Late Sunday, back in Toronto, Brian dropped off the others and then let himself into the branch. His “in” basket was overflowing. He found nothing alarming until he came on a memo from Osborne: “re Brydson: see me about her loans.” Construction had begun on the Elmwood Club. No doubt Brydson had been in for more money, and Osborne had noticed she was near the branch limit.
The last thing Molony wanted was to have Alex Osborne looking into the Brydson loans. Osborne had been giving him more and more responsibility, including a multimillion-dollar construction loan. Osborne knew construction inside out, and Molony had picked his brains. How big are the lots? What will they sell for? How will the financials work? When will we get our money back? You mean the developer incorporates a separate company for each project so that one lawsuit won’t destroy the whole works? Are personal guarantees available? What’s the cost of servicing? What letters of credit will be needed? How much will be paid out when each lot is sold? Do they usually put the streets down the first year and pave them the second? Osborne gave him an instant education.
“But why all the questions? It’s fully secured.”
Next time somebody came in about a construction loan, said Molony, he wanted to know what to look for.
“Quite right,” said Osborne. “Good work.”
Nothing to do but wait till morning. The bank hockey team played Sunday nights, and Molony drove to the rink. He was not the most gifted athlete, but he was intense and aggressive. The hockey was non-contact, so he could only skate up and down like a madman. At midnight, when the ice time expired, he drove the icy streets, ate a hamburger, and studied Monday’s entries. Then there was nothing left to do but go home to the empty house and lie awake.
In the morning he drove to the branch early and plunged into work. His panic subsided. So long as he was fully occupied he could keep anxiety at bay. When Osborne arrived he went and knocked on the door.
“Welcome back,” said Osborne. “How was your Christmas? Good vacation?”
“I get sort of restless sitting around, but the weather was good. You wanted to see me about Brydson.”
“They seem to have aggressive expansion plans. Maybe we should find out what their needs are going to be and advise Regional Credit Office. Let’s arrange an authorized line of credit.”
“I’ll speak to her,” said Molony. “I see Mark got two goals the other night. He’s doing well.”
“I was at that game,” said Osborne, beaming. “He was the best player on the ice. If he keeps it up, we’ll be watching an NHL player next year.”
A couple of weeks into the New Year, Molony used the Sherry Brydson loan account for the second time. He debited her U.S.-dollar account by $45,000 and told the foreign-exchange girl the customer needed a bank draft payable to the Marina. On a bank draft the word “Marina” had a pleasantly nautical ring.
Molony flew to Las Vegas Saturday morning, took a cab to the Marina, and deposited the draft at the casino cage. Rather than cashing it, the cage held it and issued him chips. This ensured he’d remain at the Marina. He played continuously, breaking only to urinate. By Sunday afternoon he had taken $45,000 in markers. He settled the debt by signing over the draft.
Before flying home, Molony spoke with one of the pit bosses, a gangly fellow whose narrow face and pinched expression suggested intestinal distress. The Super Bowl was a week away, and Molony said he’d be coming down to bet the game. He’d have another draft and wanted to be sure the Marina would cash it for him. The Marina did not have a sports book; he’d be taking the proceeds elsewhere to bet the game. Would there be any problem, he wondered, cashing a $50,000 draft? The pit boss spoke to a superior and told Molony, “No problem. See you next week.”
The following Saturday, Molony returned to Las Vegas. Again he had debited the Sherry Brydson account and brought a draft payable to the Marina. When he presented it at the casino cage, the clerk said she couldn’t honour it. Molony spoke to the manager. Because the draft was drawn on the CIBC in San Francisco, he said, they had to cash it there. Molony explained that he’d made arrangements the previous weekend. Sorry, said the cage manager, I have my instructions.
The instructions had come from the casino manager, a corpulent man whom Molony found in the coffee shop, with two showgirls, eating ice cream. Molony explained that he’d come on the understanding the draft would be cashed.
“Bill said there’d be no problem.”
“Bill gave you the wrong information.”
“Why would you let me fly down here before telling me?”
“We phoned your travel agent. Didn’t she call you?”
