The Moneychangers 3 страница

Edwina nodded. The same question had already occurred to her.

Without being obvious, Edwina studied the young woman. She was small, slight, dark, not really pretty but provocative in an elfin way. She looked Puerto Rican, which she was, and had a pronounced accent. She had said little so far, responding only briefly when spoken to.

It was hard to be sure just what Juanita Nunez's attitude was. It was certainly not co-operative, at least outwardly, Edwina thought, and the girl had volunteered no information other than her original statement. Since they started, the teller's facial expression had seemed either sulky or hostile. Occasionally her attention wandered, as if she were bored and regarded the proceedings as a waste of time. But she was nervous? too, and betrayed it by her clasped hands and continuous turning of a thin gold wedding band.

Edwina D'Orsey knew, because she had glanced at an employment record on her desk, that Juanita Nunez was twenty-five, married but separated, with a three-year-old child. She had worked for First Mercantile American for almost two years, all of that time in her present job. What wasn't in the employment record, but Edwina remembered hearing, was that the Nunez girl supported her child alone and had been, perhaps still was, in financial difficulties because of debts left by the husband who deserted her.

Despite his doubts that Mrs. Nunez could possibly know how much money was missing, Tottenhoe continued, he had relieved her from duty at the counter, after which she was immediately "locked up with her cash."

Being "locked up" was actually a protection for the employee concerned and was also standard procedure in a problem of this kind. It simply meant that the teller was placed alone in a small, closed office, along with her cash box and a calculator, and told to balance all transactions for the day. Tottenhoe waited outside.

Soon afterward she carted the operations officer in. Her cash did not balance, she informed him. It was six thousand dollars short.

Tottenhoe summoned Miles Eastin and together they ran a second check while Juanita Nunez watched. They found her report to be correct. Without doubt there was cash missing; and precisely the amount she had stated all along. It was then that Tottenhoe had telephoned Edwina.

"That brings us back," Edwina said, "to where we started. Have any fresh ideas occurred to anyone?"

Miles Eastin volunteered, "I'd like to ask Juanita some more questions if she doesn't mind." Edwina nodded.

"Think carefully about this, Juanita," Eastin said. "At any time today did you make a TX with any other teller?"

As all of them knew, a TX was a teller's exchange. A teller on duty would often run short of bills or coins of one denomination and if it happened at a busy time, rather than make a trip to the cash vault, tellers helped each other by "buying" or "selling" cash. A TX form was used to keep a record. But occasionally, through haste or carelessness, mistakes were made, so that at the end of the business day one teller would be short on cash, the other long. It would be hard to believe, though, that such a difference could be as large as six thousand dollars. "No," the teller said. "No exchanges. Not today." Miles Eastin persisted, "Were you aware of anyone else on the staff, at any time today, being near your cash so they could have taken some?" "No."

"When you first came to me, Juanita," Eastin said, "and told me you thought there was some money gone, how long before that had you known about it?" "A few minutes."

Edwina interjected, "How long was that after your lunch break, Mrs. Nunez?"

The girl hesitated, seeming less sure of herself. "Maybe twenty minutes."

"Let's talk about before you went to lunch," Edwina said. "Do you think the money was missing then?" Juanita Nunez shook her head negatively. "How can you be sure?" "I know."

The unhelpful, monosyllabic answers were becoming irritating to Edwina. And the sulky hostility which she sensed earlier seemed more pronounced.

Tottenhoe repeated the crucial question. "After lunch, why were you certain not only that money was missing, but exactly how much?" The young woman's small face set defiantly. "I knew" There was a disbelieving silence.

"Do you think that some time during the day you could have paid six thousand dollars out to a customer in error?" "No."

Miles Eastin asked, "When you left your teller's position before you went to lunch, Juanita, you took your cash drawer to the cash vault, dosed the combination lock and left it there. Right?" "Yes." "Are you sure you locked it?" The girl nodded positively. "Was the operations officer's lock closed?" "No, left open."

That, too, was normal. Once the operations officer's combination had been set to "open" each morning, it was usual to leave it that way through the remainder of the day.

"But when you came back from lunch your cash drawer was still in the vault, still locked?" `'Yes."

"Does anyone else know your combination? Have you ever given it to anyone?" "No."

For a moment the questioning stopped. The others around the desk, Edwina suspected, were reviewing mentally the branch's cash vault procedures.

The cash drawer which Miles Eastin had referred to was actually a portable strongbox on an elevated stand with wheels, light enough to be pushed around easily. Some banks called it a cash truck. Every teller had one assigned and the same cash drawer or truck, conspicuously numbered, was used normally by the same individual. A few spares were available for special use. Miles Eastin had been using one today.

