Cash Landing (20 page)

J
asmine sat alone in the funeral parlor. The viewing had officially ended at ten p.m., but she stayed longer.

An open casket sometimes invites drama, especially with a young and handsome corpse, but Octavio's had been a quiet viewing. No wailing. No finger-pointing. No prayers or eulogies. Twenty-two guests had signed the registry. A half dozen of Jasmine's girlfriends had come by to show their support. Octavio's coworkers and fishing buddies had made an appearance but didn't stay long. Octavio was without family in the United States, but he'd kept in touch with a sister who lived in Oriente Province in eastern Cuba. A family friend from Hialeah had brought a camera and snapped a photograph for Octavio's sister. Jasmine thought it was weird, but Octavio didn't seem to mind.

The viewing was optional under the funeral package, and Jasmine's initial instinct had been against having one. A graveside service seemed sufficient. Agent Henning's unexpected visit to her apartment had changed her mind. It was clear enough that Henning's interest was in the heist when she'd asked Jasmine to make a list of everyone who should attend the funeral but failed to do so. The logic, however, applied with equal force to the hit-and-run. Maybe the driver
was
someone Octavio had known. Jasmine had no intention of helping the FBI solve the heist, but it still seemed like a good idea to create such a list for her own use. Maybe it would reveal Octavio's killer.

“We need to close up for the night,” the manager told her in a gentle voice.

Jasmine was seated in the front row of white folding chairs, ten feet away from the casket. “Just a moment longer, please?”

He nodded, seeming to understand, and walked away quietly.

Jasmine rose and slowly stepped forward. She stopped at the kneeler but remained standing, resting her hand on the coffin's edge. Octavio was handsome in blue, and Jasmine had selected his favorite shirt. To look at him now, no one would ever have guessed that he'd been killed in a car accident. She'd chosen not to see the body until after the work had been done, but she'd been told that the deadly blow had been to the back of his head.

“I lied,” she whispered.

To Agent Henning, she meant. She and Octavio had talked about so much more than she'd led the FBI to believe. The heist, of course, was one omission. Octavio's promise to marry her was another.

Jasmine reached toward his body. Stillness was by definition a part of death, but the only Octavio she'd ever known was full of life, and it was disturbing to see him exhibit absolutely no sign of it. Her hand trembled as she laid it atop his. His skin was cold, so cold. Much warmer memories brought a tear to her eye. She wiped it away and collected herself.

“It was a good plan,” she said softly. “A really good plan. I'm not sure what went wrong, but I promise you, I'll figure it out. I'll make this work. You'd like that, wouldn't you?”

She leaned over and kissed his forehead. “We were a
great
team.”

She sensed the manager standing in the rear of the parlor, and a quick glance over her shoulder confirmed that her time was up. She knew that the casket would be closed and sealed when she left, and she would never see Octavio again.

“Good-bye, my love.”

She turned away and headed toward the door. The manager
expressed his sympathies again, which she said she appreciated. He offered to escort her to her car, but she declined, preferring to be alone. The moon peeked through the clouds to help her find her car key. She climbed into the driver's seat and closed the door.

Octavio is gone.

It seemed unbelievable, but Jasmine could do nothing to bring him back. The best she could do was to carry out their plan and make sure the risks Octavio had taken and the work he had done were not in vain. Jasmine's meeting with Ruban had been a good start. But what if he really couldn't recover Octavio's share? What if that money was gone for good?

She and Octavio had spent many nights together thinking through the “what ifs.”
What if Ruban screws you over? He's your friend, but what if his wife gets greedy? What if they pay you less than they owe you?
They'd understood the risks from the very beginning, but what really bothered him and Jasmine was the split: How did two shitheads like Jeffrey and his uncle end up with more than two million each, more than double Octavio's take? It was an injustice that Jasmine had been working hard to correct, even before Octavio's death. It was time to redouble her efforts.

Jasmine dug her cell from her purse. She knew the number by heart and dialed. He answered on the third ring, and Jasmine turned on her “club” voice.

“Hi, Jeffy,” she said sweetly. “It's me. Bambi.”

R
uban took the turnpike south to Eden Park Mobile Home Community. His meeting with Edith Baines was set for ten a.m. Kyla was in the balance.

Savannah had slept in their bed Wednesday night, but the kiss good night had been cool, and the ride to the daycare center in the morning had been downright chilly. She'd accepted his explanation for lying about the car, but she refused to believe that he hadn't planned on using “Jeffrey's money” to buy a new one. She'd get over it in a day or so, and he could live with her anger. What he couldn't risk—and what he couldn't tell Savannah about—was the possibility that a witness had seen Octavio, moments before he was run down in the street, talking to a man in a white Chevy with a nonmatching gray quarter panel. Getting rid of the old piece of junk was the preferred solution, but a paint job would do the trick. Ruban dropped it off that morning. Metallic blue. It would be ready late Friday afternoon. Until then, he was stuck in an economy-class rental that should have come with pedals.

