Cash Burn

  “Listen, I’ll explain to them—”

  Mark drilled his finger at him. “No. No. You’re not even talking to them again. I’ll handle this. This conversation has to happen CEO to CEO. I just hope I can control the damage in the market.” He plopped into his chair.

  “Jason,” Scotty said, “how did this happen?”

  Jason couldn’t look at him. Outside the window, the fall air had taken on a gloomy cast. The bright days of summer felt long gone. Jason had authorized a proposal on these terms, but how could Billy have used the commitment-letter format instead? Proposal letters had outs. They were subject to extensive due diligence. BTB wouldn’t be blamed for shifting the terms issued in a proposal letter. Not much, anyway. But a commitment was different. It was legally binding. The only negotiating point was the form of the loan documents.

  Scotty waited for an answer, but Jason couldn’t throw Billy under the bus. A mistake like this could ruin a young career. Jason would have to take this whipping like a man.

  Mark fidgeted in his seat as if it was on fire. “And to think Scotty wanted to put you on loan committee.”

  Scotty glanced at Mark and back to Jason. The eyeglasses went into his shirt pocket and he leaned over in his seat and crossed his legs.

  Jason had a vision of sitting at the boardroom table, a pile of loan reports before him, with Vince waiting across the table to be voted down.

  Scotty shrugged. “It was supposed to be a rotating membership. Ninety days on, then off. You were going to be next in line after Vince. Maybe I should have told you.”

  “Well, Jason’s not going on loan committee. Not with stuff like this flying around.” Mark shook the commitment letter in the air and flipped it down again.

  “All right, guys. I get it. It won’t happen again. Give me a chance to make it right. Don’t cut me out of the process with the company, Mark. It’ll look awful.”

  “You get it? That’s good. You get it.” Mark came out of his chair again. “This is not something you should have to get. Not in the position you’re in. You should be the one enforcing this stuff, not violating it.” Mark stood over him. “I don’t think you do get it. This is about more than this loan commitment, Jason. I might be able to fix that. This is about who you are in this organization.”

  “No, it’s not.” Jason rose to face him. “It’s one mistake, Mark. One. In the five years I’ve been in this position, we haven’t had one conversation like this. You can’t—”

  “It’s not a ‘mistake.’ This was a willful violation. I will not have the head of our home office intentionally ignoring bank policy. If you’re doing this kind of thing yourself, I can imagine what your team’s doing under your leadership.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “What am I saying? I guess I have to spell this out for you too. I’m saying I’m going to make some changes. Clearly you need more oversight.”

  “Now hold on just a minute.”

  “No. No, I’m not holding on. I will not have this. You’ve got a new boss. Effective immediately. You need supervision, and I don’t have time to babysit you.”

  Vince.

  “And this isn’t going to be some passive thing, either. I’m going to make sure he’s on you like a cheap suit. Every solicitation. Your pipeline of new deals. All your major clients.”

  “You can’t do this.”

  Mark’s face reddened even deeper. It looked as if it might erupt. “What? What? This is grounds for termination, boy. You put this bank’s reputation at risk. I always knew you were a loose cannon, but I never thought you were dumb enough to do something like this.” He turned away.

  Jason watched him round the desk and sit. “You wanted to put Vince in charge all along, didn’t you?”

  Mark’s eyes narrowed. “I gave you every chance. Every opportunity to make something happen for yourself.” He pointed at Jason. “This is your doing, Jason. You can’t deflect this onto me.”

  Jason looked to Scotty. “Scotty . . .”

  “Don’t, Jason.” The CCO shook his head. “You know what’s going on around here. Our default rates are through the roof. I’m staring down the barrel of seventy-five million dollars in substandard credits. We’re in a dogfight every second of every day to get out of bad deals. I can’t support you on this.”

  Jason stood alone in the center of the room. Mark’s desk was a wall between them. Scotty wouldn’t even return his stare.

  Mark clicked on his keyboard. “Did you put the CEO’s phone number in our system?”

