Cash Landing

by James Grippando

  “Hey, Jeffy,” she said. “I like watches, too.”

  Ruban was sinking deep into the couch, a wink away from sleep, when Savannah shoved him. The ten-o’clock news was on the television.

  “They think they found the truck that was used in the heist,” she said, her voice filled with urgency.

  He sat up and got his bearings. The report was nearly over, but a final image of a delivery truck flashed on the screen. He was relieved not to see the pickup, but that was not something to share with Savannah.

  “That could be.”

  The reporter reminded viewers to call Crime Stoppers tip line if they have “any information about the possible victim,” and the newscast moved to the night’s next story.

  “They found a human finger in it!” said Savannah.

  Ruban wasn’t sure what to make of that, but he was concerned enough to prod Savannah for more details. “Did they say anything about a black pickup?”

  “No. What do you know about a black pickup?”

  “Jeffrey told me,” he said.

  Savannah moved closer, her nails digging into his forearm. “Do you think that finger could be my uncle’s?”

  “No,” he said, thinking up another lie on the fly. “Pinky said they hired someone to get rid of the truck. I suppose it could be that guy.”

  “Oh, my God, Ruban! This is the kind of thing I was afraid of! We need to go to the police.”

  “Just calm down.”

  His phone rang, and it made them both jump.

  “Keep an eye on the news and see if there’s any update,” he told Savannah. Then he stepped away to take the call where she couldn’t overhear. The voice on the line was Jamaican.

  “Ruban, you got big trouble, mon.”

  It was the bartender at the Gold Rush. He used to work with Ruban at the restaurant. Ruban should never have backed down on burying Jeffrey’s entire share in his yard, but a hundred bucks a night for Ramsey to keep an eye on Jeffrey was Ruban’s finger on the pulse of a bad situation.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “Your brother-in-law is out of control, mon. Toe-tuh-lee out of control.”

  Ruban cut one last glance toward Savannah before ducking into the kitchen. She was glued to the television, waiting for any follow-up on the heist. “Tell me,” he said into the phone.

  “He’s crazy, mon. Money, coke, girls. Tonight he buying Rolex watches for duh strippers.”

  “What?”

  “Ruban, I don’t know where Jeffrey gets dis money. Not my business. But if the cash don’t run out soon, he goin’ to end up dead in the parkin’ lot.”

  Ruban started to pace, back and forth, from the stove to the refrigerator. “That’s what I’ve been telling him. I been telling him, and telling him, and telling!”

  “You tellin’ him, mon, but he ain’t listenin’. You got to do somethin’. Or it goin’ to be one revoltin’ situation.”

  Ruban stopped at the sink, ran his hand through his hair, and let out a mirthless chuckle. The Jamaicans had such a way with words. “You got that right, bro. One revoltin’ situation.”

  Ruban woke before five a.m., but not on purpose. He thought he heard Savannah on the phone. He buried his head in the pillow and hoped he was dreaming.

  They’d gone to bed at midnight, and not on good terms. Whatever good he’d done by returning the Rolex was lost with the replacement gift. The earrings were on sale at the mall, he’d sworn to her, no funny money involved. Savannah wasn’t fooled.

  “Ruban, wake up!”

  He opened his eyes. The room was dark, and Savannah was practically on top of him. Her cell was pressed to her ear.

  “Jeffrey’s in trouble!”

  He groaned and rolled onto his side. Savannah tugged his shoulder and forced him to look at her. “He needs to talk to you!”

  He checked the clock on the nightstand. “I need sleep.”

  She shoved the phone at him. “He sounds scared to death. Talk to him!”

  “Fine,” he said as he took the phone. “Jeffrey, I have no coke. Time to go to bed. Good night.”

  He hung up and tossed the phone aside.

  “Ruban, what are you doing?” she screamed.

  The phone rang immediately. Savannah answered, and Ruban could hear the urgency in her voice as she spoke into the phone. “Jeffrey, are you okay? Where are you?”

