They took him to the VIP floor with the courtesy of people who have never learned how to be unkind in private. The staff exchanged the kind of looks that men wear when they’re about to watch an amusing sketch. Noah felt eyes on him, felt someone’s hand tighten around a champagne flute, heard a small, high laugh from a corner.
Children in that place did not come alone. They were the offspring of winners, not the carriers of faded blue hoodies. “Kid, what exactly are you doing on this floor?” The VIP manager, a man named Whitaker whose suit might have had a nickname, peered down at him with practiced disdain.
Noah slid the folder across the counter with the careful, slow motion of someone who knows what the object means. “My grandfather opened a savings account when I was born,” he said. “He told me to come here.
He died last week.”
The laughter, for a moment, thinned to the noise of distant traffic. Some of the men shifted their attention to the boy with the solemn eyes. Whitaker’s smile flickered and turned into a question.
“Which account?”
Noah took a breath. “It’s under my mother’s name now,” he explained. “He told me to come to Mr.
Whitaker.”
Whitaker scanned the paperwork with an expression that said he expected a childhood allowance and change. He typed numbers. His fingers hovered over the keys as if they, too, were unsure whether they should perform.
The room hummed with small cruel amusements; someone whispered, “Probably a thousand bucks. Maybe twenty.” Then Whitaker’s face changed. For a long beat no one spoke.
The screen in front of Whitaker stayed blank for a second as if the system itself needed a moment to accept what it was displaying. Then numbers and documents flashed, and Whitaker’s hands, usually so controlled, trembled. “I…need to speak with you privately,” he told Noah.
The man’s voice lacked its arrogance. Whitaker’s jaw worked; he looked as if he’d swallowed something bitter. Two managers ushered Noah into a side office, a dim room with wood the color of old coffee and a lamp that made small islands of gold on the table.
Mr. Harrison, the senior superintendent, closed the door and sat in the chair across from Noah as if on guard. Linda Graves arrived with the city tidy in her briefcase and a measured, attorney calm.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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