Save Her

Drayden - Chapter 5-2

Reginald’s video message is locked in my memory, including the account information at Pittsburgh Bank. Account number 674890724145543; password, Sodapop. I think about the password while ordering an Uber. It’s curious. Sodapop. It reminds me of Mom getting mad the time we were moving to Michigan and Reginald and I kept on about whether they were going to call soft drinks either ‘soda’ or ‘pop.’ She got so tired of us going on about all the different areas that used different terms that she finally shut us down and mandated the word ‘sodapop.’ “No matter where we go,” she dictated, “we will call it sodapop.” I get in the Uber and think about Oscar, our favorite of my mother’s ex-husbands, who named his golden retriever Sodapop. Reginald and I loved that guy and loved his dog and hated my mother for ruining things with him.

The Uber ride is short and costs just $6.20, which represents approximately ten percent of what I actually have in my bank account. Thank god for credit cards. I leave a 30% tip because if the money my brother mentioned in the video message is accurate, then I’m about to be rich. I go into the bank with trepidations because I have no clue what I’m in for.

Nerves are tight inside when I walk in. Three bank managers huddle around a computer at a desk to the left, all with worried expressions and low whispers. One of them says, “This is very bad. Very very bad.” The other two nod in agreement. I go through the normal operation of going to the tellers' line even though I planned on withdrawing a substantial amount of cash and would have to deal with one of those managers, eventually. Better to follow protocol even though I really wasn’t in the mood to do that anymore.

A young and attractive female teller frees up.

“What’s going on around here?” I say to the young brunette, nodding my head in the direction of the huddled managers.

“Something about Italy not repaying its debt?” She talks softly and never takes her eyes off me. “I’m not really sure, but they have been absolutely freaking out about it for the last couple hours.”

I know the look she’s throwing my way. She’s only a couple years older, but I can sometimes pass for eighteen depending on how much I let myself go. I must look a mess after the travel and constant pace since learning about my brother’s death. Anyway, she likes me, and though at any other time of my life I would have jumped at the opportunity, right now I have way more important things on my plate.

“That sounds less than good,” I say. She nods and smiles.

“Less than good for sure,” she says, happy to agree.

“Listen, I’m here because my brother, Reginald Routton…”. I trail off because I’m about to say it out loud, and it’s throwing me. I look away, suddenly feeling my nerves fray. I look back into her big eyes and wonder if I can get through this. Her expression changes to curiosity.

“My brother… he passed. Died. He’s dead. He had an account here.” I sputter it out and can’t look at her concerned eyes, so I look dumbly away at my hands on the counter.

“Oh my gosh I’m so sorry to hear about your loss,” she says sincerely.

“He told me in a video he left behind that I should come here? That I should be able to withdraw the money? Or maybe I can transfer it? I don't know about this stuff. I don’t know how I go about taking care of this,” I say honestly.

“I’m so new here. I’m sure I have to get a bank manager to help with that, but let me just check to make sure,” she says, still looking at me sadly. Her concern is attractive. She has one of those faces that’s pretty when smiling, and even prettier when frowning. Her cheekbones become more pronounced. “Do you want to wait here or do you want to sit down over there?”

She motions to some nice leather chairs in the middle of the bank.

“I’ll sit, thanks,” I say.

She sad-faces me and nods. “It shouldn’t be too long,” she says.

I sit and watch her glance at me three times on her way to where the managers are still huddled. She whispers something, and they all look up at me and then two of them look back down to the monitor. The third one looks at the monitor again, shakes his head, and heads toward me.

He’s narrow-shouldered and long-necked and long-headed, with thick glasses that make me feel sorry for him. He’s the type of guy I can usually befriend easily, as I’ve been around this sort most of my life — intellectual, great with numbers, socially awkward, and ineffectual with women. He’s also the type of guy that once you hung out with him a while and learned his hobbies and interests, then he was the best kind of friend to have — loyal and funny. I’m the nicest guy around his sort. Guys like this are my peeps.

He approaches and offers his hand, and I get the feeling his demeanor never sways much from anxiety-stricken.

“Mr. Routton, I’m Jeffrey Stein, the branch manager. First of all, I am very sorry to hear about your brother.”

