Chapter 24

I made sure the .45 was secure in my waistband in back, took a deep breath and started down. I counted twenty five steps and figured they were a good 2 feet apart. Damn, I was already fifty feet below the upstairs floor of the house and could still hardly see the bottom where the light was shining a little brighter.

I looked up and could barely see a light above me. I took another deep breath and reached back to feel of my .45 again before I started down once more.

Another ten steps and my foot hit the concrete floor hard when I stepped down. The dim light was to my back and I turned slowly to look over there. The light was way across a big room, it looked like from here. It was just a single, naked bulb and it was a small one too.

No matter what this was, there had to be more lights down here. I raked my left hand up and down the wall near where the 2x4 ladder was fastened to the wall. I felt a lot of electrical wires running up and down the wall. They were close together and fastened to the wall every two or three feet with a staple.

I raked my right hand up and down the wall, then side to side. There it was! I felt a switch panel and there were four switches side by side. I wasn’t sure where I was or what I’d see, so I turned to look back toward the one small bulb across the room and flipped all four switches on at once.

The whole place lit up so bright I had to close my eyes for a second. I was blinded by the overhead lights in this place.

When I was able to see again, I looked all around. The walls and the floor were concrete and it looked like the ceiling was too. The lights were fluorescent and all in rows across the ceiling. The floor was as clean as my room at Granny’s house – and I started exploring.

I had my hand on my .45, with it still stuck down in my waist as I took my first three steps. There was one hell of a racket behind me and I whirled with my gun in my hand to see a large air compressor in the corner.

It had just kicked on and scared the living shit out of me when it roared to life!

I looked for the switch and found it. It was the last one on the panel and I flipped it off. The compressor died slowly with a chug, chug, chug and all was quiet once more after a long hiss of air escaping. I started easing my way across the large room to where there were metal storage racks from the floor to the ceiling.

There were large cardboard boxes stacked three high on all those shelves and I knew then, there had to be another door to this place. There was no way any of those big corrugated cardboard boxes could be taken up the ladder and out through the bathroom.

There was a metal door across the room from the storage shelves and I headed toward it. This had to be the exit, but I was still wondering how all those boxes got here.

Shit! I didn’t even take time to see what was in them!

I opened the steel door and there was nothing but darkness. I felt inside for a light switch and found it on the concrete wall.

A single row of lights ran the length of the tunnel to the other end, which had to be at least a hundred feet from where I stood. The tunnel was wide and it too was made of concrete, top, bottom, and sides.

I wasn’t sure which direction was which, but I had a feeling the tunnel ran toward the hangar ... or possibly the small basement room outside the hangar, where we’d found all those suitcases of money.

I walked fast toward the other end, almost running. When I pulled the handle on the steel door, it didn’t move. I looked all over for a trip lever or some kind of latch to keep it from opening. It had to open from either side, there was no way they would have gone all the way around to come in from the bathroom every time. If the hole in the bathroom was an escape hatch, surely they’d want another way in or out down here too.

I looked the door over good and decided it had to open to the outside. With my shoulder pressed against the door, I turned the knob hard and it opened so fast, I nearly fell.

I was in the small outdoor basement we had removed the suitcases from!

I remembered us placing boards and roofing tin over the outside entrance to hide it. I decided to go back and check the boxes since I knew how to get in and out of here now.

Back inside the big room, I lifted one of the boxes and set it on the floor. That thing must weigh close to fifty, maybe sixty pounds. I took the blade of my pocketknife and slid under the brown paper tape that sealed the flaps. I thought it may be full of marijuana buds, but got the surprise of my life when I opened this one to see it filled with

stacks and stacks of twenty dollar bills. I pulled two of the stacks out and they were wrapped in a wide, brown paper band like the hundred dollar bills I had stored away in my room. I stuffed those two down in my shirt, then grabbed another one, out of habit. Not that I’m a habitual thief, just that I like to have a little cash money on me at times!

