The banking world puts a man in touch with all kinds of thieves. If there is larceny lurking within the individual, it will likely surface in this environment. There are more temptations for a man in a small branch bank than there is for a hunting dog in a pet store. Lets face it, money makes the material world go around and now you are in the business of handling, loaning, counting, stacking, transferring, accepting, paying, exchanging and accounting for the stuff.
When I was a little boy my father asked me what I thought was a huge amount of money. I told him a million dollars. He asked what I could do with it. I listed off a bunch of extravagant things and went on at some length. When I finished he asked me if all that fun would be worth spending a single day and night locked in a metal cage. I said no.
I remember being trained on the head teller position in a Lynn Valley Branch of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. At that post I had to do a monthly inventory of the vault. In that sanctum were some surprising treasures. Among these were some heavy canvas bags with drawstrings. I had to open each one, do a physical count of the contents and duly record my findings on a clipboard. I could barely lift the first one.
At that time I met my first gold bar. Rather, I would have to call it a brick. At that time, in the borderlands of the Seventies and Eighties, each brick was worth over forty thousand dollars by weight and purity. A man could buy a house for that much where I lived at that time. Many untoward thoughts ran through my mind. Some of those thoughts were in the news feeds decades later and the perpetrators were precious metal traders. Tungsten and gold plate played starring roles.
The owner of the bricks I inventoried was a Dutchman who ran a bakery in the mall. Like so many others, he had been through war and had indelible memories of it. Every time he got enough cash to purchase a brick, he did so and added it to his hoard. Once every few weeks, he came in to the bank count them himself. It was he that taught me that an ounce of gold could be exchanged for he same amount of bread at the time Jesus as well as today, regardless of the inflation of our fiat paper currency.
Another bag contained eleven sets of Olympic Commemorative coins from the Montreal Olympics back in the Sixties. Bunches had been sent to each branch for the public to purchase. They were in plastic cases with four denominations to a set. They were struck from .999% silver. Silver was no big deal and jobs were plentiful, so the shiny disks had languished in that bag for over ten years. I had a thought.
I asked my manager if I could purchase those sets of coins, forty-four pieces in all. He said that I could by all means do this. I asked how much I would have to pay and he told me I should pay the face value, of course. I separated them into an empty sack and withdrew the cash from my account. It was a unique feeling to walk up Mountain Highway after work to my basement suite on Kilmer Road with the heavy stuff jangling over my shoulder. I felt like Bilbo Baggins.
I watched the newspapers for days waiting for the slightest upwards fluctuation in price. Within a week I had it! One Saturday, I went into Vancouver and unloaded the whole shebang to a Chinese metal trader by weight and netted myself a nifty $300 profit. After that I became bored of tracking the daily fixes of metals. I reckoned that there were only two other people who could have engineered what I did. One was Samuel Clemens, aka. Mark Twain and the other one was Squanto.
Not two months after my financial coup, I was reading the paper and nearly spewed my instant Cappuccino across the lunchroom. It appeared that some rich brothers in Texas, by the name of Hunt, got a big idea to start buying up all the available physical silver on planet Earth. That gambit understandably drove the price into the stratosphere where it peaked and then the brothers sold out. I grabbed a napkin and did a quick calculation with the figures from the newspaper article. If I had waited a few more weeks, my patience would have netted me over $3000 or nearly a year's salary for me at that time.
Sometimes larceny laid its leathern wings on the shoulders of our customers. Once a nice Scottish lady came in to cash a cheque drawn on the Bank of Scotland in Scottish Pounds. I was working my first teller position and just learning how to reconcile my cash drawer at the end of each shift. The cheque was from her father and the proceeds were intended for her two boys. She told me a wonderful story of how the old man was upset that the two grandsons couldn't be bothered to write to him in Glasgow. He sent them a letter and asked if they enjoyed the money that he had sent to them a few months ago. The boys immediately wrote to tell him the tragic news that the money had never arrived!
The lads kept up a constant stream of heartfelt correspondence after that. When the old codger deemed an appropriate time of penance had elapsed he sent forth the hard earned gift into the mails. I was so entertained by the Scottish woman's story that I misread the exchange rate and gave the woman several times more cash than she was entitled to. She instantly knew that she had hit the jackpot. She smiled and probably went to a fancy restaurant that night while I was recording my first shortage. The bank told me not to ever mention it to her.
I had two little sheets of paper taped under my counter. One was the days currency fixes for buying and selling. There was nothing fair about it. The customer lost both ways. Hey, it wasn't personal, it was business. The other paper was an internal code consisting of numbers and phrases. This was used by the bank employees to comment on various customers without their being aware of it. A teller would simply announce, "Code Nine," for example. Every other employee would glance at their own list and look knowingly at the customer currently standing at the wicket of the teller who had uttered the Code.
I had been given the Code on day two of my employment. My favourite was Code Seven. The corresponding phrase was, “Play ball with us and we'll pound sand up your ass!” My Scottish lassie returned a week later and elicited a Code Four from me upon our second meeting.
There was a benign housewife who had been a teller for thirty years at one of the branches I worked at. She was a sweet mother and wife. She was loved by everyone at work and served as the go to person for problem solving on a daily basis. I was in training at her branch when the woman attained her retirement date. As it turned out, she had been siphoning cash during the entire course of her career. She had initially stayed well within her allowed shortage limit. The fluctuating shortage amount of a teller is monitored by management and based on factors of seniority and in consideration of job performance is altered accordingly.