“Unfortunately not.”
The casino manager shrugged and licked his spoon.
“I don’t see why you’d tell me yes one week and no the next.”
The casino manager looked Molony in the eye. “You’re a banker.”
“No I’m not,” said Molony, feeling the blood rush to his face. “My brother is.”
The casino manager smiled. “We’ll take the draft to San Francisco on Monday. If they cash it, fine.”
“The Super Bowl’s tomorrow.”
“Tell me about it,” said the manager, and returned his attention to the ice cream.
The first time Molony tasted beer, having snuck into a pub with underage friends, he downed twenty-two draft. On the subway home he got sick, and he spent the night stumbling to the bathroom. That was it for beer — he vowed never to drink it again. When the manager said, “Tell me about it,” that was it for the Marina — he’d never set foot in the place again. That was it for his travel agent — he’d get himself another one. Molony was livid at himself. “I’m not, my brother is.” How dumb can you get? He shouldn’t have tipped them off a week beforehand. He should have deposited the draft, started gambling at the Marina, cashing chips here and there, freeing up Super Bowl money that way. He should have realized they’d be less accommodating when they weren’t getting his action. But why had they checked him out? Was it the bank draft, or was it Colizzi?
Colizzi had flown down a few days earlier and had had trouble finding a room. He’d gone to the Marina and used Molony’s name. Molony was a big enough player that they accommodated his pal. Perhaps, though, Colizzi had done something stupid. Or perhaps they simply hadn’t liked the looks of him and decided to investigate his friend.
Molony found Colizzi’s room and banged on the door. Colizzi was in boxer shorts, drinking Courvoisier with two black girls who looked about twenty.
“Girls, this is Brian. This is Mary, this is Stephanie.”
“Other way around,” one of the girls giggled.
“Other way around is right,” said Colizzi. “You ever had a doubleheader? Hey, what’s the matter? Come on in, you want a drink?” He turned off the TV. “Listen, girls, we’ll call it a day. Party’s over.” He pulled on his trousers and threw money on the unmade bed. “Get out of here. I mean it. Move!”
The girls tucked the money in their purses.
“Cheer up. What’s the matter with my buddy?”
“Last week they tell me I’ll have no problem cashing a draft. You show up, you’re my friend, all of a sudden they won’t cash it?”
“I couldn’t get a room. I knew you gave them action. I didn’t mean to screw nothing up.”
“You start using my name and look what happens.”
“That’s too bad,” said Colizzi. “That’s terrible. Sit down. Can I pour you a drink?”
“No.”
“Tell you what, I’ll let you double up with me. We’ll go for ten instead of the five. Make you feel better? You like the Eagles, right?”
“Meanwhile, I need something while I’m here.”
Colizzi counted out four thousand.
Molony took the money to the Tropicana and made it last until seven the next morning. Colizzi was on an early flight back. Molony caught the same plane. He hated coming home broke, changing in Los Angeles or Chicago, killing time. He had an exceptional me
mory for his gambling experiences and found it acutely depressing to spend five hours on the plane, replaying the losing bets in his mind, wallowing in self-pity and self-contempt. To compound matters, winter was disrupting the east. The plane was unable to put down in Toronto and landed instead at Buffalo. More waiting.
Somebody organized a pool on when they’d get home. Somebody else offered even money they’d bus it. Colizzi had a deck of cards, and while they sat on the tarmac he and Molony played blackjack. By the time the plane took off, two hours later, Molony had lost $7,000.
“This is turning into a wonderful weekend.”
“You got a break,” said Colizzi. “Buffalo, should be U.S. dollars. I’ll let you off with Canadian. Meanwhile, I never should have let you talk me into doubling up on the game. Am I crazy? The Eagles are too good.”
Molony watched the Super Bowl with Brenda. She wanted to know who he was cheering for, so she could cheer. The Raiders’ offensive line gave Jim Plunkett time to throw, and he hit for two touchdowns in the first quarter. At the half it was 14-3. In the third quarter he hit again. The Eagles were never in the game; the final was 27-10. For a moment, watching the revelry in the Raiders’ dressing room, Molony almost wept. Why did it always happen this way? The ones he really needed were the ones he lost. Players were pouring champagne over the announcer’s head. Everyone was laughing and shouting. Molony switched off the set. Why me, God? How much do I have to endure? I got myself into it, fair enough. Why can’t I get myself out?
