Cash Landing (12 page)

I
t was Andie's first sunrise on South Beach. A sliver of orange emerged from the Atlantic as she approached the Third Street lifeguard tower on Miami Beach. The tide was out, leaving the shoreline in the middle distance, but the gentle rhythm of breaking waves could be heard in the shrinking darkness. A handful of joggers passed on the boardwalk, but the beach was deserted, save for Andie and a dozen other early risers who had gathered for the seven a.m. yoga class. Andie had transferred to Miami knowing no one, and she wasn't having an easy time making friends outside of law enforcement. Her new friend Rachel taught the class.

“You actually came,” Rachel said with surprise.

Andie was a regular at the studio three nights a week. Rachel had been bugging her to try the beach class, though she would have denied that yoga instructors ever “bugged” anybody.

“This is spectacular,” said Andie.

“Even better, it's free. But I do take tips, and hopefully today's group will understand that telling me to ‘go to bed early' or ‘choose my sticky mat carefully' aren't the kind of tips that pay my grocery bill.”

“Not very Zen of you,” Andie said with a smile.

“Hey, I'm not running a yoga cult here.”

Andie didn't bring it up, but she'd actually discovered yoga after busting a Seattle instructor who'd convinced his female students
that signing over their worldly possessions and having sex with the instructor were necessary to awaken Kundalini.

Class lasted one hour. Andie didn't make it to the first downward-facing dog pose. In a perfect world, she would have turned off her cell and started the day right. Her unit chief had other plans. Andie stepped away from the class, walked to the other side of the lifeguard stand, and took his call.

“We got a lead through the tip line,” he said.

“Great. How many does that make now? Nine thousand, or nine thousand and one?”

“This seems real. Auto mechanic. He works at a body shop near the river. Says he knows what happened to the black pickup.”

Since the heist, agents from the FBI's auto-theft unit had been combing the auto-repair districts between the airport and the ports along the Miami River. The suspicion was that the black pickup had been reduced to parts at a chop shop.

“So the reward actually worked?” asked Andie.

“We'll see. Go talk to him. Lieutenant Watts is bringing him in now.”

“I'll be right there.”

Andie never went anywhere without a clean set of work clothes in the trunk of her car, so she drove straight to the office, made a quick change in the restroom, and met Watts in the interrogation room. Leonard Timmes, a nervous-looking man in his mid-thirties, was seated on the other side of the Formica-top table. The Miami field office was a smoke-free building, but exceptions were made for informants on the verge of running out the door if they didn't get a nicotine fix. The bright fluorescent light seemed to bother Timmes' eyes, and Andie suspected that he hadn't slept much the night before. It wasn't unusual for a tipster to change his mind and decide not to get involved after all, and Watts had done well to bring Timmes in pronto.

Andie introduced herself and thanked him for coming. Timmes lit up another cigarette, his third. Andie spent the first few minutes
trying to put him at ease, but nothing short of Valium would have done the job. She moved straight to the heart of the matter before Timmes could shut down.

“Ever seen this man?” she asked as she laid her iPad on the table. She had photographs and everything else she needed on her gizmo.

“That's the guy,” said Timmes. “Marco is his name.”

Bull's-eye.
“When's the first time you saw Marco?”

“It was a Monday. Before the heist at MIA.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“No. I just listened. I was getting ready to put a clear coat on a Toyota pickup. My boss brought him over to have a look. He wanted to borrow a truck.”

“Borrow?”

Timmes took a drag on his cigarette, then glanced at Watts. “The lieutenant said there weren't gonna be any questions about that.”

Watts confirmed it with a nod, from which Andie inferred that this was a typical deal: Timmes would help with the investigation into the heist, but he wasn't there to bring down the chop shop and put his boss and coworkers in jail for auto theft.

“How long did Marco want to borrow it?” asked Andie.

“He said he'd have it back Sunday night.”

“The Sunday of the heist?”

“Right. But he didn't like the Toyota. He said he needed a cab with a rear seat.”

Two gunmen, a driver, probably some weapons. It made sense. “Did your boss show him another truck?”

“No. We didn't have anything like that. But my boss told him I could probably get what he was looking for.”

“Did you get him one?”

Another long drag on the cigarette, followed by another exchange of eye contact between Timmes and Watts. The detective answered for him: “Let's just say one came in.”

“Right,” said Timmes. “One came in on Friday. A black Ford F-150.”

“Did Marco pick it up?”

“I assume he did. He was supposed to get it Saturday, but I didn't work Saturday because I agreed to come in the next day for the drop-off. We don't usually open on Sundays.”

“So you were at the shop when the truck came back?”

“Right. Me and two other guys.”

