Cash Landing (27 page)

I
t was Saturday night, and Café Ruban was hopping.

Ruban's instructions from Jeffrey's kidnapper were to follow his normal routine all the way up until the exchange. Ruban did so, bopping back and forth from the noisy kitchen to the crowded bar, checking on the night's reservations, and gracing his customers at their tables with his personal attention to make sure all were being cared for properly. Nothing about that night felt “normal,” however—especially when Octavio's pretty fiancée showed up with a pissed-off expression on her face.

“You and I need to talk,” Jasmine said. “In private.”

The last time they'd spoken was on a jogging course, where Jasmine had threatened to pass along Ruban's name to the FBI if he didn't come up with Octavio's missing share of the heist. He'd explained how Octavio's backpack was stolen in the hit-and-run, and in a desperate case of wishful thinking he'd clung to the notion that she might cut him some slack, at least for a time. It appeared that his “time” was up.

“Let's take this in my office,” he said.

She followed him from the bar, past the restrooms, to the office behind the kitchen. Ruban closed the door, which cut the decibel level of the crowded restaurant by half, at best. Jasmine didn't give him a chance to ask what this was about.

“You lied to me,” she said.

“Can't say I know what you're talking about. But I do know that I've been nothing but truthful with you.”

“Spare me, please. You kept Octavio's money.”

“I told you: the backpack was stolen.”

“I happen to know that the backpack was empty when you gave it to him.”

“That's ridiculous. Who told you that?”

“Pinky.”

Ruban froze. The Pinky connection had always troubled him about Jasmine. Apart from the actual heist, the three principal coconspirators—Ruban, Pinky, and Octavio—had been in the same place at the same time on only one occasion: a prep session the summer before at Night Moves, where Pinky had introduced Jasmine to Octavio.

“There was a million dollars in vacuum-sealed plastic inside that backpack,” said Ruban. “That's why Pinky ran him down and stole it.”

“Oh, so
now
you tell me it was Pinky who ran him over? Funny you never mentioned that the last time we talked.”

“I wasn't sure it was him before. Now I am. How would Pinky even be able to tell you the backpack was empty unless he was the one who ran Octavio down and stole it? Have you thought of that?”

Jasmine didn't react one way or the other, and Ruban couldn't tell whether she'd thought through Pinky's role or not. Maybe it didn't matter to her.

“What about Marco Aroyo?” she asked.

Marco was a name he hadn't even bothered to share with Octavio, his role was so limited. “How do you even know about Marco?”

“Pinky told me that you made him disappear and kept his money.”

“I gave Marco's share to Pinky! Pinky still has it!”

“That's not what Pinky says.”

“Why would you believe a scumbag like Pinky over me?”

“Because
you're
the scumbag who hired Ramsey to kidnap your own brother-in-law.”

“Did Pinky tell you that, too?”

“No,” she said, her glare tightening. “Ramsey did.”

Ruban suddenly felt cornered. The first kidnapping was a truth that tipped the credibility scales against him, and he had to explain it. “Okay, that part is true. But I was just trying to scare Jeffrey into cleaning up his act. It was never the plan to get any money out of him. I didn't screw over Octavio and give him an empty backpack, and I sure as hell didn't kill Marco.”

“I don't believe you, but that's beside the point. I'm still going to give you this chance to make things right. Be at the Sunset Motel on Flagler at two a.m.”

“For what?”

She laid a phone on Ruban's desk. “This is a prepaid cell. Never been used, no call history, no trace. Bring it with you. All the instructions you'll need to make the exchange will come over this phone. It'll be by text only. No more discussions.”

“Whoa, wait a minute. You said I was a scumbag for hiring Ramsey to scare Jeffrey, but now you're the one running the exchange?”

“Just be at the Sunset Motel at two.”

“Who will I see when I get there? The moron who called me at home and negotiated against himself? Or the real half-brain behind this operation?”

“You'll find out.”

Ruban shook his head, still amazed that she could overlook Pinky's sins. “Pinky killed Marco. He killed Octavio. He's probably going to kill Jeffrey. And now you're working for him?”

