Safely Deposited

Mr. Billings realized that he had raised his voice for the first time in his 17 years with the Manhattan Trust Company. Instead of silently reminding himself that self-control in front of subordinates was a prerequisite for executive success, he raised his voice again--louder. "They're doing what?" he shouted.

Frank Shaughnessy, the chief attendant of the safe-deposit section, cleared his throat nervously, swallowed and repeated himself. "They're fornicating in the safe-deposit rooms, sir," he said.

A great calm came over Mr. Billings. "That's what I thought you said, Shaughnessy," he managed to say in a quiet voice. He was gratified by his own display of calmness. The same course that had taught him about the necessity of being particularly controlled in front of subordinates had emphasized executive calm in general. The unexpected crisis for which the instructors had tried to prepare him had been a long time in coming--in the 17 years that it had taken Mr. Billings to rise to a third-vice-presidency of Manhattan Trust, in charge of the entire safe-deposit operation of the Fifth Avenue branch, nothing had come up that had seriously tested his ability to remain calm--but the crisis had arrived at last. They were fornicating in the safe-deposit rooms. Fornicating in his rooms, he thought, struggling to control a sudden flash of anger. Mr. Billings presided over his department of the Fifth Avenue branch with a sense of executive responsibility that verged on the proprietary. He personally made a daily inspection of the rooms furnished for clients who wanted to go over the contents of their boxes in private--the rooms that had now been violated. He personally greeted longtime box holders when they arrived at the desk in the main safe-deposit room to sign in--a show of courtesy he secretly believed was at least partly responsible for the willingness of so many wealthy and distinguished clients to entrust their valuable papers and jewels to the Fifth Avenue branch. He personally inspected Shaughnessy and whichever other attendant was on duty, to see that their uniforms were immaculate and their brass buttons shined. He personally made spot checks to see that the bank rule of having at least one attendant near the alarm in the main room was always observed. He would personally handle this crisis. He would begin, as he had been taught, at the beginning.

"Now, Shaughnessy," he said in a level voice, "who is involved in this matter?"

"A man named Bremerton Paige, Mr. Billings," Shaughnessy said.

"Not alone, I trust," Mr. Billings replied, silently congratulating himself on managing some urbane levity under the circumstances.

"No, sir," Shaughnessy said. "There's a woman involved."

Mr. Billings found himself relieved that the violation of his rooms was at least heterosexual.

Shaughnessy went on with the story. Bremerton Paige had begun renting a safe-deposit box about three months before. He was a courteous man in his late 30s or early 40s who dressed stylishly but rather conservatively in double-breasted suits and silk ties. Shaughnessy had always assumed he was a lawyer. For the first couple of months, Paige had come in about once a week, always declining Shaughnessy's routine offer to take the box to one of the private rooms rather than to one of the tables in the main room. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Paige had come in with a girl. There was nothing unusual about that. The rules permitted box holders to bring one or two people with them. Some businessmen liked to have their secretaries with them to take dictation; attorneys often needed a witness while examining documents. It was also not unusual when Paige, in the company of the girl, asked to take his box into one of the private rooms. Those were the rooms Mr. Billings had maintained so carefully, replacing the ever-so-slightly worn carpeting with a deep pile in dubonnet, making certain that the cleaning woman polished the simple but elegant tables to a high shine every morning.

Mr. Billings began to regret that he had chosen such deep pile. "What made you think anything unusual was occurring?" he asked Shaughnessy.

"Well, the first time he used a room, Mr. Paige says to me, when I was giving him back his key at the desk, something like, 'Just a quickie,'" Shaughnessy said. "I didn't think much about it then. I mean, he could have been talking about a quick look at some papers or something. But I got to thinking. Because this girl he was with was really, uh, you know, built. Perkins was on the door and he was just staring at her. Like he was a statue. When they left, Mr. Paige had to tap Perkins on the shoulder before he woke up enough to let them out. Then, the next time, Mr. Paige said it again--about the quickie. And this girl was kind of, you know, adjusting herself. Putting on lipstick and all. And this time, Mr. Paige says to me, 'Just a noontime quickie.' And I got to thinking: I never heard of anybody looking over some client's will or something and calling it a noontime quickie."

"It still could have had some harmless meaning," Mr. Billings said.

"That's what I thought, sir," Shaughnessy went on. "But then, the next time they come out--which was the very next day, because all of a sudden, Mr. Paige is finding a lot more reasons to look in his safe-deposit box--the next time they come out, this girl looks like she's really been through it. And he says to me----Just a minute, I got it noted down here." Shaughnessy withdrew a piece of paper from his pocket. "He says to me this time, 'Well, they say some are nighters and some are nooners and some are any-old-timers.'"

Hope fled from Mr. Billings.

