Cash Landing

by James Grippando

  Pedro smiled. “It’s my never-ending-coke app. The rolled-up bill acts like a stylus, so as you vacuum up the real coke, the app generates a virtual line to replace it. I’m investing my share of the ransom money in it. Brilliant, huh?”

  “Brilliant, all right. What cokehead on the verge of drug-induced psychosis wouldn’t want to be tricked into thinking there’s more coke when it’s really all gone?”

  Pedro paused, seeming to take Pinky’s point. A tap on the iPad screen erased the five electronic lines, leaving just the virtual mirror. Then he laid out five more lines of the real thing. He inhaled two of them, and the app did its job: still five lines on the screen, albeit two of them were mere computer graphics.

  “Did you send the gold caps to Savannah?” asked Pedro.

  “I decided not to.”

  “But we told her that a piece of her brother was on its way. ‘Bit by bit’—remember?”

  “I know what we told her.” Pinky grabbed a beer from the fridge, unwrapped half of the roast beef sub, and joined Pedro at the table. “I had them all packed up and ready to go, and then it hit me: if we start sending her body parts, she might call the cops.”

  Pedro was about to do another real line but stopped, incredulous. “Shit, bro. If you thought there’s any chance she might go to the police, you should never have brought her into this.”

  “The only way Savannah might run to the cops is if her brother’s gold caps or fingers or whatever land in her mailbox. Until that happens, Ruban won’t let her go to the cops.”

  The third real line disappeared, and a virtual line took its place. Pedro pinched his nostrils as he spoke, savoring the real stuff. “Big mistake,” he said, shaking his head. “Rule number one of kidnapping: Don’t tell the family to look in the mailbox for proof that you mean business and then not send the proof.”

  Pinky drank more beer. “Just be patient.”

  Pedro rubbed his gums with the residue of a real line. “Here’s where I come out on this, bro. On a gig like this, you’re either all in, or you get out. Let’s cut our losses and run. Just call Ruban and lower the ransom to something he’ll pay.”

  “That’s worse than not sending the gold caps. That shows weakness.”

  “It shows intelligence. Take what we can get before the cops get involved.”

  “You’re panicking.”

  “Maybe with good reason. How do we know the cops aren’t right on our heels, ten minutes away from arresting us for the murder of Marco Aroyo or Octavio Alvarez? I say we grab whatever money Ruban puts on the table and get the hell out of Miami.”

  “That’s the problem. Right now there’s nothing on the table.”

  “The only way to fix that is to get serious.”

  “This is serious.”

  Pedro rose, crossed the kitchenette, and opened one of the drawers. He found the knife he was looking for, walked back, and buried the tip of the ten-inch blade into the wooden tabletop. “I mean deadly serious.”

  The knife stood upright between them, still wobbling from the impact. Pinky looked past it and stared at Pedro. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “This is how we lower the ransom and save face.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Let’s keep Savannah out of this if you think she might go to the cops. We cut off Jeffrey’s finger, send Ruban a picture, and tell him the ransom is slashed from five hundred to four-fifty. If he doesn’t pay, we cut off Jeffrey’s ear, send Ruban another picture, and lower it to four hundred. Every hour we whack off another piece and lower the ransom.”

  “That’s insane!”

  “No, it’s hardball.”

  “Pedro, this is a fucking kidnapping, not a scratch-and-dent sale.”

  Pedro was down to his last two lines of real coke on the virtual mirror. They were gone in two quick sniffs and “replaced” just as quickly. “You’re right. That is stupid,” he said as he pressed his finger to the side of his nose, working it. “We need to speed this up, not drag it out.”

  “That’s the real cocaine talking. It’s making you paranoid.”

  “No, no. I’m seeing things very clearly. Okay, let’s forget slashing the price a little bit at a time. Here’s what we do: we call Ruban and tell him the ransom is cut in half—a quarter mil. No more negotiation. If we don’t get the money in two hours, it’s game over: we cut Jeffrey in half.”

  “That’s even stupider than your first idea.”

  Pedro considered it. “You’re right. Jeffrey’s too fat to cut in half.”