I stood looking down at the money, wondering just how much there was in this box and if all the boxes had money packed away inside them. I wonder who all knew about this. Was it just the Garcias or did all the rest of the ones involved in the drugs, and money laundering know this much money was still here. They must not have known about the suitcases, or did they? We moved them the day of the plane crash.

Someone came here looking for something, that was for sure.

I climbed up the storage racks and cut a small hole in three more of the cardboard boxes. All of them were filled with money too.

There were two smaller boxes over on the bottom shelf of the storage rack and I hefted one then the other. Neither of them weighed over 15 pounds. I cut a corner out of the top and sniffed. I knew exactly what this one was. I poked my knife blade in the other one and sniffed.

I had just renewed our stash and we weren’t even making a good dent in the first haul.

Shit, I need some help!

I looked around for a phone and saw a black wall phone near the door leading into the tunnel.

I called Granny.

“Ramsey residence.”

It was Granny!

“Granny, Josey here. I need some help real fast.”

“Josey, what’s wrong, Baby? Are you in trouble?”

“No, Granny. I’m at Celle and Lilia’s house and I’ve found something that’s going to take a lot of men to move. We need to hurry too, Granny.”

“Do we need to bring a big truck?”

“Yes, one of the grain trucks with the end-gate out and a tarp over the top – and hurry Granny. I’ll be away from this phone, so don’t call back. Just come to the driveway between the house and the hangar, I’ll be waiting for you. Hurry Granny, someone else has been here and they’ve trashed the place already.”

“Get your ass hid and I’ll get Hank to round up some men. We’ll be there as soon as we can, even in all this rain.”

“Granny, bring your gun. Bring three guns.”

“Josey?”

“Hurry Granny.”

I knew the only way we could ever get these boxes out of here was through the tunnel. That wasn’t going to be easy either. They had to be lifted and carried up those steep steps in the basement to the outside.

Surely they had better plans than this!

I went exploring again and this time, when I entered the small basement that leads out back of the hangar, I looked around at the walls.

One whole wall was made of steel, painted dull gray like the concrete. I saw a latch at the bottom, and when I lifted it, the door swung upwards and there was a concrete ramp. I knew it went up into the hangar without even looking. It wasn’t steep at all, and I knew this was the way they carried the money in and out of that place down there. That big underground room must have been where they sorted, counted, and packed the money, then brought it out to either load in their plane or in trucks.

When I walked up the ramp, I peeped through what looked like a plain board wall. When I pushed, it swung back into a storage room. There was a door on the other side and it opened into the back of the hangar near a workbench.

I opened that door just enough to peek out into the open hangar. Once I was satisfied there was no one else here, I closed and fastened the door again. I ran all the way through the tunnel and climbed the ladder to come out in the bathroom again.

I didn’t have the little trapdoor so I closed the closet door and left the bathroom door open like I’d found it.

I was standing at the front door when Granny drove up with Momma. I stepped out just in time to wave Hank down to the next driveway in front of the hangar. The rain was coming down hard and I was soaking wet as soon as I stepped out.

“Come go with me, I’ll tell you all about it. We need to get Hank to back the truck inside the hangar and close the big door,” I yelled as I ran past Momma and Granny.

There were six men in the back of the truck, under a tarp, and two more in the front with Hank when he had it backed all the way to the storage room.

“We need to get the big door pulled down, Hank,” I hollered and ran to the front of the hangar.

I didn’t even know how it closed, but Hank did and with two men pulling on the chain like it was a chain hoist, they lowered the door to the floor.

“Josey, what’s all this about?” Hank ask me as we walked to the back of the truck.

“Come go with me, Hank. I’ll show you what we need to load in the truck. We need those four, two-wheel hand-trucks over there too. The boxes are heavy,” I told him and pointed to the four hand-trucks near the workbench.

“Granny, it’s so good to see you and Momma both. I should have gotten both of you to come over here with me to begin with, but I never thought about finding this.”

“What is it, Josey? More weed or more money?” Momma asked.

“Both. With lots more money. I mean LOTS and LOTS of money too, Momma.“

With me rushing Granny and Momma ahead of the men, we made our way back to the concrete room underneath the house.

