by Joe Ollinger
Here we go. Last thing I want to do right now is dissect what happened last night. “This is not the time, Brady.”
“Listen to me,” he says. “I’m off this.”
This is not what I was anticipating, but . . . Of course. Just when I stopped expecting him to, he abandons me. I lean forward, hissing with anger. “Talk.”
Leaning back away from me, he struggles to answer. “I don’t have a letter from the Board.”
My heart skips a beat, sinking in my chest as a thousand incoherent thoughts flit in and out of my head. I’m starting to get used to this feeling, but I’ll never learn to like it. “Brady,” I seethe, “did you even try to get one?”
“I did. I swear I did,” he mumbles. “But I’m being taken off the Yearly Audit and Inquiry Regarding Systemic Shortfalls in Currency Supply. So I no longer have a reason to need a letter like that.” He pauses. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” I demand, struggling to suppress my anger. “Why now?”
“I got my promotion,” he blurts as though confessing to a crime. Quietly, he adds, “Deputy Auditor.”
“So that’s it? Suddenly you’re done?” Someone, somewhere, has pulled strings to make this happen. It’s one more way to bury the truth, or the lie, or whatever it is I’m so close to finding. “Who made the call?”
He stutters a bit. “The Board.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I put in the paperwork for an expedited records request, y-you know, for the video footage, and a few hours later I got a call congratulating me on the move up.” He glances around, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Taryn.”
“This doesn’t make you one bit suspicious?” I ask, forcing myself to keep my voice down. “The timing of this?”
He shakes his head, adamant. “I was told it was in the works before I even started this whole thing.”
I close my eyes, trying to shut away the humdrum noise and light of my surroundings even though I know I should stay alert and ready, even though I know that I’m in a busy public area and I’ve drawn attention to myself here and that some guy who wants to kill me might be walking discreetly toward me right now, slipping a poison promise onto an anxious finger. “You really fucked me over, Brady.”
“Taryn, I’ve wanted this for a long time,” he responds, sounding genuine but rehearsed, like he’s been thinking through what to say to me. “In this new role I’ll have a lot more ability to act, a lot better chance to make a real difference. Try to understand what that means to me.”
I grab him tightly by the arm, pulling him close. “I hope it’s worth it in the end for you, Kearns, because that’s what I’m looking at now. The end.”
“Kearns,” he mumbles, “I probably deserve that.”
“Can you do anything else to help me, or did you just show up here to piss me off?”
“Taryn, I can’t.” He stares at the ground. “There’s nothing more I can do.”
Saying nothing more, I turn my back to him to walk away but stop after a few paces realizing that I now have no plan. The way to the door out of here is relatively clear. I could easily walk through it, get on my ride, and leave. What then? Go into protective custody, maybe change my name, start over? Look over my shoulder until the day I die, worried that facial recognition software or word of mouth will betray me to the shadows of my past? Who knows? In the other direction are the tellers’ windows and the lines of customers. If I try to twist the arm of some bank manager to get video evidence right now, they’ll balk, and I’ll tip my hand. Whoever is hiding the truth from me will learn what I’m looking for, and next time I come for it, it will be gone. Looking back at the doorways out, I think maybe I could go into Collections and apply for a warrant, but I know I wouldn’t get one. I lack probable cause, and I’m not even on this case—if it even is a case. I’ve got no choices here. Any way I go I’m done for.
Promising myself I won’t second-guess the choice but breaking that promise immediately, I walk toward the tellers’ windows, passing the customers waiting in line.
“Hey!” a voice cuts through the background noise, “Hey, wait!” Glancing over my shoulder, I see that it’s Brady running to catch up with me.
I stop, annoyed. “What?”
“Taryn,” he says, flustered, “look, I still want to be there for you.”
“Super.”
“You need a safe place to stay, right?”
I can’t help but roll my eyes. “You’re a creep, Kearns.”
“I care about you, Taryn. How can you not believe that?”
“You let me down.”
“This is not personal.”
“You’re not personal.”
