by Stephen Frey
As she turned the corner on to Main, Sumter Bank’s headquarters came into view. The Sumter Tower was a fifty-story glass-encased monolith that soared above the rest of Richmond’s skyline. The city’s next tallest building was forty stories, and the rumor was that the city wouldn’t grant a building permit for anything over that, not as long as Bob Dudley, Sumter’s chairman of the board, was around. He’d commissioned the Sumter Tower ten years ago—at the beginning of his tenure as chairman—as a monument to himself.
“Hey, there,” called a short black woman. She was clasping a notepad and a pen in one hand as she descended the steps from the Sumter Tower courtyard and quickly covered the last few yards between them. She was surprisingly agile for her stocky build.
“Hello, Liv.” Olivia Jefferson was theRichmond Tribune reporter Jake Lawrence had referred to, the woman who was taking Sumter to task for what she perceived as its poor service to the city’s minority community. Jefferson was a tough-talking, middle-aged woman who’d grown up on the city’s rough east side, but now lived in the Fan, a desirable neighborhood west of downtown.
“Where have you been, Angela?” Liv asked. “I tried calling you three times yesterday.”
“Traveling. I told you I was going out of town on business.”
“But I thought you were supposed to be back yesterday.”
The original itinerary had Angela returning to Richmond on one of Jake Lawrence’s Gulfstream jets as soon as their meeting was over. But after she had come within inches of being hurled off the mountain, Lawrence’s armed guards had escorted her back to the lodge where she’d taken a warm shower, relaxed for a few hours, then eaten a late dinner alone with William Colby.
John Tucker had made no further appearances. During dinner, Colby volunteered that Tucker had made it down the mountain safely. However, Tucker had not shown up to say good-bye that evening, nor did she see him the next morning before Colby drove her to the airport. She was disappointed. She had wanted to see Tucker again. If only to convince herself that he really was all right. As much as she trusted John, she did not trust Colby.
Over dessert Colby had informed her that his men had recovered the body of her attacker from the canyon and determined that he was a recently hired ranch hand. A drifter, Colby had been advised by local authorities only a few minutes before sitting down to dinner, who had an assault record. He had apologized stiffly—Angela could tell it was something he was not accustomed to doing—criticizing Tucker several times for not doing a more thorough job of screening applicants. Then he’d requested that she not speak of the incident with anyone in return for a cash payment of ten thousand dollars, which she hadn’t accepted. She’d flown back to Richmond yesterday, arriving in the late afternoon.
There was only one question Angela had really wanted to ask Colby during dinner. Had her attacker fallen from the cliff—or been pushed? But she hadn’t asked because she didn’t want to provoke him, particularly with another night alone on the lodge’s fourth floor ahead of her. It was clear Colby hadn’t wanted to discuss the incident in any detail, and that she wouldn’t have been given a straight answer anyway. Besides, given several of Colby’s remarks, she was fairly certain by the end of dinner that she had her answer. The question had then becomewhy had the man been thrown off the cliff? But she wasn’t prepared to ask that question either. Perhaps that was simply the standard way Colby dealt with anyone who threatened Jake Lawrence. Perhaps he was as cold as he seemed.
“My trip went a day longer than I expected,” Angela answered, glancing past Olivia at a dozen warmly bundled people walking in a slow circle in front of the Sumter Bank main entrance. Each of them carried a homemade sign accusing Sumter of discriminatory banking practices, and each was doing his or her best to subtly get in the way of anyone trying to gain access to the building. They were also shouting insults at employees as they darted toward one of the entrance’s three revolving doors. Two Richmond policemen drinking coffee from 7-Eleven cups kept a casual eye on the protesters from inside the bank’s main lobby. “Is that all right with you?”
“Well, you certainly came back from your trip stretched tighter than a drum.”
“Yeah, well.” Angela caught sight of a man coming down Main Street, head bowed against the gusts. It was Ken Booker, her boss, and she turned away, hoping he wouldn’t see her.
