Cash Landing Read online

“Four guards and four warehouse employees. They’re sitting over there, with Foreman,” he said, indicating with a jerk of his head.

  Andie wondered which one would be trading in his uniform for prison garb. “A job like this doesn’t happen without inside help.”

  “Yup,” said Watts.

  “What about camera surveillance?”

  “Two outside cameras, four inside. They’re all monitored by airport security from the main terminal. Crooks were outta here before security noticed anything and dispatched police.”

  “You think the guy watching the screens was in on it? Maybe looking the other way?”

  “Honestly, I don’t. I talked with the director of airport security. The weekend staff is shorthanded. Just three guys watching dozens of screens that cover the entire airport.”

  “Wouldn’t they be more focused on this particular warehouse when a hundred million dollars in cash is clearing customs?”

  “The policy is not to give advance notice of a cash delivery to the guards who watch the CCTV screens, or to anyone else who isn’t part of a very small need-to-know circle. It makes sense: the more fifteen-dollar-an-hour employees who know exactly when a hundred million bucks’ll be spread across the floor in the warehouse, the more people you tempt into planning an inside job.”

  Andie couldn’t disagree with his logic, but she still suspected an insider. Her gaze drifted back to the eight men who were in the warehouse at the time of the heist—the armored-truck guards, in particular.

  “Which one you got your eye on?” asked Andie.

  “One of the guards. Octavio Alvarez. Cuban-American guy.”

  Watts was showing his bias from Tom Cat experience, where the “Cuban connection” was always part of any investigation into a cargo heist. Cuban-American crime syndicates in Miami preyed on Cuban nationals in Havana and other cities. The price of a trip to Florida was an indefinite stint as a “lumper” offloading truckloads of stolen cargo, followed by a string of heists around the country. For some young men, the risk of incarceration in the United States outweighed the risk of a leaky boat across the shark-infested Florida Straits.

  “Why Alvarez?” asked Andie.

  He shrugged. “Just a hunch.”

  It was possible that his hunch was correct, but Andie was trying to clear her head of the stereotypes that might apply in a Tom Cat case. Cargo theft, at the FBI, was part of “Major Thefts,” grouped together with stolen jewelry, art, vehicles, and the like. Bank robbery was part of “Violent Crimes,” grouped together with gangs, kidnapping, murder for hire, and serial killings. It wasn’t about turf wars. It involved different training, made investigators think differently, and changed the way they looked at things. As far as criminal enterprises went, cargo heists were comparatively low risk, while thieves who targeted money flights had historically shown an uncanny knack for ending up dead or in prison. The “hunches” an investigator followed early on were critical, which in Andie’s mind underscored the need for the FBI to take control of the crime scene.

  Where the heck are you, Littleford?

  “I’ll want to talk to all of the guards,” said Andie.

  “Better move fast. Braxton Security will have its lawyers here any minute. That’s rarely a good thing for the flow of information.”

  Andie checked her watch. Littleford was hands-on, and she knew he would want to be part of the witness interrogations. She’d give him two more minutes, tops.

  “Tell me more about the CCTV cameras. What’d we get?”

  “Not much more than the eyewitnesses gave us. Outside cameras confirmed the getaway vehicle was a black Ford F-150. Also picked up a plate number, but it turned out to be stolen from some old lady’s Cadillac in Doral, so that leads us nowhere. Inside cameras show both perps, but at the end of the day, we’re left with two males of average height and build wearing ski masks and sunglasses.”

  “I’ll get my tech people to see about enhancing it.”

  Andie sent a quick message to her tech agent, then walked toward the cargo lift. Watts showed her where the black pickup had parked and pointed out the bag that never made it to the truck. It was still on the floor where the thieves had dropped it.

  “Expensive case of the dropsies. Check for prints,” said Andie.

  “I’m sure we’ll get some, but not any from the perps. Witnesses say they wore gloves.”

  An FBI van pulled up outside the open cargo doors. Several agents jumped out and entered the warehouse. Another van was right behind. Special Agent Littleford hopped up on the loading dock and entered the warehouse.

  “Fill me in,” he said to Watts. “And FBI takes jurisdiction from here.”

