Cash Landing (18 page)

T
he tilapia in the refrigerator still smelled fresh, so Savannah cooked it up with steamed kale and wild rice for dinner. Ruban had a full night at the restaurant and couldn't stay, so she ate alone at the kitchen counter.

The house was too quiet, and the fifth mental replay of her talk with Ruban about Kyla was the point of overload. She grabbed the TV remote and switched on the local news. The lead story was a hit-and-run traffic fatality during the morning rush hour, but it didn't really capture Savannah's attention until the “exclusive live report” shifted to the street outside Braxton Security headquarters.

“The victim has been identified as twenty-eight-year-old Octavio Alvarez,” the reporter said into the camera, microphone in hand. “In a breaking development, Eyewitness News has confirmed that Mr. Alvarez was one of the Braxton Security guards on duty when, little more than two weeks ago, thieves made off with nearly ten million dollars in cash from a warehouse at Miami International Airport.”

Savannah almost dropped her fork.

The reporter continued, fighting off a long wisp of hair that was caught in the gentle evening breeze. “While the heist remains unsolved, sources tell Eyewitness News that law enforcement has been actively investigating the possibility of an inside job. Miami-Dade police have declined to comment on any
suspected connection to this morning's fatal hit-and-run accident involving the Braxton guard, but we will keep viewers apprised of any further developments. Reporting live from Doral, this is Cynthia—”

Savannah hit the mute button, grabbed her phone, and speed-dialed Ruban. The clatter of a busy restaurant was in the background, and she nearly had to shout for Ruban to hear her.

“Slow down,” said Ruban. “What's the matter?”

She told him, her voice racing.

“Octavio who?” he asked.

“Diaz—no, Alvarez. I don't know. The important thing is that the news made it sound like he could have been part of the heist.”

“Did you talk to Jeffrey?”

It seemed like an odd first question. “No. Jeffrey still doesn't know I know anything.”

“Okay, good. Don't talk to him.”

“Don't talk to him? Ruban, this is serious. First it was my uncle's friend. Now it's the guard from Braxton. Two of the people involved are dead. And you say don't talk to Jeffrey? What if he's next?”

“He's not.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because—”

He stopped short and asked her to hold on. The restaurant noises in the background faded, as he'd apparently moved to someplace more private. “We don't have to worry about Jeffrey,” he said. “It's Pinky who concerns me.”

“Forget him. My uncle can take care of himself. Jeffrey can't.”

“That's not my point. I don't see Pinky as next on the hit list. I think he's behind what happened to these two guys.”

Savannah felt chills. “Then we need to go to the police,” she said. “I don't care if he is my uncle.”

“We can't go to the police. Your uncle has me in a box.”

“What are you talking about?”

Savannah waited for a response, and she could almost sense him struggling over the line. Then he answered.

“There's something I need to tell you.”

“Then tell me.”

“Do you promise you won't get mad?” he asked. “No matter how bad it is?”

“Ruban, just tell me what is going on!”

“Okay. Here's the deal. Do you remember that Sunday night when I came home late and told you that it wasn't an intervention? That Jeffrey and your uncle pulled off the heist?”

“How could I forget that?”

“I told you that I made them hide the money until we figured out what to do. You and I agreed that we should do what we could to keep Jeffrey out of jail.”

“Yes, I remember all that.”

“And you were so grateful to me for helping out your family.”

“Yes, Ruban! What are you getting at?”

He breathed so heavily that it crackled over the line. “Your uncle is using that against me.”

“I don't understand.”

“He's
blackmailing
me, Savannah. If we go to the police, he is going to tell them that I was part of the heist.”

She couldn't speak for a moment, and then it came all at once. “Oh, my God! What—
how?”

“He's going to tell the cops I was his accomplice. I'll go to jail.”

“No! He can't get away with that. Jeffrey will stand up for you. He knows you weren't involved.”

“The police will think Jeffrey is lying to protect his brother-in-law. Your uncle is holding all the cards right now. He can put me away for the next thirty years.”

