Yet, for all Beatrice's attitude, fact was fact and there were things they simply could not afford. An example was holidays the Heywards had had none for the past two years. Last summer Roscoe told colleagues at the bank, "We considered a Mediterranean cruise, but decided after all we'd prefer to stay home."
Another uncomfortable reality was that they had virtually no savings only a few shares of FMA stock which might have to be sold soon, though the proceeds would not be enough to offset this year's deficit.
Tonight, the only conclusion Heyward had reached was that after borrowing they must hold the line on expenses as best they could, hoping for a financial upturn before too long.
And there would be one satisfyingly generous if he became president of FMA.
In First Mercantile American, as with most banks, a wide salary gap existed between the presidency and the next rank downward. As president, Ben Rosselli had been paid $130,000 annually. It was a virtual certainly his successor would receive the same.
If it happened to Roscoe Heyward, it would mean immediate doubling of his present salary. Even with higher taxes; what was left would eliminate every present problem.
Putting his papers away, he began to dream about it, a dream which extended through the night.
12
Friday morning
In their penthouse atop fashionable Cayman Manor, a residential high-rise a mile or so outside the city, Edwina and Lewis D'Orsey were at breakfast. It was three days since Ben Rosselli's dramatic announcement of his impending death, and two days since discovery of the heavy cash loss at First Mercantile American's main downtown branch. Of the two events, the cash loss at this moment weighed more heavily on Edwina.
Since Wednesday afternoon, nothing new had been discovered. Through all of yesterday, with low-key thoroughness, two FBI special agents had intensively questioned members of the branch staff, but without tangible result. The teller directly involved, Juanita Nunez, remained the prime suspect, but she would admit nothing, continued to insist that she was innocent, and refused to submit to a lie detector test.
Although her refusal increased the general suspicion of her guilt, as one of the FBI men put it to Edwina, "We can suspect her strongly, and we do, but there isn't a pinhead of proof. As to the money, even if it's hidden where she lives, we need some solid evidence before we can get a search warrant. And we don't have any. Naturally, well keep an eye on her, though it isn't the kind of case where the Bureau can maintain a full surveillance."
The FBI agents would be in the branch again today, yet there seemed little more that they could do.
But what the bank could do, and would, was end Juanita Ndnez's employment. Edwina knew she must dismiss the girl today. But it would be a frustrating, unsatisfactory ending.
Edwina returned her attention to breakfast lightly scrambled eggs and toasted English muffins which their maid had served a moment earlier.
Across the table, Lewis, hidden behind The Wall Street Journal, was growling as usual over the latest lunacy from Washington where an Under Secretary of the Treasury had declared before a Senate committee that the U.S. would never again return to a gold standard. The secretary used a Keynesian quotation in describing gold as "this barbarous yellow relic." Gold, he claimed, was finished as an international exchange medium.
"My God! That leprous ignoramus!" Glaring over his steel-rimmed half-moon glasses, Lewis D'Orsey flung his newspaper to the floor to join The New York Time,, Chicago Tribune, and a day-old Financial Times from London, all of which he had skimmed through already. He stormed on about the Treasury official, "Five centuries after dimwits like him have rotted into dust, gold will still be the world's only sound basis for money and value. With the morons we have in power, there's no hope for us, absolutely nonel"
Lewis seized a coffee cup, raised it to his lean, grim face and gulped, then wiped his lips with a linen napkin.
Edwina had been leafing through The Christian Science Monitor. She looked up. "What a pity you won't be around five centuries from now to say, 'I told you so.' "
Lewis was a small man with a body like a twig, making him seem frail and half starved, though in fact he was neither. His face matched his body and was lean, almost cadaverous. His movements were quick, his voice more often than not impatient. Occasionally Lewis would joke about his unimpressive physique. Tapping his forehead he asserted, "What nature omitted on the bodywork it made up behind here."
And it was true, even those who detested him conceded, he had a remarkably agile brain, particularly when applied to money and finance.
His morning tantrums seldom bothered Edwina. For one thing, over their fourteen years of marriage she had learned they were rarely directed at herself; and for another, she realized Lewis was girding himself for a morning session at his typewriter where he would roar like the righteously angry Jeremiah that readers of his twice-a month financial newsletter expected him to be.
The high-priced, private newsletter containing Lewis D'Orsey's investment advice to an exclusive list of international subscribers provided him with both a rich livelihood and a personal spear on which to impale governments, presidents, prime ministers, and assorted politicians when any of their fiscal acts displeased him. Most did.
Many financial men attuned to modern theories, including some at First Mercantile American Bank, abhorred Lewis D'Orsey's independent, acidly biting, ultraconservative newsletter. Not so, however, most of Lewis's subscribers who regarded him as a combination of Moses and Midas in a generation of financial fools.
And with good reason, Edwina admitted. If making money was your objective in life, Lewis was a sound man to follow. He had proved it many times, uncannily, with advice which paid off handsomely for those who followed it.
Gold was one example. Long before it happened, and while others scoffed, Lewis D'Orsey predicted a dramatic upsurge in the free market price. He also urged heavy buying of South African gold mining shares, at that time low-priced. Since then, several subscribers to The D'OrseyNewsletter had written to say they were millionaires, solely as a result of taking this advice.
With equal prescience he had foreseen the series of U.S. dollar devaluations and advised his readers to put all the cash they could raise into other currencies, notably Swiss francs and Deutsche marks, which-many did to their great profit.
In the most recent edition of The D'Orsey Newsletter he had written:
The U.S. dollar, a once-proud and honest currency, is moribund, like the nation it represents. Financially, America has passed the point of no return. Thanks to insane fiscal policies, misconceived by incompetent and corrupt politicians who care solely about themselves and reselection, we are living amid financial disaster which can only worsen.
Since our rulers are knaves and imbeciles and the docile public stands vacuously indifferent, it's time for the financial lifeboats" Every man (or woman) for himself"
If you have dollars, keep only enough for cab fare, food, and postage stamps. Plus sufficient for an airline ticket to some happier land.
For the wise investor is the investor who is departing these United States, living abroad and shedding U.S. nationality. Officially, Internal Revenue Code section 877 says that if U.S. citizens renounce their citizenship to avoid income taxes, and the IRS can prove it, their tax liability remains. But for those who know, there are legal ways to thwart the IRS. (See The D'Orsey Newsletter of July last year on how to become an ex-American citizen. Single copies available for $16 or Swiss fcs.40 each.