“How about dinner?” said Brenda. “Want to go to La Bruschetta?”
“You can’t get out of there for under thirty dollars,” said Molony. “What’s wrong with Swiss Chalet?”
If no interest were paid for more than ninety days on a loan made by any branch of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the loan had to be reported as irregular to downtown. At Bay and Richmond, the Nick Beck loan account was about to become reportable. Molony had imagined retiring the Beck loans with his Super Bowl and casino winnings; instead he had to use the Brydson account again. He took one of her presigned demand notes and filled in a figure that would allow him to pay down the reportable loans and leave him something extra to work with: $200,000. But how could he obtain use of the money? He couldn’t simply issue a bank draft, forge Brydson’s signature, and cash it, as he’d done with the Beck and Koharski accounts. A specimen of her signature was right there on the promissory note; besides, the branch wouldn’t have that much U.S. cash on hand.
Ever since university Molony had maintained an account at Richardson Securities, a brokerage firm on Adelaide Street, a few blocks from Bay and Richmond. Stocks were no good — it would take too long to buy them, sell them, and get the money — but brokers also dealt in government of Canada bearer bonds. In the U.S. bonds were computerized, but in Canada the purchaser still had the option of taking physical possession. What if he had a CIBC bank draft issued in favour of Richardson’s? What if he purchased bearer bonds, sold them to the securities department of his own bank, and credited the proceeds to the reportable loan accounts?
Molony told the foreign-exchange girl Sherry Brydson needed a $200,000 draft payable to Richardson Securities. The bank draft was the clerk’s debit, the promissory note her credit. So long as everything balanced. He hurried out to lunch. For his weekly reckoning with Colizzi he had dipped into the Koharski account. While they waited for a table at Hy’s, he slipped Colizzi an envelope containing $18,000.
“Worked out all right for you,” said Colizzi, tucking his scarf into the sleeve of his cashmere coat. He pocketed the cash and signalled the maitre d’. “Bet down there, you’d have lost the whole fifty. I saved you money. I’ll even pick up lunch.”
The transaction at Richardson’s went smoothly, and Molony was able to pay down the reportable loans. But the incident at the Marina haunted him. They’d looked into his background and found out where he worked. What if they alerted the bank, or the police? Casinos weren’t known for integrity, but what if? The more transactions, the more people and institutions involved, the more ways to be tripped up. His life had become an exquisite torture. He hadn’t slept properly in months. This must have been part of a painful apprenticeship. He would win enough to repay the loans only if he had paid his dues. Each fraud was the last. When he had to borrow more it could only have been that the dues were insufficient. It would take an extraordinary streak to save him; he had to suffer extraordinarily to earn the streak. There was no way of knowing when it would come. There was no turning back. Like a man borne out to sea on the outgoing tide, he could only point to shore, keep the faith, and paddle like mad.
Meanwhile he was growing paranoid. He saw sharks everywhere. One morning he spotted an unfamiliar face in the branch and convinced himself the man was from head-office security. Turned out he was a computer guy, but dread became part of Molony’s emotional reflex. Each morning when he rounded Simpsons and hurried down Bay Street his stomach seized. He couldn’t help peering through the glass, looking for strangers. Any memo, any phone call, the most innocent inquiry…
“I don’t know if I should tell you this,” Ian Stewart, a credit officer, said one afternoon, “but there’s some interesting stuff going on in the branch.”
“It’s a big branch,” said Molony.
Stewart viewed Molony as an older brother, though he was actually two years Molony’s senior. “Listen, this is for your ears only. I don’t know if we should tell Mr. Osborne. There’s some undercover work being done in the branch.”
“How do you know?” Molony said evenly.
“Well, I bumped into an old friend of mine by the elevators. He tried to avoid me. I couldn’t figure it out. I asked him what he was doing here and he said not to tell anyone.”
