This had happened some time ago, but she had lately been to see a couple of plastic surgeons and they were working up plans to do remedial surgery on her. Pozo had told her to spend whatever it took to repair the damage. “Money’s not an object here,” were his exact words.
Aricela watched as the gringo closed the hood on her Ford Escape. She went outside to pay him.
“That was very nice of you to fix the hose so fast,” she said.
“That’s what we’re here for, ma’am,” said the gringo with a goofy grin.
“How much is that?”
“Oh, just $10 for the hose and $10 for labor.”
Aricela went to the car and pulled her purse, a black Chanel rip-off, off the floorboard, cursing herself for leaving it there to begin with and not taking it with her when she went inside. She didn’t have any cash in her purse, but realized she had $8,000 in a bag on the back seat floor, but didn’t want to pull it out in front of the gringo.
“I don’t seem to have any cash on me. I’ll have to use a credit card, OK?”
“Sure.”
He took the card, went inside and came out in a minute.
“Here ya go, Miss—” he squinted as he looked at the credit card. “Uh, Miss, uh, Oh-yay-ban-jo. Is that right?”
“It’s Oyebanjo, OYE-BAN-HO. The ‘j’ is pronounced like an ‘h’ in Spanish.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
She signed the credit card slip and handed him his copy.
“I added a $20 tip for you for fixing the hose so fast.”
“Thank you, ma’am. You drive safe, now, hear?”
“I will.”
“And Merry Christmas.”
Looking around the desolate Everglades landscape, Aricela thought that Christmas seemed a million years away, though it was only two weeks from now.
“Merry Christmas,” she said to him.
This gringo was a redneck idiot.
She got into the car and pulled back onto Alligator Alley, glad to get way from these uneducated white boys in the ’Glades. She couldn’t wait till she was back among her own kind in Hialeah.
But before she got back to the familiar surroundings in Hialeah, she had one important stop to make.
* * *
As Aricela drove into Weston and veered onto the ramp taking her into the southbound lanes of I-75, Severo Oyebanjo was in the back office of his MediClínica storefront in Hialeah Gardens, a little town northwest of Hialeah. He held open a valise as his accountant, Liana Gomez, stuffed a couple of hundred checks inside.
“I can’t figure out how they don’t catch us,” said Liana.
“They aren’t trying hard enough,” said Severo. “They get one in a hundred of us. What we do that the others don’t is close down before they even start looking for us and reopen two doors away under a different name. They can’t track us.”
“I sit at the computer all day making up these checks and printing them out. I have to keep making up different numbers.”
“That’s good. We don’t want too many checks made out in the same amount.”
Liana finished stuffing the checks into the valise.
“There. That’s the last of them. Off you go.”
“You’ll have the next batch ready when?”
Liana sighed and rolled her eyes wearily.
“The end of the week. Noon on Friday.”
Severo nodded, satisfied.
As he pulled the zipper to close the valise, he feigned surprise.
“Oh, what’s this?” He pulled out a gaily-wrapped present from inside and looked at it curiously. “What could this be? Oh, yes, I remember. I got it for you!”
He handed it across the table to her and she ripped away the gift-wrap to reveal a bottle of perfume.
“Deseo!” she squealed.
“Yes. ‘Desire.’ If Jennifer Lopez makes it, it’s perfect for you,” said Severo with a mild leer.
He moved around the table and put his arms around her, giving her a deep and lingering kiss.
“You think I’m like J.Lo?”
Severo slapped Liana’s shapely buttocks, leaving his hand there to rub her.
“You got something in common with J.Lo, all right—a beautiful culo!”
They kissed again.
“You better go, Severo. You don’t know when Aricela’s going to get back.”
“Ah,” Severo said dismissively. “She’s got things to do. She won’t be coming over here.”
“And you’ve got things to do, too,” she said, her manner turning coy. “Maybe you can come by a little before noon on Friday.”
Severo beamed at the prospect.
“Maybe I will,” he teased, slipping his arm around Liana’s waist.
They both heard footsteps in the hallway outside and split apart. The door opened and one of the clinicians poked a head in.
“Señor Oyebanjo, we have a question about the Medicare Form 56-H. Can you help us out front?”
“Be right there,” he turned and winked to Liana. “See you Friday—at eleven o’clock.”
“I’ll be ready,” said Liana, holding the bottle of Deseo behind her back.
* * *
Aricela pulled into the Miller’s Ale House in Miami Lakes facing Northwest 67th Avenue and found a parking space. She looked all around the car to make sure no one was near and reached behind her for the bag with the cash. She counted out $6,000, split it into two $3,000 stacks and
