The Banker, page 3
When we hung up, I was in such a good mood that I called Angela Estrella.
‘Where do you stand on martinis and watching a movie on my couch or yours?’
‘Tonight?’
‘Yes.’
‘I feel very good about the martinis, but something tells me if this is like every other time I come over that we won’t watch much of the movie.’
‘That’s a distinct possibility.’
TWO
April gave way to May as it usually does, rain and chilly weather giving way to sun and budding plants. Leaves began to poke out of the trees on Commonwealth Avenue, and the flowers in the Public Garden hinted at the riot of colors yet to come. On TV and in the bars and homes in the Greater Boston area, there was excited talk of the Red Sox. The true religion of Boston is baseball, and Opening Day is like Easter for Red Sox fans. It was a glimmer of hope after having our collective spirits so badly dashed by the New England Patriots losing to the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl.
I was sitting in my office with my feet up on my desk, reading the Boston Globe, enjoying a pipe and an espresso. In the past few weeks, I had wrapped up not one but two divorce cases and an insurance fraud case. I was putting off writing the report about the guy who claimed to have been hit by a moving van while crossing Massachusetts Avenue. He was claiming severe neck and back injury, but I managed to get photos of him chopping wood at a cabin in the Berkshires. He took his neck brace off when splitting cord wood.
I sipped my espresso and then puffed on the pipe, filling the office with the rich smell of a blend of Virginia and Latakia from Peretti’s. L.J. Peretti had been supplying the good people of Boston with their tobacco needs since 1870. Like the Union Oyster House and Jake Wirth’s, it was a Boston institution. I alternated between sipping my tiny, bitter coffee and puffing on the pipe. The office window was open to let some of the smoke out and the sounds of traffic in.
I hadn’t thought much about Amesbury or about the Merrimack Community Bank, but it was right there on page three. Yesterday morning the bank was robbed. Two men had gone in, cold-cocked the guard and, like proper villains, threatened to shoot the place up. Frank Cosgrove, the assistant manager, stood up from his desk for some reason and was rewarded for his bravery with a bullet between his eyes. He was probably dead before he hit the ground. The robbers fled south, presumably toward Boston, in a late model sedan. There was no sign of them anywhere.
I sat back in my chair wondering about the funny way the universe works. I had been watching the bank and Cosgrove, among others, only a few weeks ago. I was so bored during my time there I would have welcomed a robbery just to shake things up. Now one had happened and a nice guy, by all accounts, was dead. I thought about his girlfriend and their dinner-and-movie dates. It left me feeling a little hollow and then angry. Cosgrove didn’t seem like the type who deserved to get killed. Not like that. He should have married his girl, started a family and lived to a ripe old age.
It was a hell of a coincidence, though, the bank getting robbed and Cosgrove murdered shortly after I had been hired to investigate embezzlement there. Except they were two different types of crimes. Why rob a bank if you can steal the money from the inside, cleanly, with no violence? That and Brock said that two million dollars was missing as a result of the embezzlement. A robber might get five or ten thousand from the cash drawers, maybe twenty or thirty thousand from a bigger bank. It hardly seemed worth the effort or the heat it would bring.
I picked up the phone and dialed Special Agent Brenda Watts’s number. I listened to it ring and pictured her sitting at her desk working on some important government investigation.
She picked up on the third ring, and after we got through our greetings, she said, ‘What do you want, Andy?’
‘Who says I want anything?’
‘Because you don’t call unless you do.’
‘That’s not true, sometimes I call to make a pass at you.’
‘That is technically wanting something.’
‘True,’ I agreed. Brenda had honey-colored hair which she wore in a simple ponytail and pretty eyes that flashed whenever she was angry with me, which was most of the time.
‘What do you want?’ she repeated.
‘I was hoping to take you to lunch and pick your brain?’ I said. Brenda had a soft spot for me, but it wasn’t enough for her to have taken me up on any of my earlier romantic efforts.
