The Dead Key Part 28

"It's been a rough day," she admitted.

"Don't mind Mr. Halloran. No one pays any attention to him."

Beatrice smiled weakly, surprised at her candor. She opened her mouth to respond, but Francine had already returned to her typewriter. The moment had pa.s.sed, but they were the first kind words Beatrice had heard at work in days.

CHAPTER 54.

At 5:00 p.m. Beatrice filed out of the building like everyone else. She headed straight to the Theatrical Grille for her meeting with Tony. The bar was nearly full with the happy-hour crowd when she ducked through the door. She scanned the room anxiously for familiar faces. Seeing none, she found the only empty booth and sat down.

A four-piece band was setting up its instruments at the far end of the bar. Beatrice welcomed the distraction and watched the young men polish their bra.s.s horns and tune a humungous ba.s.s. She didn't notice Carmichael until he was at her side.

"Bella! How are you today?" He was carrying a tray of drinks for another table. "I'll be right back."

He returned shortly with a gla.s.s of water for Beatrice. "You hungry tonight?"

She nodded eagerly.

"Excellent! I recommend the meatloaf. You need something to stick to those ribs! You are wasting away!"

She blushed in embarra.s.sment but couldn't argue with him. Her clothes were hanging off of her after weeks of inconsistent meals. "Okay."

"Say, how's my Maxie? Haven't seen her in such a long time!"

"I think she's still on vacation. I'll tell her to come by next time I see her." The story seemed to satisfy him for the time being, and he disappeared with her order.

Beatrice went back to watching the musicians and tried to clear her head before Detective McDonnell arrived. There was so much to tell, and she had to sort the secrets and lies from the truth. She was reaching into her bag of notes when she heard a woman muttering in the booth behind her.

"Figures he's lookin'. That Carmichael always was a sucker for Maxie."

Beatrice was too startled to turn around. Some strange woman had been listening to her conversation with the bartender.

"Used to get on my nerves." The voice coughed, then lowered to a near whisper. "Don't be fooled by his jive. If she's really on vacation, she better stay there. Lots of people lookin'. You tell her that!"

Beatrice scowled and snapped her head toward the voice, but the seat behind hers was empty. There was a finished drink and two dollars on the table. She stood up and searched the room for a woman with a husky voice. A crush of people were laughing at the bar while the ice in their gla.s.ses tinkled merrily. But there was no sign of a woman who wasn't already wrapped up in conversation. She surveyed the room again and caught a flash of gold lame, bronze skin, and a puff of black hair slipping out the door.

Not two minutes later, Carmichael came, grinning, with the meatloaf and mashed potatoes. "Anything else? Wine?"

Still speechless, Beatrice nodded.

He was back with the wine before she'd even considered what she'd ordered. She sipped the red liquid anyway, hoping it might settle her nerves. The food calmed her stomach, and once she'd finished both, her brain began to catch up. The voice of the dark woman replayed in her mind. People were looking for Max, and complete strangers seemed to know more about it than she did.

Tony finally swung through the door, looking haggard. He had grown a full beard since she'd seen him, and heavy bags hung under his eyes. He sank into the red vinyl booth and waved at Carmichael. The barkeep brought him a cup of coffee and didn't stop to chat. One look at Tony was enough to know he wasn't interested in small talk.

Tony turned to Beatrice. "So, did you find anything?"

"I think so," she said in a low voice. The bar was crowded, and even though the band was playing, she wasn't sure who else was listening. "Jim may be James Stone. He's a vice president and apparently changes the combinations to the vaults every Monday morning."

Tony nodded and pulled out a small wire-bound pad.

"Theodore Halloran might be Teddy. He's also a vice president of something."

"What else?"

She paused, still unsure what to divulge. Max had told her to keep their meeting at the hospital a secret. "There used to be a master key to the safe deposit boxes that the bank would use if the owner lost their key or died. The key officially went missing over ten years ago."

Tony looked up at this. "So that's how someone is accessing the boxes."

Beatrice nodded.

