Bruce Wagner - Memorial

The black told Marj to wait. Then the teller asked if she’d step aside but the old woman couldn’t hear and the request was repeated that she step out of line because there were customers waiting.

The black came out a few minutes later with a tall, thin man. (It was a relief to see people without that horrid glass barrier.) He asked Marj to sit at his desk. The black earnestly hovered a moment before she was called away. The thin man adjusted his glasses and told Marj that he was afraid there was no one by that name who worked at Wells Fargo Bank. She said she didn’t understand, the business card said the lady was Vice President of Pico-Robertson, she had even been to Marj’s home for coffee. The thin man kept staring at Miss Mulcahy’s card, with an ever-so-slight nod of the head. Then he got the old woman’s Social and punched it in his computer, calling up her accounts. Without looking at her, he asked Marj how long she had banked there, and she became furious because that was something they should know, they should know their business, she was a loyal longtime customer, she had just given him her Social Security number and he had her driver’s license sitting right there too, and anyway, he was punching everything in and she couldn’t understand why she had to be asked questions whose answers were probably staring him in the face from the screen. To show her impatience, Marj said, “Well, that’s moot.” (A remark she would have told Hamilton about when he got home from work — how during the day she’d had the gumption to tell some bureaucratic fool, “That’s moot.”) The thin man said their records showed she had closed out her money market and personal checking accounts that very morning. She said that was impossible, or if it was true, it surely had been done in the course of an investigation, because she was in the midst of helping the FBI — she was helping an agent, Agent — suddenly she became flustered, and couldn’t remember his name. The thin man told her she might be the victim of fraud and Marj got a little irate and said of course she was the victim of a fraud, she already knew that, and so did the bank, Miss Whatshername, and so did the FBI and Agent So-and-So. I cannot remember his name. The man who looks like Jeff Chandler. I was meeting both of them here.

The lady on the card spoke to my daughter—

The thin man eyed her carefully now and said he was going to call the police. Marj said she wasn’t sure that was a good idea, because the agent — Agent Marone (she had finally gotten the brilliant idea of digging his card from her purse, which she handed over to the fastidious bureaucrat, who scrutinized it closely. What an ass he was!)— Agent Marone said they were quite near an arrest, and if the thin man were to call the police it might jeopardize the work done up till now. I am to be a critical eyewitness, and the ringleader, AKA Mr Weyerhauser, is supposed to be taken into custody at this very branch, Pico-Robertson, and that is an action he should be extremely wary of jeopardizing. The thin man told her the business card of the lady appeared to be “falsified.” He dialed the number of Agent Ruddy Marone and hung up, telling the old woman it had been disconnected. Marj asked him to try again, which he did, but it was still disconnected.

He said he was going to phone the police right away because of the “high numbers” involved, that he felt Marj and the bank may have been defrauded and it was probably a good idea for her to wait at his desk until certain matters could be further clarified. She looked pale and he waved at someone to bring a cup of water. He said she could go home if she wished, that she didn’t live so far away, according to their records— well, at least they had some records! — and he would call just as soon as he heard anything. The black brought the water and the parched old trembling woman raised it to her mouth. Marj shouted, “Of course you have been defrauded!” and mentioned that the lady from Wells had deposited a hundred thousand dollars back into her account, the amount covered by federal insurance, and why didn’t that show up on his stupid screen? She tearfully apologized for her outburst, then demanded to know why the accounts had been “zeroed out,” to use the teller’s term. The black trundled off, and instead of answering, the thin man merely confirmed all of Mrs Herlihy’s personal information, by rote — they even had her cellphone number on file — and Marjorie told him yes she would wait, but then he got called away, apparently to deal with a customer complaint, that’s all they seemed to have around here, and she heard the black start to laugh, and Marj thought, She’d better not be laughing about me. Because there is nothing funny about this or the way it is being handled. People can be sued for their behavior and that woman should know it, but the laughter was grating nonetheless, distant, over by the vault, she was having a mighty laugh with the Persian, Marj didn’t think it was at her expense anymore, probably just sharing a dumb joke, the 2 tittering away like the old woman’s problems had ceased to exist or were something that wouldn’t stop the world for one iota of a single second. Marj had the very same feeling when Hamilton was hooked up in the CCU and she heard nurses laughing somewhere while the life drained out of him. She grew lightheaded and decided to go home without even making the effort to announce her intentions.

SHE forgot where the Imperial was parked then had a violent attack of diarrhea. She found it, almost by chance.

There was a vending machine with free papers and she grabbed some to sit on so she wouldn’t stain the leather seat. On the way home she was almost struck by another car and winced at the imprecations of the driver as he reentered traffic.

She stripped off her soggy dress, put it in a Glad bag, and ran a hot bath. She got the notepad with the numbers on it and called Joan’s house, thinking it was her cell, but hung up before being connected. She rang again, got a message, then put down the receiver without leaving word. She thought of phoning Lucas — maybe everyone had been wrong about him and the Bonita gal, but who was everyone? — and wanted desperately to call Jeff Chandler and the woman from Wells too, kicking herself for having left their cards at the bank. How could she have left their cards with those bloodless people? Though maybe it was best to sit tight: the pair were possibly “scammers,” that was the word her daughter used, even though Marj couldn’t believe it. They had been so kind! They were real. She didn’t trust the thin man, the black, or their double-doored nonsense as far as she could throw them. She thought of calling Joan again…she wished Ham were there, her white knight, always so protective, like her father was, so polite and respectful yet intimidating, he would have known how to deal with these people, he wouldn’t have allowed anyone into the house in the 1st place, and now she wondered about that bureaucrat who said he was going to call the police — what police? Was it really her bank, or something that looked like her bank? It sure seemed different. She didn’t recognize anyone there either. (It was as if they were actors.) Hadn’t she been there just a few days ago? How would they have put those double doors in so quickly? That was a big job! Maybe she’d ask Cora about it, but Cora did her banking at Fremont, on Wilshire. Maybe Stein would know. Stein probably used a lot of banks. Yes, she would ask Cora to ask Stein if he’d noticed any renovations at Pico-Robertson. He might even have “information,” like businessmen sometimes do. Maybe he would know if this particular branch was notorious for defrauding the elderly.