Cash Landing

by James Grippando

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Let me get straight to the point,” said the headmaster. “We are here to educate our students, but nothing at Grove Academy is more important than the safety of our children.”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s why our hiring process is so selective.”

  “I’m honored to work here.”

  That was an understatement. For five years, Savannah had been an art instructor at West Miami Middle School, where 80 percent of the students spoke English as a second language. The principal had put in a word for her at Grove Academy, and Savannah had impressed them enough to land an apprenticeship. It was actually a pay cut, but the point was that the position had become available only because the Academy had sent Savannah’s predecessor to earn his M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago—on full salary, all tuition paid. This was Savannah’s chance to earn the same distinction, to be somebody, to beat down the joke that she’d heard since high school: you can take la niña out of Hialeah, but you can’t take Hialeah out of la niña.

  “Your employment here is exactly what this meeting is about,” said the headmaster.

  It was suddenly difficult to breathe. “What do you mean?”

  “We don’t require teachers’ assistants to complete job applications under oath, but we take any misrepresentations or omissions on the application very seriously.”

  “As you should.”

  “We have zero tolerance for misrepresentations and omissions when it comes to criminal history.”

  Savannah’s throat tightened, but she knew exactly what the headmaster was talking about. “I can explain—”

  “Please, don’t make it worse by lying to my face. We’ve dug all the way back to the arrest record on this.”

  “But—”

  “Ms. Betancourt, your services are no longer required here. Return to your office immediately, pack up your personal belongings, and be gone before first period.”

  A pair of headlights flashed through the venetian blinds. Savannah went to the front window and checked the driveway. Ruban was back.

  Other than her, Ruban was the only person who knew the story behind her firing—both sides of the story. He knew how devastating it had been for her. He knew the timing couldn’t have been worse. She’d lost her job five days before they’d lost their house. Five days before the repo men had come for the car and they’d ridden off on Ruban’s motorcycle. They’d had each other in those times, only each other, and she’d told him everything she was thinking and feeling. But there was one thing she would never tell him.

  The car lights went out. She heard the car door close.

  It was hard for her to describe what had been going through her mind on that night, when she’d climbed onto the back of that motorcycle, the last thing of value they owned, even though they didn’t actually own it anymore; they possessed it only as long as they could hide it from the bank. She’d wrapped her arms around Ruban’s waist, and they’d sped down the interstate, the engine roaring, the vibration rattling her bones. She remembered that urge to jump, but what came later was fuzzy. Later, the doctor in the hospital would call it a phobia, an uncontrollable sensation that had taken over and made it impossible for Savannah to spend another moment on that speeding machine. Ruban had accepted the diagnosis. Savannah had, too, for a while, but only because she’d wanted to believe that the experts were right. Deep down, she knew differently. What had made her jump from that motorcycle was no phobia. It wasn’t a panic attack. It had been a split-second decision, but in the blurry moment it had seemed like an answer. Her broken heart was beyond repair. Behind the tinted shield of her helmet, tears were pouring down her face.

  She’d just jumped.

  The front door opened and Ruban came inside. She went to him, wrapping her arms around him as tightly as she should have on the night that had changed their lives.

  “What’s that for?” he asked.

  She couldn’t let go of him. “Nothing,” she whispered, holding back tears. “It’s just . . . nothing.”

  Chapter 22

  It was Andie’s first sunrise on South Beach. A sliver of orange emerged from the Atlantic as she approached the Third Street lifeguard tower on Miami Beach. The tide was out, leaving the shoreline in the middle distance, but the gentle rhythm of breaking waves could be heard in the shrinking darkness. A handful of joggers passed on the boardwalk, but the beach was deserted, save for Andie and a dozen other early risers who had gathered for the seven a.m. yoga class. Andie had transferred to Miami knowing no one, and she wasn’t having an easy time making friends outside of law enforcement. Her new friend Rachel taught the class.

  “You actually came,” Rachel said with surprise.

  Andie was a regular at the studio three nights a week. Rachel had been bugging her to try the beach class, though she would have denied that yoga instructors ever “bugged” anybody.

  “This is spectacular,” said Andie.

  “Even better, it’s free. But I do take tips, and hopefully today’s group will understand that telling me to ‘go to bed early’ or ‘choose my sticky mat carefully’ aren’t the kind of tips that pay my grocery bill.”

  “Not very Zen of you,” Andie said with a smile.

  “Hey, I’m not running a yoga cult here.”

  Andie didn’t bring it up, but she’d actually discovered yoga after busting a Seattle instructor who’d convinced his female students that signing over their worldly possessions and having sex with the instructor were necessary to awaken Kundalini.

  Class lasted one hour. Andie didn’t make it to the first downward-facing dog pose. In a perfect world, she would have turned off her cell and started the day right. Her unit chief had other plans. Andie stepped away from the class, walked to the other side of the lifeguard stand, and took his call.

  “We got a lead through the tip line,” he said.

  “Great. How many does that make now? Nine thousand, or nine thousand and one?”

  “This seems real. Auto mechanic. He works at a body shop near the river. Says he knows what happened to the black pickup.”