  “Enough talk,” said Pinky, groaning. “Just shut up and let me eat.”

  Pedro drummed his fingers on the table, thinking. “Bit by bit,” he said. “That’s what we told Savannah. We have to send something.”

  “Fine. Send the gold caps if you want to.”

  “Caps can be replaced. We need a more powerful message. I know it’s overused, but I like the idea of a finger.”

  “We’re not cutting off Jeffrey’s finger,” said Pinky.

  “I know we aren’t.” Pedro pulled the knife from the tabletop and held it by the tip. “You are,” he said as he offered the handle to Pinky.

  “Forget it.”

  “It’s only fair. I did Marco. You do Jeffrey.”

  “I ran over Octavio. We’re even.”

  “You keeping score now?”

  “No, you are! Look, you already pushed him to the edge of cocaine overdose, threatened to burn him alive, taped him up like a mummy, and yanked out his teeth. That’s enough for one day. Jeffrey will drop dead of a heart attack if he sees George Bush and Barack Obama coming at him with a carving knife. Then we’ll have nothing.”

  “That’s lame, bro. Sounds to me like Uncle Pinky is stepping up to protect his nephew.”

  “I don’t care what happens to that lazy son of a bitch.”

  “I know that’s not true. You wouldn’t let me burn him.”

  “Only out of consideration for his mother. I seriously don’t give a shit about him.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I got nothing to prove to you.”

  Pedro was still holding the knife by its tip. With a quick flip of the wrist, he suddenly had it by the handle. The blade was pointed at Pinky, and Pinky’s gaze locked onto it.

  “You gonna cut me, Pedro?”

  “Probably not. I think you get the message.”

  “What message is that?”

  “The same one I have for Ruban, Savannah, and your whole damn family. I’m a reasonable man. I’m willing to negotiate on the ransom. But I want my money tonight. If I don’t get it, things are going to get really unpleasant—and not just for Jeffrey.”

  Pinky’s gaze shifted quickly up and down, from the blade to Pedro’s face, then back to the blade.

  Pedro shifted the knife, to get a better grip. “You on board, Pinky? Or you want to wrestle me for the knife?”

  Pinky detected a hint of a smile, but he wasn’t convinced that Pedro was kidding.

  “And not just for Jeffrey.”

  He could have meant Ruban, Savannah, even Savannah’s mother. Or he could have meant Pinky. It wasn’t clear, but Pinky knew better than to press the point with a sadistic killer who had burned Marco Aroyo alive and who, at that moment, had a knife in his hand and a brain full of cocaine.

  “Let’s call Ruban,” said Pinky. “See if we can wrap this up tonight.”

  Chapter 57

  Andie spent Saturday at the Miami field office.

  Her preference was to monitor the Betancourt wiretap in real time, but holing up in the A/V room all day was impractical. She had a ton of paperwork to do, after all, and there was a conference room right across the hall from the surveillance center. The tech agent in charge of the Betancourt surveillance was on alert to rush over and grab her whenever the wiretap went active. Andie was reviewing a Form 302, the official record of FBI witness interviews, when Agent Gustafson hurried into the conference room.

  “Come now,�
� he said. “Betancourt is on with the kidnapper.”

  Andie dropped the 302, raced across the hall, and pulled on a pair of headphones. She recognized the kidnapper’s voice from the previous call to Savannah.

  “No, no, no! Don’t hang up!”

  It was definitely the same caller as last time, but the response was a voice she didn’t recognize.

  “I told you before,” said Ruban, “I’m not paying a half million dollars. I swear I’ll hang up if you say it one more time.”

  Betancourt, the tech agent scribbled onto a notepad for Andie’s benefit.

  “Done. I won’t say it again. The number is totally negotiable, bro.”

  “Don’t call me bro. I’m not your fucking brother.”

  “No problem. I can tell you’re a man who doesn’t like to dick around, so I’m going right to the bottom line: two-fifty.”

  “Shoot him.”

  “What?”

  “You want a quarter mil? I say shoot the dumb son of a bitch.”

