Haunted Hearts (19 page)

“You know you can't have your car back, even if that piece of crap could still run,” Sleeman told McGuire. It was almost eleven o'clock. Sleeman was reviewing the statements McGuire and Susan had signed. “Not until we nail things down, couple of days maybe.”

“If you can't put a new transmission in it, forget about giving it back,” McGuire said.

“You want me to run you guys somewhere?” Sleeman looked at McGuire. “You going back to Revere Beach?”

“We'll take a cab,” McGuire said.

“I gotta walk you out, this time of the night. I'll get you out the back way. We got all the media squirrels downstairs in front, waitin' for me to come down, do my dog-and-pony show. You guys want interviews? They've been yellin' for interviews.”

McGuire shook his head, and Susan said “God, no.”

Sleeman led them down the corridor towards the elevators, McGuire holding Susan's hand as they walked. “You know one of the best parts of this?” Sleeman said. “Frankie tight-ass took a couple days off to go down to the Cape for a break. He's the lead guy, the one who bragged that he'd bring Hayhurst in all by himself. He'll be banging his head against the wall when he hears about this. You make the collar and you're not even carrying a badge, and I get to make the announcement to the media squirrels.” Sleeman laughed as though he had just heard an especially rude and funny story.

“Let's find a quiet place for coffee,” McGuire said to Susan when they were outside.

“I can't talk now. How can I talk about me after what just happened?” Susan squeezed his hand. “I'm still shaking.”

“You'll be shaking more later, when you have time to think about it. That's what happens.”

They chose a rear booth in the first restaurant they encountered. Both ordered black coffee.

“Something else was bothering you back there on Berkeley Street,” McGuire said. “You kept looking around as though you were expecting to see somebody you knew.”

She nodded.

“Who? The cop who arrested you?”

“No. Somebody else.”

McGuire waited. When she didn't speak, he reached across to touch her hand. “Maybe you're right. Maybe you should wait for some other time to finish your story.”

She shook her head and managed a smile. “If I don't get through it tonight, I might never get the courage to tell you again.” She looked at the clock at the front of the restaurant. “I have to be checked in by midnight. Tomorrow's my first day without bed check. I can start looking for a place to stay.”

“I'll help you,” McGuire said. He smiled tightly. “We'll fill up our day. You go looking for an apartment, and I'll start shopping for a car.”

“Doesn't it bother you, what happened tonight?” she asked him. “You almost witness a murder, you get shot at, you nearly kill a man, and you act like . . . like some guy who's just finished his shift driving a bus or something.”

“It'll bother me later,” McGuire said. “When I'm alone and start thinking about it, yeah, I'll get the shakes a little, wonder if I could have handled things differently. Right now, I want to concentrate on you. I want to hear what happened between you and Ross Myers, and how Orin Flanigan got involved. You can finish telling me about it, or you can sit there wondering how close Hayhurst's bullet came to you. Believe me, thinking about that stuff does no good at all.” He reached across to squeeze her hand again. “Tell me about you. I want to know.”

She sipped her coffee and stared down into it as she spoke. “I had only been working at the S&L for a few weeks when Ross started pressuring me to do things, things I could never imagine myself doing.”

It began with a $20,000 check, postdated two weeks later. Someone had given him the check as an investment in his company, Myers explained. He couldn't wait two weeks. He needed the money immediately, and he asked her to credit his account until the check could be cashed, telling her it would be covered anyway, so no one would be the wiser. She resisted that request and another, upset and disturbed that he could ask her.

A week later, he asked Susan to deposit a $30,000 check for him. Automatically, she told him she couldn't do it, but he laughed and threw her the check and told her to look at it. It was genuine, a cashier's check. He said there would be more like them and she could relax, everything was fine now, everything was genuine.

He broke through her resistance one Friday morning when he said another cashier's check would be coming for the same amount on Monday, but he needed two months' rent on the business-school office that day in order to extend the lease. A travel agency wanted the space, and if the money wasn't in the landlord's hands by noon, he would lose the lease and the business. All he needed was a weekend float. The money would be deposited on Monday, and everything would be fine. The business was turning around, perhaps they could sell the condo and buy a house up near Cape Ann, where she always wanted to live, where the children could visit.

She told him she didn't know how she would do it, but even as she said the words, she knew how, had known how for several weeks, and had played with the idea in her mind. Until then it had been only a fantasy, the kind of wild dream everyone has but few ever play out in reality.

Three months earlier, the S&L had installed a new computer system. A consultant had been hired to design and implement the system, and he remained to train the staff in its operation.

The system included a new method of handling securities that Susan found confusing at first. The young man training her was patient and considerate, and he told her he would set up a hidden file in the system that she could use to practice transactions. He had done this with other installations, he assured her, and the staff appreciated it. They could perform trial transactions and balances, generate monthly statements, and locate and correct their mistakes, without any data appearing on the bank records. The hidden file could never access actual accounts, so there was no potential for theft. But it could print hard copies of statements. It would be submerged within archive files, with a password only he and Susan would know. When she was confident of the system, he would erase the file. No one would be the wiser. She would shine in the eyes of management.

It worked. During training sessions, she would make fictional deposits into the fictional account files, practicing the new procedures and routines. “You've got it,” he said. “Next time I'm in, I'll erase the file and finish off the training program.”

But he never returned. He called the following week, saying he was off to Dallas to repair a major systems failure. He would return in two weeks, three at the most, to erase the file. “Or I can give you the code and you can do it for me.” She said she would do it for him, and he provided the erasure procedure. It would work only on the test file. Nothing else would be affected. She could erase it when she needed to.