Savannah's hand was shaking, and she gripped the phone a little tighter to steady her nerves. “Ruban, I . . . I am so sorry.”

“Don't apologize. It's not your fault.”

“But you were just trying to help Jeffrey, and now you're caught in the middle.”

“I can handle this,” he said. “But you have to stick with me. We cannot go to the police. Not yet.”

“When?”

“As soon as I figure out how to deal with your uncle.”

“Do you really think he killed these two men?”

“I really do. I've called his phone, and the number doesn't work anymore. He quit showing up for work. He never goes to his apartment. Plus, I just think he's capable of doing something like this.”

It wasn't the most far-fetched thing she'd ever heard, but a thief in the family was one thing. A murderer was quite another. “I'm scared for Jeffrey.”

“You don't need to be.”

“He's already been kidnapped once.”

“That was my fault for trying to scare him. It had nothing to do with what your uncle did to his friend Marco and Octavio Alvarez.”

“I'm still scared, Ruban.”

“There's no reason to be, Savannah. As bad as your uncle is, he's not going to hurt his sister's kids. You and Jeffrey have nothing to worry about.”

“What about you? You hid the money. What if he goes after you?”

“I'll be okay.”

She stopped pacing and stood at the counter. From there, she could see down the hallway all the way to the locked cabinet in the other room. “Ruban, are you carrying a gun?”

“It's not anything to worry about.”

“Did you take one of your pistols from the cabinet?”

“I'm taking precautions,” he said.

“I don't like this. People are dying. You're packing a gun. Jeffrey is—” She stopped herself, sensing that he wasn't listening.
She overheard him speaking to someone in the background. Then he was back on the line.

“Savannah, I have to go now. We can talk more about this when I get home.”

“I'm not staying here by myself.”

“If I thought you were in danger, I would be the first one to tell you to get out of the house. But you're not.”

“I'm going to my mother's place. Pick me up there.”

“How are you going to get there? You don't have a car.”

She breathed out, exasperated. “I'll take the bus.”

“Okay. Go to your mom's. That's a good plan. But this is all going to be okay, Savannah. I promise. And I love you.”

He said good-bye and hung up before her reply. “Love you, too,” she said to no one.

She immediately dialed her mother. Jeffrey answered.

“Is Mom home?” she asked. “I want to come over for a while.”

“Yeah, she's here. What time are you coming?”

“It could be an hour. I have to take the bus.”

“No, I'll pick you up.”

“With what car?”

“Yours. It's in our garage.”

“Ruban said the engine is shot.”

“That's bullshit. He told me the same thing so I wouldn't drive it. There's nothing wrong with the engine. I've been driving it all day.”

Savannah hesitated, not sure what to say. “Why would he swap cars?”

“I don't know. Ask him.”

Another lie.
Best to keep Jeffrey out of this.
“I will.”

You want me to pick you up or not?”

“Can you come get me now?”

“Sure. Be there in ten minutes.”

The call ended, and Savannah laid the phone on the counter, her mind awhirl. The lies and half-truths were starting to pile up,
and the best spin she could put on it was that Ruban was trying to protect her and keep her from worrying. The spin was getting harder to swallow.

She walked to the end of the kitchen counter, where her daycare satchel lay. Tomorrow's lesson plan was inside: group time, story time, small-group activities. Tucked beside it was another folder, which contained copies of the court records that the DCF social worker had given her. Savannah glanced over the papers once more, then dialed Betty's home number.

“I'm so sorry to call you at home.”

“Not at all,” said Betty. “I said you could call me whenever, and I meant it.”

“I have a favor to ask,” said Savannah. “I was looking over the records you gave me. I notice that the victim's name is blocked out.”

“Yes. Her identity was sealed by court order. That's not the typical situation in domestic-violence cases, but it's not unheard of.”

“Ruban told me her first name is Mindy. Is there any way to find out her last name?”

“Why don't you just ask your husband?”

“I could do that,” she said, drawing a breath. “But I don't want him to know that I'm looking into this.”

“Ah, I see. Savannah, are you having some difficulties?”

“No. Nothing to worry about.”