“Where is the money, Josey?” Granny whispered.

I pointed to all the boxes stacked on the storage racks and she looked at me with her eyes wide. I looked at Momma and she just grinned at me.

“ALL of THOSE are full of money?” Momma asked as she looked at me, then Granny.

“All of them. We need to get them loaded and get the hell out of here too. I’ll tell you all about what I’ve found when we’re away from this place.”

“Hank, we need you and your men to move all those boxes out to load onto your truck. Be careful and don’t drop them, but hurry and let’s them them loaded,” Granny told him.

They stacked two boxes at a time on the hand-trucks and while those four men were gone, two more of them were lowering more boxes down from the racks.

There were twenty-four of the boxes and it took the four men three trips each to get all of them.

I carried the two smaller boxes with me and set them aside at the back of the grain truck.

When we got back to the hangar, they had only stacked the boxes on the floor and made another trip until they had them all. I helped them and we loaded the twenty-four boxes, then pulled a tarp over the boxes with the men under it.

“Hank, take them to the car garage at my house for now and unload them there. I may holler at you tomorrow to get them moved inside, but I’ll let you know early tomorrow,” Granny told him.

For the first time since they had arrived, I looked at Hank up close as he stood beside me. He was wearing a new Colt .45 just like the ones Granny and I carried. His was in a holster on his hip and the big man looked like he meant business.

I helped them open the hangar door and told them I’d close it behind them, since I knew how it operated now.

They were gone and when the door was closed, we went to the walk-in back door of the hangar. I opened the door and looked around real good before we walked out.

“Granny, I want to buy this place. The hangar and the airstrip too,” I told her and she just looked at me.

“Tell Harp to set it up so you can pay the Garcia sisters’ estate, and then tell Tori to finance it for you. I’ll sign the papers and we’ll show that you are making payments on the place. You don’t need to pay cash for something this big.”

“Thanks, Granny. I need to hire a couple of men to guard the place too. They’ll need guns.”

“Tell Hank when we get to the house. Where’s your car?”

“Inside the garage,” I said and pointed toward the house.

“Lock this place up and let’s get the hell out of there. Your momma and I need to know what this is about as soon as we get home,” Granny told me as she and Momma turned to run toward her car.

“I’ll be right behind you.” I hollered as I ran toward the front door carrying the two boxes.

I locked the house and looked at all the doors and windows. They were all closed and none of them were broken.

Whoever came in had a key!

When I backed my car out, I hopped out to pull the garage door down and lock it too, then followed Granny and Momma home.

Hank must have drove the shit out of that grain truck back to the farm. It was parked around behind Granny’s house and the men were nowhere in sight. Hank was standing just inside Granny’s garage out of the rain when I pulled up.

Momma and Granny had run inside out of the rain and I knew they’d come out into the garage from the kitchen as soon as they dried off.

“Hank, I need some help from you and at least two of your men. I know you don’t have a lot for them to do now that the crops are all in and I need some men you can trust to keep quiet. I’ll pay all of you above what Granny pays you, if you’ll help me.”

“Tell me what it is and who needs killed, Josey. Your daddy was a friend of mine growing up, and I knew all along when he died, that one day you’d come home to claim your stake in the Ramsey Place.”

“Thanks, Hank – for being a friend to my daddy. I never knew him, but I’ve heard some good things said about him in the past few months since all of this has come out in the open. Thanks too, for helping me now.

“I’ll bring you four shotguns with plenty of buckshot and three more of the .45 Colts with plenty of ammo. I need the Garcia place guarded night and day.”

“If we’re guarding it with guns, that means you want us to make sure they don’t leave, whoever they are... if they do come looking around?”

“Make sure of who it is first, you’ll know if they mean trouble or not. Do what it takes and I’ll take care of you and your men no matter what happens,” I told him and pulled the two of the bundles of money out of my shirt and handed both of them to him.

“That’s a lot of damn money, Josey. For this, you’ll get me, my two boys, Joe and Johnny and my nephew, Albert Lee. No one comes or goes on this place or the one we just left, without seeing the bottom of hell before their eyes.”

