I asked Dan, a few weeks later, what his job was really like.

He told me. Not the secret parts. He never tells me those. But the rest of it.

He told me about the elderly widow in Asheville who'd almost sent her life savings to a man pretending to be her grandson. Dan's team stopped the payment ten minutes before it left.

He told me about the small bakery owner whose business partner had been quietly emptying their accounts. Dan's team found the pattern.

He told me about all the people who'd never know his name. Who'd never know that a quiet man in a navy cardigan, in a gray office on the eleventh floor, had noticed something wrong and stopped it.

“Doesn't it bother you?” I asked. “That nobody knows? That people like Tristan get to call you a teller?”

Dan thought about it.

“The people who shout the loudest about money,” he said, “are usually the ones you have to watch. The people who keep quiet and pay their bills are the ones I'm protecting.”

He smiled.

“I'm on their side, Al. The quiet ones. I always have been.”