Cash Burn by Michael Berrier Page A

his office, Jason stared into his computer monitor. The words of his e-mail glowed back at him beneath the reflected shine from his window.
    Scotty would never go for it. It was too much money for this borrower. Too thin on cash-flow coverage and collateral. But it would move Jason’s numbers. And it was a company with a respected name. He’d tried for their business himself half a dozen times before Billy got in. It would be a flagship account he could tout in the market—by itself it might slam the door on Vince.
    He wouldn’t take it to Scotty. This proposal could go without credit approval. It was against bank policy, but after the company accepted it—and at ten million on these terms, they would definitely accept it—he’d figure out how to get it through the bank’s approval process. He’d work Mark around Scotty if he had to. He’d hammer on the bank’s reputation for delivering on proposals without a bait and switch. He’d take on the loan committee himself. But he’d get it done. Even in a recession, you needed new business. That much in new loan outstandings would bump his totals to a level the home office had never known. The loan was aggressive enough that he could charge a higher premium for it, and its income would drive the entire division’s profitability into uncharted territory.
    Of course, it could all go wrong. Flushing a loan charge-off that big would not only tank his year, it would drive the whole bank into the red.
    He took another look at the spreadsheets. He could liquidate the company’s hard assets if it came to that—maybe get half the loan paid off that way.
    Who am I kidding?
    He might be able to get it down to five million, maybe four, but still that level of write-off would be brutal to swallow.
    It wouldn’t happen. He wouldn’t let it happen. He’d watch this one, he’d stay over Billy’s shoulder, and at the first sign of a problem, he’d make them find another bank.
    Jason gritted his teeth. It was too much dough for this company. Any sane banker would know that. The “greater fool” theory would never get him out of this one.
    He should take it to Scotty and talk it through, get some ideas, button it up.
    And probably lose the business.
    No, it was only a credit proposal. It wasn’t a commitment. These proposals were nothing close to a commitment. They had outs all over the boilerplate of their proposal letters, and if Scotty didn’t like the terms, Jason could always find an excuse in the due diligence process to change the terms of the final commitment.
    There are good deals in bad markets and bad deals in good markets. Scotty’s words.
    It could work out. It would. He would make sure of it. Even in a recession, there were winners.
    And losers.

12
    Flip lay curled on his side, hands clasped between his knees, brow wrenched tight, eyes closed against the afternoon sun streaming into the room around the protest of drawn drapes.
    The kid’s face played against his eyelids as if its image were tattooed there.
    The face was gray, swollen, and cut, with blood hardening on soft skin, the way it had looked behind the gas station. Headlights of a car passing on the street on the other side of the small building flashed across the kid’s face and cast it in sharper light for an instant.
    Flip rolled over on the bed, and the springs creaked like coffin hinges. The mattress stuck to his side in the hot, compacted air.
    He opened his eyes.
    It wasn’t his first killing. At least two others. And many more he’d left bleeding and unconscious. He played them out in his mind with a vague hope that remembering them would steel him from this haunting.
    The first was when he was seventeen. The second came after all that time in gladiator school turned him from a kid into a criminal.
    But this one, this boy, was somehow different.
    Flip sat up. He put his bare feet flat on the carpet. He looked fearfully around the room as if the walls might fold in on him any second. The