“I plan to buy the Garcia place, Hank. I may need it looked after until spring. Or, until we know that it’s safe anyway.”

“You got it, Josey. Tell your Granny I’ll see her early in the morning. I need to get some dry clothes on myself. I’ll have my two boys over there as soon as they can dry off and get some more clothes on.”

“I’ll put the guns out here in the garage. Here’s the key to the front door of the Garcia house. It’s the only one I have, so hang onto it. Tell them to take the new pickup with them and park it inside the car garage after they unlock, so they can keep hidden.

“You’re just like your old man, Josey Ruiz. You even sound like him when you talk like this.”

“Thanks, Hank.”

“Josey, we need to know what that was all about and how you come to find that place under the Garcia house,” Granny told me.

We were in my room and Momma, Granny, Aunt Rita, and I were laying back on my bed with the bedroom door closed, for the only time since I moved in. I had on a short white robe and each of them did too, even Aunt Rita. I was still drying my hair when I sat down beside Aunt Rita and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

I watched her take a long drag on her doob, then hand it to me. I took a long pull on it and handed it to Momma.

“Granny, I knew there had to be more to that place than what we found the day we brought Celle and Lilia here to live. They didn’t even want to talk about it or tell me anything more than they’d already told me. They were determined to get the memory of that place behind them and I didn’t push them. I did tell them that I wanted to go back and look it over good, before it was sold and they told me to go ahead. I still had the key from when we locked it up the day of the plane crash, so with all the rain and nothing else to do, I drove over there today.

“How in the world did you ever find the tunnel and the big hidden basement room?” Momma asked.

“I almost fell into it really.

“I looked the place over and was about to give up when I opened the small towel closet in the upstairs bathroom. It just didn’t look right to me, and I moved some stuff around and saw a trapdoor in the back wall. I had to lay down to get to it, then I couldn’t open it. I turned around and kicked the shit out of it with both feet and the trapdoor fell forever before it hit bottom.

“I knew it had to lead somewhere, so I reached down into the dark hole and felt the steps of a 2x4 ladder. I felt around and found a light switch that turned on a small light bulb way down at the bottom of the ladder. When I reached the bottom, I found another light switch and saw all the boxes on the storage racks. I opened one with my knife and it was packed with bundles of twenty dollar bills. They were wrapped with the wide, brown paper band like the others we brought here in the suitcases.”

“JOSEY! You mean those twenty-four boxes the men unloaded down there are packed full of twenty dollar bills?” Aunt Rita asked.

“I cut into three more of them after opening the first one and they were the same. I’m assuming all of them are the same.”

“How much do they weigh?” Granny asked.

“Around fifty pounds each.”

“We need to get them into the house. Those boxes will come apart out in the weather like this, even back in the garage, without a door,” Momma said and looked around at all of us.

“Let’s get some shorts and shirts on and get those boxes brought up here to Josey’s closet. We’ll have to stack them to get them in there, but we can double up on them and two of us carry one at a time,” Granny told us.

When we got downstairs, the light was on in the garage and there stood Hank and his sons, Joe and Johnny, with Albert Lee, his nephew...

“Now we got some help!” Granny said as she stepped out.

“What do you need help with, Miss Ramsey?” Hank asked.

“We were going to take these twenty-four boxes up to Josey’s room, Hank. Will you and your boys help us?”

“You womenfolk just stay back, me and my boys will do this before they head back to the Garcia place,” Hank told her.

I grabbed a box when the they did and we headed upstairs with me leading the way.

“Just set them on the floor here in the closet, Hank. We may have to stack them later to have enough room,” I told him.

“These boxes are still in good shape, Josey. We’ll just stack them two high when we bring them up. That way the womenfolk won’t have to be lifting these heavy boxes,” Hank told me and I let him do it his way.

We made five trips apiece and when we were through, I pulled Hank over to the side when his men went back downstairs. I handed him the third bundle of twenty dollar bills and he fussed at me.