  Ruban stayed in the bed, but his wife was up and began to pace at the foot of the bed. Ruban wasn’t trying to listen, but she was talking in a loud, excited voice. Her end of the conversation was the same line, over and over again: Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Finally, she lowered the phone and spoke to Ruban.

  “Somebody has Jeffrey.”

  Ruban got up on one elbow. “What do you mean, has him?”

  “Abducted. Kidnapped. Whatever you want to call it. They took him from the parking lot at Gold Rush.”

  “When?”

  “Thirty minutes ago.”

  He fell back into the pillow. “Oh, shit.”

  Savannah was back on the phone. “Jeffrey, listen to what I’m saying. I want you to do whatever they . . . Jeffrey? Are you there?”

  Even in the darkness, Ruban could see the panic in her expression.

  “He’s gone!” she said. She dialed back frantically, then put the phone down. “No answer. Ruban, what are we going to do?”

  He sat up on the edge of the bed. “First, we calm down. Freaking out will just make things worse.”

  “I need to call the police!”

  Ruban snatched away the phone before she could dial. “We are not going to call the police.”

  “My brother has been kidnapped!”

  “You don’t know that he’s been kidnapped. Nobody has asked for a ransom. For all you know, he left the Gold Rush with some prostitute who is threatening to kick his ass because he ran out of money.”

  “No, that’s not what this is. I could hear it in his voice. This is bad.”

  “This is exactly the thing I warned him and your uncle about when I told them to stash the money. A guy with no job, no money, and no life is asking for trouble if he suddenly starts acting like he’s a high roller. The strippers aren’t the only ones who take notice.”

  “What money? You made sure it was buried. All of it. That’s what you told me.”

  He had told her that, the night of the split. Or had he? He wasn’t sure. Time to tap-dance. “They must have held out on me and stashed some on their own. My point is—”

  “My point is that we’re talking about my brother. We have to help him!”

  “Yes, and I’m looking out for him. If we call the cops, this whole heist that he and Pinky pulled off will unravel. Jeffrey will spend the rest of his life in jail,” he said, no mention of his own skin. “We have to work this out ourselves.”

  “How?”

  “We wait for him to call back.”

  “Wait? What if Jeffrey ends up like that guy in the back of the delivery truck? The only thing left of him is a finger!”

  “That’s not going to happen to Jeffrey.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Ruban had to dig deep for the answer to that one. “Because Jeffrey has a family who cares about him. And I’m not going to let it happen.”

  Savannah sat beside him on the edge of the bed. She was staring blankly into the darkness, but her head was resting on his shoulder. He seemed to have chosen the right words.

  “What are we going to do?”

  He took her hand. “We go to work, like we do every Monday morning. And we wait.”

  Chapter 13

  Savannah had to be at the dry cleaners by seven a.m. Ruban drove her.

  “My brother’s missing and I’m going to work,” she said, staring out the passenger-side window. “This is crazy.”

  It was their normal Monday routine: Savannah on her feet, behind the counter, hour after hour, smiling and assuring yet another rich wife of Coral Gables that her Hermès gown would no longer
smell of Dom Perignon, caviar, and Chanel No. 5. The restaurant was closed on Mondays, but Ruban still had to show up and tally the weekend receipts.

  “There’s nothing else to do until we hear from Jeffrey.”

  Or his kidnappers. He didn’t say it, and neither did Savannah. But she was thinking it. Constantly.

  Savannah climbed out of the passenger seat slowly. She hated her job at the cleaners. Marathon shifts behind the counter on Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays, however, made up for the paltry wages she earned Tuesday through Thursday as a part-time assistant at a daycare center. Nurturing preschoolers was its own reward. Customers at the dry cleaners only made her feel unworthy, even when they were trying to be nice in their own way—women like Mrs. Willis, third wife to a rich investment banker, who had come in to drop off a killer cocktail dress with a small red-wine stain at the hem. She and Savannah were just about the same height and weight, not to mention age.

  “I don’t think it will come out,” Savannah had told her.

  “You sure?”

