Behold a Pale Horse

by Franklin Allen Leib

  The farm was self-sustaining, not really profitable, although South African wines were finding increasing interest in overseas markets. Cobra had more than enough money invested in Belgium and Switzerland to last out his days in modest comfort if he was careful. Others had made more in the business of hunting men, but none that he knew of was alive to sit in the cool shade of his own acacia tree, writing his memoirs.

  The memoirs could not be published until after his death, if ever. He had considered casting the story as a novel, written under a pseudonym, of course. Perhaps he would, but first he had to get the story written down, fleshed out from the laconic notes he had made after each job. It was tedious work, but he had nothing but time.

  He set the laptop aside, took a sip of gin, and closed his eyes.

  3

  CAPITAL NATIONAL BANK arranged and paid for a room for Julia in a quiet women’s residence hotel near the campus of George Washington University. She could stay for three weeks at Mary Custis House while she got organized and found an apartment of her own. Her supervisor, the bank’s head of Recruitment and Training, a rather grave middle-aged man named Reginald Hollis, assigned her a desk in a large bay in the Credit Department on the eighth floor of the bank, then gave her a packet of personnel forms to fill out, and told her to find a place and get settled; her formal training cycle wouldn’t start for a month.

  Hollis walked Julia through the Credit Department—the bay where her desk was in one of four long rows leading from the windows on the north end facing the Willard Hotel to a blank wall in the center of the building. Seniority began at the windows and ran inward; Julia’s desk was hard by the wall. All the desks faced east at a row of offices with frosted glass walls. Hollis had the corner office, and the other two were occupied by the head of Credit Analysis, Doris Masters, and the bank’s International Economist, Gerry Brain. Neither was in, so Hollis took Julia along each row of desks and introduced her to the “window rank”—the heads of each region—and her fellow trainees, all of whom, like her, were to begin in Credit.

  There were twenty-four trainees and eight empty desks. The young men and women were from nine different countries and eight different states. Julia was the only one from Texas, or anyplace in the Southwest. Everyone seemed bright, friendly, and best of all, relaxed. Julia was herself nervous, but the group seemed not to notice.

  “Got you over at Custis?” a pretty auburn-haired woman named Judith Langtry, from London, asked.

  “Yes,” Julia said. “I just dropped my stuff and crashed last night, rushed over here this morning.”

  Judith rummaged in her desk drawer, came up with a wrinkled business card. “Here’s a rental agent the bank puts us on to,” she said, handing the card to Julia. Capital Realty. “They’re nice, and have nice listings. Why not give them a ring, go round this afternoon? Then let’s get on to lunch.”

  Julia sat and dialed. She appreciated Judith’s warmth. She was one of only three other women in the program, the others a very pretty, haughty-looking Frenchwoman and a shy, tiny woman from Hong Kong who looked about fifteen years old.

  Mrs. Wilson of Capital Realty welcomed Julia to Washington and congratulated her on her employment with Capital National Bank. She would be happy to show Julia some rentals if she would come by the agency at two o’clock. The office was only three blocks away, on 12th Street. Could Julia give her some idea of price range and location?

  Julia had no idea of what she should pay, and no knowledge of Washington beyond what she had been told about Southeast. “I just started here at the bank,” she confided to Mrs. Wilson, then whispered her salary that had seemed a huge amount down in Texas.

  “Hm.” Mrs. Wilson said, sounding disappointed. “Come in, we’ll talk. Would you consider sharing?”

  Sharing? Roommates? The suggestion was unexpected and disturbing. Roommates were bad enough in college, where at least you knew them. Julia couldn’t imagine sharing an apartment in an alien city with a total stranger. How high could rents be in Washington?

  Judith stood in front of her desk, her Coach bag over her shoulder. “Lunch, then? Hilda’s joining us.” Hilda Chu was the beautiful Chinese child.

  “You bet,” Julia said, standing. “I’ll get my coat.”

