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It's safe to say: When there's a big black bag of cash, a decent story almost always follows. Just ask airport novelists. Or Robert De Niro, back when he was in good movies.

But as 18-year-old teller Michael Rodriguez learned a couple of rainy Saturdays ago, that stuff's best saved for the glitz of fiction.

June 6 was a slow day at Cash-a-Check on Biscayne Boulevard and 137th Street. Rodriguez -- a one-year employee with a waterfall of brown curls -- answered the phone around 4 p.m. A ponytailed co-worker named Tammy Fleurelus was on the other line. She informed the naive teenager he would need to fork over some cash for the boss's wife Martha Seas, according to a North Miami Beach Police report. The Mrs. would call in few minutes, Fleurelus explained.

The phone rang again. A voice introduced herself as Seas and "asked him how much money there was in the vault," the police report states. Then she politely instructed the boy to take out $26,000, and hand it to a broker, who would be in shortly. No need to worry, she told him, the gentleman would recite a secret number code: 1203.

"I was like, "Are you sure I don't have to call my manager?" Rodriguez says. "She told me, 'No, I already spoke to her.'"