Cash Landing

by James Grippando

  “You stay in there till Tuesday,” he said loud enough for Sully to hear. “You got that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Ruban left through the front door, tossed Sully’s pistol into the shrubbery on his way out, and stashed the money in the trunk of his car before driving away. He was halfway home when he realized that he’d walked out with at least two thousand dollars more than he’d expected to get from Sully on the return, which would buy a nice birthday present for Savannah. But no more dealing with scumbags who did business out of a closet. It was time to shop like real people, people with class, people with money. He hopped onto the expressway and headed to downtown Miami.

  The Seybold Building is a ten-story retail center filled with nothing but jewelry stores and dealers. People came from all over the world to shop there, and Ruban had heard many a customer at Café Ruban gushing about their new bauble from Seybold. He breezed past the first few shops in the arcade, which sold mostly antique rings and other vintage jewelry. Midway down the mall he found a shop that sold “contemporary designs,” more Savannah’s style. He spotted a pair of earrings for two grand. Sold. He went inside and told the clerk.

  “Would you like those gift-wrapped?”

  “Yeah, I would.”

  Ruban browsed the glass display cabinets while the clerk wrapped the earrings. He wandered toward the selection of fine watches, where a Rolex caught his eye. It looked identical to the watch he had just “returned” to Sully.

  “Are you interested in a watch as well?” the sales associate asked.

  “Maybe. How much is that ladies’ Rolex?”

  The clerk unlocked the cabinet and laid the watch on a velvet pad. “This is a nice one. Twelve-karat gold with diamond and ruby bezel. It goes for twenty-five hundred dollars.”

  Ruban did a double take. “You mean twenty-five thousand, right?”

  He chuckled. “No. You can have ten of them for twenty-five thousand. Honestly, it’s a discontinued style. Twenty-five hundred is what we’re asking. I might be able to go a little lower, if you pay cash.”

  Ruban was too angry to speak.

  “Sir?”

  “Sorry,” said Ruban. “Just the earrings today.”

  He took the shopping bag, the clerk thanked him, and Ruban left the store. He tried to focus on how happy the earrings would make Savannah, but he couldn’t let go of the fact that Sully had charged his stupid brother-in-law ten times the full retail price on four ladies’ watches. His markup on the men’s watches was probably just as outrageous.

  No wonder he’d pulled a gun.

  Ruban’s cell rang. He took the call while walking back to his car. It was Savannah’s uncle—Pinky.

  “We got a problem with Marco.”

  Ruban stopped on the sidewalk. “What now?”

  “I was just watching the noontime news. The cops found the delivery truck by the river.”

  “Damn it, Pinky! Marco’s only job was to supply the pickup and then ditch it. You hired him. You said he could handle it.”

  “Don’t put this on me. It was your idea to put the pickup inside the delivery truck and put everything on the freighter. Marco was just in charge of execution.”

  “How hard is that to execute?” Ruban said, his voice rising. “Now it’s all fucked up!”

  “Relax, all right?” said Pinky. “They didn’t say anything on the news about finding the pickup. That’s gone. Maybe there wasn’t room on that freighter for the delivery truck. But if the TV news got it right, there’s a bigger problem. They found bloody chains inside the delivery truck. And somebody’s finger.”

  Ruban froze. “Shit. Is it Marco?”

  “They didn’t say.”

  “Did you ever get hold of him after we talked Thursday?”

  “No.”

  “So you still got his money?”

  “Yeah. Still got it.”

  Ruban started toward his car again, as if walking might help him think. “Where is it?”

  There was silence on the line. Then Pinky laughed and said, “Where it’ll be safe. We settled this the night of the split. You hide your money, I hide mine.”

  “This isn’t yours. It’s Marco’s. I’ll hold it.”

  “What, you don’t trust me, bro?”

  Ruban unlocked his car, and before he could answer, a homeless man approached from behind.

  “Hey, my man. Don’t I know you?” He was holding a sign that said “Dog Bless You,” which was either his attempt at humor or “Exhibit A” in his trial for public intoxication.

