"It's public," she said. "It's on the government's website. Your bank was rated Needs to Improve two years ago. Your next exam is in the spring." She let that sit. "So you see, Mr. Whitfield, I'm not here to ask for a favor. I'm here to offer one. That's why generous is the wrong word. It's a deal. It's a good deal, for both of us. But it has conditions."
"Conditions," he repeated.
She ticked them off on her fingers, the way she had once ticked off bus rules on the first day of school.
"One. Every application that was turned down in those four tracts in the last three years gets reviewed again. Not refiled. Reviewed. With the guarantee behind it. Starting with those twenty-three." She nodded at the desk. "Two. Somebody from this bank goes to every house in person before a decision gets made. Not a drive-by appraiser in a car with the windows up. Somebody who walks in the door, and sits down at the kitchen table, and looks at the ceiling. Three. The fund has a relationship officer at this bank, one person, who handles every one of these files from start to finish, and I pick that person." She lowered her hand. "And four. If I find out, at any point, that the fund is being used to make the bank look good while the denials keep coming, I move every dollar of it to Bayou Federal the next morning, and I take this folder to the newspaper on my way."
"Bayou Federal," Grant said. He seemed to have caught on that name the way a sleeve catches on a nail. "With respect, Mrs. Arceneaux, a credit union that size couldn't — they don't have the capacity to —"
"They told me they'd find the capacity. Their board meets Thursday." She smiled again. "I came to you first because the letters came from you. That's the only reason. Not because you're the best bank in town. You're just the one that owes the most."
He sat back in his chair. She watched him try to arrange his face into something, and fail, and try again. He picked up the deposit slip and put it down. He picked up the pen and put it down.
"I think," he said at last, slowly, "that this is a conversation that should probably include our regional leadership. If that's all right with you. A deposit of this size, and a — a program structure like this, that's above my — I'd want to get Lorraine Thibodeaux on the phone. She's our regional president. I'm sure she'd want to meet you personally. Would you be able to wait? I could have someone bring you —" his eyes flickered, despite himself, to the folder with the green lollipop, buried somewhere under the letters — "I could have someone bring you a coffee. A real coffee. There's a place across the street —"