• • •

At home that evening, Mr. Billings sat at the desk in his study with a single sheet of white typing paper in front of him. The paper was folded in quarters--the first step in the IWAC system of objective analysis he had learned in his management course. At the top of each quarter page, Mr. Billings wrote a question whose first word started with a letter in the system's title: Is the analyst objective? What is the dollar factor? Are other executives involved? Can action be taken? IWAC. Mr. Billings felt that he was objective. He was certainly no prude, he thought, although he agreed with his wife that there was no place, including the marital bed, where dignity was not called for. He wrote, "Yes, of course" in the first quarter page and went on to consider the dollar factor.

Renting a standard-sized box at the Manhattan Trust cost $15 a year--and that was the first figure Mr. Billings wrote on the quarter page devoted to the dollar factor. Then he nearly filled the rest of the space with figures. He stared soberly at the results: If the private rooms at the Fifth Avenue branch were considered hotel space and used as that, say, every other working day, the cost was approximately 12 cents per use. In terms of the dollar factor, they might well be fornicating in the safe-deposit rooms.

The two remaining questions were not difficult to answer. Obviously, no other executives were involved and none could be permitted to learn about what might be happening in Mr. Billings' area. Obviously, no action could be taken right away. Until Mr. Billings learned for certain what was going on, he could hardly challenge Bremerton Paige. The IWAC analysis clearly pointed to further study--which, in Mr. Billings' experience, happened to be what IWAC analyses always pointed to. Mr. Billings decided that he would arrange to be summoned the next time Bremerton Paige disappeared into one of the private rooms with a girl.

That turned out to be the following day. Shortly after noon, Shaughnessy pressed the special buzzer next to the alarm--the buzzer that sounded in Mr. Billings' private office--and Mr. Billings hurried into the main safe-deposit room. Shaughnessy and Perkins were alone--their eyes fastened on the door to one of the private rooms. Mr. Billings stood silently next to Shaughnessy. It seemed to be taking a long time. He considered trying to creep close to the door of the private room to listen for suspicious noises, but then he remembered that, as an added privacy measure, the rooms had been soundproofed, even though the loudest noise inside was usually the sound of scissors clipping coupons.

Finally, Bremerton Paige emerged, idly putting in one of his cuff links. The blonde with him, Mr. Billings instantly realized, must have been the blonde who had turned Perkins into a statue on the previous visit. She seemed to be bursting out of her dress everywhere it touched her; Mr. Billings didn't see how the material could possibly hold together all the way down the hall to the sign-out desk. She was clutching Paige's arm tightly, occasionally whispering in his ear. Mr. Billings noticed that her hair was in slight disarray.

When they reached the desk, Paige put the box down, signed out and started toward the door, where Perkins had been resculpted into Man Staring. Then the blonde whispered something into Paige's ear and he began to laugh. Turning to Shaughnessy and Mr. Billings, he said, "LuVerne here has a suggestion about my safe-deposit box. She says I should keep a safety in it, in case I want to make a deposit." LuVerne started giggling, Paige managed to get Perkins' attention by clapping loudly several times and they left. They returned the next six workdays in a row.

After the seventh visit, Mr. Billings sat down at his desk and tried to make a list of what was known about the situation. But he couldn't concentrate. IWAC no longer seemed relevant to a problem that included a girl whose contact with the material of her dress defied every rule of textile stress. He thought about LuVerne for a while. (He had begun to call her by name in his thoughts.) He tried to consider her as one element in the problem, but soon he was imagining her lying on the deep dubonnet pile in the private rooms. The sound of the buzzer startled him.

"You mean he's back?" Mr. Billings said when he joined Shaughnessy at the desk in the safe-deposit room. "He just left an hour ago."

"He said something like, 'Practice makes perfect,'" Shaughnessy said, shaking his head in admiration. At the door, Perkins was staring out into space, a half-smile on his face.

In 15 minutes, Paige reappeared from the private room. The girl with him was not LuVerne but a tall, slim girl who was wearing a dress that looked like a T-shirt that had shrunk in the wash. Mr. Billings realized that his first reaction to her was not that she was another element to be considered in the problem but that she certainly was not wearing any underwear. The girl was wrapped around Paige's arm and when he extricated himself to sign out, she absent-mindedly wrapped herself around Mr. Billings' arm instead--as if one support had been pulled away and she had routinely grabbed for another.

"Oh, sorry," Paige said when he noticed the girl wrapped around a blushing Mr. Billings. Paige's tone was like that of a mother in a grocery store who has just noticed her child bruising the tomatoes and is apologizing as she searches for the right brand of soap powder. He wrapped the girl's arm around his own, adjusted her once and walked to the door.

Mr. Billings wiped his face with a handkerchief. Shaughnessy said, "Jesus H. Christ." Perkins, again struck dumb, had to be shaken by the lapels before he could manage to unlock the door.

"Well, see you tomorrow," Paige said from the doorway. "Samantha here and a couple of other girls are joining me tomorrow. They'd like to go over a few things."

Samantha whispered in Paige's ear. "Samantha corrected me," he said, smiling. "She says they'd like to go over as many things as possible."