All tellers' cash trucks were checked in and out of the cash vault by a senior vault teller who kept a record of their removal and return. It was impossible to take a cash unit in or out without the vault teller's scrutiny or to remove someone else's, deliberately or in error. During nights-and weekends the massive cash vault was sealed tighter than a Pharaoh's tomb.

Each cash truck had two tamperproof combination locks. One of these was set by the teller personally, the other by the operations officer or assistant. Thus, when a cash unit was opened each morning it was in the presence of two people the teller and an operations officer.

Tellers were told to memorize their combinations ant not to confide them to anyone else, though a combination could be changed any time a teller wished. The only written record of a teller's combination was in a sealed and double-signed envelope which was kept with others again in double custody in a safe deposit box. The seal on the envelope was only broken in event of a teller's death, illness, or leaving the bank's employ.

By all these means, only the active user of any cash drawer knew the combination which would open it and tellers, as well as the bank, were protected against theft.

A further feature of the sophisticated cash drawer was a built-in alarm system. When rolled into place at any teller's position at a counter, an electrical connection linked each cash unit with an interbank communications network. A warning trigger was hidden within the drawer beneath an innocuous appearing pile of bills, known as "bait money."

Tellers had instructions never to use the bait money for normal transactions, but in event of a holdup to hand over this money first. Simply removing the bills released a silent plunger switch. This, in turn, alerted bank security staff and police, who were usually on the scene in minutes; it also activated hidden cameras overhead. Serial numbers of the bait money were on record for use as evidence later.

Edwina asked Tottenhoe, "Was the bait money among the missing six thousand dollars?"

"No," the operations officer said. "The bait money was intact. I checked."

She reflected: So there was no hope of tracing anything that way.

Once more Miles Eastin addressed the teller. "Juanita, is there any way you can think of that anyone, anyone at all, could have taken the money out of your cash drawerT' "No," Juanita Nunez said.

Watching closely as the girl answered, Edwina thought she detected fear. Well, if so, there was good reason because no bank would give up easily where a loss of this magnitude was involved.

Edwina no longer had doubts about what had happened to the missing money. The Nunez girl had stolen it. No other explanation was possible. The difficulty was to find out how?

One likely way was for Juanita Nunez to have passed it over the counter to an accomplice. No one would have noticed. During an ordinarily busy day it would have seemed like any routine cash withdrawal. Alternatively, the girl could have concealed the money and carried it from the bank during her lunch break, though in that case the risk would have been greater.

One thing Nunez must have been aware of was that she would lose her job, whether it was proven she had stolen the money or not. True, bank tellers were allowed occasional cash discrepancies; such errors were normal and expected. In the course of a year, eight "overs" or "unders" was average for most tellers and, provided each error was no larger than twenty-five dollars, usually nothing was said. But no one who experienced a major cash shortage kept her job, and tellers knew it.

Of course, Juanita Nunez could have taken this into account, deciding that an immediate six thousand dollars was worth the loss of her job, even though she might have difficulty getting another. Either way, Edwina was sorry for the girl. Obviously she must have been desperate. Perhaps her need had to do with her child.

"I don't believe there's any more we can do at this point," Edwina told the group. "I'll have to advise head office. They'll take over the investigation."

As the three got up, she added, "Mrs. Nunez, please stay." The girl resumed her seat.

When the others were out of hearing, Edwina said with deliberate informality, "Juanita, I thought this might be a moment for us to talk frankly to each other, perhaps as friends." Edwina had banished her earlier impatience. She was aware of the girl's dark eyes fixed intently on her own.

"I'm sure that two things must have occurred to you. First, there's going to be a thorough investigation into this and the FBI will be involved because we're a federally insured bank. Second, there is no way that suspicion cannot fall on you." Edwina paused. "I'm being open with you about this. You understand?" "I understand. But I did not take any money."

Edwina observed that the young woman was still turning her wedding ring nervously.

Now Edwina chose her words carefully, aware she must be cautious in avoiding a direct accusation which might rebound in legal trouble for the bank later.

"However long the investigation takes, Juanita, it's almost certain the truth will come out, if for no other reason than that it usually does. Investigators are thorough. They're also experienced. They do not give up."

The girl repeated, more emphatically, "I did not take the money."

"I haven't said you did. But I do want to say that if by any chance you know something more than you have said already, now is the time to speak out, to tell me while we're talking quietly here. After this there will be no other chances. It will be too late."

