Stung

by Gary Stephen Ross

  Finally, two sergeants from the fraud squad came in. One of them, agitated, all business, said, “All right, Brian, we want some answers.” The other asked if he’d like coffee or something to eat. They seemed to know exactly how much he had just lost at Caesars but otherwise, he sensed, they were groping.

  “Brian, it’s over. We know what you’ve been up to. We just don’t know how much is involved.”

  Molony, so tired he seemed sedated, looked around the room. Metal table, metal chairs, no windows, bare walls. He studied the two men, took them in for the first time. Bob Barbour was a solidly built man of forty. He wore a light grey suit. He’d spent five years on the fraud squad and had earned a reputation as an astute investigator. His partner, Bob Greig, was a big, handsome Scottish fellow with a permanent hangdog expression. He was dressed in navy blazer, striped shirt, maroon tie, and grey slacks. They knew what he’d been up to? They were fishing. No one knew what he’d been up to. Nobody knew but Molony himself, and their astonishment would be as great as his relief.

  “Maybe you better sit down.”

  9

  COLD TURKEY

  “Anna, Anna, you must understand that I am not just an unscrupulous creature — I am a man devoured by the passion for gambling.”

  – Dostoevsky, in a letter to his wife, 1871

  fter an hour of answering questions, Molony asked to use the phone. He called David Greenspan, a lawyer and branch customer. His secretary said he was out — anything she could do? Molony said he needed the services of Eddie Greenspan, the criminal lawyer. He knew the two men were unrelated but thought they might be acquainted. Five minutes later Eddie Greenspan phoned the station. Molony said he was an assistant manager at the CIBC branch at Bay and Richmond — Greenspan’s bank, as it happened, across the street from his offices — and that he’d been charged with theft over $200.

  Criminal lawyers get a feel for these things. Bank fraud. Assistant manager. Greenspan imagined an embezzlement in the range of twenty thousand. They’d let Molony out on his own recognizance. He could drop by the office in a day or two.

  “What’s involved?” said Greenspan.

  “Nine,” said Molony.

  “Thousand?”

  “No.”

  “Hundred thousand?”

  “No no, million.”

  “Nine million dollars?” said Greenspan, flabbergasted. He couldn’t help laughing. It was the way Molony had said it — “No no, million” — as if baffled anyone could be so wrong.

  Greenspan himself was baffled. How was it possible? It must have been a single, stupendous grab rather than a typical employee fraud. Nine million dollars? No bank is that vulnerable. He advised Molony not to make a statement.

  “I think I already have.”

  Informed by police that a CIBC employee had been picked up with $30,000 cash and securities receipts involving $5-million, the bank dispatched two security people to 13 Division. While Greig and Barbour questioned Molony, Don Adams and Margie Peters waited outside the interrogation room. Occasionally one of the fraud sergeants stepped out to ask a question.

  Don Adams drove down to Bay and Richmond. He introduced himself to Harry Buckle and said he wanted a word with him. Buckle showed him into the manager’s office.

  “Is Molony here this morning?”

  “Not yet,” said Buckle, “but I expect he’ll be in before long.”

  “This is a confidential inquiry, and you’re not to jump to any quick conclusions, but Molony was stopped coming from the airport with $30,000 on him. Can you think of any reason why he’d have that much cash?”

  Buckle was perplexed. “Well, he may have been out to see a customer who gave him a deposit. But I can’t think which customer it might be.”

  “There was also evidence that he’d been dealing with Richardson Securities in huge volume. He told the police they were going to find a shortage. Would you mind reviewing Molony’s loans?”

  “Of course,” said Buckle. He reviewed the computer printout for post 2 and told Adams he saw nothing unusual in Molony’s loans.

  “The shortage mentioned was $9-million,” said Adams. “Maybe we’d better look through his desk.”

  Don Adams had joined the bank after a career with the Metro Toronto Police. His slimness, English accent, and intellectual features made him look like the calligrapher he was in his free time. He had pieced together a great many frauds and it wasn’t long before he turned up indications of Molony’s deception. Harry Buckle was flummoxed.