“Wrong. I'm working
for me
.”

“You're taking an unbelievable risk for a cut of a fifty-thousand-dollar ransom.”

“Dream on, fifty thousand. Here's the new deal: bring Octavio's million dollars
and
Marco's. Then you get Jeffrey back.”

“You've missed a few weekly episodes here, sweetheart. I honestly don't care if I get Jeffrey back.”

“No. But your wife does.”

“Leave Savannah out of this.”

“Too late. She's in. All in.”

“What does that mean?”

“You should ask Pinky that question when you see him. And then do what you gotta do, Ruban. For Octavio.”

Ruban suddenly understood. “So that's your angle? You climb in bed with Pinky long enough to get your hands on Marco's share on top of Octavio's, and then you stand aside as I give Pinky what he deserves for taking down Octavio like roadkill?”

“It sounds so manipulative when you say it.”

Ruban swallowed his anger, thinking about the assault rifle in his car, along with four magazines of thirty-two rounds apiece. “You're a clever one,” he said, wondering if he had enough ammunition.

“Yes, I am. Don't be late.”

She opened the door, and he watched her leave.

Too clever for your own good.

Andie watched on the video screen as Jasmine emerged from Café Ruban. An FBI surveillance van was parked across the street from the restaurant, and the two agents inside were streaming the images back to Andie in her car, which was parked a little farther down the street. Littleford was seated in the passenger seat, also watching the screen.

“That's definitely her,” Andie said. “That's Octavio Alvarez's fiancée.”

The surveillance agent's response came by radio. “You want us to tail her?”

“Not in the van,” said Andie. “I'd rather call for another team.”

“No time. She's heading for her car. We're going to lose her.”

Jasmine's arrival at the restaurant had taken Andie by surprise. They weren't equipped to tail both her and Betancourt.

“Take the van and follow her until we can get another vehicle,” Littleford told the surveillance agents. “We'll rendezvous later.”

“Roger.”

Littleford disconnected.

“What if Betancourt leaves the restaurant before we rendezvous with the communications van?” asked Andie.

“Then it's you and me in our bucar,” said Littleford using the dated term for an FBI vehicle. “No Kingfish, no Stingray. We'll tail him the old-fashioned way.”

Andie didn't see much choice. “All right,” she said. “Old-fashioned is good.”

Jasmine climbed into the car and closed the driver's-side door. Ramsey looked over from the passenger seat. The dome light blinked off, and the two of them were alone in the darkness.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“Perfect. I made it absolutely clear to him that Pinky is involved.”

Inserting Pinky's name into the kidnapping had been directly contrary to Pinky's instructions to Ramsey, but Jasmine and Ramsey had their own agenda.

“Did he take the cell phone?”

“Yup. And I told him text only, no more phone conversations.”

Ramsey opened the glove box and reached for the burn phone, the one Pinky had given him for delivery to Ruban. Two grand just to deliver a cell phone to Ruban had seemed like a good deal to Ramsey, but Jasmine had bigger ideas. It had been her brainstorm to drive by an electronics store, purchase another prepaid cell phone for Ruban, and keep the one from Pinky. Pinky had
no way of knowing that the instructions he would text to Ruban would actually go to Ramsey, and that Ramsey would be texting a different set of instructions to Ruban—instructions that would make the “exchange” go down in a way that served his and Jasmine's purposes.

“Sistren, tell me. You think Ruban will be showin' up with two million dollars?” he asked.

“I really do. If for no other reason, he'll want to show Pinky what he's
not
getting before he kills him.”

Ramsey drew a deep breath, reeling in his anticipation. “Whadda you goin' to do with your mil?”

“I don't know yet. What are you going to do with yours?”

Ramsey leaned across the console and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. “You a clever one, Bambi.”

She smiled. “Funny. That's what Ruban told me.”

R
uban left the restaurant around one and stopped by the house. It wasn't exactly on his way to the Sunset Motel, but he had plenty of time to get there by two, and he was hoping that Savannah would be home. He had no reason to think she would be, and of course she wasn't. Still at her mother's, he presumed. He used his real phone, not the prepaid, to type out a text message—
sorry . . . i love u . . . please come home—
but he didn't send it. No one down to his last out in the World Series of love had ever fired off a game-winning text message at 1:30 a.m.

