Cash Landing (25 page)

A
ndie met her unit chief at the FBI field office early Saturday morning. Littleford stood beside her in the A/V center as a tech agent replayed the phone conversation that FBI surveillance equipment had intercepted and recorded from the Betancourts' landline.

“If you still think we're playing, you'll see we're not. A piece of your brother is on its way to you, special delivery. Pay the ransom, or that's the way he's coming home: bit by bit.”

The recording ended. Andie and her supervisor exchanged glances, but she let him speak first.

“Pretty chilling stuff,” he said.

Andie checked the clock on the wall—7:09 a.m. “It's been over six hours. You think he's still alive?”

“I do.”

“Looks like we secured that wiretap none too soon,” said Andie.

Littleford settled into the office chair at the head of the rectangular conference table. “Connect the dots for me, Henning. Where does this Jeffrey fit in?”

Andie quickly recapped what the FBI knew, the direct line from Octavio Alvarez to Ruban Betancourt as raft mates; from Ruban to his brother-in-law, Jeffrey Beauchamp; and from Jeffrey to his uncle, Craig “Pinky” Perez.

“I think it's time we bring in Betancourt for questioning,” said Andie.

Littleford pondered it, then spoke. “Why?”

“Why
? How would Betancourt have the ability to pay a half-million-dollar ransom if he wasn't part of the MIA heist? It's pretty obvious that his old friend Octavio Alvarez brought him in.”

“Fair point. But that's not enough for an arrest.”

“I didn't say arrest him. I said bring him in.”

Littleford flashed a quizzical expression. “I can't imagine you would want to do that at this point.”

“A man has been kidnapped, and we just heard his kidnapper threaten to chop him to pieces.”

“There was a threat, yes.”

“A pretty convincing threat. He screamed like a wounded banshee.”

“Maybe it was a wounded banshee.”

“That scream was real,” said Andie.

“Maybe.”

“No maybe about it. Don't forget what happened to Marco Aroyo.”

“We don't know that these are the same people who got Aroyo.”

It was Andie's turn to wear the puzzled expression. “I'm feeling pushback here, and I don't fully understand it. We just heard a credible threat of serious and imminent bodily injury to the victim of a kidnapping. You can be sure that Betancourt isn't going to call the cops if, as I believe, he was part of the heist and is sitting on millions of dollars in stolen money. His brother-in-law might be a crook, too, but right now he's a kidnapping victim. We need to move in.”

Littleford nodded slowly, but it was far from total agreement. “That's one side of it.”

“If there's another side, I'm dying to hear it.”

Littleford rose, walked over to the whiteboard on the wall, and grabbed a marker from the tray. “Here's what we don't know,” he said, writing in red as he spoke. “One: Where's the money? Two:
Where's Pinky? Three: Was anyone besides Aroyo, Alvarez, Betancourt, Beauchamp, and Pinky involved?

“Here's what we
do
know,” he said as he put down the marker, facing Andie squarely. “If you haul Betancourt in for interrogation now, we will never get answers to any of those questions.”

“I see it differently. Betancourt must be getting pressure from his wife to save her brother. We can use that angle to our advantage. We can save his brother-in-law and offer both of them a deal on the robbery if Betancourt tells us where Pinky is and where they hid the money.”

“What if he doesn't know where Pinky is?”

Andie didn't have an answer.

“What if he tells us where
half
the money is and then digs up the rest when he gets out of prison in five years?”

Again she didn't answer.

“That's what I thought you'd say,” said Littleford. “Your plan won't work.”

“Again, I respectfully disagree,” said Andie.

“You're respectfully overruled. Let the wiretap play out.”

“That's a dangerous strategy. Jeffrey Beauchamp could end up dead.”

“I'm not saying we let it play out that far.”

“That's the problem. How do we know how far is too far? The kidnapper told Savannah that he would call her husband again this weekend. Jeffrey Beauchamp could end up like Marco Aroyo, and I don't want his mutilated body on my head.”

“It's not on your head,” said Littleford. “It's on mine.”

She wasn't persuaded, but she respected his stand-up approach. Littleford was the opposite of what she'd experienced in Seattle, where shit flowed from top to bottom.

“The wiretap might not tell us everything we need to know,” she said. “I'd feel better if we put a tail on Betancourt. And his wife.”

“You got it.”

“Okay,” said Andie, sighing more loudly than intended. “So that's the plan.”

“Yeah,” Littleford said. “That is the plan.”

S
avannah rode the Metrorail green line toward Jackson Memorial Hospital and got off at the Civic Center station. She walked past the Miller School of Medicine campus and the University of Miami Hospital and then followed the cracked sidewalk beneath an interstate overpass to a place where life was less about hope and healing. The Miami-Dade County Women's Detention Center, a drab multistory building that butted up against the noisy Dolphin Expressway, looked exactly as it did in the website photo that Savannah had found. She knew from her quick online research that it housed 375 female inmates. Some were awaiting trial at the nearby criminal courthouse. Others were serving time.

