Cash Landing

by James Grippando

“You got it,” said Andie.

  Chapter 31

  Ruban drove to his mother-in-law’s house and waited until 11:30 a.m., which seemed long enough for the “accident” scene to clear. It was time to go back.

  The hit-and-run driver was Pinky. Ruban was almost sure of it. Who else knew about the prearranged meeting with Alvarez? Ruban had said too much, way too much, when he’d chewed Pinky out for dropping the ball on Marco’s cut—for not making a plan like the one Ruban had made with Alvarez: “Third Tuesday, eight a.m., corner of U.S. 1 and Bird. Boom. Octavio knows to be there.” Thanks to Ruban, Pinky knew to be there, too. Pinky and his “homeless” friend, whoever he was. Ruban had to find out.

  “Beatriz, I need to borrow your car.”

  Ruban’s car was in her garage, where it would stay. He had to assume that police would interview his homeless crew about the accident. Each was under a standing order never to tell the police who they worked for or how they got to the intersection, but these were not Navy SEALs, impervious to interrogation. They didn’t know Ruban’s name, but they could describe his vehicle. Never again would his wheels see the light of day.

  “Jeffrey needs my car to get his cereal when he wakes up,” said Beatriz.

  “Cereal?”

  “Sí. He wake up every day at noon. I ask, ‘Jeffrey, where you going?’ He say, ‘To buy cornflakes.’”

  Poor Beatriz, born long before the advent of the breakfast-buffet code for drugs. Cornflakes was cocaine, butter was crack, cocoa puffs were cocaine with marijuana, and so on.

  “Fry him an egg,” said Ruban, a vague allusion to the old public service announcement. He grabbed the keys and was out the door.

  Rush hour had ended, but each November marked the return of snowbirds to Miami, so it took Ruban nearly an hour to drive through the gauntlet of New York, New Jersey, and Ontario license plates back to the intersection. Traffic had resumed a normal flow, no police tape or squad cars on the scene. The only sign of what had happened were the remains of expired road flares, a scorched chain of burn marks on the pavement. Ruban stopped at the red light, lowered the window, and waited for the homeless Iraq War vet to approach.

  “Round up the crew,” said Ruban.

  “Huh?” he said, not recognizing Ruban at first. Then it kicked in. “Oh, hey. Whaddaya mean round everyone up? We’re not even close to earning out.” He meant the daily three-hundred dollar minimum.

  Ruban slipped him a fifty. “I’m covering you today. Get the group together and meet me at the entrance to the Metrorail station.”

  The traffic light changed, and Ruban drove around the block to the station. He parked the car, purchased four one-way rail passes from the machine, and waited outside the turnstiles. Five minutes later, his crew walked up. It was turning into a hot day, and four hours of standing in the sun had his team sweating out some head-spinning odors. Ruban sat them down on a bench in the shade by the parking garage. The pregnant young woman who wasn’t actually pregnant started to complain about cutting the day short, but Ruban made good on his promise to pay, which shut her up. Then he started his interrogation.

  “There was a homeless guy selling grasshoppers made out of palm fronds this morning,” said Ruban. “I need to find him. Anybody seen him before?”

  The vet shook his head. So did the others.

  “Did any of you see the accident this morning?”

  “Saw it after it happened,” said the vet.

  “Did anyone actually see it happen?”

  More shaking of heads.

  “Did any of you talk to the police?”

  Silence. Ruban had made it clear never to talk to the police, and he was sensing a breach of the rules. “I’m not going to get mad at anyone for telling me what happened,” he said as he opened his wallet. “There’s another fifty here for anyone who cuts through the bullshit.”

  The vet spoke up. “Cops interviewed all of us. Asked us the same questions you’re asking now.”

  “What’d you tell them?”

  “Nothing.”

  Ruban went right down the line—you, you, you? They all said the same. Nothing about the accident, nothing about the guy selling grasshoppers, nothing about their arrangement with Ruban.