“Who?” Andie didn't expect an answer, and she didn't get one.

“Mr. Timmes doesn't remember that information,” said Watts.

“Right. I don't remember. Not important anyway. What you need to know is that when the pickup came back on Sunday, it was inside the box of a delivery truck.”

Andie retrieved another photograph for him. “Like this one?”

“Bingo,” said Timmes.

“Who was driving the delivery truck?”

“Marco was.”

“Anybody with him?”

“No. Just him.”

“What happened next?”

“We took the pickup apart.”

“You chopped it?”

“That's a very loaded term,” said Timmes. “We salvaged the parts and loaded the pieces back into the delivery truck. Then Marco drove away. The whole job probably took us three hours, I'd say.”

“What time did you start?”

“Around three-thirty.”

The timing fit. Timmes was proving to be quite credible. “Did anybody leave with Marco in the delivery truck?”

“No. He came alone, left alone.”

“Where did he go?”

“I got no idea. Never saw him again, never heard from him.”

“Did he pay you?”

“No. My boss paid me, and I went home. Later, I was watching the news on TV. That's when I heard about the heist at the airport. Some guys in a black pickup truck got away with millions. So I called my boss.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I was kind of joking, but I was serious, too. I told him we didn't get paid enough.”

“Did your boss confirm that it was the pickup used in the heist?”

“He didn't have to. We all knew Marco was suddenly a very rich man.”

“Did anybody talk about tracking him down?”

“Not to me.”

Andie leaned into the table, giving her question a little extra oomph. “Do you know anybody who might cut off Marco's finger and beat him bloody to find out where he was hiding his cut from the money flight?”

Timmes crushed out his cigarette and dug into his pack for another. “I don't know any people like that.”

Andie glanced at his hands. They were shaking. “Then why are you so nervous about coming here?”

“I'm not nervous.” He struck a match, and it took several tries, but he finally steadied the flame long enough to light another cigarette.

“This is very helpful, Mr. Timmes. Thank you.”

“Do I get the reward?”

“Too early to say. You will, if this information leads to an arrest and a conviction of the criminals responsible for the heist.”

“Well, that's not exactly what I wanted to hear,” he said. “From what I've seen on the news, this Marco is probably fish food in the Miami River. You can't arrest a dead man. I should still get the reward.”

“It doesn't work that way.”

His nervousness gave way to anger. “This is bullshit. I gave you everything I promised Lieutenant Watts I would.”

“And the FBI is very grateful,” said Andie.

“Then give me my damn money!”

There was a knock on the door. Andie excused herself and left the room. Watts followed. It was one of the other agents on the case.

“I lost track of Alvarez,” he said.

Andie's interview at Braxton Security had focused on Alvarez, and he continued to be the FBI's primary suspect among potential insiders at the armored-car company. Agent Benson had been assigned to tail him.

“You
lost
him?” said Andie.

“I watched him enter his apartment last night around ten o'clock. He was supposed to be at work by six a.m. to start the daily merchant drops, but he never came out. I called Braxton and had them check on him and see why he didn't show up for work. They got the landlord to open the apartment. He's gone.”

“He can't just vanish,” said Andie.

“He's not in his apartment, and I never saw him leave.”

Andie looked at Watts. “Make another sweep along the river.”

“You thinking what I'm thinking?”

“Just a hunch,” she said. “We may have more fish food.”

R
uban's morning was full. First stop was the daycare center. He dropped Savannah off at 6:30 a.m.

Sometimes it was a pain having to drive Savannah everywhere, but Ruban didn't complain. She'd stopped driving after the accident. There seems to be a clinically recognized phobia for just about every disabling fear—phobophobia: fear of phobias—but not for fear of driving. “Post-traumatic Stress Disorder” was what the emergency-room physician had labeled Savannah's condition. A major panic attack had landed her in Jackson Memorial Hospital. She'd stopped cold in the middle lane of I-95, unable to move, backing up rush-hour traffic out of downtown Miami for two miles behind her. It wasn't car trouble. Savannah suddenly couldn't deal with cars changing lanes around her, cutting her off, stopping short, speeding past her, blinking lights, horns blasting, dump trucks roaring—
can't breathe!

“What time should I pick you up?” he asked as the car pulled up to the curb.

“Six.”

She reached for the door handle, then stopped to tap out a message on her cell phone. “I'm forwarding you the text I sent to Jeffrey with the bus info he needs to get to the dentist. He has to be there by eight sharp. Can you call him and make sure he gets there?”

“I guess so. Can't you call him?”

“I'm not supposed to use my phone at work.”

Drop-off at the daycare center started at 6:45. Savannah only got to work there three days each week, and he knew how important this job was to her. “Okay. I'll make sure.”