“Josey, I don’t need this much money. I’ll have a hard time spending all of them twenty dollar bills anyway, without folks asking where I got it.”

“Then give me one back and you put the other one up for safe keeping until you get old. I’ll take these two down to the bank and cash them in for five and ten dollar bills.”

“Josey, this ain’t right, now.”

“Hank, let me do this. You can pay your sons and your nephew to guard that place, with the twenty dollar bills and they won’t think nothing about it. You can spend the five and ten dollar bills on yourself and your wife and no one will ever know the difference. I want to do this for you.”

“Josey, your Granny has already made me the boss of the farm like Mr. Ralph was. I took the job ‘cause I knew the next man may not be any better then him if I didn’t. I get to live in the boss’ house with my bills paid and I get to drive the truck he drove. You and your Granny have already done too much for me.”

“Save your money, Hank. You’ll be old one day and you’ll be glad you did.”

“Do you put your money in the bank, Josey?”

“A lot of it I do. Want me to open you an account so Granny can just put your paycheck in the bank each week and you spend this money on groceries and stuff?”

“You’d do that?”

“Sure, I’ll go to town tomorrow and do that. Let me know if your sons or any of your other men want me to open them an account the same way.”

“Josey, your daddy would be proud of you! He always told me there would be a day I’d come into my own, if I stayed on here with Miss Early Ramsey. He knew what he was talking about I reckon, and I’m proud you’ve come home to make it all happen. You’re one hell of a man at fifteen, Josey Ruiz. You’re going to make your Granny and all of us proud we ever knew you.”

“Thanks, Hank. I got a long ways to go, but I appreciate you saying that.”

“If you ever need anything at all, Josey, you come to me or my boys. There ain’t nothing we wouldn’t do for you. Not because of Miss Ramsey or your daddy either.”

“I’ll tell you the same thing right now too, Hank. If you ever need anything, and I mean anything, just come to me. You’re a good man – my daddy knew it and now I know it too.”

We didn’t shake and we didn’t say anything else. Hank grinned at me and nodded his head and I did the same before he turned and walked downstairs.

I made up my mind right then that I was going to open a bank account for all of Granny’s hired hands. I know how hard they work. I used to work right alongside them.

“Josey – Rita and Laura think there may be as much as six-hundred-thousand dollars in each of those boxes if they’re all the same. Did you even stop to think about that?” Granny asked when they came out of the closet and laid down on my bed.

“I figured they would weigh between fifty and sixty pounds. Is that what you figured?”

“We figured a good sixty pounds, Josey,” Momma told me, then said, “but what we did was take one bundle out of that open box and measure up the side of the box to see how many layers are in it. Then we counted the bundles of money in the top layer.”

“What did you come up with that way?”

There are sixty bundles in a layer and there is one thousand dollars in a bundle.

“That’s sixty-thousand in a layer and there are ten layers,” Momma told me.

“DAMN! That’s about fourteen and a half million, if you figured right!”

“Even if we’re off a million or two, or even four, you’ve just brought in over ten million dollars tonight,” Aunt Rita told me.

“That’s drug money too, Josey and there’s no taxes on it, or records of it. You can’t be found out or the FBI and the IRS will both get your ass.”

“What do you we do suggest, Granny?”

“First of all, you need new locks on those closet doors so no one can ever snoop. I mean NO ONE too. I’ll get two of the best locks I can find when I go to town. You can put them on.

“The girls all know about Celle’s and Lilia’s money that you brought here in suitcases and they split up between all of you. They know not to breathe a word about it too. Since even Celle and Lilia know nothing of this money, I say we lock it up for the time being. Then maybe we can incorporate a new business or even form a new company so we can hide some of the money that way.

“No one knows how much money Laura and I have stashed away that we’ve held back from the IRS over the years. I’ll just put it this way–with what she and I have in the bank, and what we’ve packed away here at home, none of us will ever need any of this money you just brought in.

“I’m OK with you giving each of the women and girls a few thousand, even the girls Lilia and Celle split their money with. They can put the money in the bank and even add to it, as long as we don’t get too extravagant with it,” Granny told me and I was already thinking of who I wanted to help.

