Don't Ever Get Old (19 page)

After a moment's hesitation, the teller nodded. “We have no problem at all letting a customer access his safe deposit box.”

“Then we're on the same page here,” Tequila said.

He walked back over to me. “Grandpa, they will let you look at your box, as long as you don't make a lot of noise.”

“I'll need you to sign a signature card, to verify your identity,” the teller told me.

I stuck my cigarette in my mouth, took a pen from him, and scrawled an illegible mark on the card.

He looked at the card and then looked back at me. His eyes were wide with fear, and beads of sweat dotted his forehead. “Sir, this signature doesn't look like the one on the original card,” he said.

“Are you mocking my Parkinson's, you insensitive little shit?” I pointed an accusing finger at him, making my arm shake more than it might ordinarily.

Tequila grabbed my arm and scolded me. “You need to relax, and watch your language.”

I turned to him. “You told your lawyer to make them say my signature was wrong, didn't you? You all want to convince everyone I'm cuckoo, so you can stow me in some facility and take everything. Well, it's not going to work. Whatever is in that box goes with me. I'll have it buried with me before I let you get your dirty mitts on it.”

The teller shrank back from me. “Sir, I can't let you into a safe deposit box without proof that you are the owner.”

“I'm so sorry,” Tequila said to him. “He doesn't really know what he's doing. But when he gets into these moods, he doesn't hear reason. We just want to make sure he's taken care of.”

“Taken care of right into the graveyard. I'm on to you,” I shouted.

“If you let him into his box, I'm sure he'll calm down,” Tequila told the teller.

“I can't do that if the signature card doesn't match.”

Tequila sighed. “Look, everyone knows my grandfather. How many ninety-year-old guys have safe deposit boxes here?”

“I don't know him. Does he have some kind of identification?”

Tequila showed the teller Ziegler's Social Security and Medicare cards.

“No driver's license? No passport?”

“Not that I know of,” Tequila told him. “He hasn't driven a car or traveled abroad in, like, twenty years.”

“How can I let you access this box? You can't match the signature card. You can't even provide photo identification. You can't prove he is who he says he is.”

Tequila sighed. “We have the key, and government-issued identification documents. And the signature would match if his hands didn't shake so much.”

“Assholes,” I shouted at both of them.

“Look,” said Tequila. “Nobody has been into this safe deposit box in years. I didn't even know it existed until he started yelling about it a few days ago. But whatever is in there is suddenly very important to him.”

“These are the policies,” said the teller. “I have to follow the rules here, or I will get in very serious trouble.”

“And I understand that. But you say he can't prove who he is, and that's exactly accurate. This man is losing his identity. He's fighting as hard as he can to hang on to his past, to keep his grip on his memories, and that's why he's here today.” Tears glistened in his eyes. He snuffled and rubbed at his face with his fingers. “I'm not asking you to do anything shady, or crooked or wrong. But I know you don't really doubt that man right there is Henry Winters. All I'm asking is that you apply your policy with a little common sense and compassion.”

The teller hesitated. “I'll have to get an approval from my manager.”

“Thank you so much,” said Tequila. “We appreciate it.”

I spent the next few minutes shouting at my grandson while the teller consulted with his boss. He came back with the manager and two uniformed security guards in tow.

“You gentlemen need to leave the premises,” said the manager. He was short, about Tequila's height, and doughy, with a receded jaw that barely demarcated the boundary between his head and his neck.

“I'm sure we can discuss this reasonably,” Tequila said.

“We've discussed it already,” said the teller, crossing his arms.

“If we are unsatisfied with the proof you supply to show that you are the owner of a safe deposit box, we cannot provide you with access to it,” the manager said. “We have procedures in place to protect people who follow the rules.”

This was, of course, false. The procedures protected the bank and the bank's interest in the contents of those boxes.

