“Let’s talk about the investment advice you and Chrissie have been spreading around the neighborhood. Mrs. Tertz, Mrs. Olsen, Mrs. Hellstrom, they all agree you’ve been coming around filled with helpful hints—how they can beat their CD rates by ten points. I have an ugly feeling that if they’d taken you up on it they’d have some Diamond Head paper too. Was this your own idea, or did the bank send you out to do it?”

He picked up his watch. “You’ve had your five minutes. Now I’m going to call security. And I’ll be meeting with a lawyer to talk about you slandering me.”

I grinned derisively. “Just don’t make it Dick Yarborough or Todd Pichea. They’ve got enough to do these days. Now, if you call security, I’ll ring up the feds. They’re very interested in your kind of sales help. And they can subpoena bank files, which I can’t.”

He looked longingly at the phone, but couldn’t quite make up his mind to dial. “What do you want, anyway?”

“Information, Vinnie. Just information. I’ve figured out a fair amount, you know: you peddling Diamond Head’s junk, Todd and Chrissie taking over Mrs. Frizell’s assets.… So they could get rid of the bonds before anyone saw them? Or just mortgage her house and then sell it off so she can’t spoil Yuppieville anymore? And I figure Todd’s law firm did the legal work when Jason Felitti debt-financed Diamond Head. And since Jason sits on the board here at U.S. Met, he must have got the bank to take on some of the junk. So he gets eager young bankers like you to sell it in your spare time. I see you guys going door to door, kind of like the Girl Scouts.”

And where was Dick in this scenario? Surely not asking Todd Pichea to sell Diamond Head bonds to the little old ladies in his neighborhood. I surely couldn’t have been in love once with someone who would carry on like that.

“I don’t have anything to say to you. It’s time for you to leave.” Vinnie’s voice came out in a hiss.

He didn’t try to phone the bank’s cops, but he wouldn’t talk, either. I kept at him for half an hour, alternately cajoling and painting a picture of his probable future in the federal pen, but he didn’t budge. When I finally got up to leave he was still staring ahead, glassy-eyed.

42

Needling the Fourth Estate