Don't be pathetic.

He hit “cancel,” opened the sliding glass door in the kitchen, and stepped outside. It was a clear, crisp night, and he walked to the far edge of the patio, beyond the fluorescent glow from the kitchen. A brick paver wobbled beneath his foot, and he stopped. There was money below him; there was money weighing on his shoulders.

Two million dollars, the equivalent of Octavio's and Marco's share. Handing over that much to Jasmine would all but wipe him out. Ruban's entire take had been just two and a half, and he'd been chipping away at that on everything from Edith Baird's first fifty grand to the nonrefundable deposit on the house that Savannah didn't want. Pinky was angling to be the big winner—his share plus Marco's and Octavio's. Pinky and Jasmine, his new cohort.
Co-whore.

It was time to change that.

He went back inside to his gun cabinet and selected two pistols, one for his belt and one for backup, in case the other jammed. The Uzi-style assault rifle made a more powerful statement, but he could conceal it only with the stock folded, so he couldn't count on using it in a pinch. He grabbed two extra ammunition clips, locked up the cabinet, and went to the bedroom closet. The balance of the money he'd set aside for Edith Baird was still in the backpack. He removed all but two vacuum-sealed packs of twenty-five thousand dollars each. It wasn't his intention to pay a ransom, but he needed to be able to bluff his way through the “exchange.” The final touch was a windbreaker to hide the handgun on his belt. He locked up the house, went to his car, and retrieved the Uzi-style rifle from the trunk. With the stock folded, it fit just fine in the backpack. He laid it on the floor on the passenger side, started the engine, and drove.

Flagler is one of Miami's oldest and busiest streets, and the Sunset Motel was at its western end, midway between Miami's Little Havana and the Florida Everglades. Most of the old motels in this once-vibrant area were in decline and slated for demolition, and Ruban surmised that the last tourists to pull up and spend the night at the Sunset were probably on their way to Miami Beach in a 1966 Ford station wagon. The two-story building was typical of that bygone era. Rooms faced the parking lot and opened directly to the outdoors. Noisy climate-control units protruded from below the front windows. The neon letters on the roadside marquee were partially burned out, leaving the “Vacancy” sign to proclaim “Vaca,” which Ruban read in his native tongue:
Cow
. Add that to the pigs that flocked to this place in search of prostitutes, and the Sunset Motel was a veritable barnyard.

Ruban found a parking space near the marquee and left the motor running. He was a few minutes early. The burn phone from Jasmine was on the console. One approach would have been to wait for the text message and play their game. Ruban had another strategy. He
grabbed the burn phone and the backpack, got out of the car, and walked across the parking lot to the manager's office. The glass door was locked, a reasonable precaution in this neighborhood, but Ruban could see the manager seated behind the reception counter. She laid her cigarette in the ashtray, and with the press of a button her gravelly voice crackled over the speaker.

“Can I help you?”

“I need a room,” said Ruban.

“I'll buzz you in. Leave the backpack outside. And fair warning, mister: I have a gun, I've used it before, and I don't miss.”

Well, then, we have something in common.
“Understood.”

The buzzer sounded and Ruban entered the small reception area. The elderly woman behind the desk watched him carefully as he approached the counter. She didn't say anything, but the name tag that was pinned to her blouse told him plenty:
Hello, My Name is A. Bitch.”

Ruban laid a hundred-dollar bill on the counter. “That's for the room,” he said, and he laid two more bills beside it. “This is for your help.”

She took a drag from her cigarette, her eyes narrowing on the inhale, which brought out a whole new pattern of smoke-hardened wrinkles. “What kind of help?”

“I'm looking for a room with three men in it.”

“Last guy to come in here and tell me that was a U.S. congressman.”

Ruban smiled, gladder for the rapport than the humor. “Can you help me out?”

“I'd love to take your money, but I don't keep track.”

That sounded true. Ruban tried another angle. “I'm guessing most of the rooms here go by the hour, am I right?”