  Ruban could have stopped there, but if Pinky had turned against him and Octavio, it was a declaration of war. He had to be absolutely sure. He searched the Internet on his phone and found Pinky’s mug shot from the Florida Department of Corrections website. He didn’t want to plant his idea in their minds that Pinky had been the hit-and-run driver, so he kept his question general.

  “Any of you seen this guy before?” he asked, showing the photo.

  Three heads were shaking. The vet took a closer look. “Never seen him in person. But I saw his picture.”

  “When?”

  “One of the cops showed me. Wanted to know if I ever seen him. Looks just like that guy there,” he said, pointing at Ruban’s phone.

  “Which cop asked you that?”

  “A woman. Don’t know her name. She wasn’t dressed like a cop.”

  Ruban recalled Octavio’s description of the FBI agent who had interviewed him at Braxton. “Was she good-looking?”

  “I’d do her.”

  “You’d do a fruit bat with rabies.”

  “She was very pretty,” said the unpregnant woman.

  Ruban elicited a few more details, then gave each of them another fifty and a one-way Metro pass. “I want all of you to go back downtown and keep your mouths shut. You got that?”

  They nodded.

  “Good,” said Ruban. “Now get lost.”

  He watched them push through the turnstiles and made sure they got on the escalator leading to the elevated platform. Then he walked to his car. A bad day was only getting worse. A dead friend. A back-stabbing relative with an unknown accomplice. And now an FBI agent was on a trail that could lead her right through Pinky and all the way to Ruban. He got in the car and closed the door. His phone rang before he could start the engine. It was Jeffrey.

  Just what I need.

  “Bro, why’d you take the car?” asked Jeffrey. “I gotta be somewhere.”

  “I heard. Cornflakes run, huh?”

  Jeffrey laughed the way druggies laughed when they thought they were so clever. “Yeah. Cornflakes. You got a problem with that?”

  “I got more problems than you can imagine, but this one I can solve right now. I’m putting you on a diet. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Sure, bro. But that just makes more problems. If I don’t get my cornflakes, my memory comes back. I start remembering shit like who was at the warehouse that night. Pretty sure it wasn’t just me and my uncle. I seem to recall this third guy. It’s still kind of fuzzy. I can see his face, but can’t quite remember his name. Maybe Savannah would know it.”

  Ruban was seething. The contrite, boyish Jeffrey who had wanted Ruban’s approval was gone. Drugs.

  “You piece of shit. Are you threatening me?”

  “No. You’re doing this to yourself. I turn into a total asshole when I don’t get my cornflakes. Pick some up on the way home.”

  He hung up. The screen on Ruban’s phone went dark, but as he laid it on the console, an image reappeared. It was the mug shot of Pinky that he’d retrieved earlier.

  What a fucked-up family, he said to himself, which triggered another thought entirely. He knew what drugs could do to someone’s personality, but he wondered if Jeffrey’s new attitude was more than just an addict in need of a fix. Ruban wondered if Uncle Douchebag had been talking to his nephew.

  Don’t get paranoid.

  He started the engine, pulled away from the station, and drove toward Café Ruban, avoiding the intersection that had changed everything.

  Chapter 32

  A text message told Ruban to meet Savannah at the bus stop at six p.m. Normally he picked her up right at the daycare center, but she didn’t answer when he texted back to ask about the change. He spotted her at the bus shelter
on the corner, seated on a bench, waiting. He pulled up to the curb and reached over to unlock the door. Savannah climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Why are you driving Mom’s car?” she asked.

  Ruban steered into the flow of evening rush hour. Their car was still in his mother-in-law’s garage, but the truth was way too complicated.

  “Our car is shot,” he said. “The mechanic wants two grand to fix it. Time for a new one.”

  “With what money?”

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  “Just don’t touch any of Jeffrey’s.”

  Jeffrey’s money. Ruban was relieved to hear her put it that way. It meant that Jeffrey had not yet regained his memory about Ruban’s involvement, even though Ruban hadn’t brought him cornflakes.

  “Wouldn’t touch it,” he said.

