Free Ride a Cockhorse by Raymond Kennedy Page B

would impress those working below. She pictured Connie McElligot staring stupidly before her, the alarm writ big on her face.
    â€œI would not have guessed, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, that you held such firm views on these matters. Is it your belief,” he inquired in a soft, musical voice, “that the Parish Bank is on the slippery slide?” Mr. Zabac smiled pleasantly, his furry eyebrows going up, as he seated himself once more behind his big shiny desk.
    She didn’t mince words. “You know what’s going on better than I do. There are some people here who ought to be fired.”
    Each time she expressed her hard line, Mr. Zabac’s features contorted, and he stared at her acutely.
    â€œI wouldn’t fire them all in one day,” she conceded. “You wouldn’t want a panic down there. But I’d certainly frighten them into getting some work done.”
    Truth was, in all her years at the bank, Mrs. Fitzgibbons had never once adjudged the staff of the Parish Bank to be anything but typical of a firm of its size and type, nor certainly did it occur to her that Mr. Zabac might himself have harbored some worries of this very sort. Her next remark was inspired. “When everyone,” she said, “is underperforming, no one notices it. How could they?” She waited with a frozen visage and set lips for Mr. Zabac to respond to that unanswerable conundrum before elaborating. “They all think they’re doing wonderfully well down there.”
    Two or three times, Mrs. Fitzgibbons had mouthed the expression “down there,” characterizing the workers toiling below as beings of a lesser dispensation than herself and Mr. Zabac. The soft colors and spaciousness of Louis Zabac’s daylit office, with its racing prints and luxurious cream-and-blue Chinese carpet, only further emboldened her. She could understand why the natty little chairman never invited any of his tasteless fellow employees to join him up here; she imagined Leonard Frye standing as limp as a dishrag in front of the boss’s big tulipwood desk, trembling in his shoes. As for herself, after only ten minutes in his company, she couldn’t have felt more comfortable.
    â€œI’d start with the tellers,” she said, “the two De Maria brothers. I’d let them go first thing.”
    Mr. Zabac, after gaping momentarily, nodded sadly, as he acknowledged the wisdom in Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s choices.
    â€œWe do have two or three tellers,” he confessed, “whose tardiness, errors, and resultant late hours are costly.”
    Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s confidence mounted apace. “I’d throw them both out.” She was tempted to call Mr. Zabac by his first name but thought better of it. “Incompetents like that spoil our good name.”
    â€œBoth of them?” said Mr. Zabac, unsure of himself.
    â€œIf you keep one, he’ll only be bitter over our axing the other one.”
    Mr. Zabac winced at the word axing but could not dispute the woman’s insight into the matter of sibling loyalty.
    Mrs. Fitzgibbons added to the increasingly violent mood of their discussion, saying, “They should be sacked today, at three o’clock.”
    The little chairman took a deep breath, then laid his two hands flat on the desk before him. He looked regretful. He loved his employees. “I’ve been very patient with the De Marias,” he said, “patient and forbearing. But when I asked you to come up here, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, it wasn’t to discuss firing people.”
    â€œI’m not suggesting a reign of terror,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons tossed out lightly, although, in truth, she would have liked nothing better than striking dread in the hearts of everyone in the place, “just some selective dismissals.”
    â€œAt the moment,” Mr. Zabac continued, recovering his smooth presidential manner, “while the home mortgage climate is robust enough in this