He parked on the road outside Edith's mobile home and went to the door. Edith was still wearing her pajamas, which wasn't a pretty sight. It also told him that Kyla and her half brothers had probably walked without an adult to the bus stop on the other side of the busy highway outside Eden Park. He suddenly felt better about the deal he was cutting for Kyla.

He followed Edith into the kitchen and took a seat at the table.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“No, thanks.”

She grabbed her pink bathrobe from a hook beside the refrigerator and slipped it on. Fabric pills stretched from the frayed collar to the ragged hem, and the elbows were threadbare. Ruban's guess was that she'd been wearing that robe since Mindy was in kindergarten.

Edith pulled up a chair on the opposite side of the table. “I see you brought your backpack.”

It was on the floor at Ruban's feet. “We'll get to that.”

“Yes, sir. You bet we will.”

He leaned forward to make a point, but his hands stuck in maple syrup.

Edith reached behind her and grabbed a wet dishrag from the sink. “Damn kids,” she groused as she wiped down the Formica. “I'm always tellin' 'em to clean up after themselves.”

Another wild guess, but Ruban figured the syrup had probably been there about two weeks. “Not a problem,” he said.

“You sure you don't want any coffee?”

“No. This is going to be short and sweet.”

“Fine by me. I ain't budging: Two-fifty, that's my number.”

Ruban grabbed his backpack and laid it on the table. “That's too bad. There's only one-fifty on the table.”

Edith reached for it, but he pulled it back. “Whoa, girl.”

“I need to count it,” she said.

“You can count it after we cut a deal.”

“It's not complicated. Pay me two hundred fifty thousand dollars, you adopt Kyla. You hire the lawyer and I'll sign whatever is needed.”

“I said one-fifty.”

“That won't get the deal done.”

“Yes it will. Our
new
deal.”

“Adopting Kyla is all we talked about.”

“I came up from one hundred to one-fifty. You raise the price, I raise the demand.”

She shifted uneasily, as if sensing what he was about to ask.

“I need my name cleared,” he said.

Edith shook her head. “I can't do that.”

“Mindy can,” he said.

“Then talk to Mindy.”

“You know that's impossible. There's an injunction. I can't call, write, or get within a hundred yards of her.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Tell your daughter to recant her testimony.”

“Say what?”

“I want Mindy to state under oath that the charges she brought against me were lies.”

“You're asking too much.”

“Everything she said was a lie.”

“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.”

“You
know
it was. You wouldn't let me adopt Kyla if any of that was true.”

“I don't know anything, Ruban. I wasn't there. That's all between you and Mindy.”

He opened the backpack and removed the money, one brick of bills at a time. Fifteen in all. “One hundred fifty thousand dollars,” he said.

Edith's eyes were like saucers.

Ruban took five bricks and pushed them toward her. “Fifty thousand now.”

Edith stared at the stack of bills, but she didn't move.

Ruban separated the rest of the money into two stacks of five bricks. “Fifty thousand when Mindy recants her charges against me under oath. Another fifty thousand when the adoption is final. And no one, not even Mindy—
especially
not Mindy—can ever know that I paid you. Those are the terms.”

Edith looked at him suspiciously, her eyes narrowing. “Where on God's green earth did you get all this money, Ruban?”

“Do we have
a deal
?”

“Seriously—where did this money come from?”

“Deal? Or no deal?”

Edith considered it, here gaze darting back and forth from the stack of money to Ruban's steely expression, her elbows resting on the table. Not for a nanosecond did Ruban believe that she actually cared where the money had come from. She just needed another minute for all that cash to speak to her.

“Deal,” she said as she wrapped her arms around the bricks of bills, raking them toward her.

Ruban grabbed her wrist, stopping her cold. “If you take the money, there's no going back. You understand what I'm saying?”

Their eyes locked, and then Edith blinked. “Understood.”

Ruban released his grip. Edith drew the cash into her bosom and smiled. Ruban tucked the rest of the money into his backpack and pushed away from the table. “When should I follow up about Mindy?” he asked, rising.

“I'll speak to her this weekend.”

“Good enough,” he said as he slung the backpack over his shoulder.

Edith followed him to the front door. “Pleasure doing business with you, sir.”

“You won't regret it,” he said, and then his voice took on a more chilling tone. “Unless you screw me. Then you will regret the day we ever met.”

“We're cool. Nothing to worry about.”

He let himself out and walked to his rental car, the backpack on his shoulder a wee bit lighter.

A
ndie was alone in her car, three blocks from her friend's yoga studio and hardly able to believe that she was going to make it to class.

Rachel had switched from teaching beach yoga at sunrise to a sweaty Bikram class indoors. “A ninety-nine-degree hothouse is right up your alley,” Rachel had said in several invitations, but Andie was always full of excuses. Around four-thirty that afternoon, she'd noticed a lull in her workday. It had lasted just long enough to delude her into thinking she could squeeze in an early-evening class.