“Your meeting must have been pretty rough,” Olivia commented.
“Why do you say that?”
The older woman reached out and touched Angela’s face gently. “Your cheek is all scratched up.”
“Oh, I fell in my bathroom last night,” Angela explained, pulling back from Olivia’s fingers and glancing after Booker to make certain he’d gone inside. “I slipped stepping out of the shower.” She could still feel the cave’s gritty rock wall scraping her face, and the incredible terror as her attacker had propelled her toward the edge of the cliff. She hadn’t told Colby at dinner that the man had mentioned Lawrence, indicating to her that his attack wasn’t the result of some psychotic vendetta against women, that he wasn’t just some mindless drifter. “I hit my cheek against the sink when I fell.”
“That’s more of a scrape than a bruise.”
“I’m late, Liv.”
“Wait a minute. We need to talk.”
“Not here,” Angela answered, glancing around furtively. “Not now.”
“What’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing.” She brushed past Liv and headed toward the protesters. “I’ll talk to you this afternoon,” she called over her shoulder, moving around the human circle without incident when Liv motioned to them that Angela shouldn’t be harassed.
Five minutes later, Angela reached her workstation in the middle of the fourteenth floor, remaining there only long enough to place her briefcase down on her desk and lay her coat over the back of her chair. Then she headed for Ken Booker’s office at the far corner of the large room.
“I’m back from Wyoming,” Angela announced, walking briskly through Booker’s doorway.
He glanced up from behind his desk. “So I see.” He was a senior managing director, in charge of all of Sumter’s corporate lending and a man not far from the corporate ladder’s top rung. He was preppy looking, with thinning blond hair and tortoiseshell glasses, and he always wore a heavily starched, white Oxford button-down shirt. “Angela, I’m busy right now. We’ll have to talk later.”
“This can’t wait.” Booker was the one who had approached her about the meeting with Jake Lawrence. “Who contacted you, Ken?”
“What?”
“How did Jake Lawrence’s people get in touch with you? How did they get you to send me to Wyoming?”
Booker placed the gold Cross pen he’d been making notes with down on the legal pad in front of him. “Is there a problem?”
“Just tell me.” She wanted to ask him why he had gotten in the way of her promotion twice, but that would be risky. Maybe Lawrence really had no idea about that. Maybe he was plying her with misinformation because he had his own agenda. She wasn’t certain who or what to believe at this point, and she was going to be very careful about what she conveyed to anyone.
Booker eased back in his chair, a puzzled expression on his face. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“All right. Well, Lawrence’s New York office called. It was one of his financial people. In fact, I’d met the guy before. I’d called on him in the past to try to get business from some of Lawrence’s portfolio companies, but they’ve always stuck with the big New York banks. The guy called to tell me that Lawrence wanted to speak withyou . Frankly, I was a little put off by his attitude and the fact that he didn’t want to meet with me, but—”
“Ken, I—”
“Mr. Booker.” Booker’s assistant stood in the office doorway. “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir.”
“That’s all right, Jean. Look,” he said, glancing back at Angela, “I don’t know what the problem is but this is a conference call with som
e very important people in Washington that I’ve had scheduled for some time and I’ve got to—”
“No, actually it isn’t,” the stern-looking woman at the door interrupted. “Angela, the chairman has requested that you come up to his office on the fiftieth floor right away. He and the president are waiting for you.”
For a moment the office fell silent, then Booker looked up at Angela and shrugged. “Better go see what they want.”
She nodded slowly. Jake Lawrence’s prediction had been eerily accurate. She hadn’t been back in the building for ten minutes and already Bob Dudley was looking for her.
“By the way, Angela,” Booker called after her, “I wouldn’t mention to the men on fifty that you were talking to Liv Jefferson this morning.” He nodded at Angela’s startled reaction. “Yeah, I saw you.”
“I wasn’ttalking to her.”
“Don’t get so defensive.”
“I’m not.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“Look, Ken, she asked me for a comment on that little protest going on downstairs, but I wouldn’t give her one.”
