“Yes?”
“You transferred the cash by wire to another account.”
“Please stop saying that.”
“What’s that, ma’am?”
“That I transferred the money. I already told you I didn’t.”
“Well, all of your security questions were answered on the phone, ma’am.”
“Show me.”
She hesitates, then turns the screen my way. There they are: a long list of questions about my mother’s maiden name and what street I lived on as a child, et cetera.
“What account was the money transferred to?”
“That’s confidential.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I cannot disclose the banking information of another individual without a court order.”
“How am I supposed to get that?”
“I assume the police could help you with that, ma’am.”
“So, someone takes all my money, and the bank protects their privacy?”
“That’s the law.”
“Is there any other way you can help me?”
“Well, I think it’s important to remind you to keep all of your passwords and account information in a safe place. Never disclose the answers to your security questions to anyone. A bank account is a responsibility—”
I raise my hand to stop her. “A simple no would’ve sufficed.”
I leave the bank with my heart pumping. I stop at the ATM on the way out to get some cash. The thief left me with a few dollars. How nice of them.
I punch in my PIN, and the machine tells me I’ve made a mistake. I try again with the same result. What the—
Jesus. My PIN’s been changed. Or the bank locked me out and Ma’am Dolores didn’t tell me. Goddammit. I stare at my reflection in the glass screen, clenching my fist so I don’t punch it. There’s a pinhole camera above it, filming me trying not to lose my cool.
The camera! I should’ve thought of that before.
I go back into the bank, only this time, I bypass Dolores and go right to the top.
I’m not leaving here until I get what I need.
Chapter 3
Would You Like to File a Report?
It takes me an hour to convince the bank’s branch manager to log into their central monitoring system and pull the ATM footage from the cash withdrawals. But eventually, after I threaten to write an exposé about his branch specifically, and he finds ample information on the internet to become convinced that I’m morally bankrupt enough to write the things I’ve threatened, he leaves his office and comes back half an hour later with two black-and-white photographs.
They’re a bit blurry, but there’s no denying that it’s Jessica Two. In the first one, she’s dressed the same way she was at the airport, only she’s wearing a jaunty cap, almost a beret, that pushes her hair forward over her face and casts shadows where her eyes should be. I look at the time stamp: only an hour after my plane left. She wasted no time taking the first $1,000. She was at another ATM the next morning, on Greenwich and Eighth. She was wearing the same hat, but this time she had on a high-collared sweater. She wired away the rest of my money that afternoon.
I have so many questions. Like why did she risk going to the ATMs instead of simply wiring herself the money and disappearing? She must have needed the cash for some reason, because she was taking a risk even though I was out of the country and unlikely to be checking my account balance. Part of me feels like she did it because she wanted me to know that it was her, because she could’ve taken the cash from whatever account she transferred the money to. She didn’t have to leave a trail and get caught on video.
She didn’t have to come so close to my apartment.
I take out my phone and pull up Jessica Two’s contact information, the one she passed on at the airport with what I assume was an infected tap. It’s only her name and number, an area code I don’t recognize. When I look it up, it says it’s in California, but that doesn’t mean anything. So long as you pay the bill, no one cares if you live where your cell was born. It’s probably a fake number. I try it anyway, but no one picks up. I tap out a text.
Why did you do this?
I’m not expecting an answer, but it feels good to ask.
“You want to report a crime, ma’am?”
Tolanda Brown—the desk officer at the sixth precinct—is the second person to ma’am me today. I might not take that much time with my appearance, but I’m only a month shy of my thirtieth birthday, for fuck’s sake. I’m wearing the pencil skirt and a dressy capped-sleeve shirt I usually reserve for interviews with important persons. I always thought this outfit made me look professional and approachable, not old.
“That’s right.”
“What type of crime?”
“A theft.”
She hands me a form. “Fill in the details here and then take a seat over there.” She points to a row of upholstered gray chairs against the wall. Her phone rings shrilly as she hands me a pen. I take a seat with my form. This room feels like where people go to die by waiting, but what choice do I have? In order to file a claim with the bank for the money Jessica Two stole, I need a police report. The bank manager had made it clear that because she had access to all my security passwords, the only money I was likely to get back was that taken from the ATMs. But I might as well make a claim anyway, he said, handing me the forms, because you never know.
I fill out the form.
Officer Richardson—property crimes—doesn’t call me ma’am when we’re introduced later that day, but he’s not very reassuring either. In his midfifties, with a runner’s build, he has a weariness about him that’s discouraging.
He’s got his suit jacket draped over the back of his chair. His dress shirt is yellowed, and his suit has the shiny look suits get when they’ve been dry-cleaned too many times. There are twenty other cubicles in the room, and it’s loud in here, many people on the phone, being interviewed like myself. Despite the ambient noise, Officer Richardson talks low, almost mumbling, so I have to lean forward to hear him. It creates a sort of intimacy that I suspect is purposeful.
I give him the bare facts. I show him copies of my bank statements and the photographs from the ATM. He raises his eyebrows at the name thing, then chuckles to himself. These criminals and the things they get up to. I don’t find it funny.
“Any chance I’ll get my money back?”
He looks at me for a moment, sizing me up with large brown eyes that I suspect have seen twenty years of people asking him the same question as his hairline slowly receded. “You seem like a reasonable person. Are you a reasonable person?”
“I’d like to think so.”
“Then the short answer is probably not.”
“You should put that in the brochure.”
“You asked.”
“I did.”
He meets my gaze. “I’m speaking of probabilities. I’ve seen a lot of things in my career, so you never know. For instance, way back when I was starting out, there was this gang that ended up doing a B&E on every house on the same block. That was in Brooklyn. Back before it was . . .”
“Brooklyn?”
“Right.”