  “You won’t need the coat. Unless you’re of independent means, you can’t afford a restaurant within a mile of this place. Lunch for our lot means the dreaded, but subsidized, ninth-floor employee feedlot. Come on.”

  Julia followed Judith and Hilda to the elevator. Jesus, thirty-nine thousand a year was a lot of money! Wasn’t it?

  The ninth floor proved to be a cafeteria, busy with mostly young men and women, all in banker’s drab. The food was institutional and uninspiring, but certainly cheap. Julia followed Hilda, who selected a salad with gray tuna fish and hard-looking tomatoes, and Judith, who took a wrapped hamburger and coleslaw. Julia was hungry and went for Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, gravy, and string beans, all in shades of gray. Hilda took hot tea while Judith and Julia each picked a diet soda out of a bin of shaved ice. The three women found an empty six-place Formica table next to the windows overlooking F Street. The afternoon was dark and it had started to snow.

  Dreary day for apartment-hunting, Julia thought, sawing a piece off the Salisbury steak, fighting to control it as it slipped around the plate in greasy gravy.

  “We should have warned you about the daily blue-plate special,” Hilda said with a giggle. She modestly covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed. These were the first words she had spoken to Julia after “hello.”

  Julia got a morsel to her mouth, dipped in mashed potato. It wasn’t all that bad to a woman from the world of chicken-fried steak, just mortally overcooked. “I have a lot to learn of local customs. I hope you two will help me.”

  “All I can tell you about the food is that it’s worse than English pub grub, and I honestly wouldn’t have thought that possible,” Judith said around a mouthful of hamburger that looked as though it had been stepped on. She turned the conversation to the bank, the training program, and the capital’s extravagant social life. Judith had a quick wit and a raunchy sense of humor, and Julia hoped the Englishwoman would be her guide and her friend. Hilda said little, and seemed a little embarrassed by Judith’s descriptions of Hollis, the other bank officers in Credit, and the other trainees. Judith fixed Julia with a curious stare. “How’d you get on with dotty old Mrs. Wilson?”

  Julia hacked another bit of slippery meat off, added mash, and chewed it. It was so tough that she was unable to answer for half a minute. The beans were cold, fibrous, and tasteless. “She asked how much I wanted to pay. I didn’t know, so I told her my salary. She didn’t sound impressed.”

  “Rents are fierce in the District,” Judith said. She and Hilda exchanged glances.

  “How much should I have to pay?”

  “In a decent area? Southeast, Georgetown? Mrs. Wilson will show you. Up in the north corner, less, but it’s awfully dark up there if you get my drift.”

  Julia knew most of the District was black. She nodded.

  “A one-bedroom could run two thousand a month, unfurnished,” Judith continued. “Across the river in Arlington or Alexandria, or over in Maryland, much less, but it’s so inconvenient getting home after the parties, and so hard dragging back into the office the morning after.”

  Two thousand a month. After taxes she would be making about twenty-six hundred a month. Her heart sank. God, roommates, how awful. She gave up on the tasteless meal and glanced at her watch. “I’d better go. I’m due over at the realtor at two.”

  Judith stood and held out her hand. Julia shook. “Run around with the old trout, but be cautious. She’ll show you lovely flats you can’t possibly afford, then run you out to the student ghettos way up Connecticut Avenue, find you a fabulous studio for only a thousand a month, but you must put your deposit down this instant or all will be lost. Do yourself a favor: before you agree to anything, even if you like the garret, call me
here, or call Hilda; run it by us, as you Yanks say.”

  “I will,” Julia said. “Thanks.” She rode the elevator down one floor to Credit, got her new Burberry raincoat, and went out into the snow.

  Three hours later, tired, chilled, and wet through, Julia called Judith from the “fabulous” flat Mrs. Wilson—a big, forceful woman who obviously thought showing low-priced rental apartments a task far beneath her—was pressing her to rent “before it was gone. A matter of hours, dear.” It was a dreary studio on a trash-strewn street, as predicted, on upper Connecticut Avenue.

