Win (Windsor Horne Lockwood III #1)(47)

So what?

Five minutes later, I am in a glass-enclosed office that looks out over the main floor. The bank itself is a lovely old building on Broadway and Seventy-Fourth Street. Way back when, this very structure was, well, a bank, from the days when banks were cathedral-like and awe-inspiring, as opposed to today’s storefronts that have all the warmth of a motel-chain lobby. This branch still has the marble columns, the chandeliers, the oak wood teller stations, the giant round safe door. It is one of the few of said buildings that haven’t been converted into a party space or upscale dining facility.

The bank manager’s name, which is on her desk plate, is Jill Garrity. Her hair is pulled back into a bun so tight I worry her scalp might bleed. She wears horned-rim glasses. The collar of her white blouse is stiff enough to take out an eye.

“It’s wonderful to meet you, Mr. Lockwood.”

We do a lot of business with the bank. She hopes that my visit means more. I don’t disabuse her of this notion, but time is a-wasting. I tell her I need a favor. She leans in, anxious to please. I ask her about the bank robbery.

“There isn’t much to tell,” she says.

“Was it a stickup? Was it armed?”

“Oh no no. It was after hours. They broke in at two in the morning.”

This surprises me. “How?”

She starts fiddling with the ring on her hand. “I don’t mean to be rude—”

“Then don’t be.”

She startles up at my interruption. I hold her gaze.

“Tell me about the robbery.”

It takes a second or two, but we both know where this will go. “One of our guards was in on it. His record was clean—we did a thorough background check—but his sister’s husband was somehow involved with the mob. I really don’t know the details.”

“How much money did they take?”

“Very little,” Jill Garrity says a little too defensively. “As you are probably aware, most branches don’t keep that much cash on hand. If your worry, Mr. Lockwood, involves stolen cash, none of our clients were affected in terms of their financial portfolios.”

I had figured this. What I couldn’t figure out was why Ry Strauss would have been upset by the robbery. It could have been his paranoia, his imagination, but it feels as though it had to be something more.

And why does Ms. Garrity still look as though she’s hiding something?

“Financial portfolios,” I repeat.

“Pardon?”

“You said your clients weren’t affected in terms of financial portfolios.”

She twists the ring some more.

“So how were they affected?”

She leans back. “I assume the robbers came for cash. I mean, that makes the most sense. But when they saw that wasn’t going to happen, they went for the next best thing.”

“That being?”

“This is an old building. So downstairs, in the basement? We still have safe deposit boxes.”

I can almost hear something in my brain go click. “They broke into them?”

“Yes.”

“All, many, or a select few?”

“Almost all.”

So not specifically targeted. “Have you notified your clients?”

“It’s…complicated. We are doing our best. Do you know much about safe deposit boxes?”

“I know that I would never use one,” I say.

She pulls back at first, but then she settles into a nod. “We don’t have them in newer branches. Truthfully, they are a headache. Expensive to build and maintain, small profit margin, they take up too much space…and there are often problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“People store their valuables—jewelry, paperwork, birth certificates, contracts, passports, deeds, coin or stamp collections. But sometimes, well, they forget. They’ll come in, they’ll open their box, and suddenly they’ll start yelling that a valuable diamond necklace is missing. Usually they just forgot they took it out. Sometimes it’s outright fraud.”

“Claim something was stolen that they never put in the box in the first place.”

“Exactly. And sometimes, rarely, we mess up and it’s our fault. Very rarely.”

“How would you mess up?”

“If a client stops paying for their box, we have to evict them. We give many warnings, of course, but if they don’t pay, we drill open the box and send the contents to our main branch downtown. One time, we drilled the wrong box. The man came in, opened his box, and all his belongings were gone.”

It is starting to make sense. “And when you have a real break-in like this?”

“You can imagine,” she says.

And I can.

“Suddenly, every client is claiming they had expensive Rolex watches in their boxes or rare stamps worth half a million dollars. Clients never read the fine print, of course, but the bank’s liability for any loss for any reason shall not exceed ten times the cost of the annual rent for the box.”

“How much do you charge to rent?”

“It’s rarely more than a few hundred dollars a year.”

Not very much, I think. “So now you’re reaching out to clients,” I continue. “Many are claiming that they lost way in excess of what you are legally obligated to pay out, correct?”