Nobody ever got a letter from a bank informing them that the bill on a safe deposit box was in arrears, when the box owners died without telling their families about their boxes, the banks waited until the property could be deemed legally abandoned, at which point the banks were entitled to crack open the boxes and sell any valuables at auction.

“You're trying to steal my things,” I shouted at him. I meant it, too.

“You need to go, unless you prefer to have these men escort you out,” the manager told me.

I sighed sadly. We'd struck out.

 

30

I thought of the .357, tucked in the glove compartment out in the car, but I knew there was no way we could take the treasure by force. I moved slowly, even when I wasn't carrying bags of gold. And even if I'd been young and fit, the rate of arrest and conviction for bank robbers was damn near a hundred percent; it was the single stupidest crime anyone could commit.

The bank's front door would be the only exit, and the whole place was certainly wired with alarms and cameras. If we got out of the building and made it onto the highway somehow, we couldn't get far before we'd get pulled over or pinned by a roadblock. Force was not an option. If I couldn't convince these people I owned Ziegler's safe deposit box, whatever treasure the Nazi had stashed would stay in the vault.

I would go home and think about moving with Rose into a place like Meadowcrest, for our safety. I couldn't risk her being injured in another “fall event.” Eventually, I'd get put into a ward with a locked door and a plastic cover on the mattress, and the nurses there would swaddle me in absorbent disposable adult undergarments, and after that, there wouldn't be much else.

One of the security guards stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. Defeated, I started to head back out to the car.

“Take your goddamn hand off him,” Tequila said. I guessed he was done being the good cop, not that it mattered anymore.

I turned around to tell him to give it up, and I saw that Tequila was pointing something silver and shiny at the bank manager. For a second, terror flooded my synapses. It looked as though he'd brought the gun in with him. But then the thing in his hand started talking.

“What is going on there?” demanded Tequila's Internet phone. This hadn't been part of the plan. I had no idea what my grandson was doing or who was on the other end of the call.

“These people at the bank won't let us into Grandpa's safe deposit box, and they are trying to throw us out,” Tequila told the phone. All the softness had fallen out of his face. His eyes were no longer pleading; they'd gone cold. Almost like Ziegler's.

“Jesus Christ. Am I going to have to come down and sort things out?” the phone asked.

“Well, shit, Counselor,” Tequila said, “I sure hope not.” He gave an exaggerated shrug for the benefit of the security guards. “My attorney,” he explained to them, gesturing at the device.

“Who is in charge over there?” said the phone.

“Uh, I am,” stammered the bank manager.

“I have no idea who's talking, so that's no help to me,” hissed the voice on the line.

“I, uh…” The bank manager paused. “What?”

“Who are you?” asked the voice on the phone, biting off each word as if he were speaking to a very stupid child.

“I'm assistant branch manager Alan Patterson.”

“Well, I'll tell you something, assistant branch manager Alan Patterson. If I have to come down there, your name is going to be Shit. As a matter of fact, I am going to go ahead and just call you Shit, because assistant branch manager Albert whatever-the-fuck-your-name-is requires me to remember way too much about somebody insignificant.”

“I don't know who you are, but you can't talk to me like that,” said Patterson, trying to find his backbone.

“I'll bet he's bloated, like some kind of bloodsucking insect,” said the phone. “A chubby guy with a three-inch penis, on a power trip.”

“Yeah, he's kind of bloated,” Tequila said. “Chinless, too.”

“He sounds chinless,” the phone agreed.

One of the security guards giggled a little, which seemed to anger bloated, chinless assistant branch manager Alan Patterson. “Is there a point to this?” he growled at Tequila.

“Here's a point,” said the phone. “Have you ever heard of a tort called conversion? That means you took things that don't belong to you and you have to pay for the harm you did. Have you ever heard of a tort called intentional infliction of emotional distress? That means a fragile old man walked into your bank, and you fucked with him, and you have to pay for the harm you did. And if that's not enough, we can probably come up with various age discrimination claims under state and federal law. Those have statutory damages, so you'll really have to pay.”