"Safe deposit boxes are tough for law enforcement. You need a bench warrant and probable cause to drill one open. People can stash all kinds of stuff in there-stolen goods, incriminating evidence, cash." The detective paused and sipped his coffee.

Beatrice felt a twinge of guilt. Her aunt had been hiding her tips.

The detective kept talking. "If someone had a master key, they could even move these items around to boxes that couldn't be traced back to them."

"Boxes in someone else's name," Beatrice thought out loud.

"It's risky. If the mark checks the box, the jig is up. But I doubt people open them very often. So if the perp does it right, they could safely hide a fortune for years. No taxes. No questions. The world's safest piggy bank."

Beatrice remained silent. Suzanne, Max, Doris, and five other women in Bill's filing drawer all had boxes in their names filled with G.o.d knows what. A nagging voice reminded her Doris was different. Doris had her key. It was Max's voice.

Tony looked up at her worried face. "Max is wrapped up in this thing, isn't she?"

Beatrice nodded, not wanting to betray more. "Did you find out anything?"

"I made a few calls. It was weird. The mere mention of the bank, and people had to get off the phone. I had to resort to some desperate measures, but I finally found someone who'd talk over at the bureau. Turns out the feds have been quietly investigating the bank for five years but keep running into roadblocks."

"Investigating it for what?"

"Fraud, racketeering, embezzlement, money laundering, you name it." Tony flipped open his notepad and skimmed through his notes, then snapped it closed again. "Money has been disappearing in Cleveland for decades. Urban renewal funds, planning initiatives, school programs. The county, state, and even the federal government have been throwing money at the city's problems for years, and millions are unaccounted for."

"And the feds think the bank is involved?" She strained to recall all the conversations she'd overheard-the lost inside man, missing keys, accounts needing to be moved, police needing to be bribed.

"The board of the bank is made up of every old money man in town. No project gets built in Cleveland without someone from the bank being involved. Every project that lost money had a board member of First Bank of Cleveland at the helm, but the feds can't put a case together. City council won't provide corroborating witnesses. Judges won't grant search warrants." He shook his head, exasperated.

Beatrice repeated Ramone's words out loud: "They've got the system tied up."

Tony agreed with a glance. "Max went to the bureau with some new evidence but got laughed out of the building from the way I heard it. No one wants to take the word of a secretary. Besides, one quick background check, and she was discredited as a witness."

Beatrice stiffened at this revelation. "I don't understand. Max worked at the bank for years, in the Auditing Department no less. If anyone would know, it would be her!"

"Well, juries don't look too kindly at unwed mothers with a criminal record."

Beatrice sucked in air. "Criminal record?"

"It's not what you think. There were race riots in Hough. She was on the wrong side as far as the police were concerned. My father was so angry, he let them bring charges. She pleaded them down, but she still has a misdemeanor for criminal mischief on her record." He waved his hands. "The family went to war over it for a couple of years. It's in the past now."

"What happened to the baby?" she whispered.

Tony frowned, as if the story pained him. "She was just a kid when it happened. Us being poor and Catholic, there was really only one choice. She put it up for adoption."

Beatrice nodded, a.s.suming that was the end of the sad story.

"When the baby came out the wrong color, well, that fell through. My parents made her give it up to an orphanage. I don't think she ever forgave them for that."

Beatrice was stunned. "But, but everyone seemed so happy at Thanksgiving!" Nothing in Max's mother's kind smile even hinted of such a horrible betrayal.

"Max ran away. She was gone for over a year. When she came back, she refused to talk about it. My parents took her back into the house and pretended like nothing happened. That was almost eight years ago. And now she's gone again." Tony kept talking, as if it were confession. "She asked me once to track her baby down, you know, a couple years ago. She made me swear to keep it a secret from the folks."

"Did you find anything?"

"It was a baby girl. I told her she'd been adopted a couple years before. The records were sealed. That's all I could do. It broke my heart to tell her. She was always so sure of herself. She had real s.p.u.n.k, you know."

