of the tray. Each form was for one box, and listed not only the names and addresses and social security numbers of every person authorized access to that particular box, but at what time, on what date, someone had the box, and for how long.
What I thought Chase was going to get for me was a list of names of box holders matching—at least the last name—the names on my list. This tray obviously holds a card for every safe-deposit box in the bank.
Is giving me more information than I even asked for, crossing over the confidentiality line, the way they always “cooperate” with the police in a situation like this?
Or only when they trust the cop doing the looking?
Or because of my father’s relationship with Chase?
What difference does it make? Never stick your finger in a gift horse’s mouth.
He had finger-walked his way through perhaps half a dozen of the records when the skinny woman came back, this time carrying a tray in which another kind of bank records lay flat.
“These are the accounts in which you may be interested, Mr. Payne,” the skinny woman said. “Through ‘D.’ The sooner I can have them back, the better. So if you would just ask Dolores to Xerox the ones you’re interested in, then you could send them back. I’d really like it better not to bring you ‘E’ through ‘H’ until you’re through with these. Would that be all right?”
“That would be fine,” Matt said. “Thank you very much.”
Matt picked up the top record in the tray. It was a complete record, going back four years, of the banking activity—the dates and times of deposits; withdrawals; interest payments; and service charges—in a savings account of an individual whose last name—only—matched one of the names on the list Matt had prepared in the Personnel Office in the Roundhouse.
The form (actually three forms, stapled together) under the first was a record of the same activity in the individual’s checking account.
If I get one of these—two of these—for every account holder in this bank with the same last name as the names on the list I gave Mr. Chase, I’ll be in Harrisburg for a month.
Which, considering the rockets that went off when I kissed Susie last night, might not be entirely a bad thing.
For Christ’s sake! What the hell’s the matter with you? Get that stupid idea out of your mind, once and for all!
He reached for the telephone, dialed the operator, and placed a collect call to Sergeant Jason Washington.
“Matthew, my boy! How are things in the capital of our great Commonwealth?”
“Well, I am into the bank.”
“So, apparently, is the opposing side,” Washington replied.
“Excuse me?”
“You first. You seemed surprised.”
“The . . . level of cooperation is much more than I expected.”
“Perhaps it’s your charm,” Washington said. “I understand you were to take someone to dinner last night. Did that happen?”
“Yeah.”
“Was the evening fruitful? In a professional sense?” Was that a dig? Or was he just being clever?
“I think so.”
“But nothing specific to report?”
“No.”
“Are you somewhere where you can conveniently and confidentially telephone? There’s someone else you really should talk to.”
“Wohl?”
“Matthews.”
“I’m in a glass-walled office off the lobby of the Harrisburg Bank and Trust Company,” Matt said. “It’s private enough, but I would have to call him collect.”
“Give me the number—I should have thought of that anyway—and I’ll suggest he call you. The unattractive lady bandito has apparently struck again.”
“Really? Where?”
“I have only the most rudimentary facts. But I suspect Jack Matthews is happily anticipating providing you with every last detail.”
Matt read the telephone number and the extension off the phone to Washington.
“I am sure that you will be hearing from Matthews within minutes,” Washington said. “And there is one more thing, Matt.”
“What?”
“Peter Wohl is concerned that you might do something foolish. So am I. Allow Mr. Matthews’s associates to deal with this beyond the limitations of what you were ordered to do.”
“Okay.”
“If you were to disobey your orders, and Wohl, so to speak, threw the book at you, he would have my complete support.”
“You have made your point.”
“I devoutly hope so,” Washington said, and hung up.
Three minutes later, Dolores, after first knocking, put her head into the door of the office.
“There is a Mr. Rogers of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society on line three for you, Mr. Payne. Do you want to take it?”
“Thank you,” Matt said, and picked up the telephone. “Payne.”