“It's like I told you earlier, I'm concerned about you.”

“You don't have to be.”

“Okay. I won't pry. But why do you want to know her name?”

Savannah swallowed hard. Perhaps Ruban would have a perfectly good explanation for the little lie about the car engine, and she could probably forgive him for that. But if there were still more lies, bigger lies, she wasn't so sure. “I want to talk to Mindy,” said Savannah. “I want to know the truth about her and Ruban.”

There was silence on the line. Then Betty answered. “I'll see what I can do.”

Savannah took one more look at the docket sheet in the case of
State of Florida v. Karl Betancourt
, her finger running over the printed black bars that obscured the victim's name.

“Thank you,” said Savannah. “Thank you very much.”

T
he call from Savannah left Ruban's brain throbbing. A stabbing pain behind his right eye forced him to dim the lights and sit quietly at his desk for a minute. It was his classic stress headache.

He was alone in the cramped office at Café Ruban, which wasn't much of an office at all. There was no window. The constant clatter of the kitchen came right through the walls. The only way to open the closet door was to pick up and move the printer and the fax machine. The filing cabinets were somewhere behind thirty-pound bags of rice, canned chicken stock, and the overflow of other dry goods from the stockroom.

Ruban tucked his cell into his pocket, leaned back in his squeaky desk chair, and closed his eyes, willing the headache away. It was only getting worse.

Lies. More lies.
There were almost too many to keep track of.

He'd come so close to telling Savannah the truth about the heist, even closer than on the night he'd climbed into their bed with the smell of money on his hands and lied for the first time. He wasn't sure when he'd conjured up the story that Pinky was threatening to blackmail him if they went to the police—that Pinky had the power to put Ruban away for thirty years, and that Savannah just needed to stand by her man and all would work out. Such a great lie. It almost felt like the truth. If it was in fact Pinky who'd killed Marco and Octavio, it wouldn't be long
before Ruban was in his crosshairs. The lie he'd told Savannah wasn't all that far from the truth.

So why is my head pounding?

There was a knock at the door, and his assistant manager stuck her head into the room. “Our sous-chef is threatening to walk out again. I've had it with him. You need to deal with this.”

Ruban's head chef had the night off, leaving the sous-chef in charge. “I'll be there in two minutes,” he said.

“Okay, but it's getting pretty intense. And there are lots of knives in that kitchen.”

She was only half kidding, but Ruban seemed to recall that an argument at a fine restaurant in Coral Gables had been settled in that very fashion. The thought triggered a moment of panic. Ruban unlocked the desk drawer and opened it. To his relief, the gun was still there—no armed lunatic in the kitchen.

Ruban had always kept a gun at the restaurant, just in case, but Savannah's instincts had been correct. After the hit-and-run, he'd gone to his cabinet at home and swapped out the revolver for a pistol with more firepower. Ruban wasn't eager to use it. In fact, he was determined to avoid a confrontation with Pinky, at least until the immediate shock and anger over the hit-and-run subsided. He couldn't say what he would do if he met up with Pinky in his current frame of mind. Would he feel the impulse to avenge his friend's death? Did he even have the capacity to act on it? He didn't want to find out. If he didn't hunt Pinky down, he couldn't self-destruct. But if Pinky came looking for him . . .

Can't let it come to that.

No one—not Pinky or Jeffrey, and definitely not Savannah—knew of the friendship. He and Octavio had lost touch years earlier. In early summer, Octavio had reached out to him, a blast from the past. He'd heard on the street that Ruban had a criminal record and thought he might be up for something big. They'd met at a bar after work to talk it over. “It's why we got on that shitty raft and came here,” he'd told Ruban with that wry smile. “To be
millionaires, right, bro?” The plan was finalized by the Fourth of July weekend, which was the last time Ruban and Octavio had spoken or met in person. Their strategy to prevent law enforcement from connecting the dots between two boyhood friends from Cuba was ironclad: No contact the four months before the heist, and none for six months after it. There were only two exceptions. The phone call on the disposable cell from the MIA warehouse, after which Octavio would crush the phone to bits and flush it down the toilet. And the face-to-homeless-face exchange at Bird Road.