He kissed her good-bye and drove back to the expressway; next stop, downtown Miami. He was in a hurry and making good time. Ruban took the baseball stadium exit, drove around the block, pulled up under the bridge, and stepped out of his car. The interstate rumbled overhead as commuters poured into the city for another workday. The homeless didn't seem bothered by the noise. A half dozen or so were sleeping soundly on cardboard mattresses. A woman was loading her possessions into a shopping cart, another pointless day. An old man was urinating in plain view. A familiar face approached, and Ruban reacted too slowly to avoid him.

“Hey, you again,” the man said. “I told you I knew you!”

It was the guy on the street outside the Seybold Building with the “Dog Bless You” sign.

Ruban went in the opposite direction and scouted out three more-reliable candidates. Jorge, the one-armed Iraq War veteran with the sad eyes. Marvin, the retiree who had lost everything to Bernie Madoff. Alicia, the ponytailed, twenty-year-old runaway who could have been your niece or cousin. Ruban had used them before, and they knew the drill. They climbed into the backseat of his car and rode to Coral Gables.

The intersection of U.S. 1 and Bird Road was prime panhandling territory. Thousands of commuters sat in their cars every morning waiting for the traffic light to change. Some were too busy talking on a cell phone or putting on makeup to notice the sad faces outside their car windows. Others noticed but looked away uncomfortably. A few generous souls rolled down the window and offered spare change, a dollar, sometimes more. These were the folks that Ruban and his team counted on.

“Everybody out,” said Ruban.

The homeless trio stirred in the backseat. A twenty-minute car ride was their most comfortable sleep of the night. Ruban hurried them along and handed each of them a sign for the day.
Family Man, Lost My Job. Army Vet—Don't Do Drugs. Pregnant, Please Help.

Ruban didn't “own” the Bird Road intersection. He just rented it every Tuesday from a former gangbanger who owned all the major intersections on U.S. 1 between Coconut Grove and Pinecrest, two of Miami's most wealthy suburbs. It was Ruban's job to staff the intersection once a week, collect the money at the end of the day, and drive his team back to sleep under the bridge. The owner of the Bird Road intersection got the first $200. Ruban got the next $100. The homeless kept the rest. Anyone who didn't pull down the $300 daily minimum to cover the overhead was blacklisted and out of the rotation.

“I'll be back after the evening rush hour,” Ruban told them. He returned to his car, opened the door, and nearly fell over from the odor.

“Shit!” he said, which was exactly what he smelled. He suspected the old guy. This gig was hardly worth the effort. It was typical of the small-time dealing that had made him jump at the chance to “think big.” He couldn't wait to stop laying low and enjoy the spoils of the heist.

“Ruban!”

He turned and saw his friend, but if Octavio Alvarez hadn't spoken, Ruban would never have recognized him. Alvarez was wearing old clothes, a big hat, sunglasses, and a phony beard. Before the heist, they'd agreed that Ruban should have no contact with an armored-car guard. The plan was for Octavio to show up as a homeless person at the Bird Road intersection and collect his share from Ruban in a backpack. But that meeting wasn't until the following week.

“What the hell are you doing here today?” asked Ruban, “It's
next
Tuesday.”

“I know. We gotta talk. Get in the car.”

“Dude, get out of here!”

“Get in the car!” Alvarez said as he opened the door and jumped into the passenger seat.

Ruban didn't like it one bit, but he complied. His heart was pounding so hard that he thought he was having a Savannah-style panic attack. He slammed the door shut and glared at his friend.

“What is the matter with you? I don't have your money today.”

“I know, I—” Alvarez stopped himself, making a face. “What is that smell?”

“Never mind that. Your money is hidden. You'll get it in a week.”

“I need it right away.”

“No! That's not what we agreed.”

“I'm being followed.”

“That's what makes it even stupider for you to come here. Now they know
me
!”

“Don't worry, I shook the tail. I snuck out the window last night, and nobody followed me. You're acting like I showed up in my Braxton uniform. No one is going to recognize me dressed like this.”

Ruban breathed a little easier—but the odor hit him again. Alvarez, too.

“Damn,” said Alvarez. “I gotta roll down a window.”

“No, I don't want anyone to see us!”

Tinted windows did more than keep out the sun. Ruban started the car and blasted the air. Alvarez stuck his nose right up to the vents and drew it in.

“Who's following you?” asked Ruban.

“I'm not sure. But I'm worried. I heard about Marco.”

“What did you hear?”

“Just what's on the news, but I'm not stupid, bro. Somebody at the chop shop must have figured out Marco was part of the heist.
They followed him to the river and did a chop number on him until he told them where his money was.”