As with all addictions, hers increased over time and the entire sum was a handsome ransom. The bank was fully aware of her transgression from just after its commencement and quietly allowed her to operate her scheme for thirty years. Midway through her last week, the management confronted her, presented her with their carefully gathered and documented evidence. She was then given an extremely limited set of hard choices to make. It broke her in two. Spiritually, physically and mentally.
I was appalled by the stark lack of sympathy of the other ladies who had unburdened themselves of their personal problems over the years to this woman. If I were pressed to give a name to the species of morality displayed by the bank management in allowing her to err in order to crush her utterly at a later date, rather than correcting her initial small indiscretion while in the bud; I would not be allowed to publish the words I would coin for that task.
When I was at the Main and Broadway branch a Latino guy came in one day. He waited in a long line and when an available teller came open, he remained. He repeated this three times until he was standing in front of me. I was the only male in the bank but I still didn't think this was the reason for his behaviour. Something was up. He was about five foot two, quite healthy looking and well dressed. He was easy on his feet, relaxed and very friendly.
He handed me his VISA card and asked if I would kindly check the credit balance as he was a sloppy accountant and had been on a bit of a shopping spree on account of the good weather of late. I complied and went to my desk to make the call. When I read the number off the card, many wheels went into motion. The man at the other end of the phone became hyper-excited.
“Is the man asking about the card still there?”
I looked at the fellow who stood whistling softly at the counter.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Is he about five foot two, brown eyes and black hair?”
“Yes, Sir.”
The fellow started to tap his fingers on the counter as if he was the tiniest bit impatient.
“Is the name on the card, **** *****.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“That man is not the owner of the card. The card is stolen. That guy is an illegal alien, a convicted felon, a coke dealer and he has done penitentiary time in the USA. He is currently being sought by both Canadian and US authorities. There is an arrest warrant out for him. He has been charged with aggravated assault by the owner of that card. We have been looking for him for three days. He is to be considered armed and dangerous and he is also a third dan black belt in karate.”
I looked at the guy, not two feet away from where I stood. I looked at all the other tellers and customers who were oblivious to this rapid turn of events.
“I see. And the balance?” I said into the phone.
“Listen, tell him that our computer is down. Tell him it will take a couple of minutes, that is all. KEEP HIM THERE! We are already sending police to the bank to take him down. You will see officers coming from the Bank of Montreal across the street into both doors of your bank and they will have two dogs. The officers will seal your doors. When an officer comes up to the counter, you will have to identify the man. Got all that?”
I turned to the customer and told him that the computers were temporarily down. He looked a little bit more impatient. I went to lean on the desk out of his arm reach and peered through the windows out front as if bored of being on hold. I could see the police coming across the street as indicated and they were undoing their holsters. I saw the dog handlers.
Where I grew up people believed in minding one's own business. In my childhood household, a tattle-tale received equal or worse punishment than a wrong doer. No one likes a snitch. Everybody hates a rat-fink. All those deep-seated thoughts churned through my mind in those seconds that crawled like hours. I couldn't see myself pointing a finger at a man whom I had never met and whom had never done me a personal wrong.
That was my biggest dilemma in the next few seconds that ensued. While the cops were still outside, the fellow asked in an irritated tone if it would be much longer. I saw my chance and said to him that I figured it may take some time and asked him if he would like to forget it. I reasoned that if he was clever he would ask for the card back and tell me that he was in too much of a hurry. I felt sure of it.
The fool declined the card, accepted the extra wait and I saw again the fly in the ointment of the criminal mind. Greed breeds overconfidence. Just as any gambler has two motivations which lead him to ruin. One is the logic that if he loses often enough, the law of averages dictates that he must win eventually. The other is the logic that if he wins, it can happen again. Greed needs no explanation here. I gave no visual clues to the drama forming up outside and in an instant the widow of opportunity for the man to escape slammed shut.
Both doors were sealed and guarded by dog handlers before the customers became alerted that something unusual was going on. Two other big cops stood at each door outside with shotguns ready. As soon as one of our tellers saw the uniforms she hit the deck and began to sob and yell. The other ladies followed suit, as did about forty percent of the customers.
The thief stood nonchalantly and perfectly calm. He placed both hands on the counter and continued whistling softly. A tall policeman approached the front desk not a foot away from the man and asked in a very loud angry voice who in the hell had phoned the police. Another officer flanked on the other side of their as yet unidentified quarry.
I put down the phone. I was the only one who knew who they were seeking.
As I predicted, I could not bring myself to point at the man. I took the credit card and sat it down gently on the counter in front of the man and said, “Here's your VISA card, Sir.”
With high anxiety, I awaited the expected kung fu and gun play. It wasn't to be. As soon as the man retrieved the card, he held both hands behind his back and was quickly cuffed before being frog-marched out. A detective took my information and said I would be receiving a reward. Several months later I did receive a modest cheque from the other bank involved and was told to appear at the coming trial. I asked if my name, phone number and address would appear on the court documents for all to see, including the respondent. I learned that indeed they would. Wonderful, I thought. Just bloody lovely.
After I was subpoenaed and went to court I did see the captive and he was just as casual as the first time we'd met. Long before I was called to testify, he made a plea bargain with the judge and everybody melted into the rainy streets.
fin
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