The Matter of the Dematerializing Armored Car Read online

  “Wwweellll,” the guard drew out the word, gaining confidence he was not on the hot seat, “what you said is generally true. Depending on the run, the armored car could make twenty or thirty pickups during the day but might also visit six banks and drop off deposits. Those trips are escorted. As far as the valuables, sure, we do handle some, but it’s not a regular thing. I know when we’ve got a special delivery because the armored car goes out without an escort. That means whatever’s inside is insured or the truck is empty.”

  Noonan smiled. “Well, let me be more specific. The armored truck that’s missing. Did it have a regular route?”

  “Same thing every Sunday, yeah. No secret there.”

  “So anyone could have known where and when the armored car was going to be at any one moment during the day?”

  “Could have, but they’d have to be really good. The Jacksons . . . er . . . the drivers have been working here for as long as I have. They knew the routine and were sharp. Besides, they had an escort.”

  “But if the armored was empty, why the escort?”

  “Sunday deliveries are always escorted. Businesses are open, but banks are not. It means the armoreds are full of cash and have to come back loaded. The big money, if you want to call it that, is on Monday. After the weekend. On Mondays the armoreds are stopping at banks along the way and making deposits. They are still picking up more money on Monday but arriving back here with a lot less than on a Sunday.”

  “So Sunday is the best day to rob an armored car?”

  “Yeah, in terms of money, but it’s a lot riskier for the bandits. There’s less traffic on Sunday, which means more cops on the road. I’d guess you’d say it is a trade-off.”

  “How many times has a Swensen Armored Car Company car or truck been robbed?”

  “Easy answer. None. Not since I’ve been working here. Our people are very careful.”

  “No trouble of any kind?”

  “Some insurance quibbles but not with us. We get auditors through here pretty regularly, but they don’t stay long. My guess, we’re following the rules, so there’s no reason to spend a lot of time going over our books.”

  “You know a lot about the business. For a guard, I mean.”

  The guard smiled. “We’re like family here. We get moved around so everyone knows what’s going on in the other parts of the business. That’s the way John . . . er . . . Mr. Swensen likes it. It means he doesn’t have to keep training new people. He just promotes from within. I’ve been a driver, an escort, worked in the records room, worked in the vault. Every part of the operation. We’re the best paid in the business. That’s why most of us have been here so long. And we all know the different jobs, so if someone is sick or on vacation, the replacement knows what the . . .” He stalled, searching for the right, clean word.

  “Heck,” Noonan helped him. “What the heck is going on?”

  “You took the word right out of my mouth.”

  Both men laughed.

  “I assume John Swensen is in the room labeled office?” Noonan pointed across the empty lot to the only set of windows beside a door on the warehouse wall.

  “Better be,” replied the guard. “The police have been in there for three hours, and I don’t think they’re alone.”

  Chapter 6

  Lenny Rusnak was up to his eyeballs in what used to be called drug paraphernalia and was once illegal to sell. Today it was called inventory. But it was odd inventory, a reversal of seven hundred years of business advances. Double-entry bookkeeping, the concept of a fiscal balance between incoming and outgoing, debits and credits, had been in the historical record all the way back to the Republic of Genoa in 1340. This was a good two centuries before the root work of modern banking brought about by religious reformers, Luther and Calvin, sank into fertile fiscal soil of Christian Europe.

  Technology, necessity, efficiency, greed, and suspicion had propelled the banks to become the mega giants they were. At the same time, Rusnak was in the one nation on earth at a singular time in world history where he could not bank his legally earned cash. While, at the same time, drug dealers, large and small, were using the banks with little federal or state oversight. The irony was that Rusnak was making legal money, and then he was stuck with the cash. Stuck with cash, an odd term to use in the United States of America in the twenty-first century, where using a bank was as close to a religion as football, drinking, or badmouthing your in-laws. He had cash, but there was nothing big he could do with it. He could buy groceries and beer but not a house, car, or certificate of deposit.

  He was thus captured in a fiscal warp in the fabric of American civilization. Because marijuana was legal, he could sell it. In Colorado. But he could not put the money in a bank anywhere in America.

  Further, because selling marijuana was legal—in Colorado—he needed a business license and had to pay taxes: business, income, property, and sales to the city and state. In Colorado. But at the same time in the same city and state, marijuana was listed as Schedule 1 narcotic by the federal government. Thus, it was—in the eyes and statutes of the federal government—an illegal substance. As such, no federally regulated institution could be associated with it. The biggest federally associated institution to be impacted were the banks. Even though banking is not mentioned in the United States Constitution, banks are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. What this meant on a nuts-and-bolts level was that no checks, debit cards, or credit cards could be used to buy marijuana or any of its products. It also meant any money earned from the legal sale of marijuana or any of its products was—again, in the eyes of the federal government—drug money and must be confiscated. So the marijuana industry was making money legally, paying legally owed taxes to the city and state governments, but was denied access to the use of banks.

  Schizophrenically, even though marijuana was a Schedule 1 drug and technically illegal in the bureaucratic eyes of the federal government, this did not stop the same federal government bureaucracy from collecting income taxes from the same entrepreneurs it was excluding from the banking system.

