happiness h
ad been in the company of a whore.

  On leaving the hotel, Heyward bought an evening paper. A two column heading, halfway down the front page, attracted his attention.

  Supranational Corp. Disquiet

  How Solvent Is Global Giant?

  15

  No one ever knew what specific event, if any, provoked the final collapse of Supranational. Perhaps it was one incident. Or it could have been the accumulated weight of many, causing gradual shifts in balance, like a growing strain on underpinning, until suddenly the roof falls in.

  As with any financial debacle involving a big public company, isolated signs of weakness had been evident for weeks and months beforehand. But only the most prescient observers, such as Lewis D’Orsey, perceived them as a pattern and communicated warnings to a favored few.

  Insiders, of course—including Big George Quartermain who, it was later learned, sold most of his shares through a nominee at SuNatCo’s all-time high—had more warning than anyone and bailed out early. Others, tipped off by confidants, or friends returning favor for favor, had similar information and quietly did the same.

  Next in line were those like Alex Vandervoort—acting for First Mercantile American Bank—who obtained exclusive information and swiftly unloaded all SuNatCo stock they had, hoping that in any later confusion their action would not be probed. Other institutions—banks, investment houses, mutual funds—seeing the stock price slide and knowing how the insider system worked, soon sized up the situation and followed suit.

  There were federal laws against insider stock trading—on paper. In practice, such laws were broken daily and were largely unenforceable. Occasionally in a flagrant case, or as a whitewash job, an accusation might be leveled with a picayune penalty. But even that was rare.

  Individual investors—the great, hoping, trusting, naive, beaten, suckered public—were, as usual, the last to know that anything was wrong.

  The first public intimation of SuNatCo’s difficulties was in an AP newswire story, printed in afternoon newspapers—the same news story which Roscoe Heyward saw on leaving the Columbia Hilton. By the following morning a few more details had been garnered by the press and amplified reports appeared in morning papers, including The Wall Street Journal. Even so, details were sketchy and many people had trouble believing that anything so reassuringly sizable as Supranational Corporation could be in serious trouble.

  Their confidence was soon assailed.

  At 10 A.M., at the New York Stock Exchange, Supranational shares failed to open for trading with the rest of the market. The reason given was “an order imbalance.” What this meant was that the trading specialist for SuNatCo was so swamped with “sell” orders that an orderly market in the shares could not be maintained.

  Trading in SuNatCo did reopen at 11 A.M. when a big “buy” order of 52,000 shares crossed the tape. But by then the stock, which had traded at 48 48½ a month before, was down to 19. By the afternoon closing bell it was at 10.

  The New York Stock Exchange would probably have halted trading again the following day, except that overnight the decision was taken from its hands. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it was investigating the affairs of Supranational and, until its inquiry was completed, all trading in SuNatCo shares would be suspended.

  There ensued an anxious fifteen days for the remaining SuNatCo shareholders and creditors, whose combined investments and loans exceeded five billion dollars. Among those waiting—shaken, nervous, and nail biting—were officers and directors of First Mercantile American Bank.

  Supranational did not, as Alex Vandervoort and Jerome Patterton hoped it might, “hang on for several months.” Therefore the possibility existed that late transactions in SuNatCo shares—including the big block sale by FMA’s trust department—might be revoked. This could come about in one of two ways—either by order of the SEC following a complaint, or by purchasers of the shares bringing suit, claiming that FMA knew the true condition of Supranational, but failed to disclose it when the shares were sold. If that happened, it would represent an even greater loss to trust clients than they already faced, with the bank almost certainly liable for breach of trust.

  There was one other possibility which had to be faced—and it was even more likely. First Mercantile American’s fifty-million-dollar loan to SuNatCo would become a “write-off,” a total loss. If so, for the first time in FMA history the bank would suffer a substantial operating loss for the year. It raised the probability that FMA’s own next dividend to shareholders would have to be omitted. That, too, would be a first.

  Depression and uncertainty permeated the higher councils of the bank.

  Vandervoort had predicted that when the Supranational story broke, the press would start investigative reporting and First Mercantile American would be involved. In this, too, he was right.