• • •

That night, Mr. Billings had trouble sleeping. What was to be done? There was little doubt in his mind that they were fornicating in the safe-deposit rooms. In fact, his mind was constantly filled with pictures of their orgies. But Bremerton Paige had never explicitly acknowledged what was going on. How could he be approached? It wasn't possible just to walk up and say, "Excuse me, sir, do you happen to be fornicating in the safe-deposit rooms?" What if Paige admitted it? After all, he didn't seem at all secretive. In fact, he seemed to flaunt his affairs. A sexual show-off, probably. And if he admitted it, could Mr. Billings point to some rule against private sexual intercourse during banking hours, on bank property? Not really; no one at Manhattan Trust had foreseen the need for one. But what if the word got around? How many people would leap at the chance of a 12-cent nooner? Mr. Billings could envision dozens of couples lined up, waiting to sign in--Perkins staring dumbly at the women, Shaughnessy frantically trying to get one couple out so another could have its turn. Couples! Paige had talked about coming in with three girls. Pretty soon, people would be strolling in with tattooed men and one-armed Turks and farm animals. What would Paige and the three girls do in there? Mr. Billings thought about that for the rest of the night.

The next day, shortly after noon, Shaughnessy hardly had his finger on the buzzer before Mr. Billings appeared in the main room. Paige was, indeed, there, and so were Samantha and LuVerne and a redhead who was so staggering that LuVerne, standing beside her, testing the strength of some DuPont polyester, was made to look almost demure. The redhead, who was at least six feet tall, was wearing a see-through blouse and an amber-leather midiskirt.

"Hi, there," Paige said cheerfully. Then, as he started to sign the required slip, he noticed that Samantha was draped around his writing arm. "Oh, do you mind holding this for a minute?" he asked Mr. Billings, unwrapping Samantha and draping her around Mr. Billings. "Thanks."

"Not at all," Mr. Billings mumbled. "Always glad to be of service."

When the form had been completed and the box removed from the vault, Paige reclaimed Samantha and started for a private room. Then he stopped and said to Mr. Billings, "It might be helpful to have a bank official in there while we go over a few things."

Mr. Billings was silent for a few moments. He looked at LuVerne and Samantha and the redhead. "Well," he finally said, "always glad to be of service."

"Dandy," Paige said, transferring Samantha back to Mr. Billings.

Then the redhead leaned down and whispered something in Paige's ear. Paige turned to Shaughnessy and said, "Join us?"

Shaughnessy turned to Mr. Billings, but Mr. Billings seemed oblivious of everything except visions conjured up by what Samantha was whispering in his ear. "Jesus H. Christ," Shaughnessy said and joined the group.

The redhead leaned down to whisper again and Paige said, "She says that if the other man comes along, too, we might be able to go over things in a more interesting way."

"Well, I don't know about that," Shaughnessy said. He had more or less taken charge, since Mr. Billings no longer seemed to be acting his old executive self.

The redhead whispered to Paige once more and Paige shook his head in regret. "That's a shame," he said. "She says otherwise it wouldn't be interesting enough. She's heard there might be a very swinging group at New York Commercial Trust down the street."

"C'mon, Perkins," Shaughnessy said.

• • •

When everyone was inside the private room, the redhead started whispering in Paige's ear again. "She thinks you can't guess what's under that midiskirt of hers," Paige said to Shaughnessy.

Shaughnessy was unable to reply.

"A submachine gun," Paige said.

Shaughnessy smiled hesitantly, as if wondering what submachine gun might mean in orgy slang.

Then the redhead reached under her midiskirt and withdrew a submachine gun.

"What do you do with that?" Shaughnessy said, still half smiling.

"Rob banks," Paige said. "Don't look so disappointed. You and Perkins still get to take off your clothes. We need them."

Shaughnessy and Perkins were forced to disrobe and their uniforms were put on by Paige and the redhead--who, with her hair under a male wig and her feet in Shaughnessy's highly polished black shoes, managed to look burly instead of sexy. From his briefcase, Paige withdrew handcuffs and used them to handcuff Mr. Billings and his staff to the simple but elegant table. He furnished silencer-equipped pistols for himself and the redhead. Then, leaving LuVerne and Samantha with the submachine gun and another pistol to guard those in the private room, he accompanied the redhead to the main room, where they politely signed in each of the afternoon visitors before escorting them to the same private room. There, the bank customers remained in handcuffs while their safe-deposit boxes were looted.

Mr. Billings still hadn't said anything, but there was a lot on his mind. He knew his career at the Manhattan Trust Company was over. He had been hood-winked. What surprised him was that he had less regret about losing his job than he had about missing the anticipated experience with Samantha and LuVerne and the redhead in the private room.

When Paige and the girls were ready to leave, Mr. Billings finally spoke. "I was just wondering," he said to Paige. "Were you really, uh, you know--in the rooms?"

"Well, an expenditure of twelve cents actually has an adjusted dollar-factor value of more like seven and a half cents if it also produces a useful byproduct," Paige said. "IWAC."

Then, with Samantha on one arm and the loot in the other, he walked out of the Manhattan Trust Company's Fifth Avenue branch.