  How could there have been such a breakdown in the system? Why hadn’t he been informed of the irregularities that were showing up — the documentation for loans he knew nothing about, the notes to hold all mail, the authorized credits that didn’t exist. These things should have been reported to him. While in the audit department he himself had turned up several defalcations, including a fraud at Kipling and Queensway of half a million dollars, an enormous sum in those days. Everyone in the bank had chances to steal and not everyone could resist. But Molony? In the amounts being suggested? Buckle was so shaken he could scarcely read the day’s mail. One letter, from head office, congratulated him on the performance of his branch.

  Or, rather, what had been his branch. He was finished at Bay and Richmond, of that he was certain. If God Himself had been manager, Russell Harrison would have seen to it that He was demoted.

  At her branch of the bank, Brenda was growing concerned. Even if he went straight from the airport to work, Brian always called when he got back to Toronto. She phoned Louise, who phoned Phil, who phoned Atlantic City. Caesars still had Molony registered as a guest. Phil told Brenda that Brian had probably fallen asleep. Brian, asleep? Her concern turned to worry. It was almost noon when he finally called.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the police station. I’ve been arrested.”

  She tried to tell herself he was joking, but there was nothing in his voice to help her.

  “I’ve been charged with theft over $200.”

  “You didn’t take money, did you?”

  “Everything will be all right. I’ll call again as soon as I can. Brenda, don’t tell my parents. Phone Annemarie and ask her to tell them. She should do it before the paper comes out. They say I have to get off the phone now.”

  Molony had told the police he had more money at home. They had to move him to 52 Division, which had cells, to spend the night before his court appearance, and decided they’d let him drive his car home. At the wheel of the Electra, it began to sink in. How would his poor mother take the news? She’d be devastated; so would his father. How could he have brought such shame on them? He must have been out of his mind. What would his brothers and sisters think, his colleagues at the branch, his —

  “Watch out!” said Barbour. The car had wandered into the oncoming lane. “I know you’ve got problems, but I’ve got a wife and child at home. Let’s stay on our side of the road.”

  At the highrise Brenda’s car was in the lot. Why was she home? Why had she not parked underground? Brian realized how distraught she must have been. He let Greig and Barbour into the apartment and found her waiting, puffy-eyed and pale. She kissed him.

  “How did you get off work?”

  “I just left,” she said.

  Molony showed Greig and Barbour the money, $7,000 U.S. They began searching through papers, looking in closets, going through Molony’s file box. When they started opening Brenda’s drawers, Molony said, “That’s her stuff. There’s nothing there.” Changing clothes, he found a Canadian twenty and a pocketful of change, which he handed over. He found some crumpled ones and twos, and turned them over. Brenda told him his mother had been trying to reach him. He repeated that she was not to tell his parents, he wanted Annemarie to break the news. Quite apart from the arrest, they’d be shocked to discover he and Brenda lived together.

  “Time to go,” said Barbour.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

  “Wait a minute,” said
Greig. Each of his fingertips bore a Band-Aid, a legacy of his days in uniform. Thwarting an arson attempt, he had suffered chemical burns. The damage to his fingertips got worse each year. The Band-Aids gave him the look of a chronic nailbiter and hindered him as he counted out five dollars. He handed the money back to Molony.

  “You’re going to need something for jail.”

  In the little room with the picture of a window on the wall, Ron Andrews listened to an incoming call on Colizzi’s line. Nick Beck. Sit wires eight hours a day and you hear the panic behind everyday voices. Beck, hyper at the best of times, was almost frantic. Colizzi was even more phlegmatic than usual. Could the rumours have been true? How much had Molony already said? How much would he be persuaded to say? What were they going to do?