  “Hilda and I have talked,” Judith said warmly. “We weren’t entirely candid with you earlier; we had to size you up. Washington is a difficult town.”

  “What do you think I should do?” Julia asked, fighting to keep despair out of her voice.

  “Today? Nothing. Hilda and I would like to show you our place. Georgetown, good location, two bedrooms each with two beds so that if a girl gets lucky—well, you know. Come have a look; if you like the place and us as we like you, perhaps you’d like to be our flat mate.”

  Julia kicked off a ruined shoe and rubbed her ice-cold foot. Across the room Mrs. Wilson stared malevolently. “I’d like very much to see your place. And I do like you both.”

  Smart politicians, Julia thought, as Rupert Justice Tolliver often said, knew the difference between attainable pretty good solutions and unattainable perfect ones.

  Julia went to Judith and Hilda’s apartment off Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown as soon as she had showered, changed and thrown away her ruined new shoes at Mary Custis House. The two-bedroom flat was small but airy, and nicely furnished with pieces made of real solid wood. Nothing fancy, but better than the sticks in the furnished places Mrs. Wilson had shown earlier. Julia could see that both women were tidy and clean in their habits, as she was.

  She had two glasses of wine and a slice of pizza from the corner shop, and agreed to move in. Her share of the rent was nine hundred dollars a month.

  She moved in the next Saturday, received a credit for the time not spent at Mary Custis, and was taken to lunch by her new boss, Larry Taggart. He was a gay man in his late twenties, well out of the closet, and was in charge of the Americas and Caribbean. The other three areas were Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and Europe. Julia hoped to end up in any of those, but the training assignment was said to have no influence on one’s later territory. Larry, earrings, ruffled shirts, and all, was silly but charming, and she could tell he knew credit. Her first real day on the job he gave her the guidelines for credit analysis, her computer access code, and three annual reports to spread and review: Banco Ganadero in Peru, Cayman Islands Trust Company of Grand Cayman, and Uvalde County Savings and Loan Society of Uvalde, Texas.

  “Get right on the last one, sugar,” Larry said. “No one here or upstairs has any idea how it got in here to begin with.”

  4

  February 2000

  RUPERT JUSTICE TOLLIVER sat in his darkened office with Ezekiel Archer. Each had a large cut-glass tumbler of Jack Daniel’s whiskey in his hand; a bucket of ice and pitcher of water were on the table in front of them, between their feet. A television in the corner, its volume turned low, carried an account of the New Hampshire primary. As expected, Senator Joseph Donahue from Connecticut had finished first in a field of five, but with only 29 percent of the vote.

  “Piss-poor,” Tolliver said matter-of-factly. “That priest-ridden boy didn’t knock anyone out; didn’t even scare anyone.”

  “What’s it gonna be, Juss?”

  “How many primaries we entered in?”

  “All of’ em, ’cept California, where our ‘Draft Justice’ committees are still gathering signatures, but that one’s a way’s off yet.”

  “We’ll get there? Hard to win without California.”

  “We’ll get there. As soon as you declare, the signatures will come in.”

  “Then let’s do it.” Tolliver popped his feet off the coffee table and stood. “Let’s run for president, Zeke.”

  Archer stood and shook the big man’s hand. “Thursday afternoon, on the steps of the Capitol across the way? I have your speech ready.”

  “Good. Let’s get her done. I’m gonna enjoy this, Zeke.”

  JULIA IMMERSED HERSELF in the dry credit files and the often more interesting correspondence files that went with them. Her compulsion to make a good impression, to show the better-educated and more sophisticated bankers and trainees that she wasn’t a hopeless country bumpkin, earned her a bit of chaff from Judith, who berated her as a grind who was missing too many “required parties” and making the others look lazy. Julia laughed off the criticism but it hurt; the truth was she felt genuinely inferior.