“Can we be mature for just a few seconds, please, can we?” He’s desperate, talking too fast. “We’ve been through all this together, and it’s . . . I just . . . It’s . . . I just haven’t formed a connection with someone like—”
“A connection?” I cut him off. “You think we’ve got a connection?”
“I’ve done all I can,” he pleads. “You’ve got to believe that. Anything you need, I’m on it. You can get a warrant for the video. We just need to back off for some time . . . ”
“Back off,” I tell him. “Good advice.”
“Wait, wait,” he says. “Let me make it up to you at least?” Looking me in the eye like he’s in some grandiose Yagami romance movie, he asks, “The Eridani, eight tomorrow night?”
“Idiot.” He’s more of a clod than I ever suspected. Shaking my head, I turn and walk away from him again, toward the tellers.
“Is that a no?”
This time I don’t bother to look back. Stepping up to a view-glass window, I lean in front of the old man trying to sort through a bag of cash chips. He tosses me a mean look. The teller, a young-ish, overweight woman with thin hair, dressed in a crisp button-down shirt patterned with the yellow-and-white SCAPE logo, glances at the hexagonal Collections Agency badge on my arm.
She purses her lips, tense. “Can I help you?”
“Agent Taryn Dare, Collections Agency,” I tell her, authoritative. “I need to see your manager immediately.”
The teller stiffens. “What should I tell him this is about?”
“I can’t share that,” I respond, leaning against the counter. “Go get him.”
She gives an annoyed sigh but gets up and leaves her station. The view-glass turns translucent. I step aside from the counter, putting a couple of meters between me and the waiting customers, glancing around with paranoia. I don’t see Brady behind me. He must have left.
A minute or two later, a short, chubby, gray-haired man in a black suit with a changing holographic white-and-yellow SCAPE pin on the lapel comes walking toward me, the sound of his footsteps audible on the stone tile. “Hello,” he calls, waving. I say nothing, sizing him up as he approaches. “How can I help you, Agent?”
“I need access to some security camera footage.”
“Oh? Might I ask why?”
“I’m afraid I can’t divulge the details.” I’ve done this bluff before, and it usually works on less sophisticated people, but in my experience, banks have rules limiting what info they’ll give up without a warrant, and the staff are trained in those rules.
“I’m sorry, Agent, but our policy is not to divulge any Bank records in the absence of a warrant or court order.”
Exactly what I feared. “I just need the lobby. The investigation involves cash withdrawals,” I argue. “Lobby space is public, no privacy rights or proprietary info involved.”
“Of course,” he says, “and as soon as you procure a warrant, we’d be happy to cooperate fully.”
“You can cooperate now.” I lean in, getting in his face a little. “This is urgent. You want me to go to your superior with this and tell him you’re obstructing justice?”
“No staff of SCAPE Credit and Finance would ever obstruct justice. We cooperate fully with the authorities and vigorou
sly support the work of law enforcement, but we have an obligation to our customers and shareholders to protect proprietary information.” He smiles, completing the lines he probably read out of a corporate manual five minutes ago. “I’m sorry, but you understand my job is to follow policy.”
“I want to talk to your supervisor. Get me—”
“Is there a problem?”
It’s Brady stepping up next to me. I thought he had left, and he got close quickly without me realizing it, which is more than a bit unsettling. I try to hide my surprise.
“Hello,” says the manager. “Are you with Collections as well?”
“Commerce Board.” He pulls out his ID and shows the man, who blinks at the little authentication display on the card’s surface. “I haven’t got a new ID yet, but I’m a Deputy Auditor. Brady Kearns.”
The short man in the suit eyes Brady, on edge and wondering what’s going on. Collections is part of the Board, and in theory Agents might sometimes work with Auditors on an institutional level, but I’m not sure they’ve ever partnered on an investigation. “Would you mind,” the manager asks carefully, “telling me what this is about?”
“General audit,” Brady answers, confident. “I’m conducting the yearly leak survey. You’re familiar with it?”
“Y-yes.”