  After getting off the line, Colizzi made plans to go to Las Vegas. He called a Chinese acquaintance and arranged to meet for a drink that night. He also got a collect call from an inmate at one of the prisons near Kingston, a man who made a living with a tire iron. Colizzi asked him when he was getting out, and the inmate said he had a three-day pass coming up that weekend. Colizzi said, “Call me when you can. I may have something.”

  Colizzi had recently moved, paying cash for a house in the Annex area of the city. The police obtained a search warrant and arrived that evening as he was about to go out. Members of the anti-gambling unit conducted a search and found, among other things, playing cards, dice, baize cloth, a matchbook from Caesars Atlantic City, and a new bullet-proof vest. In a livingroom expensively furnished with leather chairs and sofas, Greig and Barbour questioned Colizzi.

  “Do you know a man named Brian Molony?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you do business with him?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know Brian Molony?”

  Colizzi shrugged. “I know him from the races, you know. I’m a bookie.”

  “What would you say if I told you Brian Molony stole ten million dollars from the bank?”

  “You shock me.”

  “Did you ever sign any bank drafts presented to you by Molony?”

  “I signed a few. They were blank. I thought I was doing him a favour.”

  “Did you get any of the money?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you sign these documents when you didn’t receive any benefit?”

  “I don’t know,” said Colizzi. “It’s crazy. I don’t believe it myself.” Greig told him he was under arrest for possession of property obtained by crime. He advised Colizzi of his right to counsel and asked if he understood.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Colizzi. He nodded at the Morality officers searching the place. “They already told me.”

  At Bay and Richmond the employees were not officially informed what had happened. They were only told not to say anything about anything to anyone. They got their information from customers, or contacts in the security department. Some heard it on the radio. Because Jeremy Brown, the radio commentator, was a branch customer, many of them listened to CKFM. When they heard that Brian had been arrested they thought at first it must have been a practical joke Brown had cooked up.

  The news was met with stunned disbelief. Brian? The treasurer of the bank hockey team, who badgered you if you were a day late with the $28 dues? Brian, whose suits and shoes looked like something from a thrift shop? Brian, who was always the last to pay for a round when they went to the pub? Does that sound like a guy with millions of dollars?

  Such a shame, if true, such a waste of talent. Is he all right? Is he in jail? Poor guy. The bank will throw the book at him. I wonder if Sandy’s heard yet. Hi, Sandy? I know. Can you believe it? How could he have done it? How could it have been going on so long? Hope he’s got something to fall back on. He’s too smart not to have stashed some of it away. I know, the casino in Atlantic City. Isn’t that clever? What better place? You could say every cent was gone and they’d have no way to trace it. I’d love to know the number of his Swiss bank account. There’s talk of suspensions? Who? Are you sure? No, I didn’t. Listen, I have to hang up. Talk to you later.

  Was Sandy right? Would there be more arrests? Was the girl at the next desk making plans to fly to Brazil? The next desk? — good God, Brian was always sticking things under my nose. Is my signature on bogus documentation? Such a decent guy, bringing us pizza the night we stayed late balancing the books. I can’t believe he’d do it. I can’t believe he’d use us. The nerve! The ruthless bastard! Betraying people whose jobs depend on mutual trust. What about Steve? They worked so closely it seemed impossible Brian could have done anything like this without Steve’s knowledge.

  Meanwhile, the branch was full of strange faces and grave concern. Besides the bank’s own people, there were members of the Metro Police fraud squad. The police had done the bank a great favour — who knows how long Molony would have carried on undetected? — but Greig and Barbour found themselves treated with chilly disdain. You’d have thought they’d stolen the money. Most employee wrongdoing is discovered by the bank itself, which made Molony’s fraud doubly embarrassing. Thank you very much, was the bank’s attitude, we’re quite capable of handling our internal affairs. If you’re so bloody capable, was the fraud squad’s attitude, how the hell did someone manage to steal ten million dollars from a single branch? And when do you think you would have caught him? And once you did, would you have turned him over to us or hushed the whole thing up to save face?