There was water in his eyes. The easygoing ladies' man she'd met a few weeks earlier was gone. She couldn't bear to see him so pained.

"I . . . I saw her."

"What?" His face went slack.

"She came to see me at the hospital a few days ago. She made me swear not to tell you, but I don't want you to worry."

"Why the h.e.l.l would she tell you not to tell me? I'm over here busting my a.s.s trying to find her!" He raised his voice to a roar, and Beatrice shrank into the booth.

"She said she didn't think you could help," Beatrice said in a tiny voice, regretting every word. "She's okay. I think she's hiding."

"Did she say where?"

"No." Beatrice stared at her hands, defeated. At least she hadn't broken her word about the key. The key Max gave her was still a secret. She hadn't betrayed everything. The image of its blank face spun slowly in her head.

"If you see her again, tell her to call me, all right?" He stood up and muttered to himself, "I can't believe this s.h.i.+t is happening."

"Okay."

He stopped and looked her hard in the eye. "If things at the bank are as bad as I think they are, you need to get out, Beatrice. You need to get out now. You know too much . . . and no one is going to believe you either."

CHAPTER 55.

Wednesday, August 26, 1998 Iris pulled to the side of the road and pried her white knuckles from the steering wheel. She hadn't left her name with the locksmith. There was no way the key lady could report her to the police for what she'd taken from the old bank. Iris rubbed her eyes with stiff fingers. It wasn't just any key. She opened her lids, and there it was, dangling from the ignition.

Out her winds.h.i.+eld, she saw that in her blind flight from the key shop she had made it all the way down to Akron. She must have gone the wrong way on I-77. Jesus. She had to stop driving and think. Iris pulled off the highway at Route 59 and managed to navigate her way to an open parking meter somewhere downtown.

The tallest building as far as the eye could see was an art deco, brick-and-stone high-rise not unlike the abandoned bank that was driving her to the brink of insanity. The letters at the top of the tower read "Capital Bank." The sign gave her an idea. Iris got out of the car.

The bronze-and-gla.s.s revolving doors were almost identical to the First Bank of Cleveland's. She pushed through them into a small lobby. There was a security desk in the corner.

"Um, excuse me?" she asked a rotund guard sitting on an absurdly tiny stool. "Who do I see about opening a safe deposit box?"

"Down the stairs, to your right." The guard pointed to a narrow set of stairs off the lobby.

At the bottom of the stairs on the right was a door marked "Deposits." Inside she found a small room and a large woman stuffed behind a crowded desk. The clerk looked a bit like Iris's mother, with her ruddy cheeks and tight-permed hair.

"Can I help you, dear?" The woman smiled up at her.

"I'm thinking about renting a safe deposit box." Iris took the seat in front of the woman's cramped workstation.

"Wonderful. You'll need to fill out this form."

She handed Iris a clipboard and went back to typing something onto her huge computer monitor. Iris skimmed the sheet. It wanted to know her name, address, social security number, and other typical information.

"Could I ask a few questions first?"

"Sure, honey." The woman pulled her reading gla.s.ses off of her nose and let them dangle from a neon-pink cord around her neck.

"Where are the boxes kept?"

"In the vault. It's through that door." She pointed to a solid wood door opposite the one Iris had walked through.

"How do I know that my things will be safe?"

"Would you like to see inside the vault, dear?"

Iris nodded eagerly.

The woman sighed ever so faintly and hoisted her girth off her ergonomic chair. She selected a key from the stretched spiral band on her plump wrist, then led Iris down a narrow hallway, through a round steel opening, and into a room full of locked cubbies.

"This is where the boxes are kept." She pointed to the rows and rows of steel doors. "The vault is locked all hours except business hours. It's monitored twenty-four hours a day with security cameras. Your valuables will be more than safe here."

Iris searched the corners for the security cameras until she saw three little red lights blinking along the ceiling.

"How are the boxes opened?"

"The bank will issue you two keys. You put one here." She pointed to one of two keyholes in a door. "And then I put the bank's key here. The two keys must be turned at the same time to open the box."