Her cell rang as she turned onto Collins Avenue. It was Lieutenant Watts at MDPD headquarters. The offer of a reward from Braxton had reeled in another credible informant.

“Shit.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean good,” said Andie. “I'm on my way.”

For the second time in as many weeks, Watts had snatched her away from yoga. It seemed as though every time she grabbed her sticky mat, someone made a grab for the reward. The first informant, Leonard Timmes, had been helpful but not a home run. Timmes worked at the body shop that had chopped the getaway truck, and his tip had linked Marco Aroyo to the acquisition and disposal of the black pickup. Aroyo was dead, however, and Andie's bet was that no one would ever find the body that had been
separated from his finger, which meant that the FBI was a long way from an arrest and conviction in the heist. Hopes were higher for informant number two.

Andie reached MDPD headquarters in Doral around six-thirty. Watts met her outside the interrogation room. Andie peered through the one-way glass and saw a middle-aged, overweight woman seated alone at the table.

“Her name's Edith Baird,” said Watts. “Walked into the station alone about fifteen minutes before I called you.”

“Out of the blue?”

“Yeah. Funny thing. We were all pissed off when Eyewitness News leaked that Octavio Alvarez was a suspected insider in the heist. That leak may turn out to be a blessing. Ms. Baird saw it on TV and has been mulling it over since Tuesday night. She says that if Alvarez was working on the inside, she has the name of his buddy on the outside.”

“No doubt in my mind that Alvarez was involved,” said Andie.

“Same here. One caveat,” Watts said as he handed her the dossier. “She has a criminal record.”

Andie read it. It was like so many she'd seen in her short tenure in south Florida, which was the undisputed king of Medicare fraud. “Basically we have a scam artist angling for a hefty reward.”

“It's a criminal investigation, not a beauty contest,” said Watts. “We don't get to pick our players.”

“Okay. Let's hear her story.”

Watts opened the door, and Andie followed him inside. Edith kept her seat through the introductions. Andie thanked her for coming in and got her permission to call her “Edith.” Chitchat followed, just enough for the law enforcement officers to size her up and develop a rapport. Andie steered clear of the criminal conviction, at least at the start.

“Tell me how you know Octavio Alvarez,” said Andie.

“I know him.”

“How well?”

Her expression tightened. “Well enough.”

“How long has it been since you last saw him?”

“It's been a while.”

“How long?”

“A while.”

“Okay,” said Andie, “let's back up a bit. What brought you into the station?”

Edith breathed a heavy sigh, glancing at Watts. “I already told the detective. I heard on the news that you think Alvarez did an inside job at the airport. I know who helped him.”

“We'd love to hear his name.”

“I'm sure you would,” said Edith. “And for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars I'll give it to you.”

“Let me explain how the reward works,” said Andie. “You give us the information. If that tip leads to an arrest and conviction, Braxton pays you the reward. Fair enough?”

“Bullshit. I don't operate that way,” said Edith.

“We're not being cute. That's the way rewards work.”

“You're not listening.
I
don't operate that way.”

“Okay. Tell me what you want.”

“I'm sure you've checked me out. You know I got a record. So let's cut the crap. You don't trust me, and I don't trust you.”

“If you have helpful information, we can build trust.”

“Yeah, sure we can. I know what's going to happen. I'll give you the name. You'll check it out. You'll get your arrest and conviction. Then you'll come back to me and say, ‘Oh, we were already following that lead when you came down to the station. Too bad, Mrs. Baird. No reward for you.'”

“I have never seen that happen,” said Andie. “The whole crime-tip system would crumble if police started playing that game.”

“I don't give a rat's ass about the system. I care about my reward. So here's how we're going to do it. You give me a list of
all the names you have so far. I'll add my guy's name to the list. If it's a new one, and he's your man, I get the money.”

“That's nice in theory, Edith. But our investigative files are confidential. We aren't going to give you a list of names.”

“Then you don't get a name from me. It's as simple as that.”

The terms were unacceptable, but Andie could play along well enough to keep the conversation from shutting down. “I'm not going to say no,” said Andie. “But I can't say yes.”

“Yes is the only word I want to hear.”

“I can't just go back to my unit chief and tell him we need to hand over our list of suspects to a convicted felon.”

Edith smiled. “Then don't tell him.”

“You've been around the block,” said Andie. “You know how these negotiations work.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good. Then let's be honest. If we're going to play by your rules, I need more than your promise to give me a name. I'll be laughed out of the FBI if I tell my boss that I have an informant who is willing to identify a suspect only on the condition that we reveal every name in our file first. If you expect me to even consider making a pitch like that, you have to give me
something
to show that you're a highly credible informant.”

Edith said nothing, but her body language told Andie that her words were resonating.

“You know I'm not being unreasonable,” said Andie.

“Shhh!
I'm thinking,” said Edith.

Andie gave her a minute.

“All right,” Edith said.

“All right, what?”

Edith laid her hands atop the table and laced her fingers together, as if ready to talk. “Get me a coffee,” she said, “and I'll give you a little something.”