“Why don’t you come here, Frade?” Nestor had said on the telephone. He had a Boston accent. More precisely a Harvard Boston banker accent. “I’ll introduce you to the people who will be handling your account. And then we’ll have lunch. Have you eaten in the Plaza?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“El Grill, on the ground floor, is the oldest restaurant in Buenos Aires. Everybody who visits Buenos Aires should eat there at least once.”
Is that what I’m doing, “visiting Buenos Aires”?
“Sounds fine.”
“Come by the office—I’m on the third floor—say about noon?”
“Right.”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
Aware that he was doing it because he was thinking about Martha, Clete pulled on a pair of boots Martha had had made to his measure by a bootmaker in Matamoros. They had walking rather than riding heels, and calfskin uppers which took a high shine. Dress-up boots, Martha had called them. So he wouldn’t look like a saddle-bum when she made him take her to church.
Ramón drove him from Belgrano to the Banco de Boston Building in Florida in the Jaguar Saloon; and it turned out to be a disappointing car. It had a marvelous name, of course—it was hard to think of a Ford Saloon, or even a Lincoln Saloon, without smiling—and the body was beautiful, inside and out. But it didn’t have any power. Ramón had to row it along with the gearshift.
I’ll be glad when the Buick gets here.
The Banco de Boston Building, and the area around it, reminded Clete of Wall Street in New York City—1890s elegant, heavy, the facade elaborately decorated. The bronze doors of the main entrance, on a corner, were enormous; the entrance itself was floored and flanked with marble. He noticed, too, a brass plate mounted on the wall reading “Embajada
de los Estados Unidos de America,” with an arrow pointing to a doorway. Clete gave in to the impulse, took several steps backward on the sidewalk, and looked up. There it was, several floors above him, the American flag hanging limply from a pole.
He entered the bank and asked directions to Nestor’s office.
Nestor looked the way he sounded on the telephone. He was a slim man, about forty, wearing a nearly black gray suit, a button-down collar shirt, and a maroon Harvard tie.
“Well, Mr. Frade,” he said, flashing not much of a smile and offering a somewhat clammy hand. But, surprising Clete, he did his best to give him a painfully hard handshake. “I’m very happy to meet you. Had any trouble finding the place?”
“None at all, thank you.”
“Can I offer you a cup of coffee? Or would you rather we tend to our business and then feed the hungry man?”
“No coffee, thank you,” Clete said.
Nestor took a small leather card case from his jacket pocket, and peeled one off.
“My card. Feel free to call me at any time,” he said.
“Thank you,” Clete said.
Nestor took his arm and led him out of the office and back down to the main floor, where he introduced him to two Argentineans and two Americans, too low in the bank hierarchy to rate more than a desk and a chair for visitors in a long row of identical desk sets.
Each time he introduced Clete the same way:
“This is Mr. Frade, Mr. Cletus Howell Frade, of Howell Petroleum.”
One of the Americans was David Ettinger, who gave no sign he had ever seen Clete before.
“Mr. Ettinger has just come down here himself,” Nestor said. “He was in our New York office.”
At the desk of one of the Argentineans, Clete was given a signature card to sign. He was then informed it would be a week or two before checks with his name printed thereon would be available; in the meantime, he should feel free to use counter checks; “the tellers will be alerted to the situation.” He was handed a pad of a dozen counter checks, which were twice the size of an American check.
As they started out of the bank, Nestor touched his arm, and whispering as if he were about to impart a deep secret, asked, “I presume you’re all right for ready cash? Or should I arrange something before we leave?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” Clete said.