The Moneychangers

  It was a neatly ingenious sequence, devised by Heyward, which Alex would find hard to break.

  “There’s something else I haven’t mentioned,” Heyward said. “Not even to you, Jerome. It could have a bearing on our decision today.”

  The others regarded him with fresh curiosity.

  “I’m hopeful, in fact the probability is strong, that we shall shortly enjoy substantial business with Supranational Corporation. It’s another reason I’m reluctant to commit funds elsewhere.”

  “That’s fantastic news,” Orville Young said.

  Even Tom Straughan reacted with surprised approval.

  Supranational—or SuNatCo, as identified by its familiar worldwide logo—was a multinational giant, the General Motors of global communications. As well, SuNatCo owned or controlled dozens of other companies, related and unrelated to its main purpose. Its prodigious influence with governments of all stripes, from democracies through dictatorships, was reportedly greater than that of any other business complex in history. Observers sometimes said that SuNatCo had more real power than most of the sovereign states in which it operated.

  Until now SuNatCo had confined its U.S. banking activity to the big three—Bank of America, First National City, and Chase Manhattan. To be added to this exclusive trio would boost immeasurably the status of First Mercantile American.

  “That’s an exciting prospect, Roscoe,” Patterton said.

  “I expect to have more details for our next money policy meeting,” Heyward added. ‘It appears likely that Supranational will want us to open a substantial line of credit.”

  It was Tom Straughan who reminded them, “We still need a vote on Forum East.”

  “So we do,” Heyward acknowledged. He was smiling confidently, pleased at the reaction to his announcement and certain of the way the Forum East decision would go.

  Predictably, they divided two by two—Alex Vandervoort and Tom Straughan opposed to the cutback of funds, Roscoe Heyward and Orville Young in favor of it.

  Heads swung to Jerome Patterton who had the decisive vote.

  The bank president hesitated only briefly, then announced, “Alex, on this one I’ll go with Roscoe.”

  2

  “Sitting around here feeling sorry won’t do one damn bit of good,” Margot declared. “What we need is to rise off our collective asses and initiate some action.”

  “Like dynamiting the goddam bank?” someone asked.

  “Nix on that! I’ve friends in there. Besides, blowing up banks isn’t legal.”

  “Who says we have to stay legal?”

  “I do,” Margot snapped. “And if any smart cats think otherwise, you can find yourselves some other mouthpiece and another pad.”

  Margot Bracken’s law office, on a Thursday evening, was the scene of an executive committee meeting of the Forum East Tenants Association. The association was one of many groups in the inner city for which Margot was legal counsel and which utilized her office for meetings, a convenience for which she was occasionally paid, but mostly wasn’t.

  Fortunately her office was a modest affair—two rooms in what had once been a neighborhood grocery store and some of the ancient merchandise shelves now housed her law books. The remainder of the furnishings, mostly ill-assorted, comprised bits and pieces she had acquired cheaply.

  Typical of the general location, two other former stores, on either side, were abandoned and boarded up. Someday, with luck and enterprise, the rehabilitating tide of Forum East might lap this particular area. It hadn’t yet.

  But developments at Forum East had brought them here.

  The day before yesterday, in a public announcement, First Mercantile American Bank had changed rumor into fact. Financing of future Forum East projects was to be cut in half, effective at once.

  The bank’s statement was couched in officialese with euphemistic phrases like “temporary shortage of long-term funding” and “periodic reconsideration will be given,” but no one believed the last and everyone, inside and outside the bank, knew exactly what the statement meant—the ax.

  The meeting now was to determine what, if anything, could be done.

  The word “tenants” in the association’s name was a loose one. A large segment of members were Forum East tenants; many others were not, but hoped to be. As Deacon Euphrates, a towering steelworker who had spoken earlier, put it, “There’s plenty of us, expectin’ to be in, who ain’t gonna make it if the big bread doan’ come through.”