“What would you suggest we do for each of them?” I asked her.

“No more than one thousand to begin with. Then we’ll see how they handle that. If everything goes well, you can add more to their accounts each year.”

“I want to open accounts for each of the men on the farm too, Granny. Not a lot at first, so it won’t be noticed. What I thought about was, you deposit their paychecks directly into those accounts, then I’ll give them enough cash out of this money for them to live on.”

“Josey Ruiz, you make my heart proud, Son. I could just shout for joy, when you do things like this. I wish I had done that for my men years ago. And here you are at fifteen, not only thinking like a man, but like a banker and a lawyer,” Granny told me.

“Granny – Hank almost made me cry talking about my daddy today. I can’t take a lot more of this from you too. I need to smoke some of my new Mexican shit I brought in today and see how it stacks up against that load we got from the hangar the day of the crash”

“Bring a handful of those buds in here, Josey. We’ll role us one, and a few extras for you. After today, us women need to stop all this wacky-backy shit, since all of us have your babies in our bellies,” Aunt Rita told me.

“Rita’s right. We’ll smoke a few buds with you today, but this will be our last pot party until the babies are weaned,” Granny spoke up and they all agreed.

I found a brown paper sack, about half the size of a grocery sack and filled it close to half full. I sniffed down into the bag and I could smell some good time aroma coming up out of there. I grabbed a couple of fresh packs of papers off my dresser when I walk by and put the sack on the bed.

“Granny, I need to use the phone in your bedroom while y’all are doing that. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“You know you don’t have to ask, Josey. Hurry back, and be sure to tell Tori hi for all of us.”

“How do you read my mind like that, Granny?” I asked and they were all laughing when I left the room.

I didn’t know the girl who answered the phone, but she sounded good...

“This is Tori Himmes,” she came on the line and I wanted her pussy again right then.

“This is the lazy ass Mexican who knocked your sexy ass up, Señora Himmes. How are you, Beautiful?”

“JOSEY! How are you, Darling? I’m doing just great now that you’ve made my day. What can I do for you?”

“Bend over your desk and pull your dress up, I’ll be right there.”

“I wish ... Now what do I owe the honor of this pick-me-up phone call?”

“I need to open some accounts for the hired hands on Granny’s farm and some more for the girls who live here. I wanted you to take the names and info, then you can let your employees, do the setups.”

“Give me the names and social security numbers and I’ll have Marie set them up for you. I know she’ll love doing that for you. We have the best time when she comes in my office. She’s thrilled to be carrying your baby, just as I am.”

“Thanks, Tori. I’m thrilled that you are too. Tell Marie hi, for me.”

“How many men do you have on the farm? I’ll do those accounts for her.”

I told Tori who I wanted to set up accounts for and how much I wanted to deposit in the accounts. I told her to take the money out of my account and I’d be by to make another deposit in my account tomorrow.

By the time I had given her all the information, she had another call waiting and I let her go.

“Bye, beautiful sexy lady. See you soon.”

When I got back to my room, they were rolling the last of the papers and I reached for one of the fat-boys on the bed next to Aunt Rita.

When I lit the stick, I could smell the happy smoke instantly. I knew this was private stock and I was even more happy that I gotten my hands on it.

“Ohhh, I smell that already, Josey. Is it as good as it smells?” Granny asked.

“Better than the Mexican Reds we smoked, Granny. Grab you one and take a deep hit off it. This shit is gooo-oood.”

“Oh Damn, this really is some good stuff, Josey,” Momma said as she lit a fat-boy and sucked a lung full.

“This is the best I’ve had in years, Josey. I wish we could grow some of this ourselves for private stock. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to cross pollinate and develop these cannabis buds to perfection,” Granny agreed with the others.

I put my joint to Aunt Rita’s lips and she sucked a healthy hit from it and smiled as she held it.

“Damn! That shit is good. No after burn to it either,” she said, grabbing her own kicker and firing it up.