“Most.”

He laid another bill on the counter. “How about you tell me which rooms aren't your usual hourly clientele. And let's limit it to guests who arrived in the last eight hours.”

She looked him over carefully, as if trying to discern why he might want that information. But she didn't ask and, apparently, didn't care. She checked the registry and jotted down a few room numbers on a Post-it. “You don't really want the room, do you?”

“No, ma'am.” He took the Post-it, then pushed the hundred “for the room” toward her. “But you can keep all of it.” Ruban turned and headed for the door, but she didn't buzz it open right away.

“I'm good with just about anything here,” she said, “so long as no one gets hurt. You hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

The buzzer sounded, and Ruban stepped outside. He picked up his backpack and started down the walkway to the guest rooms. The burn phone in his pocket vibrated, and he stopped to check it. There was a text message at 1:59 a.m.

“Walk to the west stairwell. Wait.”

Ruban glanced down the walkway. The motel had two external stairwells, one at each end. Like the first- and second-story walkways that ran the length of the building, the stairs were outdoors, but the stairwell was partially enclosed by three walls of painted cinder blocks. It would prevent anyone from taking a shot at him from the street or the parking lot, but it was impossible to know what was waiting for him behind those walls. Ruban wasn't foolish enough to walk into an ambush. He would stage his own ambush at one of the four rooms on the Post-it from “A. Bitch.” But he played along and texted a reply.

On my way.

Pinky was getting antsy, pacing from one end of the motel room to the other. Pedro was seated on the double bed nearest the window. Jeffrey was locked in the bathroom, bound and blindfolded, but still alive.

“Check the cell again,” said Pinky.

Pedro did so. “Nothing.”

“Are you sure your text went through?”

“I sent it almost an hour ago. Told him to park in space number twenty-two at 1:30. He texted right back and said he'd be here.”

Pinky stopped pacing. “Are you sure you told him the right motel?”

“Yeah. The Vagabond on Calle Ocho.”

“Text him again.”

“I already sent three follow-ups. No reply.”

Pinky took the phone from him and checked it. The thread of messages confirmed it. “He's almost forty-five minutes late. He's not coming.”

“Let's give him a few more minutes.”

Pinky went to the window and pulled back the curtain just enough for a quick view of the parking lot. Each space was numbered on the asphalt, and number twenty-two was right beside a tall ficus hedge. It was empty.

“Ruban is messing with us,” said Pinky.

“Maybe these burn phones are fucked up.”

“Call him on his real cell.”

“You sure?”

Pinky started to pace again. The burn phones had been a precaution, but he had no actual knowledge that law enforcement or anyone else was tracking Ruban's cell.

“Yeah,” said Pinky. “He's fucked with me for the last time. Call him.”

Ruban's cell rang. Not the burn phone, but his regular line. He didn't recognize the incoming number, but he took the call anyway.

“Who is this?”

“Where the hell are you?”

He recognized the kidnapper's voice from the previous calls. “On my way.”

“You were supposed to be here at one-thirty.”

“Your text said two.”

“I said one-thirty.”

“No, you didn't. You said—whatever. I'm here now.”

“The hell you are! The parking space is empty.”

“What parking space?”

“Number twenty-two!”

Ruban gripped the phone more tightly, confused. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You lying sack of shit! I couldn't have laid it out any clearer. One-thirty. Space number twenty-two. Vagabond Motel on Calle Ocho.”

“Dude, I'm at the Sunset on Flagler, like I was told.”

“I never told you that!”

“Yes, two o'clock at—”

“Fuck you, Ruban! I've had it. Keep your fifty thousand dollars. Your brother-in-law dies.”

The call ended before Ruban could respond. Jasmine had clearly told him the Sunset at two when she'd delivered the phone to the restaurant. It was confounding on many levels, right down to the last few words:
Keep your fifty thousand.
Jasmine had said two million. He was tempted to call back, but his burn phone vibrated with another text message:

“Stairwell. Where r u?”

Ruban stared at the screen. He didn't have the whole picture yet, but he could suddenly see right through Jasmine's double cross. He texted right back:

“On my way.”