‘About what?’
‘Banks.’
‘Banks?’ she asked.
‘Yes, banks.’
‘What specifically?’
‘Stealing from them.’
‘As in robbery or embezzlement?’
‘Yes,’ I said definitively. I wasn’t exactly sure how much I wanted to tell Brenda and figured having a little time to chew it over might not be a bad idea.
‘OK. What did you have in mind?’
‘Fancy a trip to Chinatown?’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t suggest Durgin Park or some other old Boston institution.’
‘No point trying to have a conversation in Durgin Park at lunch. Besides, the place I am thinking of is an old Boston institution, just in Chinatown.’
‘Sure, where?’
‘Ee Yong Goey’s. It’s not far from the Combat Zone.’ The Combat Zone was Boston’s ever-shrinking patch of sin. When Scollay Square was razed to build the architectural atrocity known as Government Center, it displaced a lot of small businesses. Those businesses happened to be porno theaters, dirty bookstores, burlesque joints and all the ancillary businesses associated with them, like drugs and prostitution. Nothing in Chinatown was actually far from the Combat Zone, which was part of the problem that the Chinatown Business Owners Association had.
‘Give me the address.’
I did as I was told, and we agreed to meet at one p.m. and then rang off.
I spent the next few hours typing up my report on the insurance fraud matter. When it was done, I went downstairs to the video rental place, which for reasons I would never understand had a coin-operated Xerox machine. I guess the owner was trying to diversify. When I had fed enough coins into the machine and got my copies, I went back upstairs. The report and the photos I had taken all went into a manila envelope along with my bill. I would stop and mail it along the way to lunch.
I walked through the narrow and winding streets from my office, which isn’t too far from the courts and the financial district. The weather was nice, and walking was easier than finding parking in this town. After a brief stop at the post office, I slipped into Chinatown on a street that tourists would have avoided like the plague. It always felt a little like crossing into East Germany from the West.
Chinatown was still in Boston, still in America, but for a few short square blocks it might as well have been a different country. Every now and then, my dad and I would go to see the Red Sox at Fenway. If we didn’t feast on ballpark franks, and soda for me, beer for him, he would suggest a hike to Chinatown. When I was a kid, this was only for the early games.
Chinatown was my first hint outside of the library that there was a world outside of South Boston. The first thing that struck me about Chinatown was the smell. It just smelled different, the mix of fish, rotting vegetables, exotic spices, and fried food that overwhelmed the other smells, making me instantly hungry. The next thing that I noticed was the writing on the signs on the buildings. Some were in English with what I would later learn was either Mandarin or Cantonese letters below, but as a kid I just thought of as Chinese. On others, the English was the minority alphabet, and on a few, the phone number on the sign was only written in English.
Many of the plate glass windows had roast chickens or ducks. Some had whole roasted piglets and others still had strips of pork, red on the outside, bright pink on the inside blending to a grayish brown. Being raised in an Irish Catholic neighborhood, my understanding of pork was that it was not properly cooked unless it was a uniform, defeated gray color. At some point it occurred to me that most of the people around us didn’t look like we did and weren’t speaking English. It was a tiny hint of what Vietnam would be like when I was out on the local economy.
I loved it. I loved how exotic it was and yet how close. The place moved with a bustle, an energy that made my neighborhood feel like it was already in the funeral parlor. Chinatown was like traveling without a passport or a lot of money. The only place that offered as much for so little was the library, but there were no eggrolls there.
Ee Yong Goey’s wasn’t much to look at from the outside. Plain brick façade, plate glass windows that were so cluttered by plants they blocked daylight from getting in, and three steps up. Above the door was a flat sign with a red background and yellow writing in English made to look like Mandarin spelling out the name of the joint. The phone number below it, an afterthought in plain black script.
