by Kiki Swinson
“We need to put an APB out on all the vehicles registered to the homeowner,” I tell an annoyed Carter.
“What if the owners are driving their vehicles? We’ll scare them half to death when the dragnet picks them up.”
“And maybe we’ll pick up our fugitives—or maybe we’ll pick up both. Are we sure that Banks and Robinson aren’t holding them prisoner?” The look on his face reads that the possibility hadn’t occurred to him. Probably for the millionth time that day, I wonder how in the hell this man obtained his position in the agency.
I don’t know whether Banks would have taken hostages, but I’ve been trained to never rule out any and all possibilities.
Grudgingly, Carter orders the APBs while my small team huddles off together.
“What do you think?” Max asks.
“I think Banks and his girl are long gone, probably even out of the state.”
Greg nods. “I still hedge my bets that they’re headed to Mexico.”
I nod. “Still a possibility. But Mexico has a big damn border.”
“Maybe he’s aware of the government’s drastic budget cuts and knows a lot of the smaller towns can’t afford expensive roadblocks and dragnets.”
“Anything is possible.” Even if Banks is headed to Mexico, our investigation won’t stop there. What a lot of crooks don’t know is that it never does. The US Marshals have international field offices in Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic. While it’s ideal to recapture a fugitive within a forty-eight-hour sweet spot, the agency has had cases that have lasted decades. The point being that, eventually, we always get our man. Harlem Banks will be no exception.
“Get me the team that’s working the Isaiah Kane case,” I tell Renee while possibilities toss around in my head.
Greg smiles. “I was just thinking about him, too.”
“Their runs are related,” I say. “At the same time, there’s definitely no love lost between the men.”
“So maybe it’s a race?” Frank contributes. “They’re trying to get to something first.”
I nod; this line of thought feels like the right track. “Maybe we need to take another look at both of their files. What are the cases that put the men on the other agency’s radar?”
Renee jumps back into the mix. “The FBI is adamant that both men were members of an international cyber crime ring. Apparently, they were cyber hacking banks before it was cool.”
“Gone are the days of smash and grab, huh?”
“Apparently. You know the FBI recently had a case where a cyber hacking ring had looted forty-five million in a hit that spanned twenty-six countries. There were over thirty-thousand-something transactions done within a matter of ten hours. Let that sink in. No mask. No weapons. Clean.”
“And all federally insured,” I say.
“Nothing like robbing the government.” I suck in a deep, cleansing breath. “So where does that leave us?”
Greg is on a roll. “That leaves us with two thieves that were busted for weapons, but I don’t remember anything about any money being recovered. If these guys are such successful thieves—where’s the money?”
The puzzle pieces finally click together in my head. Harlem has a sick daughter and cash-strapped grandmother. “They stashed the money.”
Frank smiles. “The last one there is a rotten egg.”
23
Harlem
For the past five miles my eyes have been more on the truck’s gas gauge than the winding road in front of me. Our last fill-up was in Jackson, Mississippi. We’re practically running on fumes with nothing but cotton balls in our pockets. That’s not completely true. There’s the gun I lifted from that house. An old-fashioned gas station robbery is not out of the realm of possibility, but I’m nervous about how that’s going to go down with my newly transformed good-girl-gone-bad-sister sitting at my side.
I’m worried that she has romanticized what life on the run is really going to be like. If and when I’m able to get money to Nana Gloria for Tyler’s surgery, I will have to walk out of their lives forever. The thought of that shit is tearing me up. Can Johnnie really do the same? She has a larger and closer family than I do and throwing all that away is going to come back and bite her—us. Even though I know that she may be making the biggest mistake of her life, I don’t want to let her go, either.
“There’s a gas station,” Johnnie says, pointing. She must’ve been watching the gas hand, too.
It’s show time. We coast into the station and when I shift the truck into park, the engine cuts off. We’re out of gas. Sighing, I glance over at Johnnie. “You know what we gotta do, don’t you?” I reach over into the car door and pull out the handgun.
Her brows dip together. “We’re out of money?”
Nodding, I take a quick look around. There’s only one other car pulled up at another pump. “I’m going to need you to stay calm while I go inside and get the clerk to turn on the pump. You pump the gas and keep the car running. You think you can handle that?”
She hesitates.
“It’s either that or we walk the rest of the way.”
Johnnie’s gaze lowers to the gun. “Are you going to hurt anybody?”
“Not if I can help it,” I answer. She’s got to know that this is also a test on whether she’s really made for this life.
She looks around the gas station, too.
“Johnnie? Can you do this?”
Without looking at me, she offers up another solution. “What if we just change cars?”
“What?”
Johnnie gestures toward the car at the other pump.
I follow her line of vision and noticed for the first time that the owner has the pump going into the gas tank, the driver side door is open, and he’s busily cleaning the front windows.
“It’s probably a lot easier to overpower him than to hold up the clerk,” she says as if she’s wondering aloud.
She’s right. I glance back down at her. “I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be, yet. We haven’t pulled it off.” Quickly, Johnnie slides across the leather seat and hops out of the truck before I get my door open.