  Thus the rub: the industry was making money hand-over-fist but had a cash problem: too much of it. So what do you do with $1 million in cash—legitimately earned—if you cannot use a bank, cannot buy stock, cannot buy bonds, cannot buy real estate, and cannot invest in any of the panoply of financial opportunity open to anyone else in America, who has legal money to spend? Rusnak could not buy a house because it required going through a bank, and his money was oxymoronic: opposites combined to form a new reality. In figures of speech, it was easy to define: cruel kindness, living death, open secret, military music, and pretty awful. In the world of nuts and bolts, oxymorons were hard to find. Yet, in the cannabis business, it was standard. He was making money legally by state law, but it was illegal by federal law. So he was selling legal inventory but could not use any financial instrument available to even a derelict in an alley. The banks would not allow him to accept checks, credit cards, or debit carts. From there the list expanded. He could not transform his cash into certificates of deposit, checking accounts, savings accounts, government bonds, stocks, or even cashier’s checks. Car dealerships would not take cash for a new car, and banks would not accept $250,000 in cash for a home. The United States Post Office would take small amounts of cash for postal orders, but his businesses were pulling in close to $250,000 a month. His profit was a modest 6.75 percent after taxes, but it was still cash. So he had no IRA, no 401K. There he sat, $200,000 a year income in cash, living in a $150,000 home that his wife was buying on paper because she had a real job.

  He, a millionaire, was up to his ears in cash he could not invest.

  Then, one day, along came Joseph Richiamo.

  Chapter 7

  Noonan circumnavigated the oil spots on the garage floor and made it into the Swensen Armored Car office just as John Swensen was giving two state troopers a rundown on what had happened.

>   “Like I said, officers,” Swensen nodded at Noonan as the captain came into the office, “the cell-phone message I received was pretty strange.”

  Swensen took a moment to let Noonan introduce himself around. Then Noonan said, “I appear to be a bit late. I assume we are talking about messages from the stolen armored car.” There was a chorus of yeahs. There were three other people in the room, two from the troopers and one was from an insurance company. Proof the third man was an insurance agent came when the man, a cadaverous scarecrow, gave Noonan a card, which Noonan glanced at and then pocketed.

  “Missing armored car,” Swensen corrected Noonan. “We don’t know it’s been stolen. Stolen is a legal term that implies we have lost a shipment. Which we haven’t.”

  “Let’s leave the hair-splitting to the lawyers.” Noonan nodded to the others. “What did you mean by strange?”

  Swensen looked at the two troopers hanging on his every word. One of them pulled out a pad, and she started to write what he said.

  “Well,” Swensen continued, “the first message, on the radio, said they, the drivers, were detouring to avoid an overturned vehicle. The second a short time later said they were picking their way around something. It was unclear what the something was. I assume they were talking about something in the tunnel. The next call came in on my cell phone, and the drivers said they were being foamed.”

  “Foamed?”

  “Yes. It sounded like ‘foamed.’”

  “That was the last message?” Noonan asked.

  “Right. Then the communications channel went ghost.”

  The trooper with the notepad shook her head. “Did you get the impression they actually saw an overturned vehicle? There were two drivers, right?”

  “Right. Two. Did they actually see a vehicle? I think so. I’d have to listen to the tape again, but I think so.”

  “Foamed. Hmph.” Noonan drummed his fingers on a desk. “Foamed,” he repeated. “What was in the vehicle?”

  “No money, if that’s what you are asking. It was on a pickup route, not a collect-and-deposit run. The armored car was scheduled to go from business to business and pick up cash and credit card receipts from weekend sales. Then it would bring the cash and receipts here.” He indicated the building with a wave of his hand toward one of the walls of the office. “We store the cash and receipts until Monday, then make deliveries to the bank.”

  “So the armored car was empty in terms of cash?”

  “Correct.”

  “Is security any different for an empty armored car than a full one?”

  “We’re playing a vocabulary game here, Captain.”

  “Heinz.”

  “Sorry, Heinz. The armored car leaving the garage was empty. It was being guarded because it was going to be picking up money from seventeen or eighteen businesses. By the time it had picked up those deliveries, it would be ‘full of money,’ to use a generic term.”

  “How much money would it have been picking up?” the trooper with the pen and pad asked.

  “I don’t know. Some of the deliveries were for banks, so we picked them up in bank bags with locks and were to deliver them to the respective banks on Monday, today. I . . . we don’t know how much money was in those deliveries. The other fifteen were businesses of various sizes. Figuring an average of twelve thousand dollars per business, we’re talking about two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “In cash?”

  “Not much of it. Not a lot of cash these days. Lots of paper—checks and credit and debit card readouts.”

  “So the security was the same as for any other delivery.”

  “Correct again.”

  Noonan looked at the other three and then said at Swensen. “Well, I’m sure the troopers are going to ask you about the possibility of this being an inside job.”

