The Moneychangers (5 page)

It was while they wer
e having coffee that a waitress brought a message to their table.

"Mrs. D'Orsey," t
he girl said, "a Mr. Tottenhoe
on the phone for you. He says it's urgent."

Edwina excused herself and went to a telephone in an annex.

The voice of her branch operations officer complained, "I've been trying to locate you." "Now you have' What is it?"

"We have a serious cash shortage." He went on to explain: A teller had reported the loss a half hour ago. Checking had been going on continuously since. Edwina sensed panic as well as gloom in Tottenhoe's voice and asked how much money was involved. She heard him swallow. "Six thousand dollars." "I'll be down right away."

Within less than a minute, after apologizing to her guest, she was in the express elevator en route to the main floor.

5

"As far as I can see," Tottenhoe said morosely, "the only thing all of us know for certain is that six thousand dollars in cash is not where it should be."

The operations officer was one of four people seated around Edwina D'Orsey's desk. The others were Edwina; young Miles Eastin, Tottenhoe's assistant; and a teller named Juanita Nutiez.

It was from Juanita Ntinez's cash drawer that the money was missing.

A half hour had elapsed since Edwina's return to the main branch. Now, as the other
-faced her across the desk, Edw
ina answered Tottenhoe. "What you say is true, but
we can do better. I want us to go over everything again, slowly and carefully."

The time was shortly after 3 P.M. Customers had gone. The outer doors were closed.

Activity, as usual, was continuing in the branch, though Edwina was conscious of covert glances toward the platform from other employees who knew by now that something serious was wrong.

She reminded herself that it was essential to remain calm, analytical, to consider every fragment of information. She wanted to listen carefully to nuances of speech and attitude, particularly those of Mrs. Nunez.

Edwina was aware, too, that very soon she must notify head office of the apparent heavy cash loss, after which Headquarters Security would become involved, and probably the FBI. But while there was still a chance of finding a solution quietly, without bringing up the heavy artillery, she intended to try.

"If you like, Mrs. D'Orsey," Miles Eastin said, "I'll start because I was the first one Juanita reported to." He had shed his usual breeziness. Edwina nodded approval.

The possibility of a cash shortage, Eastin informed the group, first came to his attention a few minutes before 2 P.M. At that time Juanita Nunez approached him and stated her belief that six thousand dollars was missing from her cash drawer.

Miles Eastin was working a teller's position himself, filling in as he had through most of the day because of the shortage of tellers. In fact, Eastin was only tw
o stations away from Juanita Nun
ez, and she reported to him there, locking her cash box before she did so.

Eastin had then locked his own cash box and gone to Tottenhoe. Gloomier than usual, Tottenhoe took up the story.

He had gone to Mrs. Nu
nez at once and talked with her. At first he hadn't believed that as much as six thousand dollars could be missing because even if she suspected some money had gone, it was virtually impossible at that point to know how much.

The operations officer pointed out: Juanita Nunez had been working all day, having started with slightly more
than ten thousand dollars cash
from-vault in the morning, and she had been taking in and paying out money since 9 A.M. when the bank opened. That meant she had been working for almost five hours, except for a forty-five-minute lunch break, and during that time the bank was crowded, with all tellers busy. Furthermore, cash deposits today had been heavier than usual; therefore the amount of money in her drawer not including checks could have increased to twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars. So how, Tottenhoe reasoned, could Mrs. Nunez be certain not only that money was missing but know the amount so specifically?

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 alm
ost two years, all of that time
in her present job. What wasn't in the employment record, but Edwina remem
bered hearing, was that the Nun
ez 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 ca
lculator, 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," Ed
wina 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 a
ll of them knew, a TX was a tell
er'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 els
e
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. Nu
nez?"

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 mon
ey 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 re
mainder 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 te
ller 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 ba
n
k'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 sophi
sticated 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. I
n the course of a year, eight "o
vers" 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.