By the time I hop out, the guy has stopped washing the windows and is removing the pump from the gas tank.
Johnnie distracts him.
“Excuse me, sir. Do you know what time it is?”
The guy takes one look at Johnnie and starts smiling. “Uh, sure.” He hangs up the pump and glances at his watch. Before he can tell her the time, I’ve made my way around the other side to press the gun into his back.
“Okay. Let me tell you how this is going to go down.”
Johnnie hops into the car’s front seat and turns over the engine.
“Hey. That’s my car,” the guy whines.
“Yeah. And if you want to keep breathing, you’ll shut the hell up.” I press the gun harder into his back. “Understand? Don’t make a sound until we pull off.”
The man nods.
“Good. Don’t make me shoot you.” I step back, but keep the gun leveled at him.
The dude glances back at me over his shoulder.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” I bark.
Seeing that the gun is real, he quickly snaps his head back around. “Nothing, man. Nothing. Please, don’t shoot.”
The gun stays trained on him until I hop inside the passenger door. I’m barely inside before Johnnie jams on the accelerator.
“Ohmigod. I just stole a car,” she announces, astounded.
“Yeah. I know. I was there.” I laugh.
“Holy shit.” Johnnie cracks up laughing. “I can’t believe it. Nobody is ever going to believe it.”
“Well. They will if those security cameras were working back there.”
“There were cameras?”
“It’s the twenty-first century. There are cameras everywhere.”
Her laughter fades after that, but her eyes remain wide and her hands seem to tighten on the steering wheel.
>
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“Uhm, hmm,” she says, her voice pitched a bit high.
I watch her for a few minutes while she absorbs her new reality. When she catches me, she flashes a smile. “I’m fine.”
I remain dubious.
“Really,” Johnnie insists. “My criminal cherry has been officially popped.”
That broke the ice. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“Now. Since I’m the one behind the wheel, where to, Clyde?”
“Texas, Bonnie. Where else?”
24
Sam
“Play it again,” I instruct Greg for the third time. It’s not that I’ve never witnessed a car-jacking before, it’s just that I’m having a hard time squaring the woman I see participating in this car-jacking with the woman I met at the Governor’s Ball earlier this year.
“Doesn’t look like she’s being coerced to me,” Frank says, sighing. “Should be interesting to see how her family spins this one.”
“I’m not interested in the spin. I’m more interested in where they’re headed.”
Renee pops up her laptop next to Greg’s on top of the hood of the SUV. “We know that Harlem was born and raised in New York, but I did a background check and cross-reference to see if there are any other connections in that area. Harlem’s grandfather was from Laredo, Texas.”
Another piece of the puzzle clicks in my head. “Yeah?”
“Where is Grandpa Banks now?”
“Six feet under—in Laredo.”
I mull that information over. “Pull various routes from New York to Laredo and see if Mr. Banks’s travels so far have us heading in the same direction.”
Renee’s fingers fly across her keyboard. When a smile creases her face, I have my answer. “Bingo.”
“All right, gang. It looks like we’re headed to the Lone Star State.” The team starts packing up their gear. “Renee, find whatever family Harlem still has in Laredo. Brothers, sisters—cousins. He’s on his way to see someone down there.”
“You got it, boss.”
Exhaling a deep breath, I begin to feel that we’re finally getting somewhere with this situation instead of simply reacting. Chances are Harlem and Johnnie have reached Laredo. Depending on how much money we’re talking about, once Harlem or Isaiah get their hands on it, I have a feeling that this case may take decades to wrangle them back to prison.
“Greg, make sure you place a call to the local sheriff’s department in Laredo and bring them up to speed.”
Greg gestures to the phone he has tucked under his ear. “I’m already on it.”
A jolt of adrenaline kicks in. We’re close. I can feel it. Twenty minutes later, my team is back in the air. “Anything?” I ask Renee.
“Not yet. But I’ve called the New York office to have a couple of agents pay another visit to Gloria Banks. She’s going to be the quickest route in getting the list of names we’ll need.”
“Humph. She wasn’t too helpful the last time,” I gripe. Not that I don’t understand her position. She’s probably relying on Harlem to get his hands on that life-saving money for her great-granddaughter.
When we touch down in Laredo, I’m shaking another district deputy chief’s hand. At least this one, Aiden O’Donnell, isn’t on an ego trip. It helps that my crew has worked with his department in the past. Renee keeps hitting a brick wall for possible family members living in Laredo, Texas, and the agents back in New York call us back with the unhelpful news that Gloria Banks doesn’t know or is pretending not to know anything about her deceased husband’s family.
“Two steps forward and then ten steps back,” I huff and disconnect the call.
Greg shrugs and adds a suggestion. “We can always kick it old school and just go through the white pages.”
“Do they even compile those anymore?” I ask, grunting.
He tosses up his hands. “I’m open to another idea.”
“Fine. Whatever. How many Bankses can there possibly be in a town of a quarter million?”
25
Harlem
Webb County Cemetery
“Are you sure that this is it?” Johnnie asks, peering around. It’s sunset and the amber sky gives the surrounding gray tombstones an eerie cast.