  Dusk was turning to darkness. The streetlamps flickered on. Ruban glanced over, but Savannah was looking straight ahead into the fuzzy glow of oncoming headlights.

  “So. What’s up with picking you up at the bus stop?”

  “I spoke with the Department of Children and Family Services today,” she said.

  Ruban bristled. “Savannah, I told you I didn’t want to go that route.”

  “I thought it was worth a shot. I was wrong. Not only did they say no way on adoption but the social worker also said it was best for you not to come on the campus anymore.”

  “That’s bullshit. So from now on I have to drop you off and pick you up at the bus stop?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re treating me like a child molester because of a dumbass conviction when I was a teenager?”

  “No,” said Savannah. “Because of a conviction for domestic violence that you didn’t tell me about.”

  Oh, shit.

  “Ruban? I want the truth.”

  She was looking right at him, her laser-like gaze intense enough to burn through metal. Ruban pulled into a gas station and parked. He gathered his thoughts before speaking.

  “Her name was Mindy,” he said. “We lived together for eight months.”

  “Did you hurt her?”

  “No.”

  “What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Men don’t get convicted of domestic violence for doing nothing.”

  “They do when women lie.”

  “So this Mindy is a liar? Is that your answer?”

  Ruban looked away, toward the motorists vying for a spot at the gas pumps, then back. “Mindy was a mess. Not as bad as your brother, but bad enough for me to tell her I was moving out if she didn’t stop the drugs. A week later, I came home from work and found her totally strung out on meth. That was it.”

  “You left?”

  “Tried to leave. She went berserk.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “The whole scene was sick. She was crying, hanging on to me, promising never to do it again. It went beyond begging me to stay. I was shoving my things into a suitcase, and she kept pulling them out and stuffing them back into the drawer. Finally, I just decided to leave everything and go. She grabbed onto me, and I shook her loose. That’s when her temper took over. She started hitting me.”

  “Did you hit her back?”

  “No. Never. I just kept walking.”

  “What did she do?”

  He hesitated, his gaze again shifting toward the gas pumps. “You really want to know?”

  “Yes. I want to know.”

  He looked her in the eye, her face aglow from the dashboard light. “She ripped off her blouse, called me a user, and said I should fuck her one more time because that’s all I ever wanted anyway. Then she ran into the bedroom and got my gun.”

  Savannah caught her breath. “She was going to shoot you?”

  “I didn’t wait to find out. I went for the gun and managed to take it away from her. That’s when the cops showed up. The neighbors heard us arguing and dialed 911.”

  “Did you tell them what happened?”

  “Didn’t get the chance. They rushed in with weapons drawn. First thing they saw was Mindy on the floor with her blouse ripped off and me standing over her with a pistol in my hand. In ten seconds they had me facedown with my hands cuffed behind my back. They took Mindy into the bedroom to talk to her away from me. The story she told them was that she was kicking me out of the apartment and I refused to leave—that I pulled a gun and started ripping off her clothes.”

  Savannah blinked twice, as if it were too much to process. “That’s unbelievable.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good word for it,” said Ruban. “Because nobody believed me. They believed Mindy.”

  “Did the police give her a lie-detector test?”

  “If they did, they didn’t tell me about it.”

  “Is there any way you can prove she was lying?”

  “You want me to prove it to you?”

  “Not to me,” she said, suddenly energized, as if a bright idea had come to her. “To the adoption agencies that turned us down. Maybe they’d change their mind if we could prove that your conviction was based on a lie.”

  “How could I possibly prove that? Mindy and I were the only people in the room.”

  “If you could find some way—”

  “Savannah, forget the adoption agencies,” he said, a little too firmly.

  The sparkle in her eye faded, gone as quickly as it had appeared. “Forget them? I’ve explored everything. DCF was our last option, and now they’ve said no.”

  “We don’t need DCF. We don’t need the adoption agencies.”

  “We do if we want to adopt a child!”