  Margot knew that Deacon, his wife and five children lived in a tiny, crowded walk-up, part of a rat-infested tenement that should have been torn down years ago. She had made several attempts to help them find other rental quarters, without success. A hope that Deacon Euphrates lived with was that he would move his family into one of the new Forum East housing units, but the Euphrates’ name was only midway on a long waiting list and a slowdown in construction was likely to keep it there for a long time to come.

  The FMA announcement had been a shock to Margot, too. Alex, she was sure, would have resisted any cutback proposal within the bank, but obviously he had been overruled. For that reason she had not discussed the subject with him yet. Also, the less Alex knew about some simmering plans of Margot’s, the better for them both.

  “The way I see the ball game,” Seth Orinda, another committee member, said, “whatever we do, and legal or not, there’s no way, but no way, we can squeeze that money out of those banks. That is, if they’ve their minds set on clamming up.”

  Seth Orinda was a black high school teacher, already “in” at Forum East. But he possessed a keen civic sense and cared greatly about the thousands of others still waiting hopefully on the outside. Margot relied a good deal on his stability and help.

  “Don’t be so sure, Seth,” she responded. “Banks have soft underbellies. Stick a harpoon in a tender place and surprising things could happen.”

  “What kind of harpoon?” Orinda asked. “A parade? A sit-in? A demonstration?”

  “No,” Margot said. “Forget all that stuff. It’s old hat. Nobody’s impressed by conventional demonstrations any more. They’re just a nuisance. They achieve nothing.”

  She surveyed the group facing her in the crowded, cluttered, smoky office. They were a dozen or so, mixed blacks and whites, in assorted shapes, sizes, and demeanors. Some were perched precariously on rickety chairs and boxes, others squatted on the floor. “Listen carefully, all of you. I said we need some action, and there is a kind of action which I believe will work.”

  “Miss Bracken.” A small figure near the back of the room stood up. It was Juanita Núñez, whom Margot had greeted when she came in.

  “Yes, Mrs. Núñez?”

  “I want to help. But you know, I think, that I work for the FMA Bank. Perhaps I should not hear what you will tell the others …”

  Margot said appreciatively, “No, and I should have thought of that instead of embarrassing you.”

  There was a general murmur of understanding. Amid it, Juanita made her way to the door,

  “What you heard awready,” Deacon Euphrates said, “that’s a secret, ain’t it?”

  As Juanita nodded, Margot said quickly, “We can all trust Mrs. Núñez. I hope her employers are as ethical as she is.”

  When the meeting had settled down again, Margot faced the remaining members. Her stance was characteristic: hands on small waist, elbows aggressively out. A moment earlier she had pushed her long chestnut hair back—a gesture of habit before action, like the raising of a curtain. As she talked, interest heightened. A smile or two appeared. At one point Seth Orinda chuckled deeply. Near the end, Deacon Euphrates and others were grinning broadly.

  “Man, oh man!” Deacon said.

  “That’s goddam clever,” someone else put in.

  Margot reminded them, “To make the whole scheme work, we need a lot of people—at least a thousand to begin with, and more as time goes on.”

  A fresh voice asked, “How long we need ’em?”

/>   “We’ll plan on a week. A banking week, that is—five days. If that doesn’t work we should consider going longer and extending our scope of operations. Frankly, though, I don’t believe it will be necessary. Another thing: Everyone involved must be carefully briefed.”

  “I’ll help with that,” Seth Orinda volunteered.

  There was an immediate chorus of, “So will I.”

  Deacon Euphrates’s voice rose above others. “I got time comin’ to me. Goddam, I’ll use it; take a week off work, an’ I can pull in others.”

  “Good!” Margot said. She went on decisively, “We’ll need a master plan. I’ll have that ready by tomorrow night. The rest of you should begin recruiting right away. And remember, secrecy is important.”

  Half an hour later the meeting broke up, the committee members far more cheerful and optimistic than when they had assembled.

