“I’ll be back after the evening rush hour,” Ruban told them. He returned to his car, opened the door, and nearly fell over from the odor.
“Shit!” he said, which was exactly what he smelled. He suspected the old guy. This gig was hardly worth the effort. It was typical of the small-time dealing that had made him jump at the chance to “think big.” He couldn’t wait to stop laying low and enjoy the spoils of the heist.
“Ruban!”
He turned and saw his friend, but if Octavio Alvarez hadn’t spoken, Ruban would never have recognized him. Alvarez was wearing old clothes, a big hat, sunglasses, and a phony beard. Before the heist, they’d agreed that Ruban should have no contact with an armored-car guard. The plan was for Octavio to show up as a homeless person at the Bird Road intersection and collect his share from Ruban in a backpack. But that meeting wasn’t until the following week.
“What the hell are you doing here today?” asked Ruban, “It’s next Tuesday.”
“I know. We gotta talk. Get in the car.”
“Dude, get out of here!”
“Get in the car!” Alvarez said as he opened the door and jumped into the passenger seat.
Ruban didn’t like it one bit, but he complied. His heart was pounding so hard that he thought he was having a Savannah-style panic attack. He slammed the door shut and glared at his friend.
“What is the matter with you? I don’t have your money today.”
“I know, I—” Alvarez stopped himself, making a face. “What is that smell?”
“Never mind that. Your money is hidden. You’ll get it in a week.”
“I need it right away.”
“No! That’s not what we agreed.”
“I’m being followed.”
“That’s what makes it even stupider for you to come here. Now they know me!”
“Don’t worry, I shook the tail. I snuck out the window last night, and nobody followed me. You’re acting like I showed up in my Braxton uniform. No one is going to recognize me dressed like this.”
Ruban breathed a little easier—but the odor hit him again. Alvarez, too.
“Damn,” said Alvarez. “I gotta roll down a window.”
“No, I don’t want anyone to see us!”
Tinted windows did more than keep out the sun. Ruban started the car and blasted the air. Alvarez stuck his nose right up to the vents and drew it in.
“Who’s following you?” asked Ruban.
“I’m not sure. But I’m worried. I heard about Marco.”
“What did you hear?”
“Just what’s on the news, but I’m not stupid, bro. Somebody at the chop shop must have figured out Marco was part of the heist. They followed him to the river and did a chop number on him until he told them where his money was.”
“Pinky doesn’t think he told them anything. That’s why they killed him.”
“Pinky doesn’t know shit. What if Marco gave up my name?”
“Not possible. Marco never knew your name.”
“You swear?”
“Yes.”
That seemed to make Alvarez feel better, but it left an obvious question. “Then who is following me?” asked Alvarez.
“Have the cops been questioning you?”
“Of course,” he said. He told him about the FBI interview. “Two agents. An older guy named Littleford. A woman named Henning. She’s kind of hot, actually.”
“I’m sure she thinks you’re cute, too. What the fuck does it matter that she’s hot?”
“I’m just saying. But you make a good point. It doesn’t matter. Just like it doesn’t matter who’s following me. I’m being followed. Period. I need my money, and I need to get out of Miami.”
“Bad idea. I’m not going to let you do that, bro.”
“Not gonna let me?”
“Your money is hidden. It stays hidden, and we are all staying put until the cops decide that the MIA Lufthansa heist is headed for the cold-case files.”
“That was a good plan before Marco got whacked.”
“It’s still a good plan.”
Alvarez leaned forward, took in another blast of fresh air from the A/C vent, then shook his head. “This started out as us grabbing a few bags of cash from a big-ass German bank that ships a hundred million dollars every week. A little payback for their banker buddies in Miami who took your house and are still driving around in their Porsches and BMWs.”
“Those fuckers back in Frankfurt don’t even care if the plane lands,” said Ruban. “They still get rich. It’s all insured.”