  “I anticipated that.” Swensen pointed to a pile of folders on his desk. “I pulled the personnel files of the four motorcycle security men and the two drivers.” Swensen scooped them up and handed them to Noonan. “There’s a breakroom down the hall.” He pointed to the left of his office door. “I’ll see you are brought coffee. There should be all kinds of pens and paper in the office. The senior security man is George Steigle. He’s cooling his heels in the hallway. Do you want to see him right away?”

  “Absolutely,” Noonan said.

  Swensen stood up and looked at the three others in the room. “Why don’t the three of you take a break? I have to make introductions with George, the senior security guard. I want to make sure he knows to answer all of Captain . . .”

  “Heinz.”

  “Right. Heinz.” Then, looking at the other three at the table, he said, “I want to make sure Steigle knows to answer all of Heinz’s questions. After Heinz finishes with him, you can look over the details. Right now, you three are interested in any money that might have been stolen, not the armored that,” Swensen raised his left hand and pointed an index finger at the three, “is missing, not stolen. There is no money missing, so this is an odd occurrence, but as yet there is no crime, and Harry,” Swensen looked directly at one of the three, “there is no insurance claim pending because nothing is stolen. Got it?”

  One of the three, the living skeleton who had handed Noonan his card, sort of nodded.

  “I’ll be right back,” Swensen said and led Noonan out of the room.

  The two went down a short hallway and entered what was clearly a breakroom. There were candy bar and soda dispensing machines all along one side of the room and a wall-to-wall bank of lockers across the room. The third wall was a side-by-side sink and stove combination. In the center of the room was a Formica table with piles of newspapers and magazines.

  When Steigle came into the room, President Swensen motioned the security motorcycle man into an empty chair next to Noonan

  “George,” Swensen told the man. “This is Captain Heinz Noonan of the Sandersonville Police Department. I have asked for him to investigate the missing armored car. You are tell him everything you know about what happened. Hold nothing back. I am telling you this because there is every reason to believe the disappearance is a prank, not a robbery.”

  Steigle gave a you’re-the-boss nod and extended his hand to Noonan for a shake. Noonan smiled and shook the extended hand.

  As Swensen stood at the back of the breakroom, Steigle sat down opposite Noonan as Noonan cleared a portion of the table from the magazines. Then Noonan pulled out his notepad. Steigle was quiet. Noonan asked the guard if he wanted a cup of coffee. Steigle refused the offer.

  “Nothing personal,” Noonan began, “but you are a bit old for a security guard.”

  “Nothing personal about it,” Steigle said in a soft voice, which surprised Noonan. “I’m not doing it for the money.” He glanced over his shoulder at Swensen. Swensen gave his head a quick nod and rose from his chair by the door.

  “I’ve got to get back to the troopers,” Swensen said as he left the room.

  Steigle hardly fit the image of a security guard. He was tall enough for a guard—a few inches over six feet and clearly worked out in a gym regularly—but there the stereotype ended. He was so lean his uniform was an odd fit over his sculpted body. He wore an Academy ring on his right hand and no wedding ring on his left. His nails were manicured and his hair perfectly coiffured. He had a pair of aviation sunglasses on his forehead, and a Fitbit protruded from beneath his right sleeve when he propped his elbows on the breakroom table.

  Steigle waited until Swensen had left and the door closed. “Like I said,” he continued, now looking directly at Noonan, “I’m not a security guard for the money. I’m retired and bored. So I took the job.”

  “What did you do before you rode for the Swensen Armored Car Company?”

  “Lawyer. An incredibly boring job that paid too well to totally quit. Still does. In the old days, it was primarily corporate. Contracts, patents, labor disputes, more contracts and more contracts after that. Now I do wills, trusteeships, living wills, div
orce settlements, and a lot of pro bono for people who cannot afford a lawyer. It’s not a lot of fun, but it still pays, and I’ve got quite a few bills.”

  “Not a thrilling job, eh?”

  “Not an iota of charm. Took up riding as a hobby. Then it became my mental escape. After I retired from the corporate world, I figured I’d try a job that required a bike.”

  “Motorcycle?”

  “Right. We call it a bike.”

  Noonan smiled. “Your bike has a lot more power than the bike I learned to ride when I was a kid.”

  Steigle sort of smiled. “Yup.”

  “How long have you worked for Swensen?”

  “Five or six years,” Steigle replied. “Took it as a lark and took to liking it. Good people here. Like family. Sure, sorry this happened.”

  “Well, since you brought it up,” Noonan picked up a pen from beside the notepad on the table, “what exactly did happen?”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about anything that was out of order. Everything was routine. Even for a Sunday.”

  “Was a Sunday delivery unusual?”

  “As a security guard, no. I and the others arrive when we are told to arrive. Monday or Sunday, be it noon or at 8:00 a.m. We don’t make the schedule; we just follow it. In the five years I’ve worked here, I have to say no time is unusual the way you mean it. I think the schedule is made to fool robbers, if you know what I mean—scramble the schedule.”

  “So it was just a normal day for you?”

  “Normal job. I don’t work days like in a regular job. I show up when I’m needed and get paid by the hour.”