SQUEEZE PLAYS
By Jeffrey Marshall
The traffic headed south on Park Avenue stranded the Mercedes like a raft in the Sargasso Sea. Taxis jockeyed and edged in during their endless game of chicken; pedestrians crossed against the lights, a time-honored Manhattan tradition, like cockroaches skittering across a kitchen floor. It was hard for the car to make more than two lights at a time, and Corbin van Sloot looked at his watch in annoyance. “Bad morning, hey, Pieter?” His driver and sometime bodyguard, Pieter Stroganov, gave a slight backward glance. “Worse than usual today, boss. I think there’s some construction south of Grand Central.”
Corbin had learned to understand him most of the time, but his accent sometimes seemed thicker than borscht in February. “Ay yi yi.” Corbin deemed himself no more impatient than most men, but being stuck in traffic always got his goat. Each day was a crapshoot, and he wasn’t the one rolling the dice. At least he had copies of the Times and the Journal to go through during the ride. The commute home was always faster – well, almost always.
In his more reflective moments, Corbin knew he had a lot to be thankful for. His position as CEO of Whitehall Banking Group – one of the world’s twenty largest commercial banks – put him in the catbird seat. He had a mansion in a blue-chip suburb, a lovely wife, three good kids, and all the creature comforts a man could hope for. Of course, the downside was that for Corbin, as for any top chief executive, the seat of power was almost always hot – often uncomfortably so. Restive investors, competitors battling for market share, consumer watchdogs, his own board and executive team: there was no telling where the next crisis would come from. Sometimes it felt like being holed up in a wagon train in an old western with a band of circling Indians pumping arrows at you.
Corbin had the requisite résumé for the job – undergrad from Dartmouth, MBA from Harvard, twenty years at J.P. Morgan Chase – that had persuaded the Whitehall directors to hire him three years ago when their CEO had retired. Though based in London, they sensed that the US market was going to be key to their future, and so two senior executive vice presidents at headquarters were summarily passed over to bring Corbin in. Both left within two months of his arrival; nothing stings more than ambition unrequited. Meanwhile, the company chairman, Sir Reginald Downing (mockingly referred to by many in the company as “Regicide”), remained in London.
Having major seats of power on opposite sides of the pond can be daunting, Corbin soon discovered; the time difference alone was vexing as hell. Major discussions, and decisions, often had to be postponed so that all the parties could be present. Worse, in Corbin’s mind, was the habit of Sir Reginald, now in his early seventies, to take afternoon naps on a leather recliner in his office. Corbin was almost twenty years younger, and he swore he would never work at an age when naps were a necessary evil.
Corbin looked out again: the car was just passing Fifty-Sixth Street on its odyssey south, and the traffic seemed as knotted as ever. He sighed and opened the Times to the Arts & Leisure page. He flipped back to the crossword. It was a Wednesday, and the degree of difficulty was medium. He decided he’d start it, at least. He was reasonably accomplished, and he could usually finish a Wednesday puzzle, but the latter days of the week were another story; Friday puzzles, he’d concluded, were simply a bitch.
He took out his mechanical pencil from his briefcase and started on the top grid. He’d just filled in 3 down when he heard the sirens. The light, which had been green, went to red as the two hook-and-ladder fire trucks crawled cautiously through the intersection.
Christ, what’s next? he thought to himself. A water main break? No, no, he thought, don’t go there – it could happen. Everybody knew that the mains in Manhattan had been put in before women’s suffrage and were slowly rotting away. One or another gave way several times a year. It was just the way things were, like knees going out on football running backs. It was gonna happen.
Twenty minutes later, he rode the elevator up to the forty-third floor and stepped out into the cool gray carpet of the executive suite. Corbin gave his executive secretary, Angela D’Alessio, a broad smile; he’d already called her and told her of the delay. “It was pretty bad out there, Angie. You’re lucky you get to take the subway.” She smiled, showing long canine teeth. “I suppose you’re right, Mr. van Sloot,” she said evenly. “Traffic jams won’t ever reach down to the subway.”
She smiled expectantly. She was a stout middle-aged woman who wore a bit too much makeup and was given to long print dresses and cardigans in the winter. Angela had worked for his predecessor and was good-hearted and more than efficient; she was a repository of knowledge about the office and who did what. She was indispensable, and Corbin saw no reason whatsoever to bring in someone younger and prettier.
“Is that merchant banking call on for this morning?” Corbin asked. Angela looked at her notes. “Yes. It’s a video conference call at ten.” She kept a strict calendar for him, and he relied on her more than he was willing to admit. Corbin suppressed a frown. “Okay, let me know when it’s five till.”
He had been sent a memo two days earlier that suggested that one loan in particular, to Star Enterprises, a newspaper chain, wasn’t doing well – in fact, it was like a carton of milk that was going from sour to rancid.
“I will.” She looked at him and nodded. Corbin had a smooth, unlined face; a firm jaw; and dark hair going to gray at the temples. With deep-set blue eyes, he was just over six feet tall and reasonably slim; he could have been a model for aliens to show them what a CEO looked like.
Corbin walked into his corner office, large enough for a small luncheonette, took off his suit jacket, and hung it on the wooden coat tree in the corner. He gazed out the floor-to-ceiling windows, which afforded a spectacular view of the East River and the glistening tower of the United Nations. It was May, and the trees below were clad in the light green of spring, as shimmering from this distance as a Monet canvas. High up in the clear sky, a passenger plane was a silvery beetle making its way east to LaGuardia Airport.
He turned his mind back to the present. Merchant banking? It was a troubled business that was being run out of London, as it always had been. Too many merchant bankers thought they were top bananas, rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful in places like Monte Carlo or Gstaad. Hell, he’d never been to Gstaad. The Whitehall unit was like an old boys’ club for graduates of Oxford or Cambridge, and it was barely breaking even. Corbin wanted to hear the latest, but if things weren’t turning around, changes would be in the wind. And he’d probably have to be the one to make them. ##
