Scout’s Honor: Chapter 22

Banking Hopes

“Maybe Irving Trust,” said the bored loan officer, casually doodling on a yellow notepad. The young banker sat behind a shoddy desk, one of many, in an open area across from the elaborate wrought-iron tellers’ windows. Customers trundled along velvet cordons inside the financial cathedral, scuffing the polished white marble floor. Murmured exchanges and the sounds of shuffling papers—of money counted—rose toward the quatrefoiled ceiling thirty feet above. 

“Tried them, sir,” said Austen. He sat straight, shoulders thrown back, his mouth set against this latest disappointment. Although scrubbed clean, his hands revealed traces of inveterate paint and grease. With his clip-on tie and new polyester suit, he might have been a day laborer paying respects at his master’s funeral. 

“You don’t have to call me sir. What about Bank of New York? Have you tried—”

“Them, too. Think I’ve tried every bank in New York. Could you please explain something for me, sir?” Austen asked, his voice authoritative despite his disappointment, timbered from battle command. “If I have three hundred thousand in equity in these apartment buildings, why does every bank treat me like a panhandler? Is it how I look, or that I didn’t go to college?” 

“No,” the smug banker replied, remembering his training, avoiding the personal. He almost felt sorry for Austen, knowing the hayseed simply didn’t belong at J. P. Morgan. “It’s not how you look, and college would only matter if you wanted a job here, not a loan. It’s money. What you consider equity in your little buildings isn’t cash as far as the bank is concerned. Good luck.” 

“I’m back, ma’am. Remember me? I promised you I’d try every other bank before I bothered you again.” Austen grinned, his gap-toothed smile buried beneath a walrus mustache. He’d stopped shaving the day the Corps discharged him four years earlier, but—enhanced disguise or no—he’d hated the beard, and gradually pared it down to the flamboyant mustache. Wearing his only suit, he stood at parade rest before the assistant manager’s walnut desk.

“Yes, Mr. Austen. Of course, I remember. Please do sit down. You’re so tall as it is,” she replied. “And please don’t call me ma’am, I’m scarcely older than you.” Rather than an office, Ann Koch had a small area partitioned from the bank’s central lobby by oriental screens and a row of brass-potted ficuses. A dark, thin, attractive woman in her early thirties, Ann volleyed his smile, but knew she could only turn him down again. Yet she was intrigued by her awkward supplicant. She had vaguely remembered him from seven years earlier, the day the youth with the unusual cash deposit had bounded into the Swiss Bank Corporation’s Manhattan branch. “If persistence were all that a loan required, you’d have more money than the Federal Reserve.”

“Thank you. Well, I didn’t have any luck.”

She glanced about for eavesdroppers. “You offered to move your SBC account to these other banks?” 

He nodded. “Picked up lots of free bank pens. Hell, I could make a living selling pens and bank calendars in Times Square,” he joked. “But while I was hitting everybody but the pawnshops—they’re next—I kept thinking SBC is my best bet. I’ve brought my last three years’ tax returns, starting with 1973. Here, this is for you.” He set a red delicious apple on her desk. “Of everyone who said no, you’ve been the nicest.”

“Why, thank you. I hope you’re not thinking of bribing me,” she joshed, blushing, feeling as much as hearing Austen’s resonating voice. 

“I sure as hell would if I thought it would work.” He laughed. 

“Now tell me please, how on earth did you happen to pick SBC in the first place?” Ann was curious. She’d been impressed by his resume—he was a true war hero—but it listed no education. She studied him. She found his intensity, his palpable hunger, fascinating, found herself wishing she could help him, thinking this ambitious young man, unlike the bank’s pampered trust-fund clients, was on his way. 

“Let’s see,” Austen said, gathering himself for a plausible answer. With no gift for deception, he avoided personal questions by never asking any himself, by politely changing the topic, sometimes through a stiff silence. Mostly by not making friends. Now he had to answer. He blinked, recalling in fragmented images his fevered race through Manhattan on his way to enlist, his certainty that Roy’s cash had to be deposited overseas, instinct telling him he would one day flee the country. “Sounds silly, but remember I was only nineteen. I thought a Swiss bank would be kind of cool, like in a James Bond movie. Come to think of it, your guys weren’t all that crazy about taking my money. A nice old cashier suggested I tell the new accounts officer I was planning to attend school in Geneva.” 