  At Margot’s request, Seth Orinda stayed behind. She told him, “Seth, in a special way I need your help.”

  “You know I’ll give it if I can, Miss Bracken.”

  “When any action starts,” Margot said, “I’m usually at the front of it. You know that.”

  “I sure do.” The high school teacher beamed.

  “This time I want to stay out of sight. Also, I don’t want my name involved when newspapers, TV, and radio start their coverage. If that happened it could embarrass two special friends of mine—the ones I spoke about at the bank. I want to prevent that.”

  Orinda nodded sagely. “So far as I can see, no problem.”

  “What I’m really asking,” Margot insisted, “is that you and the others front this one for me. I’ll be behind scenes, of course. And if there’s need to, you can call me, though I hope you won’t.”

  “That’s silly,” Seth Orinda said. “How could we call you when none of us ever heard your name?”

  On Saturday evening, two days after the Forum East Tenants Association meeting, Margot and Alex were guests at a small dinner party given by friends, and afterward went together to Margot’s apartment. It was in a less fashionable part of the city than Alex’s elegant suite, and was smaller, but Margot had furnished it pleasingly with period pieces she had collected at modest prices in the course of years. Alex loved to be there.

  The apartment was greatly in contrast to Margot’s law office.

  “I missed you, Bracken,” Alex said. He had changed into pajamas and a robe which he kept at Margot’s and was relaxed in a Queen Anne wing chair, Margot curled on a rug before him, her head tilted back against his knees while he stroked her long hair gently. Occasionally his fingers strayed—gentle and sexually skillful, beginning to arouse her as he always did, and in the way she loved. Margot sighed with gratification. Soon they would go to bed. Yet, while mutual desire mounted, there was exquisite pleasure in self-imposed delay.

  It was a week and a half since they had last been together, conflicting schedules having kept them apart.

  “We’ll make up for those lost days,” Margot said.

  Alex was silent. Then, “You know, I’ve been waiting all evening for you to fry me on a griddle about Forum East. Instead, you haven’t said a word.”

  Margot tilted her head farther back, looking at him upside down. She asked innocently, “Why should I fry you, darling? The bank’s money cutback wasn’t your idea.” Her small brow furrowed. “Or was it?”

  “You know darn well it wasn’t.”

  “Of course I knew. Just as I was equally sure that you’d opposed it.”

  “Yes, I opposed it.” He added ruefully, “For all the good it did.”

  “You tried your best. That’s all anyone can ask.”

  Alex regarded her suspiciously. “None of this is like you.”

  “Not like me in what way?”

  “You’re a fighter. It’s one of the things I love about you. You don’t give up. You won’t accept defeat calmly.”

  “Perhaps some defeats are total. In that case nothing can be done.”

  Alex sat up straight. “You’re up to something, Bracken| I know it. Now tell me what it is.”

  Margot considered, then said slowly, “I’m not admitting anything. But even if what you just said is true, it could be there are certain things it’s better you don’t know. Something I’d never want to do, Alex, is embarrass you.”

  He smiled affectionately. “You have told me something after all. All right, if you don’t want any probing, I won’t do it. But I’ll ask one assurance: that whatever you have in mind is legal.”

  Momentarily, Margot’s temper flared. “I’m the lawyer around here. I’ll decide what’s legal and what isn’t.”

  “Even clever lady lawyers make mistakes.”

  “Not this time.” She seemed about to argue further, then relented. Her voice softened. “You know I always operate inside the law. Also you know why.”

  “Yes, I do,” Alex said. Relaxed once more, he went back to stroking her hair.

  She had confided in him once, after they knew each other well, about her reasoning, reached years before, the result of tragedy and loss.

  At law school, where Margot was an honors student, she had joined, like others at the time, in activism and protest. It was the period of increasing American involvement in Vietnam and bitter divisions in the nation. It was the beginning, too, of restlessness and change within the legal profession, a rebellion of youth against the law’s elders and establishment, a time for a new breed of belligerent lawyer of whom Ralph Nader was the publicized, lauded symbol.