  Fortunately the computer was her ally. She quickly mastered the bank’s analysis program, a template on Excel, and made a few improvements that allowed her to highlight anything that deviated from the canned ratios automatically. Despite Larry’s request that she begin with Uvalde County S. and L., she ran the two other banks first, because the files were current and in good shape. Both Banco Ganadero and Cayman Islands Trust were well within guidelines for the credit Capital National Bank allowed them, lines of credit for settlement of money transfers and letters of credit used to finance trade.

  The file of Uvalde County was a different matter entirely. There were great gaps in the information, missing annual and quarterly reports, 10ks and other securities filings, and income-tax returns. The account with Capital National was opened three years ago, but statements indicated little activity until only a month ago, when balances suddenly went from a few tens of thousands to over $10 million.

  Julia thought all this odd, and she remembered Larry’s offhand remark that neither Credit nor the account executives—“upstairs” he called them—knew where the account had come from. Capital National dealt only with the largest and best-managed banks in the world, and with almost none in the United States outside of a few giants in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston.

  She completed the spreadsheet as best she could, noted that Capital National cleared payments for Uvalde in Europe, the Caribbean, and the Bahamas but did not extend it credit, and wrote a memo to the account officer suggesting that current statements be requested from Uvalde. Her memo came back, initialed, with a notation that she flag the file and review it again in six months.

  Shit, Julia thought, as she returned the file to the library. A flagged file meant she had to stay on top of it as long as she was in Credit, even if, as she hoped, she was soon assigned to more interesting areas. She noted the flag in the computer and on the file itself, and decided to forget about it.

  LIFE IN WASHINGTON WAS gradually becoming less frightening and more fun. Julia counted herself lucky that she had moved in with Judith and Hilda; if she had found her dream flat she probably would have never left it due to shyness. Julia and Hilda shared a room, because Judith, in Hilda’s words, handled the sex for the three of them. Judith was so full of energy and joie de vivre that the two more retiring roommates met people and partied whether they would have chosen to or not.

  Washington, Julia discovered, was a city filled with young people from everywhere else. The people her age were all attached to the Congress or wanted to be if they were American, and to embassies if they were not. Most of the Americans and some of the foreigners were harried, overworked, and underpaid to the point of being downright poor. Power and influence were the currencies they craved and traded in; if one had the right “rabbi”—a powerful congressman or senator, the right committee staff assignment, or the right embassy posting—one could eat, drink, and party for free. People who actually worked for “the government,” the executive departments, were “lame”—without power.

  It was a game for men, but some women played it with the best. For the rest of the women in the Georgetown-Capitol axis, one had only to be pretty and willing. Judith laughed and proclaimed at any occasion that these women had power of a far older time.


  A separate class of beings, with their own brand of power and influence, were the journalists. The senior people, the network anchors and the “face” reporters who covered the White House, the Capitol, and the Pentagon, were gods, but they were older. The younger reporters, especially the freelancers and stringers for minor out-of-town papers, were far down the pecking order, the hungry ones, the seekers, hoping to become Woodward or Bernstein, to develop the ultimate story, the ultimate inside source, before they were chased back to Des Moines or Nashville by abject poverty and despair.

  Julia loved it all. She was pretty enough and bright enough to be a “prestige bird” on any man’s arm, or quite welcome solo at parties and events given by embassies and lobbyists, the two groups who fed the capital’s hungry in the hopes of influencing a vote in what was described as “the world’s biggest purchasing office.” Judith was in it for expensive fun and was willing to trade on her own beauty to stay in the game; Hilda was precious and unattainable; a strategy Julia thought would be more lasting, while she herself became immersed in the politics, the deals discussed, the trades made, the secrets exchanged. She once heard a bargain struck between a lobbyist for the Sugar Growers and a staffer from the Senate Agriculture Committee who had actually wrapped themselves in a velvet curtain at the Belgian embassy.

  She had peeked behind a curtain at another party and seen a congressman giving oral sex to a prominent woman reporter for CBS as she leaned against the window and moaned with ecstasy. Sex and information and money were power in Washington, and power was everything.