Chapter 10 A Whole Lot of Money
“A Whole Lot of Money”
Rosalía Freire was the first to recover the power of speech.
“Is that . . . money?” she asked, her voice tight with tension. “Real money?”
“Looks like it,” said Roberto. “I’m not sure but, yes, I think so.”
“How much?”
“There’s only one way we could find that out.” He pointed at the bundle. “We’d have to count it.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Ramón Docampo stepped forward impatiently. “Open it up.”
“Hang on!” protested Roberto. “We already know what’s in there. It’s the Guardia Civil’s business now.”
“How much do you think there is?” Ignoring Roberto’s words, Luis Docampo had extracted another wad of notes from the bundle.
“Don’t touch it. You’ll cover them with fingerprints—the police will hardly thank you.”
“I’m wearing gloves, Mr. Writer,” replied Luis as he stuffed the wad into his coat pocket. “And you touched them too.”
Roberto stared at the wad in his own hand as if seeing it for the first time, and cursed inwardly, before dropping it on the ground.
“We’ll tell the officers when they arrive,” he insisted. “We have to hand it over.”
It would be so simple: Just one call to the authorities and they’d arrive in less than an hour, whether by sea or by air.
He didn’t have the slightest doubt that it was the right decision.
His hand was halfway to the pocket where he kept his phone, but he stopped when he saw that Ramón Docampo had raised his arm.
“Not so fast. There’s an alternative.”
“What?”
“We could keep it.”
A murmur spread through the group, like fire through a barn. There was no need to look at them to know which idea was more popular. Far more popular.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?”
“Well, to start with, because the money doesn’t belong to us.”
“And who does it belong to?” Ramón Docampo looked around theatrically. “I don’t see anyone here but us. What the sea washes up on the shore belongs to whoever finds it.”
A chorus of agreement echoed around him.
Roberto was astonished.
“Come on, be reasonable! It’s clearly a stupid idea!”
His heart sank when he saw that nobody agreed with him.
Everyone was staring at the wad of notes on the ground with the greedy expressions of hunting dogs eyeing a hare.
Even Antía seemed undecided. “This money belongs to someone.” He tried to find another angle. “They’re bound to be looking for it.”
“They don’t need to know that it’s ended up here,” Luis cut in. “It could have washed up anywhere.”
“Listen to me, everyone.” Roberto tried to sound as authoritative as possible. “Nobody ties a bundle of cash to a buoy in the middle of the sea if they aren’t doing something illegal. It’s not like putting it in a piggy bank. This money must be linked to drug trafficking.”
“And what’s that got to do with us?”
“Because the owner will be looking for it, for Christ’s sake!” Roberto exploded. “They’re not the sort of people you want to get on the wrong side of, and believe me, that’s exactly what will happen if you steal their money. We need to tell the Guardia Civil. Now.”
“Not so fast,” interjected Ramón Docampo. “My son’s right. Nobody needs to know this money is here. It would be like it never existed.”
Roberto stared at them impotently. They had been overcome by greed; he could see it in their eyes.
“Don’t you understand that what you’re proposing is a crime?” he insisted. “We could end up in jail. Think about it.”
“Maybe we keep just some of it.” It was the first time Antía had spoken since they’d opened the bundle, and Roberto felt his stomach tighten to see that even she was considering it. “Just a few thousand. Then we can call the Guardia Civil to come and get the rest, and everyone will be happy.”
“They’d realize the money was missing.” Roberto shook his head. “They’d see the gap, and they’d put two and two together. Anyway, what do you think will happen when you start flashing the cash a few weeks after a narco hoard has been washed up? Do you think nobody’s going to notice?”
“That’s why we can’t hand it in.” Rosalía Freire shook her head. “As soon as news gets out that the money’s appeared, the narcos will know that we found it. And it won’t matter if we keep some of it or not. Those people are suspicious by nature.”
“So?”
“They’ll assume that we’ve kept some of it, and they’ll come to Ons to get their revenge,” she replied.
“You aren’t from here; you don’t know them like we do.
It doesn’t matter what we do; as far as they’re concerned, it’ll be our fault that they lost their money.
They’ll think we’ve hidden some of it. You said it yourself: They’re not the sort of people you want to get on the wrong side of. ”
“We can’t tell anyone, particularly not the authorities,” Ramón Docampo said, backing her up. “We’ll just divvy it up and be done.”
A deathly silence ensued.
“No way.” Roberto shook his head as he took out his phone. “I’m not getting caught up in anything like that.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” interrupted Luis Docampo’s wife, Amaia, with a hint of bitterness.
“You don’t live here. In a few weeks, you’ll go home, return to your comfortable writer’s life, and nobody will know you had anything to do with this.
It isn’t you they’ll come after. We’ll have to pay the price. ”
Roberto stopped, his fingers hovering above the screen of his phone. There was truth in what the woman said. But the very idea of taking the money revolted him. In Mexico, he had seen at close quarters how many broken lives the narco empire left in its wake.
“I have a suggestion.” Ramón Docampo held his hands palm outward. “Why don’t we count the money first to see how much we’re talking about? There could be something else under the top layer of bills. Or maybe there’s nothing at all. We need all the information before we make a decision.”
Roberto had to admit that his logic was impeccable.
“Okay,” he conceded. “But everyone has to wear gloves when they touch the money.”
It was as if he’d fired a starting pistol. Everyone threw themselves on the bundle and began to tear the wrapping off, sending bills flying everywhere.
“Calm down, calm down! Let’s take it slowly.”