The hidden file remained in place, and the morning that Ross Myers asked for the float, an elderly couple arrived to purchase a two-year term deposit of $40,000. She knew what she could do: She entered the amount in the training file and printed a receipt, telling them an official certificate would be mailed the following week. Then she deposited $30,000 of the couple's deposit into the business-school account and called Myers to tell him the checks could be passed.

“He almost jumped through the telephone at me,” she said to McGuire. “Five minutes later he came into the branch with a dozen roses, handed them to me, and gave me a big kiss. One of the women came over and told me how lucky I was to have such a romantic boyfriend, and I remember how my stomach was tying itself into knots.”

“And the check he promised to cover the thirty thousand never appeared.”

“No.”

“And you didn't stop there.”

“No. I couldn't. I just couldn't.”

When no money was deposited Monday morning she called Myers from the bank, frantic with worry. A woman answered the telephone at the business school, a voice she didn't recognize, and the woman told her Mr. Myers was busy, could he call her back? Yes, Susan said, yes, right away, it's urgent. When she gave her name, the woman asked if Myers would know what it was about.

There was no call. That evening she drank alone in the condominium until midnight, and then fell asleep. Myers arrived home after three in the morning with a gold ring for her and a host of excuses. When she asked about the check, he said it had been delayed a week, maybe more, but he would need more money, at least $10,000 more. In a panic she told him she would go to her manager and explain what happened, and Myers told her to go ahead. It was her they'd throw in jail, not him. Besides, he promised, he would cover the amount for sure and make it all up to her, and he would take her and the children to Florida for the weekend.

She hardly slept that night. Myers was right. There was no evidence of his involvement. If she admitted what happened, she would at least lose her job and the respect of the people she worked with, people she had grown close to. Except for her children, they were her only friends and family now. She worried as well about the elderly couple whose money she had diverted to Myers. She assumed the bank would return it, if she were to be found out. But she still felt guilty about deceiving them.

One step at a time, she told herself. She would find a way to cover their money from some other source. She would set a deadline for Myers to make up the money. She would get out of this mess somehow, and then she would get out of the relationship with Myers. She would not go to jail. She would not let her children see their mother as a criminal.

The next day, when she arrived at work, the branch manager called her into his office. She entered trembling, and at the sight of three men she had never seen before she almost collapsed with fright, until one of them smiled and stepped forward, his hand thrust out to shake hers. Another pulled out a plaque identifying her as Employee of the Month. Along with their congratulations they gave her a $100 gift certificate from Filene's.

The nightmare had begun.

She transferred $30,000 from a corporate account to cover the elderly couple's needs. But Myers needed more money, enough to free up some accounts receivable, he told her. Soon, he would be able to pay it all back. The next month she transferred another $30,000 to the business-school account, diverting funds meant for term deposits and issuing false certificates from the hidden training files. When enough cash became available from other depositors, she would issue real certificates, falsifying the date where necessary. Each morning she entered the S&L offices expecting to be confronted by bank officials or the police, and each day she told herself Myers would fulfill his promise to replace the money.

“I became numb,” she said. “When you get so frightened, when you feel so beaten down, you become like a sleepwalker sometimes. That's how I started acting. Sometimes I just didn't care. Sometimes I almost wanted them to catch me, just to make it stop.”

She was seeing less and less of him. He was spending more time in Florida, where he boasted of joining an exclusive club in Palm Beach and purchasing a condominium in Fort Lauderdale. He owned three racehorses, and shares in two others. He kept a car in Florida and leased another in Boston, telling her he was opening a second business school near Miami, and soon they would be living there year-round. He bought her jewelry, diamonds, watches, and fur coats, telling her they were purchased with gambling profits. He assigned the management of the Back Bay Business School to a woman with bleached hair and breasts that sat unnaturally high and firm on her chest, a woman who, the few times Susan met her, regarded her with something between amusement and contempt.

One day in early summer, when the children were due to stay with her for a week, Myers announced he wanted to take them to Florida for a few days. She was frightened and resisted, but the children begged her, they wanted to visit Disney World again as Uncle Ross promised. Myers was adamant, he had already made arrangements. She could fly down and join them for the weekend. He had always been gentle to the children, as he could be gentle and loving with her on occasion, and she finally relented.

The next day she called the condominium number, but there was no answer until the evening, when Ross answered and said everything was fine. He and the children had spent the day at the beach, and were having a wonderful time, and he would call her the following day. When he didn't, she rang several times, again with no answer, until he called her at work and told her, his voice changed and a hint of desperation in it, that he needed $50,000 and he needed it
now
,
so she should have the money wired to Florida the following day.

She told him it was impossible. She was worried that someone could be overhearing their conversation. He became angry with her, cursed her, told her she had better start doing what she was told, that she would regret defying him. When he hung up she was shaking and crying, and she retreated to the washroom, where a teller came to tell her some man wanted to speak to her on the phone.

The man did not identify himself. He spoke softly, with a deep voice and a vaguely foreign accent. He told her to just do what Myers wanted and everything would be all right. When she protested, he said there would be a good chance, a
very
good chance, that her children would not be returning from Florida until it was done. She canceled the paperwork on several large term deposits that day, issued fake receipts from the training file, and transferred the money to Ross's account.

When he returned with the children two days later, he brought her gifts, but the children were changed somehow, a little distant to her, and she told herself she had to find a way to end this nightmare. She began to cut herself off from her children, because she was afraid Myers would use them again, and because she couldn't bear their innocence, their trust in her and love for her, when she knew what she was and what she was doing.