“If you’ll give me just a moment here, Skeeve,” he said, lunging out of his seat and heading for the door, “I’ll get the staff started while we fill out the necessary paperwork. We should be able to have some imprinted checks and one of our special, solid gold credit cards ready for you before you leave.”
“Hold it, Malcolm!”
Things were suddenly starting to move uncomfortably fast, and I wanted a bit of clarification before they went much further.
The banker stopped as if he had hit the end of an invisible leash.
“Yes?”
“As you can probably tell, I’m not as at home with financial terms as I should be. Would you mind defining ‘ adequate financial support’ to me . . . in layman’ s terms?”
The smile vanished as he licked his lips nervously. “Well,” he said, “we should be able to cover your day-to day needs, but if you were to require substantial backing . . .say, over seven figures, we’d probably appreciate a day’s warning.”
Seven figures! He was saying the bank was ready to supply me with up to ten million . . . more if I gave them warning. I resolved that when I got back to the office, I was going to have to have Bunny go over our exact financial condition with me!
Chapter Sixteen:
“You can judge the success of a man by his bodyguards!”
—PRINCE
EDVIK WAS VISIBLY impressed by my success with the bank. That was all right. I was impressed, too.
“Gee! A solid gold card! I’ve heard about those, but I’ve never really seen one before,” he exclaimed as I proudly displayed my prize. “Not bad for a guy who didn’t think the bankers would want to even talk to him.”