The Racketeer Read online

  the FBI is still monitoring any possible movements by Malcolm Bannister. I’m betting they are not, and I want the FBI to think I’m still somewhere in the islands having a grand time. At any rate, I’m moving quickly. Since Malcolm no longer has a valid driver’s license, Max rents a car at the Avis desk, and forty-five minutes after landing in Atlanta, I’m leaving the city in a hurry. Near Roswell, Georgia, I stop at a Walmart and pay cash for two more prepaid cell phones. As I leave the store, I drop two old ones into a trash can.

  After dark, Vanessa parks the truck for good. She’s been driving it for almost twelve hours and can’t wait to get rid of it. For a moment she sits behind the wheel, in a space next to her Honda Accord, and watches a commuter airliner taxi to the Roanoke terminal. It’s a little after 9:00 on a Sunday night, and there appears to be no traffic. The parking lot is almost empty. She takes another deep breath and gets out. Working quickly while watching everything around her, she transfers the backpacks from Nathan’s front seat into the trunk of her car. Eight backpacks, each seemingly heavier than the one before it, but she does not mind at all.

  She locks the truck, keeps the keys, and leaves the parking lot. If things go as planned, Nathan’s truck will not be noticed for several days. When his friends realize he’s missing, they will eventually notify the police, who will find the truck and start piecing together a story. There’s no doubt Nathan boasted to someone that he was headed to Miami on a private jet, and this will cause the cops to chase their tails for a while.

  I have no way of knowing if the authorities can link their missing man to Nathaniel Coley, the clown who recently left town with a fake passport, four kilos of coke, and a pistol, but I doubt it. He might not be located until someone down in Jamaica finally allows him to make a phone call. Whom he calls and what he tells that person is anyone’s guess. He is more likely to count the hours and days until I return with a sackful of cash and start bribing people. After weeks, maybe a month, he’ll realize his old pal Reed stiffed him, took the money and ran.

  I almost feel sorry for him.

  At 1:00 a.m., I approach Asheville, North Carolina, and see a sign for the motel at a busy interchange. Parked behind it, and out of view, is a little blue Honda Accord with my dear Vanessa sitting behind the wheel, the Glock at her side. I park next to her and we step inside our first-floor room. We kiss and embrace, but we are much too tense to get amorous. We quietly unload her trunk and toss the backpacks on one of the beds. I lock the door, chain it, and stick a chair under the doorknob. I pull the curtains tight, then hang towels from the rods to cover the slits and cracks and make certain no one can see inside our little vault. While I do this, Vanessa takes a shower, and when she emerges from the bathroom, she is wearing nothing but a short terry-cloth bathrobe that reveals miles and miles of the prettiest legs I’ve ever seen. Don’t even think about it, she says. She’s exhausted. Maybe tomorrow.

  We empty the backpacks, put on disposable latex gloves, and make a neat arrangement of eighteen cigar boxes, each secured with two precise bands of silver duct tape. We notice two have apparently been opened, with the tape cut along the top, and we set them aside. Using a small penknife, I cut the tape on the first canister and open the box. We remove the mini-bars, count them-thirty-then put them back inside and re-tape the lid. Vanessa scribbles down the quantity and we open the second one. It has thirty-two mini-bars, all shiny, perfectly sized, and seemingly untouched by human hands.

  “Beautiful, just beautiful,” she says over and over. “It will last for centuries.”

  “Forever,” I say, rubbing a mini-bar. “Wouldn’t you love to know what part of the world it came from?”

  She laughs because we’ll never know.

  We open all sixteen of the sealed boxes, then inventory the mini-bars from the two that had previously been opened. They held about half the number as the others. Our total is 570. With gold fluctuating around $1,500 an ounce, our jackpot is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $8.5 million.