  Since the heist, agents from the FBI’s auto-theft unit had been combing the auto-repair districts between the airport and the ports along the Miami River. The suspicion was that the black pickup had been reduced to parts at a chop shop.

  “So the reward actually worked?” asked Andie.

  “We’ll see. Go talk to him. Lieutenant Watts is bringing him in now.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Andie never went anywhere without a clean set of work clothes in the trunk of her car, so she drove straight to the office, made a quick change in the restroom, and met Watts in the interrogation room. Leonard Timmes, a nervous-looking man in his mid-thirties, was seated on the other side of the Formica-top table. The Miami field office was a smoke-free building, but exceptions were made for informants on the verge of running out the door if they didn’t get a nicotine fix. The bright fluorescent light seemed to bother Timmes’ eyes, and Andie suspected that he hadn’t slept much the night before. It wasn’t unusual for a tipster to change his mind and decide not to get involved after all, and Watts had done well to bring Timmes in pronto.

  Andie introduced herself and thanked him for coming. Timmes lit up another cigarette, his third. Andie spent the first few minutes trying to put him at ease, but nothing short of Valium would have done the job. She moved straight to the heart of the matter before Timmes could shut down.

  “Ever seen this man?” she asked as she laid her iPad on the table. She had photographs and everything else she needed on her gizmo.

  “That’s the guy,” said Timmes. “Marco is his name.”

  Bull’s-eye. “When’s the first time you saw Marco?”

  “It was a Monday. Before the heist at MIA.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “No. I just listened. I was getting ready to put a clear coat on a Toyota pickup. My boss brought him
over to have a look. He wanted to borrow a truck.”

  “Borrow?”

  Timmes took a drag on his cigarette, then glanced at Watts. “The lieutenant said there weren’t gonna be any questions about that.”

  Watts confirmed it with a nod, from which Andie inferred that this was a typical deal: Timmes would help with the investigation into the heist, but he wasn’t there to bring down the chop shop and put his boss and coworkers in jail for auto theft.

  “How long did Marco want to borrow it?” asked Andie.

  “He said he’d have it back Sunday night.”

  “The Sunday of the heist?”

  “Right. But he didn’t like the Toyota. He said he needed a cab with a rear seat.”

  Two gunmen, a driver, probably some weapons. It made sense. “Did your boss show him another truck?”

  “No. We didn’t have anything like that. But my boss told him I could probably get what he was looking for.”

  “Did you get him one?”

  Another long drag on the cigarette, followed by another exchange of eye contact between Timmes and Watts. The detective answered for him: “Let’s just say one came in.”

  “Right,” said Timmes. “One came in on Friday. A black Ford F-150.”

  “Did Marco pick it up?”

  “I assume he did. He was supposed to get it Saturday, but I didn’t work Saturday because I agreed to come in the next day for the drop-off. We don’t usually open on Sundays.”

  “So you were at the shop when the truck came back?”

  “Right. Me and two other guys.”

  “Who?” Andie didn’t expect an answer, and she didn’t get one.

  “Mr. Timmes doesn’t remember that information,” said Watts.

  “Right. I don’t remember. Not important anyway. What you need to know is that when the pickup came back on Sunday, it was inside the box of a delivery truck.”

  Andie retrieved another photograph for him. “Like this one?”

  “Bingo,” said Timmes.

  “Who was driving the delivery truck?”

  “Marco was.”

  “Anybody with him?”

  “No. Just him.”

  “What happened next?”

  “We took the pickup apart.”

  “You chopped it?”

  “That’s a very loaded term,” said Timmes. “We salvaged the parts and loaded the pieces back into the delivery truck. Then Marco drove away. The whole job probably took us three hours, I’d say.”

  “What time did you start?”

  “Around three-thirty.”

  The timing fit. Timmes was proving to be quite credible. “Did anybody leave with Marco in the delivery truck?”

  “No. He came alone, left alone.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I got no idea. Never saw him again, never heard from him.”

  “Did he pay you?”

  “No. My boss paid me, and I went home. Later, I was watching the news on TV. That’s when I heard about the heist at the airport. Some guys in a black pickup truck got away with millions. So I called my boss.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I was kind of joking, but I was serious, too. I told him we didn’t get paid enough.”

  “Did your boss confirm that it was the pickup used in the heist?”

  “He didn’t have to. We all knew Marco was suddenly a very rich man.”

  “Did anybody talk about tracking him down?”

  “Not to me.”

  Andie leaned into the table, giving her question a little extra oomph. “Do you know anybody who might cut off Marco’s finger and beat him bloody to find out where he was hiding his cut from the money flight?”

  Timmes crushed out his cigarette and dug into his pack for another. “I don’t know any people like that.”

  Andie glanced at his hands. They were shaking. “Then why are you so nervous about coming here?”

  “I’m not nervous.” He struck a match, and it took several tries, but he finally steadied the flame long enough to light another cigarette.

  “This is very helpful, Mr. Timmes. Thank you.”

  “Do I get the reward?”