“All true,” said Alvarez. “But everything has changed now. Marco got chopped to pieces in the back of a truck, and somebody’s following me. Time for a new plan.”
Ruban didn’t tell him that Pinky was ready to make a run for it, too. And he didn’t dare tell him about Jeffrey. “We’re going to be okay. We have to hang together.”
Alvarez paused, as if he sensed that his words wouldn’t be received well. “I’m thinking about going back to Cuba.”
Ruban could hardly believe his ears. “You’re what?”
“The FBI can’t touch me there. My sister still lives in the middle of nowhere, twenty miles west of Guantánamo. I can stash the money and hide out with her for six months. A year if I have to. When the FBI stops looking for me, I dig up my money, and I’m set for life.”
“Great plan,” said Ruban, scoffing. “But what do you do when you set foot on Cuban soil and they throw you in jail for defecting when you were seventeen years old?”
“That’s not gonna happen, bro. That’s the kind of shit people talk when they run for mayor of Miami.”
Ruban shook his head, laughing without heart.
“What’s so funny?” asked Alvarez.
“Think back fifteen years,” said Ruban. “I still remember that look on your face when we got on that balsa. A wood crate sitting on top of inner tubes, plastic bottles, and anything else that would float. Powered by a lawnmower motor. A jar of fireflies so we can see the compass at night. You know you’re in trouble when there’s no room to bring anything with you except for a coffee can to bail out the water.”
“That was one balls-out trip. Good thing we had that virgin with us—somebody to pray to God we make it across the Florida Straits.”
They shared a smile, but it was tinged with a measure of sadness. “We were the lucky ones,” said Ruban, and he could see the memories clouding Octavio’s eyes. They’d been part of the Cuban raft exodus of summer 1994. Some made it all the way to U.S. shores. The Coast Guard plucked another 31,000 from the sea and shipped them to overcrowded refugee camps at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo. An unknown number succumbed to twelve-foot waves, storms, dehydration, exposure, rafts that had no business being anywhere near the water, or just plain bad luck, their fates sealed at the bottom of the ocean, or in the bellies of sharks.
“What if I had told you then that you were going to be a millionaire before you were thirty-five?” asked Ruban.
“I’d have called you crazy.”
“And what if I’d also told you that, nine days after all that money was yours to keep, you would look me in the eye and say you’re going back to Cuba?”
That got a real laugh. “I would’ve called you fucking crazy.”
Ruban’s expression turned very serious. “That’s exactly my point, bro.”
Alvarez took a minute to consider it, staring down at the air vent. Then he looked across the console and said, “All right. I get it. I’ll hang tight.”
“Good man,” said Ruban.
Alvarez reached for the door handle. “But next Tuesday’s meeting stands. I get my money.”
“A deal’s a deal,” said Ruban.
Alvarez nodded, opened the door, and climbed out on the passenger side. “Ruban?” he said before closing the door.
“Yeah?”
“Take some of my money,” he said, sniffing, “and buy yourself an air freshener.”
Ruban smiled as the door closed and Al
varez stepped away from the car. Then he pulled out into traffic, ignoring the sad and hungry faces of the homeless as he merged into the morning rush hour.
Chapter 24
Savannah was on edge.
Morning drop-off at the daycare center had gone fine, nothing unusual. At nine o’clock, however, the director called Savannah into her office. Two lawyers had arrived unexpectedly, and the younger one closed the door after Savannah entered.
“What’s up?” asked Savannah. She was trying to sound cheery, but the men in business suits made her voice crack.
“We have a very serious matter on our hands,” said the director.
Savannah took a seat and listened.
“We have a court order,” said the lawyer.
The last time Savannah had seen one of those, she’d lost her house. This time, her thoughts raced to an even scarier place: the heist. Maybe the lawyers represented the airline, the bank, the airport, or the Federal Reserve. Maybe they were prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office.
“How does this involve me?” she asked.
The director opened her desk drawer and handed her a paintbrush. Savannah was the center’s art instructor, but teaching lawyers to paint happy faces seemed beyond her expertise.