Juanita Nunez seemed about to speak again. Edwina raised a hand. "No, hear me out. I'll make this promise. If the money were returned to the bank, let's say no later than tomorrow, there would be no legal action, no prosecution. In fairness, I'll have to say that whoever took the money could no longer work here. But nothing else would happen. I guarantee it. Juanita, do you have anything to tell me?"

"No, no, no! I lo jure For mi hija!" The girl's eyes blazed, her face came alive in anger. "I tell you I did not take any money, now or ever." Edwina sighed.

"All right, that's all for now. But please do not leave the bank without checking with me first."

Juanita Nunez appeared on the verge of another heated reply. Instead, with a slight shrug, she rose and turned away.

From her elevated desk, Edwina surveyed the activity around her; it was her own small world, her personal responsibility. The day's branch transactions were still being balanced and recorded, though a preliminary check had shown that no teller as was originally hoped had a six-thousand-dollar overage.

Sounds were muted in the modern building: in low key, voices buzzed, papers rustled, coinage jingled, calculators clicked. She watched it all briefly, reminding herself that for two reasons this was a week she would remember. Then, knowing what must be done, she lifted a telephone and dialed an internal number. A woman's voice answered. "Security department." "Mr. Wainwright, please," Edwina said.

Nolan Wainwright had found it hard, since yesterday, to concentrate on normal work within the bank.

The chief of security had been deeply affected by Tuesday morning's session in the boardroom, not least because, over a decade, he and Ben Rosselli had achieved both friendship and mutual respect. It had not always been that way.

Yesterday, returning from the tower executive floor to his own more modest office which looked out onto a light well, Wainwright-had told his secretary not to disturb him for a while. Then he had sat at his desk, sad, brooding, reaching back in memory to the time of ho own first dash with Ben Rosselli's will.

It was ten years earlier. Nolan Wainwright was the newly appointed police chief of a small upstate town. Before that he had been a lieutenant of detectives on a big city force, with an outstanding record. He had the ability for a chief's job and, in the climate of the times, it probably helped his candidacy that he was black.

Soon after the new chief's appointment, Ben Rosselli drove through the outskirts of the little town and was clocked at 80 mph A police patrolman of the local force handed him a ticket with a summons to traffic court.

Perhaps because his life was conservative in other ways, Ben Rosselli always loved fast cars and drove them as their designers intended with his right foot near the floor.

A speeding summons was routine. Back at First Mercantile American Headquarters he sent it, as usual, to the bank's security department with instructions to have it fixed. For the state's most powerful man of money, many things could be filed and often were.

The summons was dispatched by courier next day to the FMA branch manager in the town where it was issued. It so happened that the branch manager was also a local councilman and he had been influential in Nolan Wainwright's appointment as chief of police.

The bank manager-councilman dropped over to police headquarters to have the traffic summons withdrawn. He was amiable. Nolan Wainwright was adamant.

Less amiably, the councilman pointed out to Wainwright that he was new to the community, needed friends, and that non-co-operation was not the way to recruit them. Wainwright still declined to do anything about the summons.

The councilman put on his banker's hat and reminded the police chief of his personal application to First Mercantile American Bank for a home mortgage loan which would make it possible to bring Wainwright's wife and family to the town. Mr. Rosselli, the branch manager added somewhat needlessly, was president of FMA.

Nolan Wainwright said he could see no relationship between a loan application and a traffic summons.

In due course Mr. Rosselli for whom counsel appeared in court, was fined heavily for reckless driving and awarded three demerit points, to be recorded on his license. He was exceedingly angry.

Also in due course the mortgage application of Nolan Wainwright was turned down by First Mercantile American Bank.

Less than a week later Wainwright presented himself in Rosselli's office on the 36th floor of FMA Headquarters Tower, taking advantage of the accessibility on which the bank president prided himself.

When he learned who his visitor was, Ben Rosselli was surprised that he was black. No one had mentioned that. Not that it made any difference to the banker's still simmering wrath at the ignominious notation on his driving record the first of a lifetime. Wainwright spoke coolly. To his credit, Ben Rosselli

had known nothing of the police chief's mortgage loan application or its rejection; such matters were conducted at a lower level than his own. But he smelled the odor of injustice and sent, there and then, for the loan file which he reviewed while Nolan Wainwright waited.

"As a matter of interest," Ben Rosselli said when he had finished reading, "if we don't make this loan what do you intend to do?"

Wainwright's answer now was cold. "fight. I'll hire a lawyer and we'll go to the Civil Rights Commission for a start. If we don't succeed there, whatever else can be done to cause you trouble, that I'll do."

It was obvious he meant it and the banker snapped, "I don't respond to threats."

"I'm not making threats. You asked me a question and I answered it."

Ben Rosselli hesitated, then scribbled a signature in the file. He said, unsmiling, "The application is approved."