  News reporters, who in recent years had been motivated by the example of the Washington Post’s Watergate heroes, Bernstein and Woodward, bored in hard. Their efforts were successful. Within several days, newspeople had developed sources inside and outside Supranational, and exposés of Quartermain’s sleight-of-hand began emerging, as did the conglomerate’s shady “Chinese accounting.” So did the horrendously high figure of SuNatCo’s indebtedness. So did other financial revelations, including FMA’s fifty-million-dollar loan.

  When the Dow Jones news service tapped out the first reference Unking FMA with Supranational, the bank’s public relations chief, Dick French, demanded and was granted a hastily summoned top-level conference. Present were Jerome Patterton, Roscoe Heyward, Alex Vandervoort, and the burly figure of French himself, the usual unlighted cigar in a corner of his mouth.

  They were a serious group—Patterton glowering and gloomy, as he had been for days; Heyward seeming fatigued, distracted, and betraying nervous tension; Alex with a mounting inner anger at being involved in a disaster he had predicted, and which need never have happened.

  “Within an hour, maybe less,” the p.r. vice-president began, “I’m going to be hounded for details about our dealings with SuNatCo. I want to know our official attitude and what answers I’m to give.”

  Patterton asked, “Are we obliged to give any?”

  “No,” French said. “But then no one’s obliged to commit hara-kiri either.”

  “Why not admit Supranational’s indebtedness to us,” Roscoe Heyward suggested, “and leave it at that?”

  “Because we won’t be dealing with simpletons, that’s why. Some of the questioners will be experienced financial reporters who understand banking law. So their second query will be: How come your bank committed so much of its depositors’ money to a single debtor?”

  Heyward snapped, “It was not to a single debtor. The loan was spread between Supranational and five subsidiaries.”

  “When I say it,” French said, “I’ll try to make like I believe it.” He removed the cigar from his mouth, laid it down, and drew a note pad toward him. “Okay, give me details. It’ll all come out anyway, but we’ll look a lot worse if we make this painful, like a tooth extraction.”

  “Before we go on,” Heyward said, “I should remind you we’re not the only bank to whom Supranational owes money. There’s First National City, Bank of America, and Chase Manhattan.”

  “But they all headed consortiums,” Alex pointed out. “That way, any loss is shared with other banks. So far as we know, our bank has the greatest individual exposure.” There seemed no point in adding that he had warned all concerned, including the board of directors, that such a concentration of risk was dangerous to FMA and possibly illegal. But his thoughts continued to be bitter.

  They hammered out a statement admitting First Mercantile American’s deep financial involvement with Supranational and conceding some anxiety. The statement then expressed hope that the ailing conglomerate could be turned around, perhaps with new management which FMA would press for, and with losses minimized. It was a wan hope and everybody knew it.

  Dick French was giv
en some leeway to amplify the statement if he needed to, and it was agreed he would remain sole spokesman for the bank.

  French warned, “The press will try to contact all of you individually. If you want our story to stay consistent, refer every caller to me, and caution your staffs to do the same.”

  That same day, Alex Vandervoort reviewed emergency plans he had set up within the bank, to be activated in certain circumstances.

  “There’s something positively ghoulish,” Edwina D’Orsey declared, “about the attention that gets focused on a bank in difficulties.”

  She had been leafing through newspapers spread around the conference area of Alex Vandervoort’s office in FMA Headquarters Tower. It was a Thursday, the day after the press statement by Dick French.

  The local Times-Register bannered its page one story:

  LOCAL BANK FACES HUGE LOSS

  IN WAKE OF SUNATCO DEBACLE

  With more restraint, The New York Times informed its readers:

  FMA Bank Declared Sound

  Despite Sour Loan Problems

  The story had been carried, too, on last night’s and this morning’s TV network news shows.

  Included in all reports was a hasty assurance by the Federal Reserve that First Mercantile American Bank was solvent and depositors need have no cause for alarm. Just the same, FMA was now on the Fed’s “problem list” and this morning a team of Federal Reserve examiners had quietly moved in—clearly the first of several such incursions from regulatory agencies.

  Tom Straughan, the bank’s economist, answered Edwina’s observation. “It isn’t ghoulishness, really, that excites attention when a bank’s in trouble. Mostly, I think, it’s fear. Fear among those with accounts that the bank might be forced out of business and they’d lose their money. Also a wider fear that if one bank fails, others could catch the same disease and the entire system fall apart.”

  “What I fear,” Edwina said, “is the effect of this publicity.”