The Moneychangers (6 page)

Of course, Juanita Nu
nez could have taken this into account, deciding that an immediate six thousand dollars was worth the loss of her job, even though she might have difficulty getting another. Either way, Edwina was sorry for the girl. Obviously she must have been desperate. Perhaps her need had to do with her child.

"I don't believe there's any more we can do at this point," Edwina told the group. "I'll have to advise head office. They'll take over the investigation."

As the three got up, she added, "Mrs. Nunez, please stay." The girl resumed her seat.

When the
others were out of hearing, Edw
ina said with deliberate informality, "Juanita, I thought this might be a moment for us to talk frankly to each other, perhaps as friends." Edwina had banished her earlier impatience. She was aware of the girl's dark eyes fixed intently on her own.

"I'm sure that two things must have occurred to you. First, there's going to be a thoro
ugh investigation into this and
the FBI will be involved because we're a federally insured bank. Second, there is no way that suspicion cannot fall on you." Edwina paused. "I'm being open with yo
u about this. You understand?"
"I understand. But I did not take any money."

Edwina observed that the young woman was still turning her wedding ring nervously.

Now Edwina chose her words carefully, aware she must be cautious in
avoiding a direct accusation whi
ch might rebound in legal trouble for the bank later.

"However long the investigation takes, Juanita, it's almost certain the truth
will come out, if for no other
reason than that it usually does. Investigators are thorough. They're also experienced. They do not give up."

The girl repeated, more emphatically, "I did not take the money."

"I haven't said you did. But I do want to say that if by any chance you know something more than you have said already, now is the time to speak out, to tell me while we're talking quietly here. After this there will be no other chances. It will be too late."

Juanita Nunez seemed about to speak again. Edwina raised a hand. "No, hear me out. I'll make this promise. If the money were returned to the bank, let's say no later than tomorrow, there would be no l
egal action, no prosecution. In
fairness, I'll have to say that whoever took the money could no longer work here. But nothing else would happen. I guarantee it. Juanita, do you have anything to tell me?"

"No, no, no! I lo jure
For mi hija!" The girl's eyes blazed, her face came alive in anger. "I tell you I did not take any money, now or ever." Edwina sighed.

"All right, that's all for now. But please do not leave the bank without checking with me first."

Juanita Nunez appeared on the verge of another heated reply. Instead, with a slight shrug, she rose and turned away.

From her elevated desk, Edwina surveyed the activity around her; it was her own small world, her personal responsibility. The day's bra
nch transactions were still be
ing balanced and recorded, though a preliminary check had shown that no teller as was originally hoped had a six-thousand-dollar overage.

Sounds were muted in the modern building: in low key, voices buzzed, papers rustled, coinage jingled, calculators clicked. She watched it all briefly, reminding herself that for two reasons this was a week she would remember. Then, knowing what must be done, she lifted a telephone and dialed an internal number. A woman's voice answered. "Security department." "Mr. Wainwright, please," Edwina said.

6

Nolan Wainwright had found it hard, since yesterday, to concentrate on normal work within the bank.

The chief of security had been deeply affected by Tuesday morning's session in the boardroom, not least because, over a decade, he and Ben Rosselli had achieved both friendship and mutual respect. It had not always been that way.

Yesterday, returning from the tower executive floor to his own more modest office which looked out onto a light well, Wainwright-had told his secretary not to disturb him for a while. Then he had sat at his desk, sad, brooding, reaching back in memory to the time of ho own first dash with Ben Rosselli's will.

It was ten years earlier. Nolan Wainwright was the newly appointed police chief of a small upstate town. Before that he had been a lieutenant of detectives on a big city force, with an outstanding record. He had the ability for a chief's job and, in the climate of the times, it probably helped his candidacy that he was black.

Soon after the new chief's appointment, Ben Rosselli drove through the outskirts of the littl
e town and was clocked at 80 mph
A police patrolman of the local force handed him a ticket with a summons to traffic court.

Perhaps because his life was conservative in other ways, Ben Rosselli always loved fast cars and drove them as their designers intended with
his right foot near the floor.

A speeding summons was routine. Back at First Mercantile American Headquarters he sent it, as usual, to the bank's security department
with instructions to have it
fixed. For the state's most powerful man of
money, many things could be fil
ed and often were.

The summons was dispatched by courier next day to the FMA branch manager in the town where it was issued. It so happened that the branch manager was also a local councilman and he had been influential in Nolan Wainwright's appointment as chief of police.

The bank manager-councilman dropped over to police headquarters to have the traffic summons withdrawn. He was amiable. Nolan Wainwright was adamant.

Less amiably, the councilman pointed out to Wainwright that he was new to the community, needed friends, and that non-co-operation was not the way to recruit them. Wainwright still declined to do anything about the summons.

The councilman put
on his banker's hat and reminded the police chief of his personal application to First Mercantile American Bank for a home mortgage loan which would make it possible to bring Wainwright's wife and family to the town. Mr. Rosselli, the branch manager added somewhat needlessly, was president of FMA.

Nolan Wainwright said he could see no relationship between a loan application and a traffic summons.

In due course Mr. Rosselli for whom counsel appeared in court, was fined heavily for reckless driving and awarded three demerit points, to be recorded on his license. He was exceedingly angry.

Also in due course the mortgage application of Nolan Wainwright was turned down by First Mercantile American Bank.

Less than a week later Wainwright presented himself in Rosselli's office on the 36th floor of FMA Headquarters Tower, taking advantage of the accessibility on which the bank president prided himself.