“Did you make that sign out in front of the daycare center?” the lawyer asked.
“Yes. Why?”
“We have to change it,” said the director.
The lawyers were intellectual-property specialists. The illegal “Mickey & Minnie Daycare Center” needed a new name and new mascots, or it would be shut down immediately. Savannah tried not to look too relieved as this “very serious matter” was explained to her.
“I’ll get right on it,” said Savannah.
It took her about an hour. The ears were a challenge, but Mickey and Minnie were transformed into “Mikey and Millie,” Miami’s friendliest raccoons.
Savannah cleaned her brushes and could breathe again, but it wasn’t the alleged trademark infringement that had her so upset. When she’d walked into the main office and seen the suits, she’d seriously thought that the Justice Department was on the premises and that she’d be leaving in handcuffs. It was so unnerving that she violated the no–cell phone rule to check on Jeffrey. She called him from the bathroom.
“Did you make it to the dentist?” she asked.
“No. I’m in bed.”
It was after ten o’clock. “Jeffrey, you were supposed to be there two hours ago.”
“I’ll get there when I get there.”
“Aren’t you in pain?”
“I rubbed coke on my gums. I’m all numb. It’s fine.”
Savannah didn’t bother with the “just say no” lecture. Drugs had been an on-and-off problem for Jeffrey since high school. He’d turned things around for a while, but losing his job had sent him into a downward spiral, which was now going on two years. Moving back home wasn’t just about a place to live. Savannah suspected that, unbeknownst to Mommy, at least half her monthly Social Security check was going up Jeffrey’s nose.
“Get your butt out of bed and go to the dentist,” she said. “Or I’m telling Mom about the strippers.”
Jeffrey groaned. Their mother could look the other way about drug addiction, a treatable illness, but strippers were for perverts, and perverts couldn’t live in Mommy’s house. Savannah hung up, knowing that she had him, and went back to work.
She stayed busy the rest of the morning helping three-year-olds paint self-portraits. Her favorite little girl was vomiting and had to be picked up early, one more reason to put today in the “not as fun as usual” category. But the real source of her stomachache—Savannah’s, not the little girl’s—was the afternoon appointment with the social worker from the Florida Department of Children and Family Services.
DCF was the Florida agency in charge of placing neglected or abandoned children. It was Savannah’s best shot at adoption, though it wasn’t where her journey had begun. She and Ruban had been trying for months. They’d started with a private adoption agency. Naturally, she’d been nervous about it. Even though all criminal charges against her had been dropped, no conviction, her prior arrest had cost her a job at Grove Academy. She’d gone into the meeting with the private adoption counselor fully prepared to explain that her brother Jeffrey had borrowed her car, that she was stopped for speeding the next day, and that the neatly rolled joint the police had spotted on the backseat “in plain view” had belonged to Jeffrey, not her. She never got to give the explanation. Her arrest wasn’t the problem.
“I’m afraid I have bad news for you.” The counselor’s words had caught Savannah off guard. Their first meeting with the private adoption agency had gone well, she’d thought.
“How bad?” asked Savannah.
“Your application has been rejected.”
Ruban was seated beside her, but Savannah did the talking. “We’ve barely even gotten started. You said there would be a series of meetings. You were going to come to our house, talk to our references, all that stuff.”
“How should I put this?” asked the counselor. “Sometimes there’s a red flag that halts the adoption process cold.”
“I think I know what you’re talking about,” said Savannah. “But there is a perfectly innocent explanation for this ‘red flag.’”
“Look, I’ll be honest with you. You might find an agency that will approve you, but I doubt it. Certainly this agency will not approve you, no matter what the explanation.”
“That’s not fair. The charges were dropped.”
Ruban took her hand. “Let’s go, Savannah.”
“No,” she said firmly. “This is crazy. We both have jobs. We own a house. We’re good people. Okay, there was an arrest. We can explain that. But an arrest is not a conviction.”