  The direct approach. Andie listened as Watts gave Littleford the same quick recap, and then Littleford followed up with some questions of his own.

  “No shots fired? You confirmed that?” he asked.

  “Correct. None.”

  “How well armed were the perps?”

  “At least one handgun, for sure. Witnesses agree that it looked like a semiautomatic.”

  “I’ve already told tech to work on the security video,” said Andie. “Hopefully we’ll get a make and model on the gun.”

  “Which they’ve dumped by now, if they’re smart,” said Littleford.

  Watts agreed. “Seems to me they came here knowing that none of the guards would be armed and wanted to have as many hands free as possible to carry out the money bags. But it would be safe to assume more firepower in the truck to ward off any pursuit. The BOLO says ‘armed and dangerous,’” he added, referring to the “be on the lookout” alert.

  Littleford started across the warehouse, taking Andie with him. “Let’s talk to the witnesses,” he said, but then he stopped short at the bag of cash that the thieves had dropped.

  “This is our best friend right here,” he said. “Even if they wore gloves and we don’t lift a single print.”

  “How so?” asked Andie.

  “We have no shots fired, no blood, and no one hurt. Well, that’s all about to change. I don’t have to be the fly on the wall to hear them arguing already: ‘Dude, you’re the one who dropped the bag. That comes out of your split.’ Oh, yeah. It’s gonna get ugly. Real ugly.”

  Andie returned the thin law enforcement smile. This wasn’t the undercover work she’d transferred across the country to do, but she liked the way Littleford operated.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go find their insider.”

  Chapter 3

  Five sealed canvas bags lay in a heap, a virtual mountain of concealed cash lying on the cracked and oil-stained garage floor.

  The transfer of the money bags from the getaway truck to the trunk of Ruban’s car had gone off without a hitch. Marco from the tile depot had supplied the “borrowed” black pickup, and it was his job to ditch it. Jeffrey and his uncle left in separate cars and in opposite directions. Ruban drove off with the money, but only after assuring his coconspirators that all five bags would remain sealed until it was time to make the split. They agreed it would be that night in the garage at the Betancourts’ rental house.

  “Open it, bro,” said Jeffrey.

  Ruban was standing over the bags with a kitchen knife in his hand. Pinky was beside him. It was just the three of them. The others would get their money later.

  “Hold on,” said Pinky. “What if there’s one of those blue dye packs inside? You know, the ones that explode in your face when you open the sack of money.”

  “Alvarez says there’s no dye packs,” said Ruban.

  “What if some kind of tracking chip starts beaming out a signal to the cops when you open the bag?”

  “Alvarez says no. Nothing but money inside.”

  Jeffrey chuckled. “Dumb fucks need to watch more cop shows. Open the bag, bro.”

  He tried to puncture it with a kitchen knife and nearly broke the blade. The bag was impenetrable. “I need a power tool.”

  Jeffrey got an electric drill and a steel bit from
the tool board. Ruban used it like a jigsaw to cut a fist-sized hole in the bottom of the bag. He reached inside eagerly, grabbing and pulling brick after brick through the hole. The bag hemorrhaged fifty- and hundred-dollar bills until it was empty.

  “Ho-leee shit,” said Jeffrey, staring at the pile of money on the concrete floor.

  “Pretty, huh?” said Ruban. “Four more just like it.”

  “Who’s going to do the counting?” asked Pinky.

  “I’ll do it,” said Jeffrey.

  “You can’t count that fucking high.”

  “Then let Savannah count it,” said Jeffrey. “She’ll get it right.”

  Savannah was Ruban’s wife, and Jeffrey’s younger sister. The joke in the family was that “Savannah got the looks, but Savannah got the brains”—which, strangely, always made brother Jeffrey laugh. She was a Latina beauty with none of her brother’s weight issues. “Wow,” “gorgeous,” “sexy,” and “linda, como su madre” were typical of the ways people described her. Ruban was handsome, not in the classic sense but more in the bad-boy Marc Anthony mold, so it was plain to see why he’d fallen for the neighborhood version of J-Lo. Some said there was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep her.

