Cash Landing (7 page)

S
avannah had to be at the dry cleaners by seven a.m. Ruban drove her.

“My brother's missing and I'm going to work,” she said, staring out the passenger-side window. “This is crazy.”

It was their normal Monday routine: Savannah on her feet, behind the counter, hour after hour, smiling and assuring yet another rich wife of Coral Gables that her Hermès gown would no longer smell of Dom Perignon, caviar, and Chanel No. 5. The restaurant was closed on Mondays, but Ruban still had to show up and tally the weekend receipts.

“There's nothing else to do until we hear from Jeffrey.”

Or his kidnappers.
He didn't say it, and neither did Savannah. But she was thinking it. Constantly.

Savannah climbed out of the passenger seat slowly. She hated her job at the cleaners. Marathon shifts behind the counter on Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays, however, made up for the paltry wages she earned Tuesday through Thursday as a part-time assistant at a daycare center. Nurturing preschoolers was its own reward. Customers at the dry cleaners only made her feel unworthy, even when they were trying to be nice in their own way—women like Mrs. Willis, third wife to a rich investment banker, who had come in to drop off a killer cocktail dress with a small red-wine stain at the hem. She and Savannah were just about the same height and weight, not to mention age.

“I don't think it will come out,” Savannah had told her.

“You sure?”

“Not without discoloring the fabric, which would be a shame. Such a gorgeous dress. I mean,
I
would wear it with a little stain like this on it. But that's just me.”

Mrs. Trophy-Wife had reached for her dress, paused, and then pushed it across the counter toward Savannah. “Why don't you keep it, sweetie? I think you'd dress up nicely in it.”

The stain had actually come out, no discoloration, good as new. But Savannah never told the customer. It was the closest she'd ever come to stealing, but she'd managed to rationalize it.

Sweetie? Dress up nicely? Up your liposuctioned butt, lady.

She was afraid Ruban was starting to engage in the same mental gymnastics, convincing himself that it was okay to buy a Rolex and earrings for his wife with Jeffrey's stolen money.

Like the banks don't steal, Savannah.

She'd heard him say that many times. Too often, especially of late. It was a slippery slope.

“Everything is going to be okay,” Ruban said from behind the wheel.

She hesitated before closing the car door. “Are you sure?”

“Definitely. It's better to wait at work than to sit at home.”

“You promise to call me as soon as you know anything?”

“I promise.”

She closed the door, and Ruban drove out of the parking lot.

Ruban didn't go to work but to a coffee shop in West Miami, where he had some business with a certain Jamaican bartender.

Ramsey Kincaid was waiting for him at an outside table. Ruban joined him, laid an envelope on the table, and pushed it toward Ramsey.

“Here's half,” he said.

Ramsey tucked the envelope into his fanny pack without
bothering to count the money. His dreadlocks were tucked up under a knit cap. A Bob Marley tattoo bulged on his right bicep. He'd come straight from work at the Gold Rush, having pulled the eleven-to-seven shift.

“How's our boy this morning?” asked Ruban.

“I dunno.”

“Huh?”

Ramsey tore open a pack of sugar. His hand was shaking so badly that more of it ended up on the table than in his coffee. “We got a problem, mon. A big problem.”

Ruban stared at him. They had agreed on the telephone that the best way to get Jeffrey to stop flashing money was to scare the living crap out of him. Ramsey had agreed to do it, for three thousand dollars.

“Ramsey, I swear, if my brother-in-law OD'd and died on you, I will—”

“No, no, no. Jeffrey not dead, mon.”

“Where is he?”

“I dunno.”

Ruban tightened his glare. “Stop saying you don't know and start explaining.”

“It all went fine at first. Jeffrey partied all night, like he do every night. Finally, he leaves at four o'clock in the morning. I walk him to his car. He's so wasted that he practically falls into the trunk. My friends, they took him—”

“Wait a minute,” said Ruban. “You didn't go with them?”

“No, mon. I work till seven o'clock in the mornin'.”

“I paid you three grand. You said
you
would do it.”

“No, mon. I said I would
get it done.
Kidnapping is not my thing. I got you professionals.”

Ruban was ready to grab him by the throat. “You idiot! I didn't tell you to bring in more people.”

“Hold your horses, mon. You didn't tell me
not
to.”

Ruban breathed out his anger. “Who are your friends?”

“Not really friends. More like friends of friends.”

“You don't even know these guys, do you?”

“Friends of friends, mon.”

Ruban leaned into the table, pointing his finger as he spoke. “Listen to me, Ramsey. You need to get Jeffrey back right now.”

“Okay, mon.”

“I mean
right now.
”

“No problem. Well, maybe there be one problem. The ransom.”

“What the hell are you talking about? There's no ransom.”

“Your brother-in-law, he got one big mouth, mon. Before we even shove him inside the trunk of the car, he sayin' shit like ‘Oh, please, please, Mr. Kidnapper, don't hurt me. I got lots of money. I pay you a million dollars.'”

Ruban's head was about to explode. “I hope your friends didn't believe him.”

“Not my friends, mon. Friends of friends.”

“Whoever. Do they think Jeffrey actually has a million dollars?”