“Pinky doesn't think he told them anything. That's why they killed him.”

“Pinky doesn't know shit. What if Marco gave up my name?”

“Not possible. Marco never knew your name.”

“You swear?”

“Yes.”

That seemed to make Alvarez feel better, but it left an obvious question. “Then who is following me?” asked Alvarez.

“Have the cops been questioning you?”

“Of course,” he said. He told him about the FBI interview. “Two agents. An older guy named Littleford. A woman named Henning. She's kind of hot, actually.”

“I'm sure she thinks you're cute, too. What the fuck does it matter that she's hot?”

“I'm just saying. But you make a good point. It doesn't matter. Just like it doesn't matter who's following me. I'm being followed. Period. I need my money, and I need to get out of Miami.”

“Bad idea. I'm not going to let you do that, bro.”

“Not gonna
let
me?”

“Your money is hidden. It stays hidden, and we are all staying put until the cops decide that the MIA Lufthansa heist is headed for the cold-case files.”

“That was a good plan before Marco got whacked.”

“It's still a good plan.”

Alvarez leaned forward, took in another blast of fresh air from the A/C vent, then shook his head. “This started out as us grabbing a few bags of cash from a big-ass German bank that ships a hundred million dollars
every
week
. A little payback for their banker buddies in Miami who took your house and are still driving around in their Porsches and BMWs.”

“Those fuckers back in Frankfurt don't even care if the plane lands,” said Ruban. “They still get rich. It's all insured.”

“All true,” said Alvarez. “But everything has changed now. Marco got chopped to pieces in the back of a truck, and somebody's following me. Time for a new plan.”

Ruban didn't tell him that Pinky was ready to make a run for it, too. And he didn't dare tell him about Jeffrey. “We're going to be okay. We have to hang together.”

Alvarez paused, as if he sensed that his words wouldn't be received well. “I'm thinking about going back to Cuba.”

Ruban could hardly believe his ears. “You're
what
?”

“The FBI can't touch me there. My sister still lives in the middle of nowhere, twenty miles west of Guantánamo. I can stash the money and hide out with her for six months. A year if I have to. When the FBI stops looking for me, I dig up my money, and I'm set for life.”

“Great plan,” said Ruban, scoffing. “But what do you do when you set foot on Cuban soil and they throw you in jail for defecting when you were seventeen years old?”

“That's not gonna happen, bro. That's the kind of shit people talk when they run for mayor of Miami.”

Ruban shook his head, laughing without heart.

“What's so funny?” asked Alvarez.

“Think back fifteen years,” said Ruban. “I still remember that look on your face when we got on that
balsa
. A wood crate sitting on top of inner tubes, plastic bottles, and anything else that would float. Powered by a lawnmower motor. A jar of fireflies so we can see the compass at night. You know you're in trouble when there's no room to bring anything with you except for a coffee can to bail out the water.”

“That was one balls-out trip. Good thing we had that virgin with us—somebody to pray to God we make it across the Florida Straits.”

They shared a smile, but it was tinged with a measure of sadness. “We were the lucky ones,” said Ruban, and he could see the memories clouding Octavio's eyes. They'd been part of the
Cuban raft exodus of summer 1994. Some made it all the way to U.S. shores. The Coast Guard plucked another 31,000 from the sea and shipped them to overcrowded refugee camps at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo. An unknown number succumbed to twelve-foot waves, storms, dehydration, exposure, rafts that had no business being anywhere near the water, or just plain bad luck, their fates sealed at the bottom of the ocean, or in the bellies of sharks.

“What if I had told you then that you were going to be a millionaire before you were thirty-five?” asked Ruban.

“I'd have called you crazy.”

“And what if I'd also told you that, nine days after all that money was yours to keep, you would look me in the eye and say you're going back to Cuba?”

That got a real laugh. “I would've called you
fucking crazy
.”

Ruban's expression turned very serious. “That's exactly my point, bro.”

Alvarez took a minute to consider it, staring down at the air vent. Then he looked across the console and said, “All right. I get it. I'll hang tight.”

“Good man,” said Ruban.

Alvarez reached for the door handle. “But next Tuesday's meeting stands. I get my money.”

“A deal's a deal,” said Ruban.

Alvarez nodded, opened the door, and climbed out on the passenger side. “Ruban?” he said before closing the door.

“Yeah?”

“Take some of my money,” he said, sniffing, “and buy yourself an air freshener.”

Ruban smiled as the door closed and Alvarez stepped away from the car. Then he pulled out into traffic, ignoring the sad and hungry faces of the homeless as he merged into the morning rush hour.