  “Savannah’s not home,” said Ruban. “I made sure of that.”

  “How much does she know?” asked Pinky.

  Ruban looked right at his accomplice, making sure he understood. “Nada. Savannah knows nothing.”

  “But she has to find out some time,” said Jeffrey.

  “She finds out when I’m ready to tell her. Got it?”

  “Yeah, sure. Whatever you say.”

  “I’ll count the money,” said Ruban.

  It took hours to cut open the bags, count each bill, and divide each player’s take into separate piles. Three times Jeffrey had gone out to “use the bathroom.” Each time he’d come back all wired up and sniffling, unable to stop pacing a circle around the money. Clearly he’d been blowing coke. That was one drug Ruban had no use for. Some guys claimed it was an aphrodisiac, but as far as he could see, doing coke only made you want to do one thing: more coke.

  By midnight, there were seven stacks on the floor. Ruban announced the final tally. One million for Alvarez, the armored-car insider. Another million for Marco.

  “The rest is ours,” said Ruban. “Three-way split.”

  “How much? How much?” asked Jeffrey.

  “Two-point-five million and change.”

  “Woo-hoo! Wait. Is that before or after taxes?”

  It was late, Ruban was exhausted, and he was in no mood for his brother-in-law’s jokes. “Listen up,” he said. “I’ll make sure Alvarez gets his money. Pinky, did you and Marco work out a time and place to get his share to him?”

  Pinky had brought Marco into the heist. They’d met in prison. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Please tell me you have a plan in place,” said Ruban.

  “I said I’ll take care of it.”

  “Damn it, Pinky. I don’t want phone calls flying back and forth about splitting up the money. I gave Alvarez clear instructions: third Tuesday, eight a.m., corner of U.S. 1 and Bird. Boom. Octavio knows to be there, no phone calls needed. You and Marco were supposed to do the same.”

  “Alvarez is different. The FBI will be watching the guards like a hawk. Nobody knows to keep an eye on Marco.”

  “We can’t get sloppy anywhere.”

  “Here’s a plan,” said Jeffrey. “I’ll take my money now. I am going to par-tee tonight.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Ruban. “We are going to lay low.”

  “Low, uh-huh, real low,” Jeffrey said in the deep, rhythmic voice of a rapper. He arched his back and mimicked a limbo dance, his shirt rising up to expose his big belly above the beltline. “How low . . . can you go . . . bro?”

  Ruban smacked him across the head, knocking Jeffrey onto his ass. “I’m serious. Stop goofing off.”

  Jeffrey picked himself up. “It’s my money, bro.”

  “We’re in this together. If one of us gets caught, we all get caught.”

  “They catch me, I don’t give up nobody,” said Jeffrey.

  “Just listen to me,” said Ruban. “This is how it’s going to be. We don’t go out drinking and partying. We don’t flash money. We all get up and do what we do on a regular Monday morning.”

  “Cool. I sleep till noon,” said Jeffrey.

  “The perfect cover for you would be to go out and start looking for work,” said Ruban.

  “Fuck that,” said Jeffrey. “I don’t ever have to go back to work now.”

  “It’s about perception,” said Ruban. “You ever see the movie Goodfellas, Jeffrey?”

  “No. What’s that, gay porn?”

  “It’s about the guys who pulled off the biggest heist ever from JFK airport. It went perfect.”

  “Just like us.”

  “Yeah. Except we don’t want to end up like them. They were snorting coke before they even counted up the money. It was fucking Mafia wars before it was all over. Like a dozen guys ended up dead.”

  “Yeah? So? That was them.”

  “It could be us. This is no bullshit, bro. We gotta lay low.”

  “What do we do with the money while we’re laying low?” asked Jeffrey.

  “We stash it,” said Ruban. “Ninety days, minimum. We act like this never happened.”

  “No, no,” said Pinky. “We gotta launder it. I saw this in a Ben Affleck movie. You buy shit, you go to the casino, you—”

  “Forget it,” said Ruban. “Laundering the money is what the cops expect us to do. If we do what they expect, we get caught.”

  “So when you say stash it, you mean what?” asked Pinky.