  It was Bob Barbour who saw that the most recent fraud had been perpetrated the day before and wondered aloud whether there might be a way to freeze the funds. Don Adams noticed, reviewing the first draft to California Clearing Corporation, that it had been negotiated at the Bank of Montreal across the street. The security people at all the banks work closely together. Adams called a friend in the Bank of Montreal’s security department and asked about the previous day’s transaction. The friend told him the $1.42-million was still on deposit at the Manulife branch but that Caesars had requested immediate remittance. Because the money was in U.S. funds, the draft was drawn on Irving Trust in New York. The CIBC instructed Irving Trust to stop payment, saying there was doubt as to the authenticity of the signatures. Not true, but it seemed the best way of buying time.

  The race was on. The CIBC’s lawyers, Blake Cassels, discovered that California Clearing Corporation had never bothered to obtain a licence to conduct business in Ontario. Don Adams swore out an affidavit, stating: “I verily believe that if an injunction is not granted to restrain disposition of the funds … the fraud perpetrated by Mr. Molony upon the Bank will be furthered by withdrawal of these funds from this Province.” Affidavit in hand, a lawyer from Blake Cassels hurried to Osgoode Hall. Mr. Justice J. Catzman granted an interim injunction restraining California Clearing Corporation, the Bank of Montreal, and Desert Palace Inc. from disposing of any funds in the FX 276 account.

  Having frozen the $1.42-million, the bank set about determining exactly how — and how badly — it had been stung. A CIBC spokesman, asked how millions could go missing without anyone noticing, replied, “That’s a question a lot of people around here are asking.”

  Molony’s sister Annemarie, though utterly stunned after speaking to Brenda, made sure the doctor across the street was available to sedate her parents before she told them Brian had been arrested. Mrs. Molony was inconsolable. Dr. Molony prayed.

  Doug and Nicole saw the news on Sarnia television and burst into tears, which set off their daughter.

  Jeremy Brown was preparing his morning commentary at CKFM when he heard the news on the studio monitor. He began trembling and was barely able to go on air.

  Louise got a call from a friend at Bay and Richmond. She, in turn, called Phil. After they’d got over their initial shock, Louise said, “I told you it was strange he didn’t take any holidays.” Phil recalled someone having said, after the auditors left Bay and Richmond, “Funny, everybody else is relieve
d the audit’s over, but Brian doesn’t seem relieved.”

  Eli Koharski heard the news on his car radio. He almost collided with a bus. He had to pull off and take a taxi home.

  When Sherry Brydson learned of the fraud, she wondered if it had something to do with Molony’s diet — all that fast food and Coca-Cola.

  Stu Butts told Brydson on the phone, “I don’t know what this is all about, but I’m going to help Brian any way I can. I’m going down to put up bail.”

  “I believe I first heard the news from my wife,” recalled Barney Rooney, Molony’s history teacher for four years at Regina Mundi in London, Ontario, and now the principal of the school. “She read it in the paper — she said, ‘Is that our Brian?’ — and of course the next day it was all over the school. My first reaction was: what he chooses to do, he’ll do well. Look at the others in the Molony pack. In their chosen fields they all seem to be doing well. What was the final sum involved at the bank? Brian holds the championship, does he not? The second reaction, of course, was a feeling of deep regret. Why? How the hell did it come to this? It’s like finding that someone you expected to become a great surgeon has become Jack the Ripper. The skills required in both cases are roughly similar — it’s all in how you put them to use.

  “I believe Brian was inflicted with me right the way through high school, though I’d have to look that up. So I got to know him reasonably well, as one Irishman ought to know another. I took a special interest in him, since his dad was from Dublin. I met Dr. Molony at a couple of dinners, and certainly enjoyed the banter that went along with it. A very capable, very witty man. A man who understood Gaelic football and hurling. I met him with the prejudice of our both being Irish. I’m a County Down man myself, but my wife’s people are westerners — her uncle went to the College of Surgeons — and a lot of my classmates went down to Dublin, National University, and a lot of my friends went to Maynooth. It’s a very small society, and in a sense we’re all exiles.