“I guess I could use a close family friend.” He recited Monique’s name and phone number.
Relieved, Martell added the information. “Perfect. You’ve had your picture taken for your identification, and we can schedule you for orientation. I’ve given you immediate access so that if you want to go to the branch now and familiarize yourself with the bank behind the scenes, you can, as well as meet your team.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that.”
Having no desire to return to the apartment, run into Sean, and face more questions, Tristan took the train to the Financial District, where he walked around his new workplace and introduced himself to the branch staff. He also met the man he was replacing, and asked if he could have a quick meeting with his team to make sure the transition was as seamless as possible. Four men and two women made up his detail, and he thought this was a good opportunity for them to talk a bit about their experience. The last man to introduce himself was a football type, brawny and broad-shouldered, with dark eyes and buzz-cut blond hair.
“Sal Truman. I was with the Philadelphia PD when your partner was killed and you got shot. I came to the city as part of the delegation for his funeral. Mad respect for you.”
As always, hearing about Terry’s death broke his already fractured heart into even smaller pieces. “Thanks.” Anxious not to get into a prolonged discussion of what had happened, he launched into his expectations.
“I’ve spent eighteen months with the London office, supervising their security team. With the rise of international smuggling and illegal arms trading, we always have to be on the lookout for the possibility of terrorism and theft. And though the majority of our funds are deposited electronically, we still deal with relatively large deposits of cash, plus foreign currency, all of which can make us a target. Unless I’m needed at corporate, I anticipate always being here, out on the floor. Not to watch you, because I’m sure you can all do your jobs and do them well, but to offer any help and be a second set of eyes. I’m not the type to sit behind a desk.”
The team seemed appreciative, and Tristan was left happy to see he’d be welcome and not resented as an outsider. All of them had several years of experience at that location, with most coming from a law-enforcement background. One of the women was a former corrections officer, the other a retired Army MP. Two of the four men were ex-sheriffs from upstate, and the others were former police officers and understood what was necessary.
After his speech, he shook hands with the team. When it was Truman’s turn, Tristan asked him, “So you left the force?” He was curious why, as Truman was relatively young.
“Yeah. My wife couldn’t take the nightly reports of shootings, wondering if she was gonna get the call it was me not coming home. She’s much happier now. You know what they say—happy wife, happy life.”
No, Tristan didn’t know, but it made sense, and he gave Truman a faint smile. “I guess so.”
“You’re not married, obviously.” Truman chuckled. “Believe me. Anyway, in the four years I’ve been here, the most we’ve had to deal with were a few drunk and disorderlies wandering in from the street. Occasionally we get outraged customers who can’t understand that we don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars in their foreign currency at the ready when they haven’t ordered in advance. They seem to think we should know they left that last on their list.”
Tristan could sympathize. “We had that in London too, with the Americans. Everyone believes they’re much more important than they really are.” He scanned the floor, noting the armed guards at the front and side entrances. “I start full-time next week, so I wanted to come down here and make sure we could hit the ground running as a team.”
Larissa Owens, the former CO, touched her earpiece. “I have to go to the vault area. Nice meeting you, McDermott.”
“Same.”
With long, purposeful strides, she crossed the expanse of the floor to the rear, where the safe deposits were located.
Tristan turned to the others. “I’ll be here for the rest of the afternoon, familiarizing myself with the layout. See you on Monday.”
The team dispersed to their posts, and Tristan found himself anxious to begin working again.
After getting buzzed into the section behind the main bank of tellers, he frowned. A schedule of who was assigned to what security post was tacked up on a board, in plain view of not only the employees, but the public. Tristan spotted Brady Christianson, one of the former upstate sheriffs assigned to monitoring the floor, and waved him over.
“Why is this in public view?”
Christianson shrugged. “Guess it’s always been there. I never noticed. Why?”
“I don’t like anyone knowing our internal process.”
A pucker formed on Christianson’s forehead. “But it’s only our employees. We don’t have to worry about them.”
“Negative. In my experience, we have to be concerned with everyone. Take it down, please. From now on, only the members of our team will know and have access to security’s schedule.”
“Okay.” Christianson scratched his chin. “I guess you’re right.”
“I know I am. Thanks.”
“You got it.”
Tristan kept an eye on Christianson, but he did as told and removed the offending paper. Was he paranoid? Maybe, but he’d learned a very important lesson early in life: Trust no one except yourself. Then if you were disappointed, you had no one else to blame.
He’d learned that the hard way. The first time, it was during the winter he turned eleven. They were having dinner, and his mother said she was going to the store for a pack of cigarettes. She didn’t come home that night, or the next, and at first Tristan didn’t think anything of it—she’d often left him. The tight money was only one of the reasons they lived with his grandmother. Every time his mother got a new boyfriend, she would disappear, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks. That time, she never returned.
Thirty years had passed, and yet he remembered the day he realized she was gone for good. He stood in the doorway of her bedroom and watched his grandmother dump all her things in a big black garbage bag and toss them into the trash. Tristan didn’t cry because it made no sense to do so. Why should he care for someone who never loved him?