Booker nodded. “That was smart. You know we have a policy here at Sumter about talking to the press without senior management’s authorization. It’s a policy we take very seriously.”
The elevator ride from fourteen to fifty was quick.Too quick, Angela thought to herself when the doors opened. Nothing good could come of this. She was about to meet with Sumter’s two most senior executives, and they weren’t summoning her to the top of the tower to congratulate her on closing a profitable transaction. They wanted to grill her about her meeting with Jake Lawrence. There could be no other reason for their sudden need to speak to her.
“Hi, I’m here to see Mr. Dudley,” she informed the receptionist.
“Your name?”
“Angela Day. Mr. Dudley is expecting me.”
The woman looked Angela up and down, then pointed to a plush sofa behind an antique coffee table. “You can have a seat over there.”
“Thank you.”
As she walked across the room’s huge Oriental rug, she gazed steadily at the long row of dark oil paintings stretching the length of the wall behind the sofa. These were paintings of the men who had run Sumter Bank since its founding in the early 1860s, their tenures inscribed on small gold plaques affixed to the bottom of each ornate frame: 1917–1926, 1926–1932, and so on. In their portraits, hung on the wall in chronological order from left to right, the men looked strikingly similar. All were white, silver-haired, and strong-jawed. They were all clad in dark suit jackets, conservative ties, and white shirts. And they all wore stony expressions. There were no smiles on the wall.
“The chairman is ready for you, Ms. Day,” the receptionist called. “Over there.”
Angela nodded and headed toward the door the receptionist had pointed to. Behind the door was an anteroom and another woman seated behind a desk, a gray-haired woman with half-lens spectacles who seemed friendly enough at first but who gave Angela the same up-and-down the receptionist had. Without a word the woman waved Angela toward a large door at the back of the anteroom.
Angela hesitated at the door, then turned the large brass knob and pushed.
“Come in, Ms. Day.”
She looked across the large office in the direction of the voice. The chairman and president were on the far side of the room, near a wide window, posed almost exactly as they had been in last year’s glossy annual report to the bank’s shareholders. The chairman sat in a huge leather wing chair, legs crossed at the knees, hands folded in his lap—a picture of cool control. The president stood behind him, arms folded across his chest.
“Please, come in,” the president called, beckoning as he moved out from behind the chairman and met her halfway across the room. “I’m Carter Hill, and I’m sure you recognize our chairman, Bob Dudley.”
“Of course,” Angela said, aware of the fact that Hill hadn’t offered his hand in greeting, as many men still didn’t, even in business settings. They’d shake hands with her male counterparts, but not her. “Hello, Mr. Dudley.”
Dudley nodded, almost imperceptibly, but said nothing.
“We appreciate your being available to see us so quickly,” Hill continued politely.
“It’s my pleasure.” She was struck by how much Dudley and Hill resembled the men in the paintings along the lobby wall. “I want to help you in any way I can.”
“Yes, I’m sure you do.” Hill gave her a quick, forced smile. “Would you care for anything to drink? Coffee? Coke?”
“No, thanks, I’m fine,” she replied, following him past a large desk to the area by the window where Dudley waited.
“Please have a seat.” Hill directed her to a wooden chair by the window. He sat in another large leather wing chair beside the chairman’s.
Angela glanced out the window at a panoramic view of Richmond and the wide James River at the base of the steep hill the city was built on, then looked away and sat down. God, she hated heights.
“Everything all right, Ms. Day?” Hill asked.
“Fine.” There was a table beside the chair that caught her eye. On it was a collection of toy soldiers, each only a few inches high. They were Confederate soldiers, she noted, one of which, at the front of the unit, was bearing a small Rebel flag. “Just fine,” she repeated, smoothing out her dress.
“Angela, you have a fine record of performance here at Sumter,” Hill began. “The chairman and I were just reviewing it. Several years of very strong production in Ken Booker’s division. Lots of income, including fees, and no loan write-offs. We appreciate your fine service.”