  “Too early to say. You will, if this information leads to an arrest and a conviction of the criminals responsible for the heist.”

  “Well, that’s not exactly what I wanted to hear,” he said. “From what I’ve seen on the news, this Marco is probably fish food in the Miami River. You can’t arrest a dead man. I should still get the reward.”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  His nervousness gave way to anger. “This is bullshit. I gave you everything I promised Lieutenant Watts I would.”

  “And the FBI is very grateful,” said Andie.

  “Then give me my damn money!”

  There was a knock on the door. Andie excused herself and left the room. Watts followed. It was one of the other agents on the case.

  “I lost track of Alvarez,” he said.

  Andie’s interview at Braxton Security had focused on Alvarez, and he continued to be the FBI’s primary suspect among potential insiders at the armored-car company. Agent Benson had been assigned to tail him.

  “You lost him?” said Andie.

  “I watched him enter his apartment last night around ten o’clock. He was supposed to be at work by six a.m. to start the daily merchant drops, but he never came out. I called Braxton and had them check on him and see why he didn’t show up for work. They got the landlord to open the apartment. He’s gone.”

  “He can’t just vanish,” said Andie.

  “He’s not in his apartment, and I never saw him leave.”

  Andie looked at Watts. “Make another sweep along the river.”

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Just a hunch,” she said. “We may have more fish food.”

  Chapter 23

  Ruban’s morning was full. First stop was the daycare center. He dropped Savannah off at 6:30 a.m.

  Sometimes it was a pain having to drive Savannah everywhere, but Ruban didn’t complain. She’d stopped driving after the accident. There seems to be a clinically recognized phobia for just about every disabling fear—phobophobia: fear of phobias—but not for fear of driving. “Post-traumatic Stress Disorder” was what the emergency-room physician had labeled Savannah’s condition. A major panic attack had landed her in Jackson Memorial Hospital. She’d stopped cold in the middle lane of I-95, unable to move, backing up rush-hour traffic out of downtown Miami for two miles behind her. It wasn’t car trouble. Savannah suddenly couldn’t deal with cars changing lanes around her, cutting her off, stopping short, speeding past her, blinking lights, horns blasting, dump trucks roaring—can’t breathe!

  “What time should I pick you up?” he asked as the car pulled up to the curb.

  “Six.”

  She reached for the door handle, then stopped to tap out a message on her cell phone. “I’m forwarding you the text I sent to Jeffrey with the bus info he needs to get to the dentist. He has to be there by eight sharp. Can you call him and make sure he gets there?”

  “I guess so. Can’t you call him?”

  “I’m not supposed to use my phone at work.”

  Drop-off at the daycare center started at 6:45. Savannah only got to work there three days each week, and he knew how important this job was to her. “Okay. I’ll make sure.”

  He kissed her good-bye and drove back to the expressway; next stop, downtown Miami. He was in a hurry and making good time. Ruban took the baseball stadium exit, drove around the block, pulled up under the bridge, and stepped out of his car. The interstate rumbled overhead as commuters poured into the city for another workday. The homeless didn’t seem bothered by the noise. A half dozen or so were sleeping soundly on cardboard mattresses. A woman was loading her possessions into a shopping cart, another pointless day. An old man was urinating in plain view. A familiar face approached, and Ruban reacted too slowly to avoid him.


  “Hey, you again,” the man said. “I told you I knew you!”

  It was the guy on the street outside the Seybold Building with the “Dog Bless You” sign.

  Ruban went in the opposite direction and scouted out three more-reliable candidates. Jorge, the one-armed Iraq War veteran with the sad eyes. Marvin, the retiree who had lost everything to Bernie Madoff. Alicia, the ponytailed, twenty-year-old runaway who could have been your niece or cousin. Ruban had used them before, and they knew the drill. They climbed into the backseat of his car and rode to Coral Gables.

  The intersection of U.S. 1 and Bird Road was prime panhandling territory. Thousands of commuters sat in their cars every morning waiting for the traffic light to change. Some were too busy talking on a cell phone or putting on makeup to notice the sad faces outside their car windows. Others noticed but looked away uncomfortably. A few generous souls rolled down the window and offered spare change, a dollar, sometimes more. These were the folks that Ruban and his team counted on.

  “Everybody out,” said Ruban.

  The homeless trio stirred in the backseat. A twenty-minute car ride was their most comfortable sleep of the night. Ruban hurried them along and handed each of them a sign for the day. Family Man, Lost My Job. Army Vet—Don’t Do Drugs. Pregnant, Please Help.

  Ruban didn’t “own” the Bird Road intersection. He just rented it every Tuesday from a former gangbanger who owned all the major intersections on U.S. 1 between Coconut Grove and Pinecrest, two of Miami’s most wealthy suburbs. It was Ruban’s job to staff the intersection once a week, collect the money at the end of the day, and drive his team back to sleep under the bridge. The owner of the Bird Road intersection got the first $200. Ruban got the next $100. The homeless kept the rest. Anyone who didn’t pull down the $300 daily minimum to cover the overhead was blacklisted and out of the rotation.