  Ruban waved him off, climbed behind the wheel, and locked the door. “Pinky, if Marco’s toast, we need to split up his money.”

  “We don’t even know he’s dead yet.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Can’t you see what happened here? Marco shot his mouth off to the wrong person. They beat him with chains and cut off his finger to find out where he hid his money, and they didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t get paid yet. He’s dead.”

  “Probably.”

  Another thought came to Ruban’s mind, one more important than money. “Do you think Marco gave us up?”

  “How the fuck do I know, bro?”

  “He was your friend.”

  “He’s a two-bit car thief I met in prison. Look, all I can tell you is I’m outta here. No way am I going to work tomorrow like everything’s normal. I’m cracking open my vacuum-sealed packs and getting the hell out of Miami.”

  “Pinky, don’t. We have to hold it together here.”

  “Bullshit. Your brother-in-law is stuffing coke up his nose and dropping money at strip clubs like there’s holes in his pockets. He’s wearing a target on his chest. Either you get him to tone it down, or I might take some target practice myself.”

  “That’s not cool. Jeffrey is your nephew.”

  “He’s a fuckup. This is the big leagues. There’s a chance Marco didn’t give us up. But if somebody even twists Jeffrey’s fat finger, there’s no chance he won’t give us up. You gotta take control of the situation. If you don’t, I will.”

  “Don’t threaten me.”

  “No threat. Here’s the deal. Get fatso under control, and we split Marco’s share. Otherwise, I keep it. That’s all I have to say.”

  Pinky hung up. Ruban tossed the cell onto the passenger seat. Week one had been a dream. Week two was shaping up to be a nightmare. Pinky’s question had hit the nail on the head: “What, you don’t trust me, bro?”

  Ruban didn’t trust anybody. Gotta take control.

  He started the engine and nearly ran over the homeless guy as he backed out of the parking spot. The driver’s-side window squeaked as he lowered it.

  “Dog bless you,” he said as he drove away.

  Chapter 11

  Andie stopped by Littleford’s townhouse after dinner. It had been a busy afternoon, and his place was on her way home from the crime lab.

  “Tire tracks match,” said Andie. “The pickup used in the heist was definitely inside the delivery truck at some point in time.”

  They were seated in matching Adirondack chairs on the backyard patio. The sun had set, and a half-moon was rising over the tall ficus hedge. It was the peak of autumn in south Florida, that one night each November when Miamians step out of their air-conditioned boxes and ask, Hey, where did the humidity go?

  “That gives us something,” said Littleford. “Stay on Tom Cat this week to keep looking for the pickup, but my bet is that it’s probably cruising down the streets of Nassau or Santo Domingo as we speak.”

  “Or chopped into pieces that will soon be sprinkled across South America.”

  “What about the finger?”

  “More bad news: no fingerprint.”

  “Ants?”

  “Not just ants. Dermestids. Flesh-eating beetles. Every trace of epidermis is gone. I swear, you find the most bizarre insects at these cargo terminals on the river.”

  “What did you find out about the blood on the chains?”

  �
�B-positive. It matches the DNA from the finger. Male victim. Unfortunately, we have nothing from the MIA warehouse to compare it to, so no way to know if it was one of the perps in the heist.”

  “Any other prints to work with?”

  “MDPD pulled some from the handwritten note that was found under the visor, and from the cab of the delivery truck. But no hits in the databases.”

  Littleford’s wife came out and handed him a slice of cheesecake on a plate. “You sure you wouldn’t like some, Andie?” she asked.

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “You know, dessert is actually a required activity in my unit,” said Littleford.

  “You do make it tempting. But my plan is still a steady diet of undercover work after this case is cracked.”

  He shaved off a slice with his fork and savored it. “Great cake, Barbara.”

  “Thanks, honey,” she said. “Do you bake, Andie?”

  “Only when I lie in the sun.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry, bad joke. No, I’m not much of a cook.”

  “But she can shoot the cap off a Coke bottle at fifty yards,” said Littleford.