“Thank you.”
“Which is why we were a little surprised—”
“What did Jake Lawrence want?” Dudley interrupted gruffly.
“Easy, Bob,” Hill urged, “let’s take it slowly. We don’t want to—”
“What did Lawrence want?” Dudley repeated.
Angela and Dudley locked eyes. “Mr. Lawrence asked me to come to Wyoming to discuss one of his portfolio companies,” she explained. Dudley’s eyes were cold and dark, just like Lawrence’s. “He wants to leverage the company with long-term debt, and he wants Sumter to be the lead bank in terms of providing the loans.” Angela sniffed, as though she wasn’t enthusiastic about the opportunity. “Of course, he intends to pay himself a huge dividend with the cash we lend to his company.”
“Why did he callyou , Ms. Day?” Dudley continued.
“He didn’t.”
“What do you mean?” Hill asked quickly.
“First of all, Jake Lawrence didn’t make the initial contact. It was a person out of his New York office that called. Second, that individual initially called Ken Booker, who then relayed the message to me. I want to be very clear on all of that because New York isn’t my territory, and I don’t want to step on any toes. My territory is Georgia and Alabama.”
“Ken didn’t tell me about it happening that way when I spoke to him,” Dudley hissed. “He seemed to think you were acting on your own.”
“Well, I don’t know why he would have told you that, Mr. Dudley, because I—”
“You’ve had such a stellar employment record here at Sumter, Ms. Day,” Hill cut in, “up until now, anyway. You should have run your meeting with Jake Lawrence up the chain of command before accepting his invitation. You should have—”
“Excuse me, sir, but, as I said, Ken Booker took the initial call from Lawrence’s people, then approached me.” She wasn’t going to give Dudley or Hill any opportunity to scar her record. “You can check with him.”
“Why did Lawrence want to talk to you and not Booker?” Dudley inquired.
“Because I have specific industry experience related to the portfolio company Mr. Lawrence wants to leverage,” she answered, repeating what Lawrence had told her to say. “So he thinks I’m best suited to guide the transaction through the bank and to convince other banks to join us.” She glanced down at the toy soldiers
marching toward her on the small table, wondering if Dudley and Hill understood how hateful she found all the display represented. Perhaps the soldiers had been put there on purpose, she realized. Just for her. Perhaps they knew that she had friends who were black. One in particular. “From what Lawrence was saying, it will be a significant transaction. About a billion dollars in total, so we’ll need a broad syndicate of other lenders.”
“What’s the name of the company he wants to leverage?” Dudley asked.
Angela hesitated, knowing how this would sound. “I’m not certain. He didn’t want to go into detail yet.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What industry does the company operate in?” Dudley pressed. “He must have mentioned the industry if that was why he wanted to speak with you and not Booker.”
She hesitated again. “He didn’t tell me that either.”
Dudley pounded the arm of the chair with his fist. “Well, whatdid he tell you?”
“Only what I’ve related.”
“You expect me to believe that Jake Lawrence flew you all the way out to Wyoming just for that?” Dudley’s cheeks were becoming flushed. “Ms. Day, you’d better come up with more—”
“He made a pass at me,” she snapped, glaring at Dudley. “He made a pass at me,” she repeated softly, gritting her teeth and glancing down at her lap, feeling the heat rush to her eyes. “I think that’s why he flew me all the way out to Wyoming.”
Carter Hill rose quickly from his chair, pulled a clean white handkerchief from the top pocket of his suit jacket and held it out for her. “Here,” he offered gently.
“I’m fine,” she said, holding up her hand. She wanted Jake Lawrence’s help in getting custody of her son, but there were limits to how far she’d go to get it. She had found that out as Lawrence’s physical advances on the cabin’s couch had turned into a short but scary struggle. “Look, I didn’t want to say anything. I know Mr. Lawrence is a powerful man, and I don’t want any trouble. Not for Sumter Bank or for me personally. I just want to forget I ever went out there. I want to forget it happened.”