When he learned who his visitor was, Ben Rosselli was surprised that he was black. No one had mentioned that. Not that it made any difference to the banker's still simmering wrath at the ignominious notation on his driving record the first of a lifetime. Wainwright spoke coolly. To his credit, Ben Rosselli

had known nothing of the police chief's mortgage loan application or its rejection; such matters were conducted at a lower level than his own. But he smelled the odor of injustice and sent, there and then, for the loan file which he reviewed while Nolan Wainwright waited.

"As a matter
of interest," Ben Rosselli said
when he had finished reading, "if we don't make this loan what do you intend to do?"

Wainwright's answer now was cold. "fight. I'll hire a lawyer and we'll go to the Civil Rights Commission for a start. If we don't succeed there, whatever else can be done to cause you trouble, that I'll do."

It was obvious he meant it and the banker snapped, "I don't respond to threats."

"I'm not making threats. You asked me a question and I answered it."

Ben Rosselli hesitated, then scribbled a signature in the file. He said, unsmiling, "The application is approved."

Before Wainwright left, the banker asked him, "What happens now if I get caught speeding in your town?"

"We'll throw the book at you. If it's another reckless driving charge, you'll probably be in jail."

Watching the policeman:go, Ben Rosselli had the thought, which he would confide to Wainwright years later: You self-righteous s.o.b.! One day I'll get you. He never had in that sense. But in another, he did.

Two years later when the bank was seeking a top security executive who would be as the head of Personnel expressed it "tenaciousl
y strong and totally incorruptibl
e," Ben Rosselli stated, "I know of such a man."

Soon after, an offer was made
to Nolan Wainwright, a contract signed, a
nd Wainwright came to work for F
MA.

Prom then on, Ben Rosselli and Wainwright had never clashed. The new head of Security did his job efficiently and added to his understanding of it by taking night school courses in banking theory. Rosselli, for his part, never asked Wainwright to breach his rigid code of ethics and the banker got his speeding tickets fixed elsewhere rather than through Secur
ity, believing Wainwright never k
new, though usually he did. All the while the friendship
between the two grew until, after the death of Ben Rosselli's wife, Wainwright frequently would eat dinner with the old man and afterwards they would play chess into the night.

In a way it had been a consolation for Wainwright, too; for his own marriage had ended in divorce soon after he went to work for FMA. His new responsibilities, and the sessions with old Ben, helped fill the gap.

They talked at such times about personal beliefs, influencing each other in ways they realized and in others of which neither was aware. And it was Wainwright though only the two of them ever knew it who helped persuade the bank pr
esident to employ his personal
prestige and FMA's money in helping the Forum East development in that neglected city area where Wainwright had been born and spent his adolescent years.

Thus, like many others in the bank, Nolan Wainwright had his private memories of Ben Rosselli and his private sorrow.

Today, his mood of depression had persisted, and after a morning during which he had stayed mostly at his desk, avoiding people whom he did not need to see, Wainwright left for lunch alone. He went to a small cafe on the other side of town which he favored sometimes when he wanted to feel briefly free from FMA and its affairs. He returned in time to keep an appointment with Vandervoort.

The locale of their meeting was the bank's Keycharge credit-card division, housed in the Headquarters Tower.

The Keycharge bank card system had been pioneered by First Mercantile American and now was operated jointly with a strong group of other banks in the U.S., Canada, and overseas. In size, Keycharge ranked immediately after BankAmericard and MasterCharge. Alex Vandervoort, within FMA, had over-all responsibility for the division.

Vandervoort was early and, when Nolan Wainwright arrived, was already in the Keycharge authorization center watching operations. The bank security chief joined him.

"I always like to see this," Alex said. "Best free show in town."

In a large, auditorium-like room, dimly lighted and with acoustic walls and ceilings to deaden sound, some fifty operators predominantly women were seated at a battery of consoles. Each console comprised a cathode ray tube, similar to a TV screen, with a keyboard beneath.

It was here that Keycharge cardholders were given or refused credit.

When a Keycharge card was presented anywhere in payment for goods or services, the place of business could accept the card without question if the amount involved was below an agreed floor limit.
The limit varied, but was usuall
y between twenty-five and fifty dollars. For a larger purchase, authorization was needed, though it took only seconds to obtain.

Call
s poured into the authorization center twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They came from every U.S. state and Canadian province, while a row of chattering Telex machines brought queries from thirty foreign countries including some in the Russian-Communist orbit. Whereas builders of the British Empire once cheered proudly for the "red, white, and blue," creators of the Keycharge economic empire
rooted with
equal fervor for the "blue, green, and gold" international colors of the Keycharge card. The approval procedures moved at jet speed.

Wherever they were, merchants and others dialed directly through WATS lines to the Keycharge nerve center in PMA Headquarters Tower. Automatically, each call was routed to a free operator whose first words were, "What is your merchant number?"

As the answer was given, the operator typed the figures, which appeared simultaneously on the cathode ray screen; Next was the card number and amount of credit being sought, this too typed and displayed.

The operator pressed a key, feeding the information to a computer which instantly signaled "ACCEPTED" or "DECLINED." The first meant that credit was good and the purchase approved, the second that the cardholder was delinquent and credit had been
cut off. Since credit rules
were lenient, with banks in the system wanting to lend money, acceptances by far outnumbered turndowns. The operator informed the merchant, the computer meanwhile recording the transaction. On a normal day fifteen thousand calls came in.