Before Wainwright left, the banker asked him, "What happens now if I get caught speeding in your town?"

"We'll throw the book at you. If it's another reckless driving charge, you'll probably be in jail."

Watching the policeman:go, Ben Rosselli had the thought, which he would confide to Wainwright years later: You self-righteous s.o.b.! One day I'll get you. He never had in that sense. But in another, he did.

Two years later when the bank was seeking a top security executive who would be as the head of Personnel expressed it "tenaciously strong and totally incorruptible," Ben Rosselli stated, "I know of such a man."

Soon after, an offer was made to Nolan Wainwright, a contract signed, and Wainwright came to work for FMA.

Prom then on, Ben Rosselli and Wainwright had never clashed. The new head of Security did his job efficiently and added to his understanding of it by taking night school courses in banking theory. Rosselli, for his part, never asked Wainwright to breach his rigid code of ethics and the banker got his speeding tickets fixed elsewhere rather than through Security, believing Wainwright never knew, though usually he did. All the while the friendshipbetween the two grew until, after the death of Ben Rosselli's wife, Wainwright frequently would eat dinner with the old man and afterwards they would play chess into the night.

In a way it had been a consolation for Wainwright, too; for his own marriage had ended in divorce soon after he went to work for FMA. His new responsibilities, and the sessions with old Ben, helped fill the gap.

They talked at such times about personal beliefs, influencing each other in ways they realized and in others of which neither was aware. And it was Wainwright though only the two of them ever knew it who helped persuade the bank president to employ his personal prestige and FMA's money in helping the Forum East development in that neglected city area where Wainwright had been born and spent his adolescent years.

Thus, like many others in the bank, Nolan Wainwright had his private memories of Ben Rosselli and his private sorrow.

Today, his mood of depression had persisted, and after a morning during which he had stayed mostly at his desk, avoiding people whom he did not need to see, Wainwright left for lunch alone. He went to a small cafe on the other side of town which he favored sometimes when he wanted to feel briefly free from FMA and its affairs. He returned in time to keep an appointment with Vandervoort.

The locale of their meeting was the bank's Keycharge credit-card division, housed in the Headquarters Tower.

The Keycharge bank card system had been pioneered by First Mercantile American and now was operated jointly with a strong group of other banks in the U.S., Canada, and overseas. In size, Keycharge ranked immediately after BankAmericard and MasterCharge. Alex Vandervoort, within FMA, had over-all responsibility for the division.

Vandervoort was early and, when Nolan Wainwright arrived, was already in the Keycharge authorization center watching operations. The bank security chief joined him.

"I always like to see this," Alex said. "Best free show in town."

In a large, auditorium-like room, dimly lighted and with acoustic walls and ceilings to deaden sound, some fifty operators predominantly women were seated at a battery of consoles. Each console comprised a cathode ray tube, similar to a TV screen, with a keyboard beneath.

It was here that Keycharge cardholders were given or refused credit.

When a Keycharge card was presented anywhere in payment for goods or services, the place of business could accept the card without question if the amount involved was below an agreed floor limit. The limit varied, but was usually between twenty-five and fifty dollars. For a larger purchase, authorization was needed, though it took only seconds to obtain.

Calls poured into the authorization center twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They came from every U.S. state and Canadian province, while a row of chattering Telex machines brought queries from thirty foreign countries including some in the Russian-Communist orbit. Whereas builders of the British Empire once cheered proudly for the "red, white, and blue," creators of the Keycharge economic empire rooted with equal fervor for the "blue, green, and gold" international colors of the Keycharge card. The approval procedures moved at jet speed.

Wherever they were, merchants and others dialed directly through WATS lines to the Keycharge nerve center in PMA Headquarters Tower. Automatically, each call was routed to a free operator whose first words were, "What is your merchant number?"

As the answer was given, the operator typed the figures, which appeared simultaneously on the cathode ray screen; Next was the card number and amount of credit being sought, this too typed and displayed.

The operator pressed a key, feeding the information to a computer which instantly signaled "ACCEPTED" or "DECLINED." The first meant that credit was good and the purchase approved, the second that the cardholder was delinquent and credit had been cut off. Since credit rules were lenient, with banks in the system wanting to lend money, acceptances by far outnumbered turndowns. The operator informed the merchant, the computer meanwhile recording the transaction. On a normal day fifteen thousand calls came in.

Both Alex Vandervoort and Nolan Wainwright had accepted headsets so they could listen to exchanges between callers and operators.

The security chief touched Alex's arm and pointed, then changed headset plugs for both of them. The console Wainwright indicated was carrying a flashing message from the computer "STOLEN CARD."