One was about to receive an unexpected visitor.

“I'm here to see Mindy Baird,” Savannah told the guard at the visitors' entrance. A pane of bulletproof glass stood between them. Savannah passed her identification through the slot, and the guard buzzed her through the metal door to the clearance center. Her phone, purse, belt, earrings, and everything in her pockets went into a metal storage locker. A female guard checked her with a handheld metal detector, gave her a quick physical pat-down, and then led her to the waiting area, which was filled with other visitors.

“Your first time here?” asked the guard.

Savannah wondered how she knew, but if she looked anywhere near as nervous as she felt, it was no wonder. “It is.”

The guard handed her a printed copy of the visitation rules. “Be sure to read these, and wait here until your name is called.”

Savannah promised that she would and found an open seat beside an elderly woman.

Betty the social worker from DCF had delivered on her promise to dig up the name of the accuser in Ruban's domestic violence conviction. Mindy Baird's incarceration complicated matters, but Savannah was determined to meet her. Nerves, however, were taking a toll. Savannah had barely slept at her mother's house, but she'd managed to head out early, no questions asked, her destination a secret. She was too on edge to converse with any of the other visitors in the waiting room, and she was glad the old woman beside her was busy praying aloud in Spanish, rosary beads in hand, no interest in small talk. It was exactly what Savannah's mother would have been doing if she were visiting her daughter in prison, and Savannah quickly shook off the disturbing thought that her own family could indeed find itself in that position—that in the eyes of the law Savannah was even more involved in the MIA mess than she realized.

“Savannah Betancourt?” the guard said.

Savannah stepped forward. The guard inspected her visitor's badge and led her down the hall to the visitation center. Savannah had stressed all night over being in the same room with Mindy Baird, but the rule sheet specified that contact visits were allowed only if scheduled in advance. The guard took her to a booth, and Savannah sat before a pane of glass that separated visitors from inmates. Savannah waited, noting the smudges on the glass, each fingerprint on her side matched by one on the other, the “contact” between loved ones.

The door opened on the cellblock side. A young woman dressed in orange prison garb entered the visitation room. Savannah tried not to stare as she approached the glass. She checked for a name on the coveralls to confirm her identity, but there was
none: Mindy Baird was a number. She took a seat facing Savannah. Neither one reached for the phone on the wall. The first minute on opposite sides of the glass was their time to size each other up.

Mindy was prettier than expected, her face surprisingly fresh for a woman serving time on charges of drug use and prostitution. Her eyes were her most attractive feature, big and brown, with naturally long lashes. Her hair was shoulder length. Savannah surmised that the damaged ends had been cut off, like the other parts of her life that said “drug addict.”

Mindy made the first move, and Savannah reciprocated by picking up the phone on her side of the glass.

“So you're Ruban's wife,” Mindy said. She sounded unimpressed.

“How did you know?”

“Betancourt. Ruban doesn't have a sister. I didn't think the name was a coincidence. How long you been married?”

Savannah paused. She hadn't come to share information about herself. “A few years.”

“Does he hit you?”

Savannah shifted in her chair. “Actually, no. Never.”

“Well, aren't you the lucky girl? Did he tell you what he did to me?”

“Yes. That's why I'm here.”

“What did he tell you?”

Savannah repeated her husband's words: Mindy strung out on drugs, begging Ruban not to leave and ripping off her blouse as he packed his suitcase; Ruban tackling her when she pulled a pistol; the police bursting into the apartment to find Mindy on the floor and Ruban in control, gun in hand.

Mindy laughed into the phone.

“Why is that funny?” asked Savannah.

“That's exactly what my mother told me to say.”

“You mean when it happened?”

“No. Yesterday. It was the first time she's come to visit me since I been here. She wanted me to sign a sworn statement that says exactly what you just said.”

“So it is the truth?”

“Hell no, it's not the truth. Why would anyone pay me twenty-five thousand dollars to sign my name to a sworn statement if it was the truth?”

“What—twenty-five thousand? From Ruban?”

“Yes
, from Ruban. Are you trying to tell me you don't know anything about this?”

“No, and I can't say that I believe you, either.”

“I wouldn't want to believe something like that about my husband, either. Not that it matters. I'm not gonna sign anything for no twenty-five thousand dollars. Not when my mother gets five times that much.”

Savannah blinked, startled by the number. “Ruban is paying you and your mother . . . how much?”

“One-fifty. That's how much he put on the table to clear his name. My mom says my cut is twenty-five. Can you believe that? She tells me that's the price I pay for getting knocked up at seventeen and making her raise my kid.”

Apparently Grandma Baird hadn't said a word to Mindy about the adoption, but that wasn't the only thing that had Savannah's head spinning. “Wait a minute. You were
seventeen
?”