“They called me one hour ago. They want a handsome ransom. Hey, dat rhyme.”

“How big?”

“I jis told you. One million.”

“No way.”

“Come on, Ruban. Dis is your brother-in-law.”

“I'm not paying a million-dollar ransom. I'm not paying anything.”

“These are bad dudes, mon. They will kill him.”

Ruban looked off toward the rush-hour traffic, thinking. Then his gaze shifted back to Ramsey. “Here's my counteroffer: Tell your friends to let Jeffrey go.”

“Not my friends, mon. Friends of friends.”

“I don't care who the fuck they are, Ramsey.”

“You don't understand, mon. Bad dudes. Very bad.”

He leaned forward, his forearms resting on the table, his eyes cutting through the Jamaican like lasers. “Do you know who Jeffrey's uncle is?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Craig Perez. He goes by Pinky. Ask around about him.”

“What you telling me, mon?”

Ruban had no intention of involving Pinky, but it was the best bluff he could come up with. “Tell these bad dudes to let Jeffrey go. Or Pinky comes looking for
you
.”

R
uban left his assistant manager in charge at the restaurant and picked up Savannah at the dry cleaners. It wasn't even lunchtime, and the early pickup made Savannah think the worst. The tension was written all over her face as she slid into the passenger seat, shut the door, and braced for the unspeakable.

“Please tell me Jeffrey is okay,” she said.

The motor was running, but they were still in the strip-mall parking lot. People were coming and going from the cleaners and the drug store, oblivious to the worried-looking woman talking to her husband in the car.

“I'm sure Jeffrey is just fine,” said Ruban.

“It sounds like you don't know.”

“I only heard from the kidnappers. I didn't talk to Jeffrey.”

Her concern heightened. “They wouldn't let you speak to him?”

“It wasn't like that. They passed a message to me through one of the bartenders at the Gold Rush. A Jamaican guy.”

“Is he working with them?”

He couldn't tell Savannah that he'd hired Ramsey and that his plan to scare Jeffrey had backfired. He kept it vague. “No. I don't think so.”

“What's the message?”

“If we want Jeffrey back, the ransom is a million dollars.”

She sank a little deeper into the passenger seat, her gaze fixed blankly on the dashboard. “How easy is it for you to dig up a million of what they stole?”

Very easy, if they counted Ruban's share and the million he was holding for Octavio. “That's putting the cart before the horse. We don't pay a million. We negotiate.”

She glanced over. “How do you know it's negotiable?”

“Everything's negotiable.”

“Ruban, this is a kidnapping, not an eBay auction.”

“We can't get emotional about this.”

“Not get emotional? This is my brother!”

“Take a breath, okay? Only a fool would hand over a million dollars just because some thug says so. Have you ever met the Mendoza family two doors down from us?”

“Who—what do they have to do with this?”

“I'm making a point. A couple of months ago I got to talking with the
abuelo
when he was out walking the dog. Five different members of his family were kidnapped before they finally left Medellín. The old man didn't give me specifics, but they never paid the first ransom demand. It was always negotiated down.”

“Ruban, this isn't Medellín.”

“It's also not Kabul. We're not up against the Taliban or some other lunatics trying to make a religious or political statement. This is all about money. We negotiate.”

She considered it, but not for very long. She looked at him from across the console and spoke in a firm voice: “No.”

“No
, what?”

“No negotiation. If they hurt Jeffrey, I swear I will never forgive you, Ruban. Pay the million dollars.”

He chuckled, but not because it was funny. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

“Whoa what?”

Only a half million of Jeffrey's share was buried in their yard. “Let's think this through,” he said.

“What's there to think about?”

Ruban stared at the steering wheel, searching for something to say other than the truth of the matter: paying a million dollars meant dipping into
their
share. Then it came to him.

“Your first instinct was right, Savannah. When I bought you that Rolex, you said we can't touch the money.”

“But this is different.”

“No, it's not. If we ever have to explain this to the police, they won't care what we spent it on. All they'll know is that we hid the money, and a million dollars is missing.”

Her expression tightened. It was her nervous look, which meant he was getting through to her.

“Okay. Then what do we do?” she asked.

“The way Jeffrey has been burning through money, he clearly has some serious cash stashed away somewhere. We find it, and we use it to pay the ransom.”

“How is that better?”

“At least we can honestly say that we never touched any of the money that was under our control.”

“I guess that makes sense. But how do we even know where to look?”

“If you were Jeffrey, where would you stash your money?”

“I have no idea.”

“Savannah, come on. Your brother is a thirty-two-year-old cokehead who lives with his mother. Apart from the bedroom he's had since middle school, the only world he knows is the Gold Rush. We can only hope that he didn't stash his money at the strip club. Really, where do you think it is?”

She sat up and turned, her left shoulder leaning into the seat back. “No, absolutely not. If we start tearing my mother's house apart looking for Jeffrey's money, I'm going to have to tell her that Jeffrey got kidnapped, and she's going to have a heart attack. Literally, she will run for her rosary and drop dead on the floor.”

“She is not going to die.”

“We cannot drag my mother into this. She knows nothing about the heist.”