“This is it,” I tell her. “Just follow the winding roads toward the back—where the crypts are.”
“Crypts?” She eases off the accelerator. “Is this some sort of joke?”
“It’s no joke,” I say, smiling. “For obvious reason, I don’t trust banks.”
“So you what—buried your money at a cemetery?” she asks incredulously.
“It seemed like a safe place at the time.”
Johnnie stares at me as if I’d just sprouted a second head. “There’s something wrong with you.”
“That’s probably why you love me.” I wink.
“True.” She shakes her head. “God help me.”
Shortly after I point out where we should park, I tell her that we’re going to have to go the rest of the way on foot. I hope that the two of us will be able to lug the huge steamer trunk, weighing nearly five hundred pounds, back to the car ourselves. The money was stacked over time. I’ve never had to haul all the money at one time. But I guess I’m about to find out. The sun disappears out of the sky halfway toward our destination while the moon plays hide-and-seek among the thicket of trees.
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Johnnie asks before tripping over the uneven ground.
My reflexes kick in and I catch her before she wipes out. “Whoa. Careful.”
Once she’s in my arms, she doesn’t let go. “This shit ain’t cool,” she pants. “I can hardly see a damn thing. How much farther?”
Seeing her fear, I can’t help but tease her. “What? Are you scared?”
“Dead people aren’t exactly my favorite people to hang around,” she tells me.
“Don’t tell me that you believe in ghosts.”
“Not until about five minutes ago,” Johnnie whispers, still looking around like she expects someone to leap out at us at any moment.
Unable to contain my amusement, I chuckle and make sure that I keep her tucked at my side. “C’mon. We don’t have that much farther to go.” And we don’t. Around the next bend is my grandfather’s resting place. James Harlem Banks Senior’s stone crypt is visibly different than the others on this stretch of land, simply because it was built within the last decade. Crypts have long gone out of fashion; hence the other ones in this section of the cemetery were built at the time of the Civil War.
“This is freaking me out,” Johnnie whispers.
“Don’t worry. We will be out of here in a few minutes.” I pat myself down for the key to the iron lock, but while I’m searching Johnnie simply steps forward and pushes on the gate. Good thing that I put the key in my pocket instead of the bag that is currently at the bottom of a river.
“It’s already open,” she says, puzzled.
My blood seems to freeze in place. “What?”
She pushes the gate again. This time the rusting hinges squeaks in protest.
Isaiah. “No. No. No.” I bolt past her and then up the two steps to the heavy iron door. It, too, is already open. Inside are two stone tombs. One is where my grandfather is resting in peace and the other is reserved for my grandmother, which currently should be holding my nest egg. One look at Nana’s future resting place and I already know before shifting the stone top aside what the deal is.
“It’s gone.”
26
Isaiah
I’m on fucking cloud nine rapping Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M. at the top of my voice, “Dolla, dolla, bill y’all.” I glance over my shoulder into the backseat to make sure that the monstrous steamer trunk loaded with cash is still back there. It’s a new habit I’ve developed every time I roll up to a traffic light. “Fucking Harlem. I love that muthafucka!”
Of course, I wish I could be a fly on Grandpa Banks’s c
rypt wall when Harlem arrives there and sees that all his money is gone. That muthafucka always thought his ass was smarter than me. I bet I just showed his ass. “Ha! How do you like me now?” Chair dancing, I can’t stop thinking about all the shit I’m going to buy and the bitches I’m going to fuck once I find a spot on a private island somewhere. This time I’m not going to make all the mistakes I made with my own money. I’m going to just pinch off a little at a time—make the shit last.
Smiling and rapping, I push all guilt to the damn side. This money is going to save my life and get me a new start. I’m thinking beyond just crossing the border to Mexico. This kind of money can get me any damn place I want: Colombia, Fiji, or Ibiza.
I could even double the money! I latch onto the idea. Paying off Kingston West is going to probably take half the stash. What I need to do with the other half is try to flip it. I need to buy into a good game. A list of contacts scrolls through my mind as the devil on my right shoulder warns me about the dangers of my losing money while the other devil on my left encourages me by pointing out that I’m on a streak of good fortune.
No way I’m going to find an underground game here in Laredo. I got to get to my boy Gold Dawg. I know his ass still has the hottest games—and since I got to go see Kingston West in Atlanta anyway . . .
I’ve completely warmed up to the idea by the time I make it back to a private landing strip a few towns over in Del Mar. It feels good handing the pilot the stack of cash promised to him. It also improves his sour disposition when his small crew has to lug the trunk onto the plane.
“Where to now?” he asks, grinning.
“Atlanta,” I boast. “There’s a game somewhere calling my name.”
“You got it.”
I keep a close eye on him as he helps load up my newly found wealth and once we’re in the air, I punch in Gold Dawg’s number from memory. However, I’m not surprised when an automated voice informs me that the number is no longer in service. I punch in other numbers for other cats who would know how to get in contact with the underground poker host, but the problem with having criminals as friends is that no one has the same cell number for long.