“Almost eighteen when she was born.”

“But Ruban was—”

“Twenty-six.”

Gross. Utterly and completely gross.
It was Savannah's turn to speak, but her thoughts consumed her, and the words didn't come.

“Are you okay?” asked Mindy.

“Not really.”

“Can I ask you one simple question?”

“Sure,” said Savannah.

“It's been five years. Why is it suddenly so important for Ruban to clear his criminal record?”

Clearly her mother had said nothing about the adoption. Savannah wasn't sure if she should go there, but she eased into it, intentionally vague.

“We're thinking about adopting a child.”

“Adoption, huh? I know a little something about that. My mother adopted my—”

Mindy stopped cold. Savannah could almost see the lightbulb above her head.

“Oh, my God,” said Mindy. “Now I see what's going on. It seemed like a lot of money, a hundred fifty thousand dollars just for me to sign an affidavit and clear Ruban's name. But now I get it. That money isn't just for my signature. You and Ruban are buying my baby.”

Savannah didn't answer.

“You bitch! You're
buying my baby
!”

The accusation crushed Savannah, but she didn't deny it. She wasn't sure where this one ranked in Ruban's string of lies—lies that brought everything into question, from his criminal past to his very denial of any involvement in the heist.

Mindy rose and leaned toward the glass. “You can't have my daughter,” she said, hissing. Then she slammed the phone into its cradle.

Savannah watched as she turned and went to the door. The guard opened it, and before she disappeared into the cell block, Mindy looked back and shot Savannah the finger. Savannah hung up the phone, but she remained in the visitor's chair for a moment longer, unable to move.

“Miss, you have to go now,” the guard told her.

Savannah didn't react.

“It's time to leave,” the guard said.

Time to leave.
Her thought exactly. “Yes,” Savannah said, rising. “You got that right.”

P
inky brought sandwiches back to the warehouse for dinner. He put on his Bush mask and walked down the hall to Jeffrey's room. He opened the door but said nothing, still mindful that even a single word might be enough for Jeffrey to recognize his uncle. He handed him an Italian salami sub with double meat.

“No shanks
,” said Jeffrey, his speech slurred.

They'd yanked out his gold caps with a pair of pliers to elicit that horrific scream in the phone call to Savannah. It was probably overkill to take his teeth and roots along with the caps, but Jeffrey deserved it, if he was stupid enough to buy replacement gold after the first kidnapping.

“Jis shummin uh dree
.
”

Pinky heard that as “Just something to drink.” He gave him a bottle of water, then closed the door and locked it, pulling off his mask as he walked back to the kitchenette. Pedro was seated at the table. The foot-long roast beef on a hoagie roll was still on the counter, untouched. A small mirror lay on the tabletop, and the neat lines of white powder were the focus of Pedro's attention.

“Go easy on the coke,” said Pinky.

Pedro snorted the first of five lines through a tightly rolled hundred-dollar bill. As soon as it was gone, another line magically appeared. Pinky did a double take, and then he realized that it wasn't a mirror and that the replacement line wasn't real. Pedro
was snorting from his iPad screen. The real lines had been inhaled; their replacements on the “mirror” were virtual.

Pedro smiled. “It's my never-ending-coke app. The rolled-up bill acts like a stylus, so as you vacuum up the real coke, the app generates a virtual line to replace it. I'm investing my share of the ransom money in it. Brilliant, huh?”

“Brilliant, all right. What cokehead on the verge of drug-induced psychosis wouldn't want to be tricked into thinking there's more coke when it's really all gone?”

Pedro paused, seeming to take Pinky's point. A tap on the iPad screen erased the five electronic lines, leaving just the virtual mirror. Then he laid out five more lines of the real thing. He inhaled two of them, and the app did its job: still five lines on the screen, albeit two of them were mere computer graphics.

“Did you send the gold caps to Savannah?” asked Pedro.

“I decided not to.”

“But we told her that a piece of her brother was on its way. ‘Bit by bit'—remember?”

“I know what we told her.” Pinky grabbed a beer from the fridge, unwrapped half of the roast beef sub, and joined Pedro at the table. “I had them all packed up and ready to go, and then it hit me: if we start sending her body parts, she might call the cops.”

Pedro was about to do another real line but stopped, incredulous. “Shit, bro. If you thought there's any chance she might go to the police, you should never have brought her into this.”

“The only way Savannah might run to the cops is if her brother's gold caps or fingers or whatever land in her mailbox. Until that happens, Ruban won't let her go to the cops.”

The third real line disappeared, and a virtual line took its place. Pedro pinched his nostrils as he spoke, savoring the real stuff. “Big mistake,” he said, shaking his head. “Rule number one of kidnapping: Don't tell the family to look in the mailbox for proof that you mean business and then not send the proof.”