“Thank you, Jeffrey.”

“I understand you are looking to transfer money from one of his accounts?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m doing. I have an account number and a password, so I guess we can begin there?”

“Certainly,” he says. “Please follow me to my office.”

We go into Jeffrey’s little glassed-in office where he angles the computer monitor towards me and hands me the keyboard so I can enter Reginald’s account information. My brother’s account pulls up and displays twenty-six million, four-hundred fifty-nine thousand, three hundred and two dollars all waiting for transfer to my name.

I fall back in the guest seat of Jeffrey’s office. The money’s really there. I just can’t believe it. And now I don’t have a clue what to do with it. Jeffrey looks nervous.

“How long can I leave it in there?”

Jeffrey looks at the account details and shakes his head. “Your brother changed this to a joint account two days ago. I’m required by law to transfer all remaining holdings into your name.”

“But you’d have to see proof of death for that, right?” I’m thinking.

“That’s correct.”

“So, if I never told you he had died, then everything would have to be the same as before I came in, right?”

Jeffrey smiles hesitantly. “I’m not sure where you are going with this.”

“Well, you said it’s a joint account, so realistically I can access the money at any time and withdraw it at any time?”

“That’s correct.”

“Okay, great. How much of it can I get?” I ask. “I mean if I wanted cash to carry out of here? Like a million?”

Jeffrey lowers his voice to a near whisper. “That kind of money, is, uh, unfortunately, not something we keep on hand.”

“That’s okay, Jeffrey,” I say, lowering my voice to match his. “I’m flexible. How much can I get?”

“We could provide one hundred and twenty thousand today, and I can make arrangements to have up to two-hundred fifty-thousand more by tomorrow?”

“That sounds just fine,” I say. I want this guy to be happy. I want him to be able to go home to his wife and tell her how he had assuaged a customer with his people skills. I want his wife to be so impressed with him that she’s inclined to make love to him.

“Excellent,” he says, suddenly smiling. “I’ll get the currency transaction report prepared.”

He leaves his office with a spring in his step while I go out and over to the other two managers to see what the heck is happening in Italy. I make my way behind them without invitation.

“Can we help you?” The older one asks politely. He’s twice my age, and probably a VP here.

“No thanks. Jeffrey’s got it,” I say. “What the latest with Italy?”

“The market’s down over a thousand points,” says the other manager-type.

It’s bad. It’s a sell-off. In just the thirty seconds of me standing there, the market drops another forty points.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “How could Italy have started all this?”

“They’re not repaying debts, and they’re pulling out of the European Union. It’s ridiculous. They can’t do that.”

Jeffrey comes back with the currency transaction report. I follow him back to his office, sit down at his desk, and I can feel his stare as I fill out the paperwork. His black briefcase on the floor of his office catches my eye.

“Buy that from you?” I ask, pointing to the briefcase. “A thousand dollars enough?”

“I — I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Jeffrey says. “I could get in trouble.”

“C’mon, Jeffrey. I can’t walk out of here with that kind of cash in my pockets.” He looks outside the glass at the two other manager-types who continue to hunch over the same computer monitor as when I had walked into the bank. “I promise I won’t tell,” I say.

“It was a gift from my wife,” he says.

“Five thousand dollars. You can say you were robbed.”

He looks again outside the glass and nods. Without looking at me, he turns quickly to the briefcase and empties its contents on the floor.

“I’ll put your money in the case. Would you like to count it?”

“Do I have to?” I really don’t want to do that. It sounds tedious.

“Surely not. Not if you don’t want to.”

“I trust you, Jeffrey.”

“I’ll be right back with your money,” he says in a very casual way and with a very nervous smile just before he leaves his office. We’re buds, Jeffrey and I. I understand him.

Sitting in the chair is not conducive to processing the amount of quick thoughts I’m having about everything, so I stand and pace and wonder how Reginald had acquired so much money, and wonder if he had possibly used the powers granted to us by the gray steel box. With our abilities, it would be easy to steal, but neither Reginald nor myself were thieves, and money for us had never been the end-all-be-all. We had grown up watching mother chase it in the form of rich men to marry, which had turned us off from the idea that money brought and bought happiness. We were more interested in the chase than the catch whereas for my mother it had always been the catch. But right now the cash would certainly help. I could stay off the grid with it and avoid the use of credit cards altogether. Right now, with all the heat on me from all the different sources, staying off the grid is a necessity.