“Look, there's no need for that,” stammered the branch manager. Beads of sweat were popping out of his forehead.

“Did that chinless piece of shit just interrupt me?” asked the phone.

“I, uh, I am sorry,” said Patterson.

“Nobody cares if you're sorry. Shut up,” the phone told him. “Now, your bank has insurance, for the amply foreseeable circumstance in which you are stupid or negligent and injure your customers. For example, if that senile old man you're trying to keep out of his safe deposit box were somehow George-fucking-Clooney, dropping some
Ocean's Eleven
shit on your bank, any liability you have for negligence in allowing him access to a safe deposit box would be covered. But your insurer will not cover intentional torts, such as the aforementioned conversion or intentional infliction of emotional distress. Do you understand what that means?”

The bank manager looked at Tequila, hoping for a way out.

“Don't look at me,” Tequila told him. “Answer the question.”

“I'm not sure what that means,” said Patterson, his voice low and hoarse.

“It means if you don't let that man see his stuff, I will sue you. I will take your house,” the phone shrieked. “If you have any money saved to send your chinless kids to college, I will take that. You will be eating cat food when I am done with you. Actually, what you're doing may also have criminal implications. That means you will be eating prison food. I've got a buddy who works for the D.A.'s office. Maybe I'll play nine holes with him this afternoon and we can discuss all the things the law will let us do to a guy who steals from the elderly.”

“I don't—,” Patterson said. It came out as a strangled wheeze. “I didn't.”

“I don't think that will be necessary,” Tequila said, his voice soft and soothing. “I think Mr. Patterson will listen to reason.”

Patterson looked to the two security guards, who had physically backed away from him. He looked over at the teller, who had retreated back to his position behind the counter. Everyone in the bank was looking at us; the chatter of morning commerce had given way to tomblike silence.

A tear rolled down Patterson's chubby cheek, over the slight protrusion of his jawline, and down his neck to dampen his shirt collar.

“Gentlemen,” the branch manager said to his guards, “the signature card looks like a pretty clear match to me. Let's get Mr. Winters his safe deposit box from the vault.”

“That's what I thought,” said the phone.

 

31

The two security guards ushered me and Tequila into a small office where we could examine the lockbox.

“It took all three of us to lift this thing,” Patterson said. “It's really heavy. What on earth are you keeping here?”

“None of your business,” I told him. “Get out.”

Patterson used his key on one of the two locks on the safe deposit box and then left us alone with it.

“What are you waiting for?” Tequila asked. “Open it up.”

I drummed my fingers on the lid of the box. “What the hell was that with the telephone?” I asked him. “That wasn't part of the plan.”

“Deus ex machina,” Tequila said, laughing. “God from the machine.” He waved the Internet phone at me.

“Don't bullshit me,” I growled.

“That was Pete, my roommate. I figured we needed a fallback option.”

“We were supposed to run the good-cop, bad-cop,” I said. “We had a plan.”

“And my backup was for when your plan didn't work,” he told me.

I scowled at him. “Does Pete's mother know he has a mouth like that?”

“Open the goddamn box, Grandpa.”

“Smartass,” I said as I turned my key in the lock. The safe deposit box popped open. It contained eight gold bars, each about eight inches by three inches, stamped with swastikas.

I let out a low whistle. Tequila just stared at it, saucer-eyed.

“I can't believe there's really a treasure,” said Tequila. “I wanted to find it, but, deep down, I suspected it was sort of, you know, a MacGuffin.”

“You should have gone earlier,” I said. “They stop serving breakfast at half-past ten.”

“Not a McMuffin, Grandpa. I thought the gold was, like, psychological, or symbolic, or something.”

“You think I would schlep halfway across the country for imaginary gold?”

“I mean, I knew you thought there was gold, but I thought that the gold represented your desire for meaning at a point in your life when you're facing infirmity and still trying to make sense of what you saw in the war, and trying to rationalize what happened to Dad.”