  We lie on the bed with the gold stacked between us, and it’s impossible not to smile. We need a bottle of champagne, but at 2:00 on a Monday morning in a cheap motel in North Carolina, champagne does not exist. There is so much to take in here, at this moment, but one of the more glorious aspects of our project is that no one is looking for this treasure. Other than Nathan Cooley, no one knows it exists. We took it from a thief, one who left no trail.

  Seeing, touching, and counting our fortune has energized us. I yank off her bathrobe and we crawl under the covers of the other bed. Try as we may, it’s difficult to make love without keeping one eye on the gold. When we finish, we collapse with exhaustion and sleep like the dead.

  CHAPTER 38

  At 6:30 Monday morning, Agent Fox walked into the large office of Victor Westlake and said, “The Jamaicans are as slow as ever. Nothing much to add. Baldwin arrived late Friday night on a jet chartered from a company in Raleigh, a nice plane that is currently being seized by Jamaican Customs and can’t come home. No sign of Baldwin. His friend Nathaniel Coley tried to enter with a fake passport and is now locked up just like the airplane.”

  “He’s in jail?” Westlake asked, chewing on a thumbnail.

  “Yes sir. That’s all I can get as of now. Don’t know when he might be getting out. I’m trying to get the police to check hotel records to find Baldwin, but they’re hesitant to do so. He’s not a fugitive; they don’t like to piss off the hotels; it was the weekend; et cetera.”

  “Find Baldwin.”

  “Trying, sir.”

  “What’s he up to?”

  Fox shook his head. “It makes no sense. Why burn that much cash on a private jet? Why travel with someone using a fake passport? Who the hell is Nathaniel Coley? We’ve done a search in Virginia and West Virginia and found no possible hits. Maybe Coley is a good friend who can’t get a passport, and they were trying to beat Customs so they can play in the sun for a few days.”

  “Maybe maybe.”

  “You got it, sir.”

  “Keep digging and report back by e-mail.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I’m assuming he left his car behind at the Roanoke airport.”

  “He did, in the parking lot of the general aviation terminal. Same Florida license plates. We found it Saturday morning and have it under surveillance.”

  “Good. Just find him, okay?”

  “And if we do?”

  “Just follow him and figure out what he’s doing.”

  Over coffee and gold, we plan our day, but we do not linger. At nine, Vanessa turns in the key at the front desk and checks out. We kiss good-bye and I follow her out of the parking lot, careful not to crowd the rear bumper of her Accord. On the other side of it, hidden deep in the trunk, is half the gold. The other half is in the trunk of my rented Impala. We separate at the interchange; she’s going north and I’m going south. She waves in the rearview mirror, and I wonder when I’ll see her again.

  As I settle into the long drive, tall coffee in hand, I remind myself that the time must be spent wisely. No foolish daydreaming; no mental loafing; no fantasies about what to do with all the money. So many issues vie for priority. When will the police find Nathan’s truck? When do I call Rashford Watley and instruct him to pass along the message to Nathan that things are proceeding as planned? How many of these cigar boxes will fit into the bank lockboxes I leased a month ago? How much of the gold should I try to sell at a discount to raise cash? How do I get the attention of Victor Westlake and Stanley Mumphrey, the U.S. Attorney in Roanoke? And, most important, how do we get the gold out of the country, and how long might it take?

  Instead, my mind drifts to thoughts of my father, old Henry, who hasn’t had contact with his younger son in over four months. I’m sure he’s disgusted with me for getting busted out of Frostburg and shipped off to Fort Wayne. I’m sure he’s puzzled by the absence of correspondence. He’s probably calling my brother, Marcus, in D.C. and my sister, Ruby, in California to see
if they’ve heard anything. I wonder if Henry’s a great-grandfather yet, courtesy of Marcus’s delinquent son and his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, or did she get the abortion?

  On second thought, maybe I don’t miss my family as much as I sometimes think. It would be nice, though, to see my father, though I suspect he will not approve of my altered looks. Truth is, there’s a good chance I’ll never see any of them again. Depending on the whims and machinations of the federal government, I could remain a free man or I could spend the rest of my life as a fugitive. Regardless, I’ll have the gold.