  It was a slight exaggeration, but Barbara didn’t seem impressed anyway. “Michael says you moved here from Seattle.”

  “That’s right,” said Andie.

  “Are you seeing anyone?”

  “Hey, a new world record!” said Littleford. “Fifteen seconds until Barbara puts out the feelers for her poor, lonely divorced cousin.”

  “Stop, Michael. John is not poor.”

  “I didn’t mean he’s—”

  “I know what you both mean,” said Andie. “No, I’m not dating anyone. But I’m not looking to date right now. Thank you, though.”

  “Great answer,” said Littleford.

  Barbara rose. “Well, if you change your mind . . .”

  “I’ll let you know,” said Andie.

  Barbara smiled and left them alone.

  Littleford set his plate on the armrest. “Well, wasn’t that just dandy? I spend all week trying to convince you to stay in the bank robbery unit, and in two minutes my wife has you running for undercover work.”

  Andie laughed. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay. Let’s talk about this week. I want you to coordinate with MDPD to find out who lost a finger.”

  “No problem.”

  “Any reason to go back to the MIA warehouse?”

  Andie considered it. “I still think one of the guards—probably Alvarez—called the perps from the warehouse and told them when to come. But we’ve practically turned that warehouse inside out looking for a phone. Nothing.”

  “Your initial reaction is probably spot-on,” said Littleford. “He went into the bathroom, made the call, smashed the phone into a thousand tiny pieces, and flushed it down the toilet.”

  “We should keep our eye on Alvarez. At some point he needs to meet up with someone and get his cut of the stolen money.”

  “Unless someone else is putting the money through the laundry and it ends up in his Cayman Islands account. Maybe we go back to Braxton and talk to Alvarez again.”

  Littleford’s wife was back with two demitasses. “Espresso?” she asked.

  “Is it decaf?” asked Andie.

  Littleford made a face. “Real dessert, real coffee. Get with the program, Henning.”

  Andie smiled and took the cup.

  “I forgot to ask,” said Barbara. “How do feel about lawyers?”

  “Barbara, give it a rest,” said Littleford.

  “Sorry.” She went back inside.

  “My wife has a great heart, but she’s one of those married people who will never rest until the rest of the world is married, too.”

  Andie felt the need to shift gears. She opted for the perfect diversion with any man and made the conversation about him. “Not to change the subject, but ever since those interviews at Braxton, I’ve been meaning to say that I loved the way you worked in those eighteen robberies in three days after the Lufthansa heist at JFK. I thought you were bluffing, but I Googled it. That was no bull.”

  “Nope. August 1979.”

  “So, your dad was with NYPD?”

  “No. That part of the story I made up.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No. He was never even a cop.”

  “Oh, man,” she said, smiling. “You had me totally buying it. What did he do? Wait, don’t tell me. Aromatherapist, right?”

  He smiled, then turned serious. “He drove an armored truck in the Bronx.”

  “For real? Why didn’t you tell the folks at Braxton?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t really tell anyone.”

  Andie paused, confused, not sure why he’d be embarrassed by it. “Why not?”

  “You really want to know?”

  She wasn’t sure. “Yeah. If you want to tell me.”

  He put down his demitasse and looked out across the yard as he spoke. “It happened on a Tuesday,” he said. “I was in my last week of the third grade and couldn’t wait to start summer vacation. My dad was in the parking lot outside a shopping center. Four men stormed the truck. Two of them had guns. They got away with two hundred and ninety-two thousand dollars. No one really knows why, but they shot both guards before they ran off with the money. One lived. Dad was dead before I got home from school.”

  Andie didn’t know what to say. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t really talk about it, especially with the armored-transport companies. Can you imagine what they would say? ‘Oh, there goes Littleford again, bumping up the reward money, still trying to make us pay for never finding out who killed his daddy.’”

  Andie studied his profile, which was more like a silhouette in the dim afterglow of the sunset. “Did they offer a reward?”

  “Sure did.”