  “Not without discoloring the fabric, which would be a shame. Such a gorgeous dress. I mean, I would wear it with a little stain like this on it. But that’s just me.”

  Mrs. Trophy-Wife had reached for her dress, paused, and then pushed it across the counter toward Savannah. “Why don’t you keep it, sweetie? I think you’d dress up nicely in it.”

  The stain had actually come out, no discoloration, good as new. But Savannah never told the customer. It was the closest she’d ever come to stealing, but she’d managed to rationalize it.

  Sweetie? Dress up nicely? Up your liposuctioned butt, lady.

  She was afraid Ruban was starting to engage in the same mental gymnastics, convincing himself that it was okay to buy a Rolex and earrings for his wife with Jeffrey’s stolen money.

  Like the banks don’t steal, Savannah.

  She’d heard him say that many times. Too often, especially of late. It was a slippery slope.

  “Everything is going to be okay,” Ruban said from behind the wheel.

  She hesitated before closing the car door. “Are you sure?”

  “Definitely. It’s better to wait at work than to sit at home.”

  “You promise to call me as soon as you know anything?”

  “I promise.”

  She closed the door, and Ruban drove out of the parking lot.

  Ruban didn’t go to work but to a coffee shop in West Miami, where he had some business with a certain Jamaican bartender.

  Ramsey Kincaid was waiting for him at an outside table. Ruban joined him, laid an envelope on the table, and pushed it toward Ramsey.

  “Here’s half,” he said.

  Ramsey tucked the envelope into his fanny pack without bothering to count the money. His dreadlocks were tucked up under a knit cap. A Bob Marley tattoo bulged on his right bicep. He’d come straight from work at the Gold Rush, having pulled the eleven-to-seven shift.

  “How’s our boy this morning?” asked Ruban.

  “I dunno.”

  “Huh?”

  Ramsey tore open a pack of sugar. His hand was shaking so badly that more of it ended up on the table than in his coffee. “We got a problem, mon. A big problem.”

  Ruban stared at him. They had agreed on the telephone that the best way to get Jeffrey to stop flashing money was to scare the living crap out of him. Ramsey had agreed to do it, for three thousand dollars.

  “Ramsey, I swear, if my brother-in-law OD’d and died on you, I will—”

  “No, no, no. Jeffrey not dead, mon.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I dunno.”

  Ruban tightened his glare. “Stop saying you don’t know and start explaining.”

  “It all went fine at first. Jeffrey partied all night, like he do every night. Finally, he leaves at four o’clock in the morning. I walk him to his car. He’s so wasted that he practically falls into the trunk. My friends, they took him—”

  “Wait a minute,” said Ruban. “You didn’t go with them?”

  “No, mon. I work till seven o’clock in the mornin’.”

  “I paid you three grand. You said you would do it.”

  “No, mon. I said I would get it done. Kidnapping is not my thing. I got you professionals.”

  Ruban was ready to grab him by the throat. “You idiot! I didn’t tell you to bring in more people.”

  “Hold your horses, mon. You didn’t tell me not to.”

  Ruban breathed out his anger. “Who are your friends?”

  “Not really friends. More like friends of friends.”

  “You don’t even know these guys, do you?”

  “Friends of friends, mon.”

  Ruban leaned into the table, pointing his finger as he spoke. “Listen to me, Ramsey. You need to get Jeffrey back right now.”

  “Okay, mon.”

  “I mean right now.”

  “No problem. Well, maybe there be one problem. The ransom.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? There’s no ransom.”

  “Your brother-in-law, he got one big mouth, mon. Before we even shove him inside the trunk of the car, he sayin’ shit like ‘Oh, please, please, Mr. Kidnapper, don’t hurt me. I got lots of money. I pay you a million dollars.’”

  Ruban’s head was about to explode. “I hope your friends didn’t believe him.”

  “Not my friends, mon. Friends of friends.”

  “Whoever. Do they think Jeffrey actually has a million dollars?”