Inside, there was the usual smattering of tables with the Formica tops that were supposed to look like wood. The red paper placemats had water glasses and tea cups sitting rim down, paper napkins, paper-sleeved chopsticks and metal flatware on each table. Black metal chairs with red vinyl seats were like clubs on a playing card. The carpet had been new once, but that might have been when John Kennedy was a presidential hopeful. Here and there were a few ficus trees to liven the place up.
A waiter hustled over and bowed. It was a little much, but maybe he mistook me for a tourist. I held up two fingers in a V for victory symbol and he nodded. I followed him to a table and sat down with an eye on the door. For once I was early and I had beaten Watts to lunch.
He came back with two menus under his arm and a small metal pitcher in his hand. He turned over two of the glasses and poured ice water into them. It was Boston’s finest tap water.
I made eye contact with him before he moved away. ‘Tea, please.’
He nodded and, in a minute, came back with a small metal pot.
I turned over the small teacup – really a glorified white, ceramic shot glass – with a red ring around it and poured some tea into it. Watts walked through the door and stopped briefly, scanning the two-thirds empty dining room. Her eyes settled on me, and she walked over.
‘Well, Andy, you do know how to impress a girl,’ she said, nose wrinkled as she looked around.
‘The place is modest, but the food is out of this world.’ I wasn’t exactly sure where Watts was from, but I had the feeling it was a part of the country where pizza is considered ‘ethnic’ cuisine.
‘Modest or seedy?’
‘No one comes to Chinatown for the décor.’
‘Well, let’s hope the food is as good as you say it is.’
‘Watts, this place is a diamond in the rough. You’ll love it.’
‘Ha, let’s hope your judgment in restaurants is better than your judgment in all other things.’
‘Are you saying I have bad judgment?’
‘You? Only in just about everything you do.’
‘See, it’s not all bad.’ I smiled my second-most charming smile at her. Using my most charming smile didn’t seem right while I was spending time with Angela.
‘Only you would see it that way.’
The waiter came and we ordered chicken lo mein, beef with broccoli and eggrolls. There were far more complicated dishes on the menu, but neither of us was willing to invest the time in peking duck or moo shu pork. There was nothing wrong with them, but they weren’t chat-about-crime-over-lunch types of dishes.
We sipped our tea out of the hot ceramic shot glasses, and finally Watts asked, ‘So, what did you want to know about crime related to banks?’
‘I was wondering what you could tell me about embezzling from banks?’
‘Why, are you working on a case?’
‘I was three weeks ago, but it’s over.’
‘Someone hired you to investigate embezzlement?’ She snorted, she actually snorted at the thought.
‘Hey! Is that so surprising?’
‘Well, Jesus, Andy … in the few short years I’ve known you, you haven’t actually impressed me as someone who is subtle or investigates nuanced crimes.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘And since I’ve known you, you’ve shot or beat up half of Boston.’
‘That’s not true. I beat up some guys in Fairhaven that time.’ Fairhaven was a tough little town butted up against the dying textile city of Fall River, Massachusetts.
‘And shot a couple of people in Vermont,’ she added quietly.
There were others but she was too polite to get into specifics.
‘It’s a crime, how hard can it be?’ I asked.
‘You aren’t exactly a forensic accountant. There’s a reason why the Bureau hires a lot of lawyers and accountants. Crimes like embezzlement require something more than your state-of-the-art nineteen-thirties gumshoe approach.’ She actually had a point, as insulting as it was.
‘I was hired to follow three bank employees and see if they were living beyond their means.’
‘Well, that’s a little more your speed.’ She at least smiled when she said it. Watts had a great smile; it went with her great cheekbones, which highlighted her great eyes. It made the lack of confidence in my investigative skills go down a little easier.
‘Yeah, thanks.’
‘Was any of them an embezzler?’
‘Not that I could see. It was the most godawful boring two weeks of my life. If any of them were up to anything, they didn’t show it.’
‘Nothing?’