  “But—”

  “No ‘but.’ He’s a pain in the ass and nothing but trouble. Shoot him right in the head.”

  “Dude, come on. This is your brother-in-law. How about two hundred?”

  “No.”

  “I know you got the money. You did your thing. You’re still coming out ahead. Shit, let me be on top, too.”

  “‘No’ means no. You got it?”

  “All right, all right. One-seventy-five. But that’s my final offer.”

  “Shoot him. I’ll pay for the bullet.”

  “Come on, man. Why are you making this so hard? I’m like the Salvation Army here, ringing the bell, and no one wants to pay for the fat boy.”

  “You should pay me to take him back.”

  “Fuck! This was supposed to be the easy part.”

  Ruban chuckled, but Andie didn’t read it as enjoyment. “I tell you what,” he said. “If you promise to stop calling me, I’ll give you a hundred grand.”

  The kidnapper took a moment to consider it. “How about one-fifty?”

  “How about seventy-five?”

  “Okay, a hundred.”

  “Now you’re at fifty.”

  “Shit! Okay, okay. I’ll take fifty thou.”

  “Deal,” said Ruban.

  There was an audible commotion on the line, but the words were indecipherable. Andie surmised that the kidnapper was catching hell from his partner for going too cheap.

  “All right, we’re good on this end,” said the kidnapper. “Fifty thousand, but it has to be tonight.”

  “Fine. Tonight.”

  “Do what you normally do on a Saturday night. We’ll call you when it’s time for the exchange.”

  The call ended. Andie removed her headset, walked around the worktable in the middle of the room, and went to the tech agent’s computer station.

  “Did you get it?” asked Andie.

  “Triangulating now.”

  The display was a split screen: a map of Miami-Dade County on the left, which Andie recognized; a stream of numbers and letters on the right, which Andie could only assume were mathematical calculations. It was the key to “triangulation,” the process of collecting and interpreting the electronic pulse that a cell phone in power-on mode transmitted to surrounding cell towers.

  “Got it,” he said.

  The split screen vanished, leaving only the map. The target area was shaded.

  “That’s the best you can do?” asked Andie.

  “Six million square feet. That’s actually pretty good.”

  “Not if it’s densely populated.”

  “That part of Hialeah is mostly commercial.”

  “Show me,” said Andie.

  The screen switched from map mode to satellite image. “Warehouses,” said Andie.

  “That’s a good thing. There can’t be a lot of cell phone signals coming from a cluster of warehouses on a Saturday night. You want to send in the Stingray?”

  The Stingray was a mobilized tracking system that could roam through target areas and trick a cell phone into thinking it was connecting to a cell tower when, in reality, the user was revealing a more precise location than the FBI could obtain through triangulation based on actual cell towers.

  “Is that our only option?”

  “It’s our best option.”

  Andie wasn’t so sure. “The last time I sent in a Stingray, the perps spotted the van and were long gone before we could pinpoint anything.”

  “The Amberjack antenna is very low profile. We can mount it on any vehicle. Doesn’t have to be a communications van.”

  “It wasn’t the antenna or type of vehicle that was the problem. It was that methodic crisscrossing of the neighborhood that’s needed to find the signal. Any crook with a lookout can see what’s going on.”

  “That’s a definite risk.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a risk I want to take with a hostage involved.”

  “It’s your decision. But you’d better make it fast. There’s no guarantee our perps are stationary. That cell-phone call could have been made from a parked car anywhere in the target area, and that car could be mobile as we speak.”

  Andie glanced again at the satellite image on the screen. The Palmetto Expressway and dozens of side streets cut right through the targeted area, and the Florida turnpike was nearby. There weren’t enough law enforcement officers on duty to cover six million square feet of a warehouse district.

  “All right,” Andie said. “Send in the Stingray.”

  Ruban poured himself another shot of tequila and belted it back. It was his fourth in the last hour. Maybe his fifth. He wasn’t counting.

  No way was he about to ransom Jeffrey—not for fifty thousand dollars, not for fifty cents. Once upon a time, his split from the heist had sounded like more money than he and Savannah could ever spend. How quickly things can change. Savannah was gone. If he wasn’t careful, the money would be gone, too.