“Agent Dare is involved for follow-up purposes to track down any rogue currency, but this is primarily academic. You understand the importance of getting the data we’re asking for in a timely manner?” Diplomatically he adds, “I do apologize for the lack of advance notice, but you understand how that could taint the study as well, I’m sure.”
“Mister, uhm, Kearns. I wish I could help, but as I’ve said, it’s against Bank policy.”
“Do I really have to trouble the Board with this?” With only a hint of threat to it, he asks, “You do know what an auditor does, right?”
The pudgy bank man looks half-panicked, unsure how to handle this. This scenario wouldn’t have been in the policy manual. “Let me see what I can do.” He walks away, hurried.
I glance at Brady, avoiding lasting eye contact. “Change of heart?” I ask, keeping the anger and relief out of my voice.
“I guess you could call it that.”
We wait around for a few minutes, not talking to each other, before the manager returns. “Come with me,” he says.
Brady and I exchange a glance, then follow the man to a door at the far end of the lobby, which he opens with a thumbprint on the little scanner concealed in the stone of the wall. We go through into a hallway lined on one side with office doors and on the other with long rows of cubicles in which employees in identical yellow-and-white button-down shirts field calls and work at monitors. After a couple of left turns, we arrive at a secure room with a metal-lined wall and a secured metal door. The manager enters a passcode and a thumbprint on the less-discreetly-concealed panel, the door hisses open, and we follow him inside.
The door swings shut with a soft thump as my eyes adjust to the lower light in the room. This is the security command center, a vault about five meters by ten meters in size, filled with control systems, secure data devices, a rack of very serious firearms, and, most importantly to me right now, a wall of monitors displaying security camera footage and an accompanying control station. Two big guys in black suits stand up from their chairs, sizing us up through dark-tinted tactical glasses that have small black earpieces extending from their frames, and probably view-data displays in the lenses as well.
“Gentlemen,” says the manager, “this is Commerce Board auditor Brady Kearns, and, and Agent, uhm . . . ”
“Dare,” I say, assuming that the beefy security guards are sizing me up behind those dark lenses. “Collections.”
“Right,” the manager continues. “I want you to help them find some security camera footage. Just of the lobby. Got it?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, saying “Thanks” as he goes back out the door, which quickly thumps shut behind him.
The guards step forward, and I realize suddenly that these men are probably armed and armored under their suits and cheesy yellow-and-white SCAPE neckties, and that the guns on the rack are probably keyed to their fingerprints. The odds would be against me in a firefight here, especially since Brady is undoubtedly unarmed and quite possibly not on my side anyway. The bigger guard, a thick-necked, dark-skinned guy with short-cropped hair and a disproportionately small and round head, steps forward. “Hello,” he says, motioning toward the chair in front of the security footage monitors. “Have a seat, and we’ll help you out.”
So much for a blood-soaked ambush, I guess. I step past him and sit down in the chair, and he leans over my shoulder pointing out items in the interface. “Each screen is a camera,” he says. “Except the big one in the center, which is variable but always plays a live feed. You can go back through dates with the calendar pad at the bottom.”
“Got it.” I pull out my phone, extend the screen, and flick open the spreadsheets with the cash withdrawals. “Let’s see,” I say aloud, finding the time code beside the earliest entry, “Arjun Chatterjee, withdrawal of eighty thousand units on four-twelve-oh-four at eleven thirty-seven . . . ” I scroll to the date, then to the time code. Before I hit play, I look up at the array of monitors. About half of the screens go blank, probably shut off by one of the guards at the manager’s request so that I can only see the lobby. About twenty are still on, though, and it’s overwhelming at first, all of them showing different angles of the floor, varying in scope from a wide, curvy and distorted image of the entire space to close shots of the front door. But then I see a cluster of screens showing downward angles of the tellers’ counters, clearly intended to capture cash exchanges.
“Watch these,” I tell Brady, pointing to the teller window monitors, “We’re looking for a withdrawal of eighty thousand units.”