  He heard the distress in her voice—had heard it many times before. He reached across the console and took her hand. “Actually, we don’t. We really don’t.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “There’s one more thing you should know about me and Mindy.”

  His tone was apologetic, but Savannah seemed to sense the excitement in his voice, too. He was eager to move beyond saying how sorry he was for what had happened after the motorcycle accident; he was finally able to fix it.

  “What is it, Ruban?”

  He swallowed hard and took a breath. And then he told her.

  Chapter 33

  The sun was setting in her rearview mirror as Andie drove across the causeway to Miami Beach. Special Agent Benny Sosa was with her, but this time it was no undercover date at Night Moves. Andie had the much more delicate assignment of interviewing Octavio Alvarez’s girlfriend less than twelve hours after his death. They were about ten minutes from Westwind Apartments when Andie phoned Lieutenant Watts for the latest on the hit-and-run.

  “The only development is more of a nondevelopment,” said Watts.

  “Meaning what? Nobody called in and confessed?”

  “That happens,” said Watts. “But let me give you a more common ‘for instance.’ Driver runs over a pedestrian. Driver panics and flees the scene. Driver talks to a smart lawyer. Driver parks his car in the Grove ghetto with the door wide open and the motor running, then calls MDPD and reports that it was stolen an hour or two before the accident.”

  Andie kept her cynicism in check, but she was suddenly thinking about Barbara Littleford and her poor, available cousin: How do you feel about lawyers, Andie? “If I hear you correctly, no one called in today to report that his blue sedan was stolen a few hours before this morning’s hit-and-run.”

  “That would be correct,” said Watts.

  “So, what does that tell you?”

  “The driver could be afraid to come forward. Maybe he thinks a witness got a look at him. Could be a warrant out for his arrest. Maybe he’s an illegal alien.”

  Maybe he’s afraid the police will recognize him as the gunman in the heist. “Keep me posted,” she said.

  Andie thanked him and hung up as the causeway fed her into the North Miami Beach version of Main Street. Palm trees lined the sidewalks. Locals strolled past mom-and-pop restaurants and shops w
here customers were known by name. Delis and corner markets that were strictly kosher. A gas station that was full service. Westwind Apartments was well away from the older, traditional neighborhood. The two-story white building was just a short walk from the ocean, popular with beach lovers, catering to a mixture of overnight hotel guests, seasonal renters, and year-round tenants. Andie found a parking spot on the street, right behind a long row of Vespas, the Italian-made motor scooters that were the method of transportation in Miami Beach for anyone who fancied himself immortal and zipped around, oblivious to the fact that to the average driver in south Florida scooters were the equivalent of bugs on a windshield.

  Andie and Sosa checked in with the attendant at the front desk, who directed them down the hall to apartment 103. A young woman answered, and Andie identified herself with a flash of her badge. “I’m sorry for your loss,” said Andie, “but we’d like to talk to you about Octavio Alvarez.”

  “I already talked to Miami-Dade police. What’s this about?”

  Andie made a strategic decision not to mention the heist. If Jasmine knew about it, she’d say nothing; and whether she knew about it or not, pointed questions from the FBI would only put her on the defensive and shut down the conversation. “Just a follow-up. Gathering as many facts as we can about the hit-and-run.”

  It was enough to get invited inside.

  Jasmine Valore was a pretty brunette with the toned body of someone who had no cause for embarrassment at the beach. She wore jeans shorts, flip-flops, and a tank top, just like every other young woman Andie had seen on her way into the building. A background check had told Andie that she was a graduate of Miami Beach Senior High and a part-time student at Miami Dade College with no criminal record. She lived alone in a small one-bedroom apartment. The smell of cooked oatmeal wafted from the tiny kitchen, a reasonably healthy dinner for a young woman on a budget. The living room was tidy, but space was severely limited; Jasmine had to move her bicycle to make room for guests to sit on the couch.

  “This doesn’t even seem real to me,” said Jasmine, her voice hollow. “I can’t believe Octavio is gone.”

  “How long did you know him?”