He unfolded it, smoothed out the wrinkles and creases, transformed it from the wadded ball it had been an instant earlier into a strip of paper some seven inches long and perhaps an inch-and-a-half wide. White. Nothing on it. A plain white strip of paper. He turned it over. There were narrow violet borders on each side of the strip. Printed boldly from border to border across the strip was the figure $2000, repeated some five times over at regularly spaced intervals along its length. Ink-stamped between two of these bold figures were what at first appeared to be cryptic markings:
is.BJc. amp;Tr.Co.,N.A. Jeff. Ave. Br.
They were looking at what banks call a currency strap.
The Manager of the Jefferson Avenue Branch of the Isola Bank amp; Trust Company was a man named Avery Granville, | fiftyish and balding, wearing a brown, tropical-weight suit, a I beige button-down shirt, and an outrageous green-and-orange striped tie. With all the intensity of an archeologist studying a suspect papyrus scroll, he scrutinized the narrow violet-bordered strip of paper and then looked up at last and said, "Yes, a that's one of our straps," and smiled pleasantly, as if he'd just approved a loan application.
"What does the 'NA' stand for?" Brown asked.
"National Association," Granville said.
"And the WL?"
"Wendell Lawton. He's one of our tellers. Each teller has his own stamp."
"Why's that?" Brown asked.
"Why, because he's accountable for whatever's printed on the strap," Granville said, looking surprised. "The teller's personal stamp is saying he's counted that money and there's fifty dollars in the strap, a hundred dollars, five hundred, whatever's printed there on the strap."
"So if this one says two thousand dollars …"
"Yes, that's what's printed there. And the violet border confirms the amount. Violet is two thousand dollars."
"Then this wrapper …"
"Well, a strap, we call it."
"This strap at one time was wrapped around two thousand dollars."
"Yes. We've got straps for smaller amounts, of course, but this one's a two-thousand-dollar strap."
"How high do they go? The straps?"
"That's the highest, two thousand, usually in hundred-dollar bills. All the straps have different colors, you see. Here at IBT, a thousand-dollar strap is yellow and a five-hundred-dollar one is red, and so on. It varies at different banks, they all have their own color-coding."
"And the date here …"
"That's stamped by the teller, too. First he puts his personal stamp on the currency strap, and then he uses a revolving stamp to mark the date."
"I'm assuming this means …"
"July ninth, yes. The straps are temporal and disposable, we just stamp in the month and the day, easier that way."
"Is Mr Lawton here now?"
"I believe so," Granville said, and looked at his watch. "But it's getting late, you know, and he's balancing out right now."
The clock on the wall read ten minutes to four.
"What we're interested in knowing, sir," Brown said, "is just who might have withdrawn that two thousand dollars on the ninth of July. Would there be any record of such a cash transaction? Two thousand dollars withdrawn in cash?"
"Really, gentlemen . . ."
"This is very important to us," Brown said.
"It may be related to the murder of a young woman," Carella said.
"Well, believe me, I'd be happy to help. But. . ."
He looked at his watch again.
"This would mean checking Wendell's teller tape for that day, and . . ."
"What's that?" Carella asked. "A teller tape?"
"A computer printout for all the transactions at his window. It looks somewhat like an adding-machine tape."
"Would this tape show such a withdrawal? Two thousand dollars in cash?"
"Well, yes, if in fact it was made. But, you see …"
Another look at his watch.
"A teller can handle as many as two hundred-and-fifty
transactions on any given day of the week. To go through all those …"
"Yes, but a two-thousand-dollar cash withdrawal would be unusual, wouldn't it?"
"No, not necessarily. There could be any number of those on any given day."
"Exactly two thousand dollars?" Carella said skeptically. "In cash?"
"Well…"
"Could we have a look at the tape, Mr Granville?" Brown asked. "When your teller's finished with his tally?"
"His balancing out," Granville corrected, and sighed. "I suppose so, yes."
Wendell Lawton was a man in his early thirties, wearing a lightweight blue blazer, a white shirt, and a red tie that made him look like either a television news commentator or a member of the White House staff. He confirmed that this was indeed his stamp on the two-thousand-dollar strap, but he told them that he handled many such bundles of currency every day of the week, and he couldn't possibly be expected to recall whether this particular strap had been handed over the counter to anyone in par -
"But we understand there's a teller's tape," Carella said.
"Well, a teller tape, yes," Lawton said, correcting him, and then looking up at the clock; Carella figured it must have been a long, hard day.
"So perhaps if we looked at that tape …"
"Well," he said again.