“But how did you get started in real estate?”

“I bought a dump on 221st Street in Queens right after I was discharged. Fixed it up and sold it. Used the money I’d saved from the Corps. I’ve become pretty good at pinching pennies,” said Austen, rueful. 

“You spend all your time on your buildings? You have no free time?”

“Sixteen hours a day. That’s how I’ve managed to buy these three buildings,” he said, tapping his financial statement. “But now, I’m stuck, my cash is fully invested, and I can’t buy anything else without bank loans, without leverage.” He slipped off his glasses, rubbed his twisted nose. “Do banks ever loan to people who really need the money?”

She covered her embarrassment with a small laugh. “Well, we certainly don’t.” Apologetic, she offered an introduction to her SBC counterpart in Basel by way of a small consolation prize. Should Mr. Austen ever find himself in Switzerland, he could take her letter of introduction to Herr Hans Peter and if the two of them got on together, and if Austen were interested in making a substantial deposit, Peter might set up a private account for him.

“They’re not really numbered, you know,” Ann said. “You can use initials, anything you want. Your birth date or maybe your girlfriend’s birth date.”

“Don’t have one.”

“Oh.”

“The bank doesn’t have to report my deposit?” he asked, paying attention. 

“No, but that law’s bound to change soon. The IRS hates it.” She glanced up from her desk and looked him in the eyes, holding his gaze. “You know what? I think you’ll get your loan somehow. In the meantime, I get off for lunch in an hour. If you’re still downtown, I’ll loan you enough to buy us both a sandwich.”

“You don’t have to do that, Ms. Koch.” Confused, reddening, Austen glanced from her to the emerald-green carpet. He had always been shy with girls, bantering beyond him, flirting impossible, his everyday glibness flustered in the face of beauty. He’d been convinced that girls found him ugly long before his nose had been crushed in that fight. The fight that had shattered his world. Eddie had shown up for water polo practice two weeks after his father’s death in Vietnam. Certain the boy was still bereft, his sympathetic coach had sent him home early. So early Eddie had walked in on his mother in the kitchen—her panties around her ankles—kneeling in front of his father’s best friend. He froze, horrified by the blind sensuality in her glazed eyes, and then, screaming at them both, swung wildly at the commander, getting in two good punches before the bigger man decked him. The officer zipped up his khakis, pinned the dazed, bleeding boy to the floor with his boot. His poor mother was trembling so she could scarcely pull up her skirt while Eddie screamed whore whore whore. The commander retreated, Mary Kawadsky tried to explain her loneliness over her son’s shouting, his father’s open infidelities—their doomed marriage frozen in hell—but Eddie heard none of it. He raised his fist, but caught himself, slamming the wall instead. Crying. As self-righteous as a false messiah, he stormed from the house, swearing he never wanted to see her again. He never did. He hid from her for weeks, living in his van, until at last the weak, broken-hearted woman gave up hope. Months later, Mrs. Cross told him his mother had left the state, perhaps to Las Vegas. Maybe Albuquerque. 

“You’ve been too nice already,” Austen added, biting his lip, hating himself, knowing no woman could ever love him. Yet this woman was kind. 

“It’s only a sandwich.”

“Thanks, but I wouldn’t, I mean, I’ve got to fix a leak.” He shook his head imperceptibly. Ann Koch was everything he’d dreamed of in his loneliest hours—smart, caring, and lovely—but starting a relationship with her, or any woman, was impossible. It would either be built on sand, on lies repeated more often than daily prayers or tantamount to signing a murder confession. No woman could ever love him if she knew the truth. 

“Yes, of course.” She rose to shake his hand, reassuming her professional distance. “I do think you will get that loan somehow.”

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