  As the miles pass and I cling to the speed limit while trying to avoid getting hit by the big rigs, I can’t help but think of Bo. I’ve been out of prison for four months now, and every day I’ve fought the urge to dwell on my son. It’s too painful to think I may never see him again, but as the weeks go by I have come to accept this reality. Reuniting with him, in some fashion, would be the first huge step down the road to normalcy, but my life from now on will be anything but normal. We could never again live together under the same roof, as father and son, and I see no benefit to Bo of knowing that I’m suddenly around and would like to have an ice cream twice a month. I’m sure he still remembers me, but the memories are certainly fading. Dionne is a smart, lovely woman, and I’m sure she and her second husband are providing a happy life for Bo. Why should I, a virtual stranger and a guy who certainly looks like one, pop into their world and upset things? Once I convinced Bo I was really his father, how would I rekindle a relationship that’s been dead for over five years?

  To stop this torment, I try to focus on the next few hours, then the next few days. Crucial steps lie ahead, and a screwup could cost me a fortune and possibly send me back to prison.

  I stop for gas and a vending-machine sandwich near Savannah, and two and a half hours later I’m in Neptune Beach, my old, temporary stomping ground. At an office supply store I purchase a heavy, thick briefcase, then drive to a public parking area for the beach. There are no security cameras and no foot traffic, and I quickly open the trunk, remove two of the cigar boxes and place them in the briefcase. It weighs about forty pounds, and as I walk around the car I realize it’s too heavy. I remove one container and return it to the trunk.

  Four blocks away, I park at First Coast Trust, and nonchalantly walk toward the front door. The digital thermometer on the bank’s rotating billboard reads ninety-six degrees. The briefcase gets heavier with each step, and I struggle to act as though it contains nothing but some important papers. Twenty pounds is not a lot of weight, but it’s far too much for a briefcase of any size. Every step is now being captured on video, and the last thing I want is the image of me lumbering into the bank with a heavy satchel. I worry about Vanessa and her efforts to access her lockboxes in Richmond with such a burden on her shoulder.

  Heavy as it is, I can’t help but smile at the astonishing weight of pure gold.

  Inside I wait patiently for the vault clerk to finish with another customer. When it’s my turn, I give her my Florida driver’s license and sign my name. She checks my face and my handwriting, approves, and escorts me to the vault in the rear of the bank. She inserts the house key into my lockbox, and I insert my own. Noises click perfectly, the box is released, and I carry it to a narrow, private closet and close the door. The clerk waits outside, in the center of the vault.

  The lockbox is six inches wide, six inches tall, and eighteen inches long, the largest available when I leased it a month ago for one year, at $300 per. I place the cigar box inside. Vanessa and I labeled each one with the exact number of mini-bars. This one has thirty-three, or 330 ounces, roughly $500,000. I close the box, admire it, kill a few minutes, then open the door and report to the clerk. Part of her job is to remain aloof with no suspicions whatsoever, and she does it well. I suppose she’s seen it all.

  Twenty minutes later, I’m in the vault at a branch of the Jacksonville Savings Bank. The vault is larger, the lockboxes smaller, the clerk more suspicious, but everything else is the same. Behind a locked door, I gently place another stash of mini-bars into the box. Thirty-two gorgeous little ingots worth another half a million bucks.

  At my third and final bank, not a half mile from the first one, I make the last deposit of the day, then spend an hour looking for a motel where I can park just outside my room.

  In a mall on the west end of Richmond, Vanessa wanders through a high-end department store until she finds the ladies’ accessories. Though she acts calm, she is all nerves because her Accord is alone out there in the parking lot just waiting to be vandalized or stolen. She selects a chic red leather shoulder bag large enough to be called luggage. Its designer is well-known, and it will probably be noticed by the female clerks who run the banks. She pays cash for it and hustles back to her car.