  Earlier at college, and later at law school, Margot had shared her avant-garde views, her activism, and herself with a male fellow student—the only name Alex ever heard was Gregory—and Gregory and Margot cohabited, as was customary too.

  For several months there had been student-administration confrontations and one of the worst began over the official appearance on campus of U. S. Army, and Navy recruiters. A student body majority, including Gregory and Margot, wanted the recruiters ordered off. The school authorities took an opposite, strong view.

  In protest, militant students occupied the Administration Building, barricading themselves in and others out. Gregory and Margot, caught up in the general fervor, were among them.

  Negotiations began but failed, not least because the students presented “non-negotiable demands.” After two days the administration summoned state police, later unwisely supplemented by the National Guard. An assault was launched upon the now beleaguered building. During the fighting, shots were fired and heads were cracked. By a miracle, the shots hit no one. But, by tragic misfortune, one of the cracked heads—Gregory’s—suffered a brain hemorrhage, resulting in death a few hours later.

  Eventually, because of public indignation, an inexperienced, young, and frightened policeman who had struck the mortal blow, was arraigned in court. Charges against him were dismissed.

  Margot, though in deep grief and shock, was enough of an objective law student to understand the dismissal. Her law training helped her also, amid later calmness, to evaluate and codify her own convictions. It was a belated process which the pressures of excitement and emotion had prevented far too long.

  None of Margot’s political and social views were diminished, either then or since. But she had the honest perception to recognize that the student body faction had withheld from others those same freedoms of which they claimed to be defenders. They had also, in their zeal, transgressed the law, a system to which their scholarship was dedicated, and presumably their lives.

  It was only one step further in reasoning, which Margot took, to acknowledge that no less would have been achieved, and probably far more, by staying within legal limits.

  As she confided to Alex during the only time they ever talked about that portion of the past, it had become her guiding principle, in all her activism, ever since.

  Still curled comfortingly close to him, she asked, “How are things at the bank?”

  “Some days I feel like Sisyphus. Remember him?”
r />   “Wasn’t he the Greek who pushed a rock uphill? Every time he got near the top it rolled back down again.”

  “That’s the one. He should have been a bank executive trying to make changes. You know something about us bankers, Bracken?”

  “Tell me.”

  “We succeed despite our lack of foresight and imagination.”

  “May I quote you?”

  “If you do, I’ll swear I never said it.” He mused. “But between us privately, banking always reacts to social change, never anticipates it. All the problems which affect us now—environment, ecology, energy, minorities—have been with us a long time. What’s happened in those areas to affect us could have been foreseen. We bankers could be leaders. Instead we’re following, moving forward only when we have to, when we’re pushed.”

  “Why stay a banker then?”

  “Because it’s important. What we do is worthwhile and whether we move forward voluntarily or not, we’re professionals who are needed. The money system has become so huge, so complicated and sophisticated that only banks can handle it.”

  “So your greatest need is a shove now and then. Right?”

  He looked at her intently, his curiosity reviving. “You’re planning something in that convoluted pixie mind of yours.”

  “I admit nothing.”

  “Whatever it is, I hope it doesn’t involve pay toilets.”

  “Oh God, no!”

  At the year-old memory, both laughed aloud. It had been one of Margot’s combat victories and created wide attention.

  Her battle had been with the city’s airport commission which, at the time, was paying its several hundred janitors and cleaners substantially lower wages than were normal in the area. The workers’ union was corrupt, had a “sweetheart contract” with the commission, and had done nothing to help. In desperation a group of airport employees sought help from Margot who was beginning to build a reputation in such matters.

  A frontal approach by Margot to the commission produced merely a rebuff. She therefore decided that public attention must be gained and one way to obtain it was by ridiculing the airport and its rulers. In preparation, and working with several other sympathizers who had aided her before, she made an intelligence study of the big, busy airport during a heavy traffic night.