Pinky drank more beer. “Just be patient.”

Pedro rubbed his gums with the residue of a real line. “Here's where I come out on this, bro. On a gig like this, you're either all in, or you get out. Let's cut our losses and run. Just call Ruban and lower the ransom to something he'll pay.”

“That's worse than not sending the gold caps. That shows weakness.”

“It shows intelligence. Take what we can get before the cops get involved.”

“You're panicking.”

“Maybe with good reason. How do we know the cops aren't right on our heels, ten minutes away from arresting us for the murder of Marco Aroyo or Octavio Alvarez? I say we grab whatever money Ruban puts on the table and get the hell out of Miami.”

“That's the problem. Right now there's nothing on the table.”

“The only way to fix that is to get serious.”

“This
is
serious.”

Pedro rose, crossed the kitchenette, and opened one of the drawers. He found the knife he was looking for, walked back, and buried the tip of the ten-inch blade into the wooden tabletop. “I mean deadly serious.”

The knife stood upright between them, still wobbling from the impact. Pinky looked past it and stared at Pedro. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

“This is how we lower the ransom and save face.”

“I don't follow you.”

“Let's keep Savannah out of this if you think she might go to the cops. We cut off Jeffrey's finger, send Ruban a picture, and tell him the ransom is slashed from five hundred to four-fifty. If he doesn't pay, we cut off Jeffrey's ear, send Ruban another picture, and lower it to four hundred. Every hour we whack off another piece and lower the ransom.”

“That's insane!”

“No, it's hardball.”

“Pedro, this is a fucking kidnapping, not a scratch-and-dent sale.”

Pedro was down to his last two lines of real coke on the virtual mirror. They were gone in two quick sniffs and “replaced” just as quickly. “You're right. That is stupid,” he said as he pressed his finger to the side of his nose, working it. “We need to speed this up, not drag it out.”

“That's the real cocaine talking. It's making you paranoid.”

“No, no. I'm seeing things very clearly. Okay, let's forget slashing the price a little bit at a time. Here's what we do: we call Ruban and tell him the ransom is cut in half—a quarter mil. No more negotiation. If we don't get the money in two hours, it's game over: we cut Jeffrey in half.”

“That's even stupider than your first idea.”

Pedro considered it. “You're right. Jeffrey's too fat to cut in half.”

“Enough talk,” said Pinky, groaning. “Just shut up and let me eat.”

Pedro drummed his fingers on the table, thinking. “Bit by bit,” he said. “That's what we told Savannah. We have to send something.”

“Fine. Send the gold caps if you want to.”

“Caps can be replaced. We need a more powerful message. I know it's overused, but I like the idea of a finger.”

“We're not cutting off Jeffrey's finger,” said Pinky.

“I know we aren't.” Pedro pulled the knife from the tabletop and held it by the tip. “
You
are,” he said as he offered the handle to Pinky.

“Forget it.”

“It's only fair. I did Marco. You do Jeffrey.”

“I ran over Octavio. We're even.”

“You keeping score now?”

“No, you are! Look, you already pushed him to the edge of cocaine overdose, threatened to burn him alive, taped him up like a mummy, and yanked out his teeth. That's enough for one day. Jeffrey will drop dead of a heart attack if he sees George Bush and
Barack Obama coming at him with a carving knife. Then we'll have nothing.”

“That's lame, bro. Sounds to me like Uncle Pinky is stepping up to protect his nephew.”

“I don't care what happens to that lazy son of a bitch.”

“I know that's not true. You wouldn't let me burn him.”

“Only out of consideration for his mother. I seriously don't give a shit about
him
.”

“Prove it.”

“I got nothing to prove to you.”

Pedro was still holding the knife by its tip. With a quick flip of the wrist, he suddenly had it by the handle. The blade was pointed at Pinky, and Pinky's gaze locked onto it.

“You gonna cut me, Pedro?”

“Probably not. I think you get the message.”

“What message is that?”

“The same one I have for Ruban, Savannah, and your whole damn family. I'm a reasonable man. I'm willing to negotiate on the ransom. But I want my money tonight. If I don't get it, things are going to get really unpleasant—and not just for Jeffrey.”

Pinky's gaze shifted quickly up and down, from the blade to Pedro's face, then back to the blade.

Pedro shifted the knife, to get a better grip. “You on board, Pinky? Or you want to wrestle me for the knife?”

Pinky detected a hint of a smile, but he wasn't convinced that Pedro was kidding.

“And not just for Jeffrey.”

He could have meant Ruban, Savannah, even Savannah's mother. Or he could have meant Pinky. It wasn't clear, but Pinky knew better than to press the point with a sadistic killer who had burned Marco Aroyo alive and who, at that moment, had a knife in his hand and a brain full of cocaine.

“Let's call Ruban,” said Pinky. “See if we can wrap this up tonight.”