“Would you rather she hear about it from the kidnappers?”

“There's no reason for them to call her.”

“You're right. They won't call. When Jeffrey cracks under pressure and tells them where his money is, they'll just smash down her front door and put a gun to her head. Is that what you want?”

“God, no!”

“We need to find that money, hide it someplace else, and send your mother on a monthlong vacation to Fiji.”

She leaned back and considered it. “All right,” she said, breathing out a heavy sigh. “But let me be the one to break it to her.”

“Now you're making sense,” he said as he backed out of the parking space.

She shook her head, staring out the window. “None of this makes any sense,” she said under her breath.

“Ay, Dios mío!”

Ruban rolled his eyes as he walked into the kitchen to refresh the cold compress. His mother-in-law had not taken the news well. For ten minutes she'd been moaning, wailing, and calling for divine intervention. Savannah was beside her on the couch, trying in vain to console her.

“Mi niño, mi niño precioso!”

Right. The “precious boy” whose idea of “laying low” was to spend ten times retail on discontinued Rolexes and give them to strippers.
Idiot.

“Ruban, hurry!” Savannah called from the living room.

He went to the freezer, wrapped fresh ice in the washcloth, and returned to the critical care unit—er, living room. His mother-in-law was on her back with her feet up on the couch and her
head in Savannah's lap. Savannah took the compress and placed it on her mother's forehead.

Beatriz Beauchamp was filled with more melodrama than the human body could possibly contain. Anything from the death of her husband to her parakeet's loss of appetite was enough to land her on the couch, praying to Saint Lazarus. Savannah had inherited her beautiful face, but nothing more. The rest of her—the carrying on, the five-foot frame, the extra poundage—she'd passed on to her son.

Ruban sat in the armchair facing them. “We need a plan to help Jeffrey,” he said.

“Sí, sí. El plan de Dios.”

“No, not God's plan.
We
need a plan.”

Savannah shot him an angry look. “Not
now
, Ruban.”

“This can't wait,” he said, and then he spoke directly to his mother-in-law. “Savannah and I have decided to pay the ransom.”

“Why no call the police?”

Good question, but he was ready for it. “The kidnappers said they will kill him if we call the police.”

“Ay, no!”

“Totally agree. Ay, yai, yai; yada, yada, yada. But we need to come up with some money.”

Savannah patted her mother's forehead with the cloth.

“How much?” asked Beatriz.

“A
lot
,” said Ruban. “We think Jeffrey might have some cash around the house.”

“Sí, sí.
He won it in the lottery. Pick Six.”

“The lottery, huh? What a lucky boy,” said Ruban. “Do you know where he keeps it?”

“Sí.
I found it when I cleaned his room. Under his mattress.”

Under the mattress
. The thought of Jeffrey as his coconspirator was suddenly enough to make Ruban want to shoot himself. “I'll be right back.”

Ruban went down the hall. The door was closed but unlocked. He went inside, not sure what disaster to expect, but the room was neat and tidy—just the way a doting Cuban mother would keep it. No coke mirrors on the dresser. No pornography on the walls. Not so much as a hint of dust on the windowsill or nightstand. The bed was made with military precision. Ruban went straight to it and flipped the mattress. Benjamin Franklin was staring back at him through the vacuum-sealed packs. Ruban had marked each pack with a dollar value on the night of the divvy. Ruban did the quick math on Jeffrey's stash, gathered it up, and went back to the living room.

“Four hundred thousand,” he said as he laid the packs on the coffee table. “Your brother burned through a million-plus in one week.”

“That's not possible,” said Savannah.

“Add it up.”

She didn't bother. “Maybe he stashed more somewhere else.”

“What about it, Beatriz?” asked Ruban. “Any more excellent hiding places besides the mattress?”

“Maybe ask El Padrino,” she said. “I think Jeffrey gave some for him to hold.”

“Who's El Padrino?” asked Ruban.

“His godfather,” said Savannah.

“I know what
el padrino
means. Who
is he
?”

“Carlos Vazquez,” said Savannah.

“Where does he live?”

“No sé
,” said Beatriz. “Jeffrey is the only one in the family who stays in touch with him. The rest of us . . . no.”

“Should I even ask why?”

“He became a priest,” said Beatriz.

“You cut him off because he became a priest?”

Savannah squeezed the excess water from the washcloth into the bucket at her feet, careful not to drop what remained of the ice cubes. “A Santería priest.”

Ruban had seen Santería in Cuba, and it was still practiced in certain parts of the Afro-Cuban immigrant community in Miami. A Hialeah group had successfully defended the right to conduct animal sacrifices, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. To Ruban, the killing of chickens, doves, and turtles to provide spirits the nourishment needed to possess priests during rituals was more voodoo than religion.

“Jeffrey gave his money to a Santería priest?” he asked, incredulous.

“For safekeeping,” said Beatriz.

Ruban stared at the vacuum-sealed packs on the table. Four hundred thousand dollars. If they added it to the half million of Jeffrey's money that was buried in the yard, they were close to the ransom demand. But paying the full amount made about as much sense to Ruban as giving it to a Santería priest.

“Brilliant,” said Ruban. “Just brilliant.”