MARCH 3, 2024 – (Cont.) I prepared meticulously for my interrogation, reviewing meticulously the record of my association with Keith from our very first encounter. I relied heavily on my daily journals covering the previous three years.
A few minutes in advance of the appointed time I made my way to the C-suite. It was a Friday afternoon and as the receptionist showed me the way down the broad interior boulevard to the president’s lair, I noticed a succession of darkened offices. Apparently, most of the “golf team” had cleared out early for the weekend.
Upon arrival at my destination, the receptionist left me with the president’s secretary, who offered me a plush chair in the waiting area just outside the gateway to his office. From this outer perimeter I could hear the bank’s affable leader guffawing with two equally congenial visitors. By what I could hear of their exchange the purpose of the meeting had been an appeal for a charitable donation—an appeal that had been granted, judging by the good cheer that emanated from the office.
Five minutes past my interview time, the secretary intervened briefly, then reappeared. “He’ll be right with you,” she told me.
A minute later, the solicitors—all smiles—exited, followed by the president, also smiling broadly . . . until he saw me.
We were acquainted on a superficial level. [Bob] was a glad-hander and a genuine one at that. He loved people, especially those who golfed, and when he strolled the corridors of the bank and surrounding skyways, he stopped every 10 strides to greet, chat, and joke with an acquaintance. His forte was charities. Given his extraordinary compensation over the years, he could afford to be generous, and who doesn’t love a generous donor? Based on what I’d observed of Bob in several small group meetings I’d attended with him over the previous couple of years, I doubted that his beneficence came with strings attached. His “hands-off” response to Keith’s record of grandiosity was evidence of Bob’s preference for cordiality over hard-nosed business decision-making.
If he was in his element with the preceding audience, he was decidedly uncomfortable with the business he had with me.
After greeting me perfunctorily, he directed me by extending his long arm toward his private office suite. As I entered the inner sanctum, he closed the double doors behind us, as if to confine a problem that we both knew couldn’t be ignored any longer.
He offered me a chair then took his place behind a desk the size of Rhode Island. Pulling a blank yellow tablet from the outer edge of Narraganset Bay to downtown Providence in front of him, he drew a pen from the holder, sighed heavily and said, “Okay, Eric, tell me everything you know about Keith.”
“Where would you like me to start?” I said.
“Jesus, I guess where things in your view started to go South.”
* * *
What flashed across my memory just then were the random determinants of my career to that stage, starting with a day nearly a decade earlier. (Cont.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
