Arthur Hailey - The Moneychangers

"Certainly not!" Heyward was sweating now, the hand holding the telephone shaking. He wondered how much this smooth-voiced inquisitor really knew. Of course, he could end the conversation here and now; perhaps he should, though if he did he would go on wondering, not knowing. "But did you, sir, as a result of that trip to the Bahamas, form a friendship with Miss Deveraux?"

"I suppose you could can it that. She is a pleasant, charming person."

"Then you do remember her?" He had walked into a trap. He conceded, "Yes." "Thank you, sir. By the way, have you met Miss Deveraux subsequently?"

The question was asked casually. But this man Endicott knew. Trying to keep a tremor out of his voice, Heyward insisted, "I've answered all the questions I intend to. As I told you, I'm extremely busy."

"As you wish, sir. But I think I should tell you that we've talked with Miss Deveraux and she's been extremely co-operative." Extremely co-operative? Avril would be,

Heyward thought. Especially if the newspaper paid her, and he supposed they had. But he felt no bitterness toward her; Avril was what she was, and nothing could ever change the sweetness she had given him. The reporter was continuing.

"She's supplied details of her meetings with you and we have some of the Columbia Hilton hotel bills your bills, which Supranational paid. Do you wish to reconsider your statement, sir, that none of that had anything to do with the loan from First Mercantile American Bank to Supranational?"

Heyward was silent. What could he say? Confound an newspapers and writers, their obsession with invading privacy, their eternal digging, digging!

Obviously someone inside SuNatCo had been induced to talk, had filched or copied papers. He remembered something Avril had said about "the list" a confidential roster of those who could be entertained at Supranational's expense.

For a while, his own name had been on it. Probably they had that information, too.

The irony, of course, was that Avril had not in any way influenced his decision about the SuNatCo loan. He had made up his mind to recommend it long before involvement with her.

But who would believe him? "There's just one other thing, sir." Endicott obviously assumed there would be no answer to the last question. "May I ask about a private investment company called Q-Investments? To save time, I’ll tell you we've managed to get copies of some of the records and you are shown as holding two thousand shares. Is that correct?"

"I have no comment to make." "Mr. Heyward, were those shares given to you as a payoff for arranging the Supranational loan, and further loans totaling two million dollars to Q-Investments?" Without speaking, Roscoe Heyward slowly hung up the phone.

Tomorrow's newspaper. That was what the caller had said. They would print it all, since obviously they had the evidence, and what one newspaper initiated, the rest of the media would repeat.

He had no illusions, no doubts about what would follow. One newspaper story, one reporter, meant disgrace total, absolute. Not only at the bank, but among friends, family.

At his church, elsewhere.

His prestige, influence, pride would be dissolved; for the first time he realized what a fragile mask they were.

Even worse was the certainty of criminal prosecution for accepting bribes, the likelihood of other charges, the probability of prison.

He had sometimes wondered how the once-proud Nixon henchmen felt, brought low from their high places to be criminally charged, fingerprinted, stripped of dignity, judged by jurors whom not long before they would have treated with contempt. Now he knew. Or shortly would.

A quotation from Genesis came to him: My punishment is greater than I can bear.

A telephone rang on his desk. He ignored it. There was nothing more to be done here. Ever. Almost without knowing it, he rose and walked out of the office, past Mrs. Callaghan who regarded him strangely and asked a question which he neither absorbed nor would have answered if he had.

He walked down the 36th floor corridor, past the boardroom, so short a time ago an arena for his own ambitions. Several people spoke to him. He took no notice of them. Not far beyond the boardroom was a small door, seldom used. He opened it. There were stairs going upward and he ascended them, through several flights and sums, climbing steadily, neither hurrying nor pausing on the way.

Once, when FMA Headquarters Tower was new, Ben Rosselli had brought his executives this way. Heyward was one of them, and they had exited by another small door, which he could see ahead. Heyward opened it and went out, onto a narrow balcony almost at the building's peak, high above the city. A raw November wind struck him with blustering force.

He leaned against it and found it somehow reassuring, as if enfolding him. It was on that other occasion, he remembered, that Ben Rosselli had held out his arms toward the city and said: "Gentlemen, what was once here was my grandfather's promised land.

What you see today is ours. Remember as he did that to profit in the truest sense, we must give to it, as well as take." It seemed long ago, in precept as well as time.

Now Heyward looked downward. He could see smaller buildings, the winding, omnipresent river, traffic, people moving like ants on Rosselli Plaza far below.

The sounds of them all came to him, muted and blended, on the wind. He put a leg over the waist-high railing, separating the balcony from a narrow, unprotected ledge.

His second leg followed. Until this moment he had felt no fear, but now all of his body trembled with it, and his hands grasped the railing at his back tightly. Somewhere behind him he heard agitated voices, feet racing on the stairs. Someone shouted, "Roscoe!" His last thought but one was a line from I Samuel: Go, and the Lord be with thee. The very last was of Avril. O thou fairest among women… Rise up, my love, my fair one and come away… Then, as figures burst through the door behind him, he closed his eyes and stepped forward into the void.

25

There were a handful of days in your life, Alex Vandervoort thought, which, as long as you breathed and remembered anything, would stay sharply and painfully engraved in memory.

The day little more than a year ago on which Ben Rosselli announced his impending death was one. Today would be another. It was evening.

At home in his apartment, Alex stin shocked from what had happened earlier, uncertain and dispirited was waiting for Margot. She would be here soon. He mixed himself a second scotch and soda and tossed a log on the fire, which had burned low. This morning he had been first through the door to the high tower balcony, having raced up the stairs after hearing worry expressed about Heyward's state of mind and deducing from swift questioning of others where Roscoe might have gone.

Alex had cried out as he hurled himself through the doorway into the open, but was too late. The sight of Roscoe, seeming to hang for an instant in air, then disappear from view with a terrible scream which faded quickly, left Alex horrified, shaking, and for moments unable to speak.

It was Tom Straughan, who was right behind him on the stairway, who had taken charge, ordering the balcony cleared, an order with which Alex had complied. Later, in an act of futility, the door to the balcony had been locked. Below, returning to the 36th floor, Alex had pulled himself together and gone to report to Jerome Patterton.

After that, the rest of the day was a melange of events, decisions, details, succeeding and merging with each other until the whole became a Heyward epitaph, which even now was not conduded, and there would be more of the same tomorrow.

But, for today, Roscoe's wife and son had been contacted and consoled; police inquiries answered at least, in part; funeral arrangements overseen since the body was unrecognizable, the coffin would be sealed as soon as the coroner agreed; a press statement drafted by Dick French and approved by Alex; and still more questions dealt with or postponed. Answers to other questions became clearer to Alex in the late afternoon, shortly after Dick French advised him that he should accept a telephone call from a Newsda:y reporter named Endicott.