Rick Mofina: Every Second

“Something’s up, Dan. What is it?”

“This is completely off the record and stays between you and me.”

“Of course. What is it?”

“It’s South Branch-seems Mort’s got a little crisis.”

“Odd. Mort’s such a perfectionist. What sort of crisis?”

“His cash inventory is low, so I’m issuing a directive to transfer two hundred and fifty thousand from our vault to South Branch, which I will personally deliver to them this morning.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Believe me, it has to be done this way.” He input several commands, and his printer came to life. “I’ll need you to cosign the directive.”

Dan grabbed the pages and his pen.

“What you’re doing isn’t right,” Annie said. “We use armored car services for interbranch transfers. They’re directed by the Central Branch. Dan, there are strict rules for this. You know that. Mort has to call Central with his inventory issue. Besides, this would drain us. It makes no sense.”

“This is an emergency, Annie.” He put the directive in a file folder and hunched over it slightly as he signed it. All the while he kept his head up, looking at her. “Believe me, you’ll understand later why I had to do this.” He closed the folder on the paperwork, turned it over to her and, leaving it on the desk with the pen, stood and picked up his briefcase. “Please cosign it after you read it carefully. I have to go.”

“No, I won’t sign it.” She turned from the desk without looking at the folder. “This isn’t right. Dan, wait!”

Dan went to the vault, opened his briefcase and began filling the duffel bag with bundles of cash, pausing to look at them and mentally counting.

“Dan, please, stop, I don’t understand what you’re doing! Tell me what’s going on.”

Just as Dan was scrambling to come up with something to tell her, Vic whispered, “Tell her it’s a security exercise, that she’s not technically supposed to know anything and that she’ll get a call fifteen minutes after you leave.”

“Listen to me.” Dan dropped his voice, continuing to load the bag. “This is part of a secret security drill. Everything’s all right. You’ll get a call from security fifteen minutes after I leave.”

Annie’s face creased with fearful disbelief.

Dan zipped the bag, hoisted it over his shoulder, left the vault and strode out the rear entrance to his car.

Roseoak Park, New York

Annie Trippe stood inside the bank’s rear door.

She watched her manager drive away, her hands pressed against her mouth and tears stinging her eyes. She jumped when someone touched her shoulder from behind.

“Annie, are you all right?” Jo asked.

Shaking her head and regaining most of her composure, Annie turned.

“Something’s very wrong with Dan.”

“I got the feeling something wasn’t right. What’s going on?”

“He just walked out of here with a bag full of cash-a quarter million.”

“Are you serious?”

“He was talking about low inventory at South Branch, made a transfer directive for me to sign, then said something about a security drill.”

Jo’s brow creased. “But…none of that makes any sense.”

“I know.” Annie pulled herself to her full height, looked around the empty lobby and took charge. “We’ve got to do something-fast. Jo, don’t open the front doors until I tell you.”

Annie hurried to her desk, picked up her phone and called Dan’s cell phone. As it continued to ring, she tried to come up with a reasonable explanation for what he’d just done. He clearly wasn’t himself, and she hoped she could get him to come back to the branch before things escalated any further.

When his voice mail picked up, Annie called Dan’s home and got the same result.

Her mind racing, she pulled up Dan’s full contact information, hoping she’d have some luck with his wife’s cell phone.

Maybe Lori knows what’s happening. Maybe she can help.

It rang through to voice mail. Out of options and out of time, Annie called one more number.

“SkyNational, South Branch. How may I direct your call?”

“Sally, its Annie Trippe at Roseoak.”

“Hey, kiddo.”

“Is Mort there? I need to speak to him, now.”

“He’s got someone in his office.”

“Can you just get him on the line, Sally-please!”

“I will, dear, just as soon as he’s free.”

“No! I need to talk to him now!”

“Whoa, what’s going-”

“I’m sorry, Sally. Just, please, get Mort. It’s an emergency.”

Annie heard a few muffled voices, then the line clicked.

“Annie, what’s going on?” Mort Frederick asked.

“Do you have an inventory issue, and did you ask Dan to personally make an interbranch transfer to you first thing this morning?”

“What the hell? No! Of course not.”

“Mort, swear to me.”

“I swear! What is this?”

“Are you aware of any secret security exercises, anything involving cash transfers?”

“Hell, no! Annie, what’s going on? Where’s Danny- Is he there?”

“No!”

“What’s this all about?”

“Mort-” Annie’s voice broke “-Dan just walked out of the branch with a bag filled with two hundred and fifty thousand!”

“He what ?” Mort cursed under his breath.

“What do I do?”

“Annie, call the police!”

Roseoak Park, New York

FBI special agent Nick Varner held out his ID to the NYPD officer whose patrol car blocked the entrance to the bank’s parking lot.

Marked NYPD units from the 111th Precinct dotted the lot and the area surrounding the SkyNational Trust branch. A heavy-duty response, Varner thought, but then this was Roseoak, middle-class neighbor to upper middle-class Douglaston, with its winding hilly streets and waterfront mansions on Little Neck Bay. The entire region was an appealing, sleepy corner of Queens where not much happened, and residents here wanted it that way.

“Yeah, take it over there, pal,” the officer said.

Varner parked his Bureau car, collected his notebook, his recorder and organized his thoughts. He knew the drill. He was thirty-nine and had put in twelve years with the FBI that had included a tour at headquarters in Washington, DC, assignments in Los Angeles, Phoenix and, for the past seven years, the New York Field Office in Manhattan, where he’d been a member of several task forces. Now he was pulling double duty, assigned to Violent Crimes and the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

He sized up the building. Typical suburban detached box. All the blinds had been drawn. A sign had been posted at the front doors. Printed by hand in block letters, it said the branch was closed. It directed customers to the nearest branch and ATMs in the area.

Varner went to the rear entrance and showed his ID to the uniformed officer there. She nodded and handed him some tissue-paper shoe covers. Varner tugged them on and entered.

The lobby was active.

Investigators with the NYPD’s Crime Scene Unit were just setting up to go into the vault and start processing it. Two others were talking to a guy in a suit who Varner took to be a bank security chief.

“Nicholas Alfonso Varner. Well, I’ll be damned.”

Varner found himself shaking hands with a familiar big-chested man in his fifties, a badge hanging from his chain: NYPD detective Marv Tilden. They’d worked together during the final years of the Joint Bank Robbery Task Force before the NYPD pulled out. They’d spent enough long hours as partners for Tilden to know Varner’s middle name was Alfonso, and that a few generations back, Varner’s family had come to America from Italy. Officials at Ellis Island had changed their name from Varnisanino to Varner.