Order was soon reestablished. Roberto, Antía Freire, and Luis Docampo counted out the wads as if they were the tokens in some children’s game. The rest of the islanders milled around, watching carefully.
It was more complicated than it had seemed at first sight.
Beneath the top layer of five-hundred-euro notes was a layer of hundred-euro notes, grouped together in thick bricks.
Below that, the familiar features of Benjamin Franklin greeted them from a layer made up of hundred-dollar bills, his enigmatic expression reminding Roberto of the Mona Lisa.
When they reached the final layer, another surprise awaited them.
“What the fuck is this?” Luis Docampo held up a wad of long purple notes.
“They’re Swiss francs,” replied Roberto, interrupting the count for a moment. “They’re worth a lot.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Each of those notes in your hand is worth about a thousand euros, give or take.”
“It looks like Monopoly money.” Luis smiled as he dropped the wad into his lap.
Roberto fell silent, his suspicions growing. This wasn’t going at all how he’d envisaged it.
Finally, the last wad emerged from the package. He’d been keeping a tally in his leather-bound notebook, and he went over the figures again in silence as the others watched impatiently.
“So? How much is it?”
Roberto ignored the question and checked the total again, incredulous.
“The dollar and Swiss franc exchange rates vary but—” he began.
“Stop beating around the bush!” interrupted Luis. “How much is there?”
Roberto looked up very slowly.
“Seventy-five million euros . . . give or take.”
Once again, everyone fell silent as they each pondered the ridiculous sum of money piled up in front of them in the wheelbarrow, like paper bricks.
It was Diego who broke the moment of concentration.
“Is that a lot of money?” he asked.
“Yes, Diego, it’s a lot of money.” Roberto squeezed his arm, trying to feign a cheerfulness that he didn’t feel. “A whole lot of money.”
The exchange had a liberating effect. Suddenly, everyone was clapping and laughing, and hugging each other, although the division between the two families remained firmly in place.
Roberto felt like one of those journalists sent to cover the story of a lottery jackpot won by a village syndicate.
They just needed someone to spray the crowd with champagne. Everyone was euphoric.
Apart from him.
At the beginning, he had assumed the cash was the payment for a drug shipment that some cartel had smuggled into the estuary.
But if that was the case, it would all be in either euros or dollars.
Not a combination of the two, and certainly not with Swiss francs thrown into the mix like spare picture cards.
No, this was something else—the combined payment for multiple illegal operations.
And that was much worse, because a cartel might be able to afford losing the payment for a single operation.
That was a calculated risk, one that occurred from time to time—part of the business.
But a fortune like this—in a number of currencies, in used, nonconsecutive bills?
That was something else. Getting this much money together in this way would have taken time, and would be difficult to do without arousing suspicions in the banking sector.
Somebody had gone to great lengths to prepare this particular consignment; it was the dream of some criminal who moved in the black market and wanted to launder their ill-gotten gains.
And if they’d gone to such lengths, Roberto very much doubted that they’d swallow the money’s disappearance so easily.
He needed to make the islanders understand, whatever it took. Right now, though, drunk with euphoria, they wouldn’t pay him any attention. Only Antía remained silent, lost in thought. Roberto went over to her.
“This is madness. We have to put a stop to it.”
The woman remained silent for a while, so long that Roberto thought she hadn’t heard him, but finally she gave him a deep, sorrowful look.
“I know,” she replied, “but right now it’d be easier to drag this island to the mainland than to get them to listen to us.”
“Maybe if you talked to your mother . . .”
“There’s no point.” She shook her head. “Look at her—when she gets something into her head, she’s unstoppable. And anyway, we’d still have to convince the Docampos. They’ve just discovered they’re sitting on a gold mine, and there’s no way they’re going to change their minds.”
“So what should we do?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t have a clue.”
“Okay, that’s enough!” Ramón Docampo clapped loudly to get everyone’s attention, then threw his cigarette butt to the floor and ground it out with his heel before speaking. “How are we going to divvy it up?”
“Half and half, obviously,” replied Rosalía Freire immediately. “Equal parts between the Freires and the Docampos.”
“What about him?” Ramón jutted his chin in Roberto’s direction. “How much does he get? The same as us?”
“There’s only one of him,” Luis protested, “and there’s lots of us. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“But he’s the one who found the money.” Ramón Docampo observed him carefully. “I wonder what he has to say about it.”
The celebrations gradually died down as all eyes turned on Roberto.
He looked steadily back. He was aware that the disposition of the pieces on the island’s chessboard had changed completely in the blink of an eye, and that everyone else had realized too.
He was no longer an eccentric visitor who had come to spend a few weeks on the island out of season.
Suddenly, he was someone who could claim a considerable piece of the pie.
Or pose an even greater threat by involving the authorities.
In other words, he had become a problem.
And, it occurred to him, there was nothing to stop them from eliminating that problem without further delay.
They were miles from the mainland and the nearest authorities.
There were no other witnesses. He could already imagine the headlines: Tragic death of Roberto Lobeira in island accident. Literary world mourns his loss.
His head was buzzing. They wouldn’t dare to. That would be murder, for Christ’s sake. That line was surely one they wouldn’t cross.
But something on Ramón Docampo’s face told Roberto that the old man was making the very same calculation. And he didn’t look like the hesitant kind.
These were island people, tough people. Merciless if they needed to be.
“Hang on.” He raised his hands placatingly. His mouth felt dry. “I’ve already said a thousand times that I don’t want a single cent of that money. But even so, I still think you ought to—”
“Someone’s coming,” interrupted Diego in his singsong voice. “Down the path.”