  “It’s in there.”

  He entered a few more letters and turned from his monitor. “Congratulations. You did something right. Now if you don’t mind, why don’t you go back to your office so the bankers in the room can try to figure out how to talk our way out of this?”

  “I do mind. You’re blowing this way out of proportion, Mark. We’ve done deals more aggressive than this.”

  “Not in this market we haven’t.”

  “I’m not going to sit still for this. I told you before, I won’t report to Vince. It’s not going to happen.”

  “It is.”

  “No. You think I won’t walk across the street to Wells Fargo and take half my team with me? We’ll pull our best customers out and leave you with nothing but nonperforming loans. Is that what you want? You’ll have your man Vince running things around here all right. There just won’t be anything left to run except workouts.”

  Mark’s color began to drain, as if his blood flow were being siphoned out by the snarling grin that spread across his face. “Listen to you. Big shot. You’re not keeping up with the times, Jason. Pick up a newspaper sometime. The big boys won’t give you the time of day. Maybe eighteen months ago you could have played that card, but in this market you should be glad to have a paycheck coming in.”

  “Guys, guys.” Scotty leaned forward. “This has gone far enough. We’ve got a lot of work to do around here. The last thing we need is to be shooting at one another. We need to concentrate on getting this ship back on an even keel. Let’s calm down.”

  Mark frowned at him. “Don’t tell me to calm down. While we’re at it, we should talk about the credit culture of this institution. Your credit culture. Your boy here’s the poster child for everything that’s going wrong at BTB.” He thumbed at Jason. “His portfolio’s shrinking. Delinquencies are skyrocketing. Twenty percent of his borrowers are out of compliance. We’ve never had worse numbers. What do you have to say about that, Scotty?”

  “We have an action plan in place. We’re working it.”

  “Action plan? I want results!” Mark slammed his desk.

  “All the trends are going in the wrong direction. I want to see these numbers turning around, Scotty. Unless you can show me something before quarter-end, I’m going to have an action plan of my own and it’s going to include a new chief credit officer.”

  He glared at Scotty, then back at Jason. “Am I getting through to anybody?”

  “Sure,” Scotty said. “I know the buck stops at my desk for credit quality. You don’t have to remind me.”

  “Then show me the results.”

  Scotty was silent. Mark stood and faced Jason. They stared at one another over the loan commitment Jason had issued without approval. Desperation hung in the air like smog.

  Jason folded his arms. “You’ll see results, all right. You can count on it.”

  Mark squinted. For a moment, it appeared that the CEO would scream at Jason for making another threat. He waved his arm. “Get out. Both of you.”

  20

  Jason moved toward his office like a condemned man. Voices quieted as he approached. Phones rang unanswered. The eyes of every staff member were trained on him. He could feel them.

  There was no privacy around here. Office doors didn’t keep out any sound, and with Mark’s booming voice, each word might as well have been spoken over an intercom.

  “Get back to work. All of you,” Jason said without looking at them.
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  Familiar noises resumed. Typing on keyboards. Telephone ringing interrupted by the standard phone salutation: “Business Trust Bank, may I help you?”

  Even the way they answered the phones was mandated by policy.

  The rules used to inspire him. He loved the structure, the clarity they provided. Now they sickened him.

  Brenda held a phone to her ear. She shifted her eyes away from him the instant he caught her staring.

  He slammed his office door. His phone rang incessantly, the voicemail light flashing as if it were a bomb about to explode.

  He went to his window. The drivers on the street below obeyed the traffic laws. They stopped at the red lights. They drove ahead when the lights switched to green. They kept their speedometers near the limits and used their turn signals. Nice little robot drivers obedient to the rules of the road.

  It was how society functioned. Don’t speed. Don’t slap each other around. Spend your life grinding away for your boss so he can make more money than you. Give your very soul for the company. Pay your taxes to feed the government machine so they can make more rules to crush you underneath. Scrimp together your nickels so you don’t outlast your money. Retire. Enjoy a few paltry weakened years without bowing to the corporation every day.