I let the video play and watch the cluster of monitors for money changing hands. Some customers are taking out cash, but none of them seem to be taking very much. The minute counter ticks over, and I still haven’t seen a transaction large enough to be eighty thousand units, but I let it play a little longer, aware that on large withdrawals, banks ordinarily provide a security escort out of the building. But I don’t see one of those, either.
“You see it?” Brady asks.
“No. You?”
“Uhhh . . . ” he hesitates. “I couldn’t tell how much was on the counter during a few of these. Go back to thirty-seven forty?” I scroll back in the interface, then let it play. Brady leans over the desk, pointing to one of the monitors. “Here.”
I slow the video to half speed and watch closely. Hands keep getting in the way, so it’s hard to tell what denominations the currency chips are, but there’s an unrelated problem. “This is a woman. Arjun is a man’s name.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. And if he’s taking out that many bones, wouldn’t the bank offer a security escort to his vehicle?”
“Maybe there’s a lack of sync? In the time codes?”
I turn to one of the security guards who leans against the wall beside the weapons rack with a bored look on his face. “I got withdrawal and deposit records from an employer. Any reason that wouldn’t have the same time code as your videos here?”
The guard frowns. “Deposit and withdrawal receipts come from our system, and the cameras are linked into that same system. Should be the same, I think.”
He doesn’t sound authoritative or particularly knowledgeable on the subject, but from what I know about timestamping, I think he’s right. “Is there a certain cash amount that you’d provide a security escort for?”
“Five thousand,” he responds. “But you can request one at lower amounts.”
“Hmm,” Brady says.
Checking my phone, I move on to the next transaction on the list, queue it up on the video, and let it play. “Elena Hisai, a hundred thousand units on two one oh four at thirteen oh four hours . . . ”
The monitors show a busy time in the bank, probably a typical late lunch hour rush on a weekday, with lines at every teller station. A lot of customers take cash, and there’s too much blur and obstruction to make out every chip that moves across the counter. I let the video play past the minute mark, waiting for someone to be escorted out by security, but that doesn’t happen.
“Couldn’t tell much from that,” Brady says.
“Me neither. Next.”
I play a couple more, but they’re just as unclear. I don’t see a security escort on any of them, but I can’t say for sure that the exchanges listed didn’t happen. The next one up is the first repeat—Arjun Chatterjee, ninety-one thousand units on seven ten thirteen at nine forty-four. I queue up the video and play it at half speed. It’s a quiet period with only two people taking out cash over the course of the minute on the records. The first of the withdrawals is just a single hundred-unit chip. In the second, a woman takes a few chips of unclear denomination. As she turns away from the counter to leave, I freeze the playback.
“You see what I’m seeing, Brady?”
He hesitates. “What?”
“This is not the same woman from the earlier video.”
Another pause as he looks closer. “It isn’t?”
“No.” I roll the video back to the point where the money crosses the counter. I can see the labels on about half of them, and they’re all twenties. “Three hundred twenty-unit chips. Even if the other three are thousand unit chips, what does that add up to?”
“Three thousand sixty,” he answers immediately. “Not enough.”
“Not even close.”
“So what does it mean?”
The obviousness of the conclusion doesn’t make it any less important or any less heavy. “It means these withdrawals never happened.”
I sit frozen in the chair, silent for maybe a few seconds or maybe a few minutes, plunging into the abyss of the deeper implications of this revelation. This whole time I’ve been operating on the assumption that if Marvin Chan got his weevil cultures through blackmail, the secret he threatened to reveal must have been the source of the weevil cultures itself. Whoever supplied the eggs had to get them by some illegal means, and it seemed to me that those means would be the obvious, easy target of blackmail. But what if it was something else Chan threatened to reveal? What if the weevils were peripheral? If Chan stumbled on a money laundering scheme and demanded a high price for his silence, the launderer would need some method of mutually assured destruction. Maybe the weevils were that option—they were valuable as payment, sure, but maybe they were more valuable for the fact that revealing Chan’s possession of them would have doomed both Chan and his blackmail victim . . .