  Ruban picked up the phone, started to dial Savannah’s number, and then hung up. Calling her wasn’t the answer. He wasn’t going to beg. She’d be back. She would come to her senses, tell him it was all a mistake, and say she was sorry. All Ruban needed to do was play it cool. He was sure of it. Hell, she’d be the one begging, and he wasn’t even sure he’d take her back.

  Damn it, Savannah. Why haven’t you called?

  He put down the phone and poured himself another shot. Then he thought better of it. It was critical to remain sharp. He left the tequila on the table and went down the hall to his gun cabinet. Do what you normally do, the kidnapper had told him.

  That voice had left him stumped. No recognition whatsoever. It could have been anyone. A friend of Ramsey’s. A gangbanger. A random opportunist who saw Jeffrey giving Rolex watches to strippers. Maybe one of Pinky’s buddies. There was no end to the possibilities, and if Ruban didn’t make a statement, there would be no end to the kidnappings. Just saying no to ransom didn’t seem to get the point across.

  Ruban was about to unlock the gun cabinet, then stopped. There was plenty of firepower in his pistol collection for just about any situation. But this wasn’t “any situation.” He tucked the key away and continued down the hallway, past the kitchen, to the entrance to the attic. Using a stepladder from the pantry, Ruban climbed up and pushed through the trapdoor in the ceiling. The difference in temperature was at least fifteen degrees, and Ruban broke a sweat just climbing up into the dark, stuffy air. A hundred-watt bulb dangled from a wire; a tug on the chain gave him all the light he needed. His gaze drifted toward a wooden crate that was stashed behind the air-conditioning ductwork. He couldn’t stand up all the way, but he was able to maneuver well enough in a crouched position. He dialed the combination, removed the lock, then opened the lid.

  Most of Ruban’s friends had seen the pistol collection he kept downstairs. No one, however, knew what he kept in the attic: his prized possession, an authentic Thompson 1928 West Hurley submachine gun, in mint condition.

&nb
sp; Ruban reached into the box and removed the gun with care, almost lovingly. It had been a gift from Octavio. Braxton didn’t just deliver cash; firearms were among the many valuables that shipped through the MIA warehouse. And on occasion items disappeared. This rare collectible never reached the licensed firearms dealer who’d paid twenty-seven thousand dollars for it in an online auction. When the Thompson submachine gun shipped through the warehouse, it practically spoke to Octavio. An authentic tommy gun was sure to convince Ruban that so much more—millions more—was theirs for the taking. He gave it to Ruban, and the partnership was born.

  Ruban couldn’t say for sure that Jeffrey’s kidnapper had anything to do with Octavio’s death. It didn’t matter. At this point, the anger over losing his oldest friend had converged with the anger over Savannah walking out on him, over Grandma Baird working him for six figures, over cleaning up the messes made by a moron named Jeffrey. With a rate of fire in the mid–seven hundreds, the gun from Octavio could avenge all of it.

  Could. But this was no time to get cute and play John Dillinger with a tommy gun. He laid the Thompson back in the box and picked up the semiautomatic UC-9 Centurion Uzi-style assault rifle instead. Fully legal, easier to hold on target, with a thirty-two-round 9-millimeter magazine—and best of all, with a folding stock, it collapsed to twenty-four inches in length, reasonably concealable in a backpack.

  “We’ll call you when it’s time for the exchange.”

  Yup, there would be an exchange, all right. Ruban was ready to mow down anyone stupid enough to be on the wrong side of it.

  Chapter 58

  Pinky checked on Jeffrey and found him snoring like a black bear down for the winter. It was hard to fathom how anyone could sleep so soundly after a cocaine binge, even if all but the first few lines had been cut with enough inert substances to make the most inefficient dealer profitable. The last time Pinky had seen anyone do that much coke, she’d set the club record at Night Moves for most double penetrations before midnight, and then danced around naked till dawn. Jeffrey’s drug tolerance was off the charts. Then again, he did outweigh the average nymphomaniac by about two hundred pounds.