  “They called me one hour ago. They want a handsome ransom. Hey, dat rhyme.”

  “How big?”

  “I jis told you. One million.”

  “No way.”

  “Come on, Ruban. Dis is your brother-in-law.”

  “I’m not paying a million-dollar ransom. I’m not paying anything.”

  “These are bad dudes, mon. They will kill him.”

  Ruban looked off toward the rush-hour traffic, thinking. Then his gaze shifted back to Ramsey. “Here’s my counteroffer: Tell your friends to let Jeffrey go.”

  “Not my friends, mon. Friends of friends.”

  “I don’t care who the fuck they are, Ramsey.”

  “You don’t understand, mon. Bad dudes. Very bad.”

  He leaned forward, his forearms resting on the table, his eyes cutting through the Jamaican like lasers. “Do you know who Jeffrey’s uncle is?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Craig Perez. He goes by Pinky. Ask around about him.”

  “What you telling me, mon?”

  Ruban had no intention of involving Pinky, but it was the best bluff he could come up with. “Tell these bad dudes to let Jeffrey go. Or Pinky comes looking for you.”

  Chapter 14

  Ruban left his assistant manager in charge at the restaurant and picked up Savannah at the dry cleaners. It wasn’t even lunchtime, and the early pickup made Savannah think the worst. The tension was written all over her face as she slid into the passenger seat, shut the door, and braced for the unspeakable.

  “Please tell me Jeffrey is okay,” she said.

  The motor was running, but they were still in the strip-mall parking lot. People were coming and going from the cleaners and the drug store, oblivious to the worried-looking woman talking to her husband in the car.

  “I’m sure Jeffrey is just fine,” said Ruban.

  “It sounds like you don’t know.”

  “I only heard from the kidnappers. I didn’t talk to Jeffrey.”

  Her concern heightened. “They wouldn’t let you speak to him?”

  “It wasn’t like that. They passed a message to me through one of the bartenders at the Gold Rush. A Jamaican guy.”

  “Is he working with them?”

  He couldn’t tell Savannah that he’d hired Ramsey and that his plan to scare Jeffrey had backfired. He kept it vague. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “What’s the message?”

  “If we want Jeffrey back, the ransom is a million dol
lars.”

  She sank a little deeper into the passenger seat, her gaze fixed blankly on the dashboard. “How easy is it for you to dig up a million of what they stole?”

  Very easy, if they counted Ruban’s share and the million he was holding for Octavio. “That’s putting the cart before the horse. We don’t pay a million. We negotiate.”

  She glanced over. “How do you know it’s negotiable?”

  “Everything’s negotiable.”

  “Ruban, this is a kidnapping, not an eBay auction.”

  “We can’t get emotional about this.”

  “Not get emotional? This is my brother!”

  “Take a breath, okay? Only a fool would hand over a million dollars just because some thug says so. Have you ever met the Mendoza family two doors down from us?”

  “Who—what do they have to do with this?”

  “I’m making a point. A couple of months ago I got to talking with the abuelo when he was out walking the dog. Five different members of his family were kidnapped before they finally left Medellín. The old man didn’t give me specifics, but they never paid the first ransom demand. It was always negotiated down.”

  “Ruban, this isn’t Medellín.”

  “It’s also not Kabul. We’re not up against the Taliban or some other lunatics trying to make a religious or political statement. This is all about money. We negotiate.”

  She considered it, but not for very long. She looked at him from across the console and spoke in a firm voice: “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “No negotiation. If they hurt Jeffrey, I swear I will never forgive you, Ruban. Pay the million dollars.”

  He chuckled, but not because it was funny. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

  “Whoa what?”

  Only a half million of Jeffrey’s share was buried in their yard. “Let’s think this through,” he said.

  “What’s there to think about?”

  Ruban stared at the steering wheel, searching for something to say other than the truth of the matter: paying a million dollars meant dipping into their share. Then it came to him.

  “Your first instinct was right, Savannah. When I bought you that Rolex, you said we can’t touch the money.”

  “But this is different.”