  “Simple. First, we put the money in vacuum-sealed bags.”

  “Vacuum-cleaner bags?” asked Jeffrey.

  “No, moron. It’s a machine. I bought it already. It seals things in plastic so no air and no water can get inside. You can use it on anything. Food, clothes—”

  “Money.”

  “You got it. So we seal the bricks into packets that hold anywhere from ten to twenty-five grand, and we stuff the packs inside PVC pipe. I bought the pipe already, too.”

  “Okay, then what?”

  Ruban walked toward the rack of tools on the other side of the garage and grabbed a shovel. “We bury it.”

  “You want to stick seven and a half million bucks in the ground?” asked Pinky.

  “Yup.”

  “Where?”

  Ruban smiled a little. “Where no one will find it.”

  Jeffrey grimaced, clearly not in love with the idea. Pinky was more vocal. “This is stupid. Marco and Octavio get their money, but we gotta bury ours?”

  “I’m not related to those guys,” said Ruban. “We’re family. We need to act as one unit. And this unit is flying under the radar.”

  “Fine,” said Pinky. “Seal up the money, and each of us buries his own share.”

  “I don’t trust you guys to bury it,” said Ruban.

  “I don’t trust you to keep my money,” said Pinky.

  “This is not negotiable,” said Ruban. “I’m keeping control.”

  “Not of my money, you’re not.”

  “Mine neither,” said Jeffrey.

  “Stay out of this, Jeffrey,” said Ruban.

  Pinky stepped closer. “Give me my money, bro, before this gets ugly.”

  Jeffrey backed away from them nervously. “Guys, come on. Let’s not fight.”

  Pinky pulled his cell from his pocket, his gaze fixed on Ruban. “No one’s going to fight. Either I walk out of here with my money, or I call my sweet little niece and tell her what her husband’s been up to today.”

  “I’m going to tell her myself,” said Ruban.

  “Bullshit,” said Pinky. “You want to sit on the money until you figure out some explanation that doesn’t involve you stealing it.”

  Their eyes locked, and the glares intensified. Neither man blinked, and R
uban could feel the power shift in the air. The honeymoon had barely started.

  Already it was over.

  Chapter 4

  It was five a.m. when Ruban returned home. He tried not to wake Savannah as he climbed into bed, but his head hit the pillow so hard that she stirred. She snuggled up next to him.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  He’d told her only that Jeffrey was doing coke again, which was true, and that the “intervention” would probably keep him out late, which was a lie. His muscles still ached from burying the money: his share, along with Octavio’s and some of Jeffrey’s. Pinky had gotten his way.

  “I’m really worried about Jeffrey,” he told her.

  “I love you so much for that. I don’t know what my poor mother would do without you. Did Jeffrey give you a hard time?”

  “Oh, yeah. He gave me a hard time, all right.”

  Pinky’s insistence that each man hide his own money had emboldened Jeffrey, and it had been World War III to get Jeffrey to leave behind a “withhold” of five hundred thousand dollars for Ruban to bury. “You can take the rest and stash it yourself,” Ruban had told him, “but if I see you flashing money, you forfeit half a mil.” It had seemed like a workable solution at the time, but Ruban was having second thoughts.

  “I’m afraid he’s going to take us all down,” said Ruban.

  “That won’t happen,” she said.

  “Don’t be so sure,” he said. They were speaking about two entirely different things, but Ruban wasn’t ready to tell her about the money. Net yet.

  “Jeffrey can’t hurt us,” she said.

  “Sure he can. He’s a cokehead.”

  She ran her finger lightly across his chest. “That’s him, not us. You are strong. You are smart. You have a beautiful, sexy wife.” She kissed the side of his mouth, but he didn’t react.

  “One slip and all that’s gone,” he said. He propped himself up on his elbow, looking at her in the darkness. There was just enough moonlight streaming through the blinds for him to see. “The slightest slip, that’s all it takes. Poof, you can lose everything.”

  “Ruban, you’re kind of scaring me.”

  He hesitated, wondering if it was the right time. He eased into it. “Tonight wasn’t about an intervention.”