I feel the pretty eyes of the teller on me through the windows of Jeffrey’s office. I look up and she smiles, so I smile back and wave, and she waves back. “There’s just no way,” I say softly to myself. “Not today,” I say, and I know the truth is that she and I will not be getting together anytime soon, and most probably not at all. Too much is at stake. Things are happening out of my control, and I hate that. I look away from her, and I think about Tengen, the police, the dead professor, my new abilities, and how everything ties in with my brother’s death.

I suddenly need to get out of the bank as soon as possible. Time has a different sensation now. It’s slower. Everything takes longer. My mind is lengthening time, just like it did with the Russian’s bullets, and when I fell out of the window. My mind is doing that now, here at the bank, slowing the steps of the patrons walking, the mouth movement of the tellers talking, and the flight of the small fly who snuck in through the front door and haplessly wanders the high air of the room. I focus on it, and its reddish eyes and fuzzy light black body, and the way its ribs hold the waxy paper-like gray wings in form. I realize that this slowing of the time and enhanced focus results from stress. When I fell out of the window, that was stress. When the bullets came at me, I handled the situation by slowing down my perception of time. Now, here at the bank, overwhelmed by everything that is happening in my life so quickly, I feel stressed. I force myself to relax by breathing deeper, slower breaths. I close my eyes, but it’s hard to calm down. My hearing takes over, and I hear everything: the desperate business loan the bank was not inclined to help a patron with; the chatter at the various tellers; the fly buzzing around the far wall of the bank.

I open my eyes and know that the only way to get rid of this anxiety is to leave. I need to get the laptop. I need answers, and I’m hopeful it has some. My brother was clutching it when he was killed. Protecting it? Hiding it? The officers who arrived at my brother’s condo were too late to save him, but maybe they had come just in time to keep the killer from stealing the laptop and other information. I realize I started pacing again and force myself to stop. I think about the little brown book I found at my brother’s, and know it’s entirely in my head, wholly memorized from the time I flipped through it. I know every single password and every single notation. I can see it in my head as if I’m flipping through the pages reading the physical version. And I realize how unnecessary it had been to my brother. He had the same tattoo of twenty dots on his arm I now have. That means he had used the gray box and been through the same searing pain I had experienced and had the same powers and the same memory I now have. That being the case, why had he written the passwords into the book? The only answer that makes sense is that he had been keeping the passwords for me to eventually find! That means he had known his life was in danger for a longer timeframe than I had initially thought. But for how long and from whom was the danger coming? The ceiling where I found the book had been dry, which meant that he had tucked everything away safely at least a week ago. Had he been preparing for his demise for that long? Had he expected me to use the steel box and become the same thing he was? If so, had I failed him already? Or was I doing exactly what he had expected me to do? Creating a joint bank account showed incredible foresight. Did he do it because he knew I'd be in danger and would need money? Did he do it because he wanted me to have the freedom to hide? Or maybe he did it because he knew of the financial mess I had gotten myself into, and he wanted to help me.

Jeffrey finally comes back carrying my newly purchased briefcase.

“Is everything alright?” He asks while handing me the case.

“Just a small headache,” I lie. “I’ll be fine,” I say as I slap him jovially on the shoulder and accept the briefcase. Buddies. That’s what we are. I wiggle the case, and it feels light. I prop it on the chair and open it and realize that twelve stacks of one hundred-dollar bills isn’t as impressive as I had thought it would be. “Thank you so much for your help,” I say.

He apologizes again for the loss of my brother, and I tell him I’d probably swing by tomorrow for the two-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars he was going to get, though I doubted I would really stop by for it. The one hundred and twenty grand should more than suffice for now.

I’m finally out of the bank, but the outside openness does nothing to decrease the anxiety that hit me inside. My head buzzes with more questions than I had answered or had answers for. Who had my brother been running from? Who was his killer? How had they killed him? What part did Tengen play? Who really was Radu Dmitriu? And now the top question on my mind: had my brother meant for me to use the steel box on myself? Had that been his intent all along?