“What was his big secret?”
“The guy’s an undercover RCMP officer. They’re in that room upstairs, behind the supply room.”
“The one that used to be the loans office? It’s locked.”
“They’re in there, running a wiretap.”
“Why would they use that room for a wiretap?”
“You have to be within a certain distance of the phone you’re tapping. I wonder if we should tell Mr. Osborne.”
Scared witless, Molony tried to think what he’d let slip on the phone. Nothing about the loans that he could recall. But what if they were monitoring his calls with the bookies?
“What do you think?” said Stewart.
“I think Mr. Osborne would appreciate having that information.”
After that Molony took care to deal with Colizzi in person, meeting in the basement of Simpsons or betting the ball games at the racetrack. Beck didn’t like the phone to begin with. If they didn’t meet at the track, Molony dropped by the dress shop. Even there Beck was jumpy, scrutinizing each car that drove by, worried about surveillance. They stepped into the storage area, amid racks of dresses, to do business.
Just as Molony’s anxiety about the RCMP was easing, Sherry Brydson called to say she wanted to see him. She was forever wanting to update him about the club, changes in plans, exploration activity in Alberta. Like Brenda, she used the word “relationship” in a way that made him cringe. She wanted a better relationship with the bank: wanted to meet more people, keep them abreast of things, get more feedback. Molony wanted to keep her as quiet as possible. Because she hired women she was viewed by the bank as a radical feminist — in the upper echelons, a radical feminist was any woman not serving coffee — and because of her eclectic interests she was seen as wingy.
The bank invited important customers to lunch on the fifty-sixth floor of Commerce Court. At one such lunch Brydson got talking about Thailand. One of the senior bankers asked if Thailand had a serious drug problem. Brydson replied that the major problem was the smuggling of heroin through Bangkok, where much of the downtown real estate seemed to have been financed by money from the opium and heroin trades. As for Thai people, she said, they often used drugs in cooking. She told the story of ask
ing her Thai maid to prepare a curry. Because of her allergies Brydson couldn’t eat airline food. She ate the curry on the plane, fell asleep in New Delhi, and didn’t wake up until the plane landed in Toronto. When she returned to Bangkok the cook asked, knowingly, if Brydson had had a good flight. The cook had laced the curry with marijuana. Shows you how widespread drugs are in Thailand, said Brydson, laughing at the memory. Jungle curry, the Thais call it.
In the private diningroom of the CIBC, throats were cleared, crystal glasses raised, linen napkins touched to lips. The story became part of bank lore. The context gradually faded away, the curry turned into hash brownies, and Sherry Brydson came to be seen not merely as an amateur who was burning Thomson money while trying to put together some sort of farfetched girls’ club, but also as a superannuated hippie who consumed cannabis in order to sleep on the plane. Senior bankers did not consume cannabis. They did not sprinkle their conversation with references to karma, astrology, and vitamin B6 therapy. They were not “into” anything. They did not use the phrase “touchy-feely,” and they did not, speaking of a multimillion-dollar project, shrug and say, “Whatever happens, happens.” Brydson’s charm was lost on the executive floor at Commerce Court. The more senior people she was exposed to, the more chance she’d spook someone important.
“I wondered if I could drop by in half an hour.”
“What would you like to talk about?” said Molony.
“I think you know.”
Had she learned of the discrepancy? Was she coming to confront him? Molony could only let her play her hand. Swallowing anxiety, he ushered her into his office. She chatted about some fittings she was having shipped from Bangkok. She told a funny story about her trip to Calgary. She talked about the frustrations of dealing with contractors. The meeting, it seemed, was just an excuse to get out of her office. She wanted someone to talk to and, like most women, she found Molony a good listener.
Several girls at the bank confided in him, knowing their secrets would go no further. One woman had told him about her marital troubles. Molony listened sympathetically and asked what she was going to do. “I don’t know,” she said, meeting his eye. “Maybe what I need is an affair.” He pretended not to have twigged. “I don’t think that would solve anything. I think it might complicate your problems.”
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