  “I’m going to take a guess here,” she said. “Was it good only for information leading to an arrest, conviction, and return of the money?”

  Finally, he looked at her. “Smart girl.”

  Andie sat forward in her chair and spoke without so much as a blink of her eyes. “We’re going to catch these guys.”

  He looked off again toward the long shadows on the lawn. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know we will.”

  Chapter 12

  Jeffrey Beauchamp was in celebration mode. It was the one-week anniversary of his becoming a millionaire. His pockets were stuffed with money, his nostrils were numb from coke, and the perfect ass of one of his favorite porn stars was grinding down on him in a four-minute lap dance.

  “Easy, baby,” he said.

  “Oooh, Jeffy, you naughty boy. I knew there was a dick somewhere under that big belly.”

  The men at the next table laughed. So did Jeffrey.

  The lap dance was a well-honed art form at the Gold Rush in downtown Miami. Completely naked women worked on very drunk men, and the old song about a fool and his money was perpetually at the top of the charts. Many a hungover patron had awakened the morning after to find that the same five-dollar cocktails he bought for himself were fifty dollars when purchased for a dancer, and that the love of his life who couldn’t say enough about the enormous bulge in his pants had “mistakenly” charged him $1,200 for a hundred-dollar dance—Oops, sorry, sweety. Dancers were from all over the world: Thailand to India, London to São Paulo, and Caribbean goddesses galore. The biggest draw was the weekly “HEAD-liner,” usually a porn star of some note. Most customers were from out of town, save for a handful of regulars that included a former congressman and an ex–state attorney who’d lost his job after flashing his badge to get in without a cover charge— and Jeffrey.

  “Don’t you ever go home, Beauchamp?”

  He smiled. Lap dances 24/7, legs and eggs for breakfast, grilled chicken and a side of friction for lunch. “This is my home.”

  The music got louder. Bambi worked her ass to a more strategic position, slow and steady. �
�Jeffy?”

  His head rolled back, and the mirror on the ceiling offered a bird’s-eye view of Bambi at her bouncy best. “What?”

  “Can I get a Rolex?”

  “Uhmm. Okay.”

  “One with diamonds?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I want it right now.”

  “Ohhh. Ohhh. Oh-kay.”

  Bambi slid off his lap. Jeffrey knocked back another shot of tequila and pushed himself up from his chair. Half of his ass was hanging out of the back of his pants, and he could feel the cold air on his skin, but he didn’t care. He wiped away the coke residue from under his nose, and Bambi followed him past the line of pole dancers and across the bar to a dark booth in the back. Sully was with a pair of Venezuelan strippers. Jeffrey recognized one, but the other girl was new. He liked the snake tattoo coiling up her arm. Very hot.

  “Whah . . .” Jeffrey started to say, but the words wouldn’t come. That last shot of tequila had hit him like a mule kick. He tried again. “Whah . . . hoppin . . . to ya’ ear, bro?”

  Sully tugged at the bandage. “It’s my Vincent van Gogh look.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothin’. You need another Rolex?”

  Bambi nodded. “Jeffy said I could have one.”

  Sully snapped his fingers at the new girl with the snake tattoo. The Rolex was the only thing she was wearing, and it made her pout to hand it over.

  “You like this one?” Sully asked as he handed it to Bambi.

  She stepped up on the table and pressed the watch against her pubic hair. “You like it, Jeffy?”

  She was so close, so in his face, that he had her scent. “Yeah, yeah. I lub it.”

  “Twenty-five grand,” said Sully.

  “Puddut in my ah-count,” said Jeffrey.

  “No,” said Sully. “No more account.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s my new rule. Cash on delivery.”

  Bambi turned around, bent over, and grabbed her ankles to give Jeffrey his favorite view. “Please, Jeffy?”

  “Okay, cash,” said Jeffrey. “My car.”

  “Let’s go,” said Sully. “Excuse us, ladies.”

  Sully slid out of the booth. Jeffrey staggered past the pole dancers and toward the door. The girl with the snake tattoo followed.