  Two weeks earlier, Max-she had always known him as Malcolm but she liked the new name better-had instructed her to rent three lockboxes. She had carefully selected the banks around Richmond, made the applications, passed the screenings, and paid the fees. Then, as instructed, she had visited each one twice to deposit useless paperwork and such. The vault clerks now recognized her, trusted her, and were not the least bit suspicious when Ms. Vanessa Young showed up with a killer new bag and needed access to the vault.

  In less than ninety minutes, Vanessa safely stashes away almost $1.5 million in gold bullion.

  She returns to her apartment for the first time in over a week and parks in a space she can see from her second-floor window. The complex is in a nice part of town, near the University of Richmond, and the neighborhood is generally safe. She has lived here for two years and cannot remember a stolen car or a burglary. Nevertheless, she is taking no chances. She inspects the doors and windows for signs of entry, and finds none. She showers, changes clothes, then leaves.

  Four hours later, she returns, and in the darkness she slowly, methodically hauls the treasure into her apartment and hides it under her bed. She sleeps above it, the Glock on the night table, every door locked and latched and jammed with a chair.

  She drifts in and out, and at dawn she’s sipping coffee on the sofa in the den watching the weather on local cable. The clock seems to have stopped. She would love to sleep some more, but her mind will not allow her body to surrender. Her appetite is gone too, though she tries to choke down some cottage cheese. Every ten minutes or so, she walks to the window and checks the parking lot. The early morning commuters leave in shifts-7:30, 7:45, 8:00. The banks do not open until 9:00. She takes a long shower, dresses as if she’s going to court, packs a bag and takes it to her car. Over the next twenty minutes, she removes three of the cigar boxes from under the bed and takes them to her car. These she will soon deposit in the same three lockboxes she visited the day before.

  The great debate raging in her mind is whether the remaining three canisters will be safer in the trunk of her car or in her apartment under the bed. She decides to play it both ways, and leaves two at home while taking another one with her.

  Vanessa calls with the news that she’s made her third and final deposit of the morning, and is headed to Roanoke to see the lawyer. I’m ahead of her by a step or two. I visited my three banks a bit earlier, made the deposits, and am now driving to Miami. We have tucked away 380 of the 570 mini-bars. It’s a good feeling, but the pressure is still on. The Feds can and will seize all assets under the right circumstances, and even the wrong ones, so we can take no chances. I have to get the gold out of the country.

  I am assuming the Feds do not know Vanessa and I are working together. I am also assuming they have yet to link Nathan Cooley to me. I’m making lots of assumptions and have no way of knowing if they are correct.

  CHAPTER 39

  Stalled in construction traffic near Fort Lauderdale, I punch in the numbers to Mr. Rashford Watley’s cell phone down in Montego Bay. He answers with a warm laugh as if we’ve been friends for decades. I explain I’m safely back home in the U.S. and life is swell. Forty-eight hours ago I was sneakin
g out of Jamaica after saying good-bye to both Nathan and Rashford, terrified I would be stopped by uniformed men before boarding the flight to Puerto Rico. I am stunned at how fast things are happening. I repeatedly remind myself to stay focused and think about the next move.

  Rashford has not visited the jail since Sunday. I explain that Nathaniel has hatched a scheme to start bribing people down there and is having delusions about my returning with a box-load of cash. I’ve made a few calls, and it seems as if the boy has a long history with cocaine; still can’t believe the idiot would attempt to smuggle in four kilos; can’t begin to explain the gun. A moron.

  Rashford agrees and says he chatted with the prosecutor yesterday, Monday. If Rashford can work his magic, our boy is looking at “about” twenty years in the Jamaican prison system. Frankly, Rashford advises, he doesn’t think Nathaniel will survive long in the system. Based on the beatings he’s received his first two nights in jail, he’ll be lucky to live a full week.