  Then you die.

  Traffic noise filtered through the pane of glass. Cars hustled from light to light. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. Pushed by the drivers behind them. Stomp on your accelerator the second the light changes or you’re berated by horns. Can’t hold up progress.

  He put his hands on the glass. It was cool, smooth. He’d never touched it before. A gentle push, but it didn’t move. If he pushed harder . . .

  Behind him, someone knocked.

  His hands came to his sides and he turned.

  Brenda leaned around the door, her fingertips on the edge sliding downward as if the touch meant something to her. “I have Francine on the line for you.”

  The green of her eyes was a jeweled magnet across the room. They tugged at him, and he felt the opportunity to swap out the anger bristling in his chest. Her eyebrows lifted into the smooth dome of her forehead, and an uncertain smile played at the corners of her lips. She wore lip gloss that made the pinkness of the flesh there shine.

  He waved her in.

  She went to the guest chair, lowered into it. “She’s on line two.”

  Jason picked up, still on his feet. “Francine.”

  “Hi, doll. I need your PIN for a wire for Southland Tools.”

  Brenda’s eyes held his. They were shaped like sideways teardrops, glistening in the overhead lights beneath long black lashes. She never looked away first.

  “You know the rules.” The word stuck sour in his mouth. Rules. His tongue was dry.

  Brenda still didn’t look away from him.

  Francine recited the details of the wire in a tired voice. No wire agreement on file, so his approval was needed. Four million going to their Taiwanese supplier. “You want to know the conversion rate the FX department gave them?”

  Jason descended into the chair behind his desk. It put him on eye level with Brenda. They stared at one another over the papers littering his desktop.

  Without taking his eyes off her, his hand found the handle of the drawer.

  “Hello? Jason?” The chatter from the wire room came over the line behind Francine’s voice.

  “Just getting the number.” If he was going to find the right file, he would have to pull his eyes off Brenda’s. The fragrance of her perfume took him into a garden, far from banks and wires and traffic, away from brothers and wives. His fingers rested on the tops of the cardboard files, waiting. “Hold on a second.”

  He put Francine on hold.

  Brenda tilted her head. The color of her skin reminded him of sand baking on a beach in summer sunshine. The tint of pink in her cheeks deepened with his stare.

  “Do you have lunch plans today?” He put it out with a tongue that was bone dry.

  She shifted in her chair, and for the first time, her eyes turned away—for only an instant—then they were back on him. “I was going to work through.”

  The phone chirped, reminding him that he had someone on hold.

  “That portfolio project? You wanted it today.”

  “It can wait.”

  Her hand went to the arm of the chair, returned to her lap. “I guess we could go across the street and get a quick sandwich.”

  Jason nodded. He went for the file, glanced at the number and punched the button to connect back with Francine. “You ready for the number?”

  “I’ve been ready.”

  He keyed it into the pad. “Got it. Talk to you later.”

  Jason hung up. The voicemail light flashed a warning at him. He should check the messages. There were five of them. The readout on the phone told him so.

  He turned to Brenda and leaned back in his chair. She held her lips pressed together and smiled briefly, almost shyly. “So, I’ve been wondering why the wire room calls you so much.”

  He cleared his throat. “Well, if a customer wants to send a wire and it’s different from the agreement we have on file, the wire room has to get my approval.”

  She nodded. “But how do you know it’s real? I mean, couldn’t somebody—I don’t know—call something in and wire money somewhere the customer didn’t want?”

  “I just know. That one was a regular payment to Southland’s supplier. And we’ve been waiting for a new wire agreement since their controller went on maternity leave. You just have to know your customers.”

  “It’s amazing you can keep track of it all.” Another smile flitted across her lips and was gone. Her cheeks flushed pinker. “Well, I should get back.”

  He looked at his watch. 11:35. “Let’s go get that sandwich.”

  21

  The place hummed with rushed lunchtime conversations, this break for a quick sandwich like a thing stolen. Jason spied a couple rising from their table, and he led Brenda through the maze of chairs and tabletops before anyone else could grab the seats.