The operator, speaking calmly and as trained, answered, "The card presented to you has been reported as stolen. If possible, detain the person presenting it and call your local police. Retain the card. Keycharge will pay you thirty dollars reward for its return."

They could hear a whispered colloquy, then a voice announced, "The bastard just ran out of my store. But I grabbed the mother's plastic. I'll mail it in."

The storekeeper sounded pleased at the prospect of an easy thirty dollars. For the Keycharge system it was also a good deal since the card, left in circulation, could have been used fraudulently for a much greater total amount.

Wainwright removed his headset; so did Alex Vandervoort. "It works well," Wainwright said, "when we get the information and can program the computer. Unfortunately most of the defrauding happens before a missing card's reported." "But we still get a warning of excessive purchasing?"

"Right. Ten purchases in a day and the computer alerts us."

Few cardholders, as both men were aware, ever made more than six or eight purchases during a single day. Thus a card could be listed as "PROBABLY FRAUDULENT' even though the true owner might be unaware of its loss.

Despite all warning systems, however, a lost or stolen Keycharge card, if used cagily, was still good for twenty thousand dollars' worth of fraudulent purchasing in the week or so during which most stolen cards stayed unreported. Airline tickets for long-distance flights were favorite buys by credit-card thieves; so were cases of liquor. Both were then resold at bargain prices. Another ploy was to rent a car preferably an expensive one Using a stolen or counterfeit credit card. The car was driven to another city where it received new license plates and forged registration papers, and was then sold or exported. The rental agency never saw car or customer again. One more gimmick was to buy jewelry in Europe on a fraudulent credit card backed up by a forged passport, then smuggle the jewelry into the U.S. for resale. In all such instances the credit-card company bore the eventual loss.

As both Vandervoort and Wainwright knew, there were devices used by criminals to decide whether a credit card in their possession could be used again, or if it was "hot." A favorite was to pay a headwaiter twenty-five dollars to check a card out. He could get the answer easily by consulting a weekly confidential "warning list" issued by the credit-card company to merchants and restaurants. If the card was unreported as hot, it was used for a further round of buying.

"We've been losing a helluva lot of money through fraud lately," Nolan Wainwright said. "Much more than usual. It's one of the reasons I wanted to talk."

They moved into a Keycharge security office which Wainwright had arranged to use this afternoon. He closed the door. The two men were much in contrast physically

Vandervoort, fair, chunky, non-athletic, with a touch of flab; Wainwright, black, tall, trim, hard, and muscular. Their personalities differed, too, though their relationship was good.

"This is a contest without a prize," Nolan Wainwright told the executive vice-president. He placed on the office desk eight plastic Keycharge credit cards, snapping them down like a poker dealer, one by one.

"Four of those credit cards are counterfeit," the security chief announced. "Can you separate the good ones from the bad?" "Certainly. It's easy. The counterfeits always use different typefaces for embossing the cardholder's name and…" Vandervoort stopped, peering down at the group of cards. "By God! These don't. The typeface is the same on every card."

"Almost the same. If you know what to look for, you can detect slight divergences with a magnifier." Wainwright produced one. Dividing the cards into two groups, he pointed to variations between the embossing on the four genuine cards and the others.

Vandervoort said, "I see the difference, though I wouldn't have without the glass. How do the counterfeits look under ultraviolet?" "Exactly the same as real ones." "That's bad."

Several months earlier, following an example set by American Express, a hidden insignia had been imprinted on the face of all authentic Keycharge credit cards. It became visible only under ultraviolet light. The intention was to provide a quick, simple check of any card's genuineness. Now that safeguard, too, had been outflanked.

"It's bad, all right," Nolan Wainwright agreed. "And these are only samples. I've four dozen more, intercepted after they'd been used successfully in retail outlets, restaurants, for airline tickets, liquor, other things. And all of them are the best counterfeits which have ever shown up." "Arrests?"

"None so far. When people sense a phony card is being queried they walk out of a store, away from an airline counter, or whatever, just as happened a few minutes ago." He motioned toward the authorization room. "Besides, even when we do arrest some users it doesn't follow we'll be near the source of the cards; usually they're sold and resold carefully enough to cover a trail."

Alex Vandervoort picked up one of the fraudulent blue, green, and gold cards and turned it over. "The plastic seems an exact match too."

"They're made from authentic plastic blanks that are stolen. They have to be, to be that good." The security chief went on, "We think we've traced the source of thecards themselves. Four months ago one of our suppliers had a break-in. The thieves got into the strong room where finished plastic sheets are stored. Three hundred sheets were missing."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14