There was no contingency plan for the death of one of them.

It killed Ruban that he couldn't even go to the memorial service. A message from Octavio's new girlfriend had come to him through the restaurant's Facebook page that afternoon. Ruban didn't know Jasmine. She and Octavio had met during the pre-heist blackout. Ruban couldn't even drop a note to express his condolences. He couldn't do
anything
that linked him to Octavio, especially with Eyewitness News pegging him as the possible insider in the airport heist.

The door opened. It was his assistant manager again. Ruban shut the desk drawer before she could catch a glimpse of the gun.

“Ruban, I'm serious. I
need
you.”

He locked the drawer. Only he had the key. “Coming.”

They went straight to the kitchen, where one angry sous-chef was shouting obscenities at his “incompetent and disrespectful” line cooks. Ruban pulled him aside, but the rant continued. They stepped out into the alley for some fresh air. A cigarette seemed to calm him. Ruban pretended to listen as the sous-chef got everything off his chest. As in most kitchens, the problem was egos. At Café Ruban, things seemed to come to a head whenever Chef Claudia took a night off and the sous-chef took over.

“I'll fix it, I'll fix it,” Ruban said a dozen times.

The chef crushed out his cigarette and, after a little more stroking
from Ruban, returned to the kitchen. Ruban went back inside to check on the dining room. It was packed, which made him smile. So was the bar, which made his smile even wider. Profits surged when customers tipped back cocktails while waiting for a table. Ruban went down the line and thanked each customer for waiting. It was the time of year for more tourists than locals. Tonight, there were no familiar faces, save one: the woman sitting alone at the end of the bar, who managed to wipe the smile from Ruban's face.

“Hello, Ruban.” It was Edith Baird. She'd put on lipstick and brushed her hair, but Ruban recognized the same sundress from their talk in her trailer.

He moved closer so none of the guests at the bar would overhear. “What are you doing here?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“That peek inside your backpack led me to believe you must be doing well. I wanted to stop by and see
how
well.”

“Let's go outside,” he said.

“I haven't paid for my martini.”

“I got it,” he said.

“That's what I like to hear.”

She followed him out of the bar, and he led her to the rear exit. He was in the alley again, and they were standing exactly where the sous-chef had crushed out his cigarette a few minutes earlier.

“Don't ever come here again,” said Ruban.

“Not very hospitable of you. This was a long drive for me.”

“I don't want you contacting me. I'll get in touch with you. That's the rule.”

“All these things are negotiable.”

“No,” he said. “That's not negotiable. Got it?”

“Sure,” she said. “I got it.”

“Good. Did you test out the hundred-dollar bill I gave you?”

“Yup. Went to Macy's this afternoon. No problems. It's the real deal.”

“There's more where that came from.”

“I'm glad to hear that,” she said. “Because it's going to take a lot more.”

Ruban hesitated. He recognized that sly expression on her face, the old Edith. “You mean more than a hundred thou?”

She sighed heavily, then turned on the phony southern accent that she liked to use. It had always annoyed Ruban. “You know, I'm very, very fond of Kyla. Now, I could see my way clear to let her stay with her daddy. But it's just going to break my heart to say good-bye to her.”

“How much do you want?”

Another sigh. “Oh, my. How does a person put a price on such things? Not seeing her sweet face every morning. No more kisses good night.”

“Edith,” he said flatly. “How much do you fucking want?”

“Not a penny less than two-fifty,” she said, the accent suddenly gone. The old Edith was in her negotiating mode.

“I'll give you one twenty-five.”

“That's an insult.”

“I'm off at midnight,” he said. “Let's talk.”

“I'm in bed by then, sweetheart. Come by the trailer on Thursday. Bring your wallet.”

He wanted to tell her exactly how he felt, but he held his tongue. His trail of lies to Savannah was like bile in his throat, and he had a sickening sense that she was beginning to see through it. No explanations could remove all of Savannah's doubts. But Kyla might just make them go away.

“All right,” he said. “I'll see you Thursday.”