The Moneychangers [antikvár]

Long afterward, many would remember those two days in the first week of October with vividness and anguish.It was on Tuesday of that week that old Ben Rosselli, president of First Mercantile American Bank and grandson of the bank's founder, made an announcement startling and somberwhich reverberated through every segment of the bank and far beyond. And the next day, Wednesday, the bank's "flagship" downtown branch discovered the presence of a thiefbeginning a series of events which few could have foreseen, and ending in financial wreckage, human tragedy, and death.The bank president's announcement occurred without warning; remarkably, there were no advance leaks. Ben Rosselli had telephoned a few of his senior executives early in the morning, catching some at home at breakfast, others soon after their arrival at work. There were a few, too, who were not executives, simply longtime employees whom old Ben thought of as his friends.To each, the message was the same: Please be in the Headquarters Tower boardroom at 11 a.m.Now all except Ben were assembled in the boardroom, twenty or so, talking quietly in groups, waiting. All were standing; no one chose to be first to pull a chair back from the gleaming directors' table, longer than a squash court, which seated forty.A voice cut sharply across the talk. "Who authorized that?"Heads turned. Roscoe Heyward, executive vice-president and comptroller, had addressed a white-coated waiter3