‘No, between the three of them, a night of living it up was either pizza for family dinner, going out to dinner and a movie, or the weekly Bingo game at church.’
‘You had to watch them for two weeks to come up with that?’
The food came and the waiter put the platters between us and a bowl of rice for the beef with broccoli. We agreed to share the food, and Watts opted for a fork while I went for chopsticks. When we had both helped ourselves to the food and had a bite, the conversation started again.
‘Here’s the funny thing,’ I said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Yesterday, someone robbed that very bank. One of the three people I was watching got shot in the head.’
‘Dead?’
‘You know any other way that usually works out?’
‘You were watching the bank that’s almost in New Hampshire?’
‘Yeah. Place was so boring that I hoped it would get robbed.’
‘You think it’s connected?’
‘It’s an awful coincidence, but I don’t know how. The amount of money taken from the robbery wouldn’t be enough to hide the money that was embezzled. Also, assuming it is connected, why kill the assistant branch manager?’
‘Maybe he’s involved and got shot to keep him quiet?’ she suggested.
‘That doesn’t make sense. Why bother setting up a robbery and killing a guy? That brings a lot of heat. It brings the Feds into and the State Police. That seems like a shitty way to cover up a white-collar crime like embezzlement.’
‘So, you think that the bank robbery is just a bank robbery then?’
‘I don’t know. What are the odds? Especially in a town like Amesbury which probably doesn’t have a lot of crime to begin with, let alone a fatal one. Boston, Worcester, Providence, sure, but Amesbury?’
‘And you are buying me this luxurious meal, which is a lot better than the look of the place would lead you to believe, so that I will get you the skinny on the bank robbery?’
‘I would appreciate it,’ I said.
‘If I know you, you aren’t going to let this go, are you.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘I don’t know. It’s too soon to tell, but I want to know more about it.’
‘There’s no point in telling you to leave it alone, is there? You know, to leave it to us and the Staties.’
‘Well, certainly not after I’ve spent a fortune on lunch.’
What I couldn’t tell Watts was that I couldn’t reconcile Cosgrove’s murder with the young guy who I had watched for a few days, the guy who held the car door open for his girl or went on nice, all-American kind of dates. There had been a wholesomeness to all of it that I wasn’t used to. Maybe that’s why the whole thing was bothering me so much.
‘Yeah, that’s it. I’ll just pretend you don’t have that look,’ she said.
‘What look?’
‘The same look you always get before you go off and do something stupid.’
‘And piss you off in the process?’
‘Yep, that look.’ She smiled when she said it.
Watts’s feelings for me were wholly platonic and ran the gamut from irked with to worried about me. It wasn’t much emotional range, but at least she cared. She had been in my corner often enough despite my best efforts to annoy her.
‘It’s probably just a coincidence.’
‘Probably,’ she said, clearly not convinced.
We finished lunch and I left some bills on the table. Out in the street, May sunshine wasn’t shining on Chinatown.
‘I don’t suppose you’ll let me know if you come up with anything criminal going on?’ she asked.
‘Hey, I’m a duly licensed private investigator, obligated to report crimes if I come across them.’
‘Yeah, but somehow your circa nineteen forties sensibilities get in the way sometimes. Plus, you have some very shady friends.’
‘Well, that’s true.’
‘Which part?’
‘All of it.’
What could I say, she was right.
I watched Watts walk to where she had parked her non-government issue Saab. It was red and nifty-looking. It seemed too early to go home, so I walked back to the office.
I kept going over my conversation with her in my head. Other than coincidence, there was nothing connecting Cosgrove’s murder to my being hired. I had spent weeks watching all three of them, and none of them were living above their means. None of them had a secret life that I could see. The only option if one of them had been embezzling was that they were very disciplined. Saving the money, not touching a penny of it until one day they could get out of Amesbury and spend it on the high life. The problem was that I had no way of getting into any of their financial records. None of them struck me as the type to bury that much money in their backyards.
