Vlad smiled a cocky smile and turned to walk away.
“Something you really are good at,” Derek said under his breath when Vlad was out of earshot.
* * *
The steward in the Learjet 35 came over to Jack and Babe sitting side-by-side in the rear of the plane.
“We’re on final approach, Mr. St. Clair.”
“OK, thanks.”
“How much longer?” Babe moaned, half asleep, her beautiful head resting uncomfortably on Jack’s shoulder, her thick dark hair spread out behind her.
“Fifteen or twenty minutes,” said the steward.
“I’ll have another Bloody Mary then.”
“Oh, what the hell. Me, too,” said Jack. “Extra spicy.”
“Right you are,” the steward smiled, returning to the galley.
Jack looked at his cell phone.
“A text from Gargrave.”
“What about?” she asked.
“Rafael and Antonia rode out with him in the chopper to meet us.”
“Oh, great,” said Babe, rolling her eyes. “I’m surprised Raven isn’t there as well—with a shotgun.”
In fact, they’d talked of little else on the trip back from Washington but Rafael and Antonia. Ever since the girls’ older sister Raven had discovered Antonia was sleeping with Jack’s younger brother, there had been turmoil in the Fuentes family.
“How’s your mother handling all this?”
Babe laughed.
“She’s a former Federal judge, a big-time lawyer. She knows when to keep her mouth shut. What can she say? ‘Oh, little Antonia, you shouldn’t be sleeping with Rafael. Just because Raven is Jack’s ex-girlfriend and Jack is now sleeping with Babe, and Raven is sleeping with the captain of Rafael’s Coast Guard cutter, who hates Rafael’s guts, I think we’ve had just about all we can take from the St. Clair family, don’t you, sweetie?’ Is that what she’s supposed to say? What can she say?”
“Yeah. Nothing, I guess.”
“Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. Nothing. Good luck to both of them. I hope they’re happy.”
“Well, me, too,” said Jack. “That’s what I say about life. It’s all about being happy.”
Jack felt a relief when the landing gear went down.
* * *
“I tell you, Derek, I’m not going to be happy till I look these guys in the face before I kill them,” Vlad said as he put a fraternal arm around Derek’s shoulder.
“And how do you think you’re going to be able to do that since you have no idea who these people are?”
“Is this the place you talked about?” Vlad nodded toward a food truck with a couple of umbrellas in front of it next to some shade trees on Greene Street.
“Yeah. Garbo’s Grill. You said you liked fish tacos. This is the place.”
Vlad got a couple of fish tacos and Derek got a Korean pork taco and a shrimp taco, lathering both of them with a spicy mustard sauce. They took their food to a bench under a tree and sat down.
“To answer your question, Derek, I don’t have to find these people. They will find us.”
Derek laughed, his mouth full of Korean pork.
“You think we’ll ever see these guys again?”
“I do,” said Vlad. Derek is so stupid sometimes I want to slap him across his pretty white face. “I think they’ll try to hit us when we move that money to the Bahamas.”
Derek sat up straight and looked at Vlad, his expression suddenly very serious.
“Why would I have you handle that job? Look what happened on this one.”
Vlad shook his head. Such a child.
“These people are following you, Derek, not me. I just happened to be along for the ride when they stole the money. If they knew about Flores and Duarte and the sub, I would bet a lot of money that they know about this job in the Bahamas, don’t you think?”
Derek had to admit this made a lot of sense.
“Yes.”
“The only difference is this time we can prepare for them.”
Derek ate the last of his shrimp taco and wiped his greasy mouth with a paper napkin. He took a long swallow of Gatorade and began.
“Howard has been handling some money—a lot of money—for a couple of Cubans in Hialeah that are into several things. They have some clinics that process Medicare claims, mostly false. Once the money comes through from the government, they write checks that they cash at a chain of check cashing stores, Cambio Xtra, that they also own. Howard has been transferring a lot of this money out through the banking system, but it piles up faster than they can get it out through wire transfers because of the high volume, not to mention the reporting requirements slow things down.”
“So they want to get rid of some of it by moving it over to the Bahamas.”
“Correct. And they want to do this on a regular basis.”
“Just as the Sinaloa Cartel was moving some of its money back using the sub.”
“And we were doing with our $20 million.”
“That was all drug money, but this Bahamas job involves Medicare money.”
“Right. The couple, the Oyebanjos, Aricela and Severo—they aren’t into drugs. They work the Federal agencies: IRS, Medicare, things like that.”
“Money’s money,” said Vlad, wiping his hands on his shorts.
“Yeah.”
“How many times have you met the Oyebanjos?”
“Only once. When Howard brought them to the place where I always met Flores.”
“Where’s that?”
“A little sandwich shop called Enriqueta’s in Wynwood. That’s where I met him so your people could pick up his tail.”
“Then that’s most likely where our mysterious friend found out about the Mirta and its sunken treasure,” said Vlad slowly, thinking.
“Maybe so.”
“I think the best thing to do is to meet the Oyebanjos in the same place to finalize the Bahamas job. We’ll set a trap and see if we catch something in it.”
“What about the Oyebanjos? I