  Rosie moved sideways between tables. Her hand looked bare without the coffeepot she usually held. The waitress moved with unexpected quickness for someone in her sixties. She took orders and brought plates as if the fate of the world rested upon the delivery of food while it was still warm. Jason caught her eye, and she got to them after being stopped twice.

  From underneath her arm, Rosie drew a pair of menus and slapped them on the table, and with her hands free, she stacked the dirty plates on one arm and drew a rag around to wipe the tabletop. She addressed each of them. “Hi, Jason. Hi, sweetie. What can I get you two to drink?”

  They ordered—Diet Coke for her and iced tea for him—and Rosie handed the plates off to a bin-carrying busboy. She jotted the orders down and slipped the pencil back over her ear, where it hid in the brown hair of her wig. “Nice to see you again, honey,” she said to Brenda and then winked at Jason and in two steps was clearing dishes from the next table, asking if the two white-collared guys wanted any coffee.

  A group of BTB tellers sat at a table across the room, brandishing sandwich halves. Jason caught their eyes, and they quickly turned away.

  Brenda’s eyes riveted on Jason. Walking across the street, he’d noticed how the sunshine made their emerald color glow.

  She parted her lips. “So. Rough morning, huh?”

  “I made a mistake. You don’t get to make many in this business.”

  The busboy brought their drinks and slid straws next to them. Brenda peeled the paper back from one end and put the plastic tip between her teeth, drawing the paper sleeve off it. She stabbed the straw between ice cubes and into the black liquid. She lifted the glass and pinched the tip of the straw with her lips. It darkened as she sipped.

  She brought her eyes back up. “We can talk about something else.”

  “Good idea.” He pulled his eyes away from hers and looked over the room. At the lunch counter, one of his lenders made conversation with
a businessman to her left. Trying to figure out if she could bring him on as a banking customer, probably. Every encounter was about the business, about dollars in or dollars out. It used to invigorate him, the way it absorbed his mind and interactions.

  Brenda waited silently.

  He reached for his iced tea, squeezed the lemon wedge and dropped it into the tea. “You still glad you moved up to my department?”

  “Best decision I ever made. How am I doing? Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. You’ve been terrific. I should’ve given you feedback before now. I apologize.”

  “No, no. Don’t apologize. You’ve got so much going on, managing the teams, the whole office, your own customers. I don’t know how you keep everything straight.” She took another sip of Diet Coke, her lips pinching, cheeks tightening and then loosening into their curves.

  “Anyway,” he said, “the feedback is, you’re doing great. You’ve picked things up really fast, and when I give you something, I don’t have to think about it anymore. Good initiative. I don’t have to spend time worrying about backup. It’s been great.”

  “Thanks, Jason. That helps a lot. Sometimes it’s like I’m swimming upstream. I’m still learning this business.”

  “You ready to order?” Rosie’s voice.

  Jason’s head jerked around. “How long have you been standing there?”

  Rosie smiled. Her dentures were perfect. “I just got here. Don’t worry, honey. I didn’t hear a thing.” She tapped the nub of her pencil’s eraser against her order tablet.

  “We don’t have any secrets.” Jason was about to ask Brenda if she knew what she wanted.

  “Too bad,” Rosie said.

  Jason looked at her. The finger that used to hold his wedding ring felt weightless. “Roast beef. On wheat. Cheddar cheese.” He looked at Brenda. “You?”

  “I’ll have the Reuben.”

  Rosie’s pencil went back to its perch over her ear. She took Jason’s menu and winked at him. “I’ll be back. You two behave.”

  Jason watched her weave between the tables on her way behind the lunch counter. “What were we talking about?”

  Brenda didn’t answer.

  He looked at her. Her face blushed. She hadn’t blushed when Rosie had made that remark about a secret between them, but now, as Jason’s eyes held hers, the pale rose-petal color of her cheeks flushed a darker shade.