The counselor closed her file. “First of all, it doesn’t help matters for you to misrepresent the criminal history.”
“I’m not misrepresenting anything.”
“Look,” said the counselor. “At the end of the day, a private adoption agency is a business. We can’t stay in business if a birth mother has any doubt in her mind about the placement of her child in a safe environment.”
Ruban nudged her. “Savannah, really. Let’s just go.”
“No. I was arrested, but I was never even prosecuted. The case was thrown out.”
The counselor appeared momentarily confused. She glanced at Ruban, who wouldn’t look her in the eye, and she seemed to sense the marital disconnect. “Mr. Betancourt, is there something you haven’t told your wife?”
Ruban said nothing, so the counselor answered for him.
“Mrs. Betancourt, your husband is a convicted felon.”
Savannah’s mouth opened, but words didn’t come. From the day she’d met Ruban, she’d known he was a risk taker, which she was not, and which had drawn her to him. This was not the kind of boldness she’d bargained for.
She pushed away from the table, smothering the urge to scream.
“Thank you for your time,” she told the counselor. “Ruban, we should go now. You and I need to talk.”
It was a bitter memory, and Savannah put it out of her mind as she led the DCF social worker to the play area behind the daycare center. The two women sat alone at one of the picnic tables. A sea of eucalyptus mulch stretched from their table to the monkey bars. Sprawling oaks shaded the entire playground.
Savannah had given up trying to find a private adoption agency that would place a child in the home of a convicted felon. The international door had closed just as quickly; under federal law, a felony conviction was an absolute bar to international adoption. Savannah’s hope was that a state agency would be more flexible about her husband’s situation. She also hoped that working at a daycare center would help her chances, since the center didn’t seem to have any problem with her husband. This was the day that DCF was to observe Savannah on the job and speak to her coworkers.
“Sorry if I seem nervous,” said Savanna
h.
“You don’t have to apologize.”
The DCF social worker went by “Betty,” but her name was Beatriz, which Savannah took as good luck, since that was her mother’s name. “This is just really important to me,” said Savannah.
Betty nodded, seeming to understand. “As I told you before, you have a complicated application.”
“I know. I’m so grateful that you’ve been able to carry us through this far. If I can just have a shot at giving DCF the total picture, I know I’ll be approved.”
“Well, let’s be clear. There are circumstances where DCF can work around a . . .” Betty paused to find a suitable euphemism for “felony conviction,” acutely aware that they were on a children’s playground. “Where DCF can work around a situation such as your husband’s. Especially if it was a long time ago and there are mitigating circumstances.”
“That’s exactly the case here.”
“Then there’s hope,” Betty said. “But this is far from a sure thing. I want to caution you not to get your hopes up too high.”
Savannah took a breath, reeling in her excitement. “I won’t,” she said, but that was her biggest lie yet.
An even bigger lie than her application.
Chapter 25
Friday was Andie’s date night.
Andie had dodged plenty of matchmaking efforts since moving to Miami. At her unit chief’s house on Sunday evening, she’d been polite but clear about her lack of interest in meeting Barbara Littleford’s cousin—the poor, recently divorced attorney who “isn’t poor.” Undeterred, Mrs. Littleford followed up midweek with a voice-mail message straight from Cupid’s quiver. “Just meet him for a glass of wine after work on Friday. He could be your type.”
A lawyer? My type?
Ironically, Andie’s ironclad excuse would come from Barbara’s husband. He and the assistant special agent in charge of the Miami field office arranged her “date” with Special Agent Benny Sosa. It was Andie’s first undercover assignment in Miami.
“Did I put on too much cologne?” Sosa asked from the driver’s seat.
Sosa was a handsome ex-jock with hair a little too styled, muscles a little too big, and shirt a little too tight. It only seemed fitting that he’d overdo the love potion. Andie’s allergic sniffles began just two minutes into the car ride.
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