  We agree that Rashford will visit the jail this afternoon and check on Nathaniel. I ask him to pass along the message that I am hard at work securing his release, the visit to his home went as planned, and all things are proceeding as discussed. “As you wish,” Rashford says. I paid his fee, so he’s still working for me, technically.

  I hope it’s our last conversation.

  Vanessa once again makes the three-and-a-half-hour drive from Richmond to Roanoke and arrives promptly for a 2:00 p.m. meeting with Dusty Shiver, attorney for Quinn Rucker. When she called to schedule the appointment, she promised to have in her possession crucial evidence about Quinn’s case. Dusty was intrigued and attempted to pry over the phone, but she insisted on a meeting, as soon as possible.

  She is dressed fashionably in a skirt short enough to get attention, and she carries a smart leather attache. Dusty jumps to his feet when she enters his office and offers a chair. A secretary brings in coffee and they manage some strained small talk until the door is closed for good.

  “I’ll get right to the point, Mr. Shiver,” she says. “Quinn Rucker is my brother, and I can prove he’s innocent.”

  Dusty absorbs this and allows it to rattle around the room. He knows Quinn has two brothers-Dee Ray and Tall Man-and a sister Lucinda. All have been active in the family business. He now remembers that there was another sister who has not been involved and has never been mentioned.

  “Quinn is your brother,” he repeats, almost mumbling.

  “Yes. I left D.C. a few years ago and have kept my distance.”

  “Okay. I’m listening. Let’s hear it.”

  Vanessa recrosses her legs and Dusty maintains eye contact. She begins, “A week or so after Quinn walked away from the camp at Frostburg, he almost overdosed on cocaine in D.C. We, the family, knew he would kill himself with the stuff-Quinn was always the heaviest user-and we intervened. My brother Dee Ray and I drove him to a rehab facility near Akron, Ohio, a tough place for serious addicts. There was no court order so they couldn’t lock him down, but that’s basically what happens at this facility. Quinn had been there for twenty-one days when the bodies of Judge Fawcett and his secretary were found on February 7.” She lifts a file from her briefcase and places it on Dusty’s desk. “The paperwork is all here. Because he had just escaped from prison, he was admitted under an assumed name-Mr. James Williams. We paid a deposit of $20,000 in cash, so the rehab facility was happy to go along. They didn’t ask a lot of questions. They gave him a complete physical exam, complete blood work, so there’s DNA proof that Quinn was there at the time of the murders.”

  “How long have you known this?”

  “I cannot answer all of your questions, Mr. Shiver. There are many secrets in our family, and not many answers.”

  Dusty stares at her, and she coolly returns his look. He knows he will not learn everything, and at the moment it’s not that important. He has just won a major victory over the government, and he is already laughing. “Why did he confess?”

  “Why does anyone confess to a crime they didn’t commit? I don’t know. Quinn is severely bipolar and has other problems. The FBI hammered him for ten hours and used all the dirty tricks at their disposal. Knowing Quinn, he was playing games. He probably gave them what they wanted so they would leave him alone. Maybe he fabricated a tall tale so they would run around in circles trying to verify it. I don’t know. Remember the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the most famous kidnapping in history?”

  “I’ve read about it, sure.”

  “Well, at least 150 people confessed to that crime. It makes no sense, but then Quinn can be crazy at times.”

  Dusty opens the file. There is a report of each day Quinn was in rehab, from January 17 through February 7, the Monday they found the bodies of Judge Fawcett and Naomi Clary. “It says here he left the facility on the afternoon of February 7,” Dusty says, reading.

  “That’s right. He walked away, or escaped, and made his way to Roanoke.”

  “And why, might I ask, did he go to Roanoke?”

  “Again, Mr. Shiver, I can’t answer a lot of questions.”

  “So he shows up in Roanoke the day after the bodies are found, goes to a bar, gets drunk, gets in a fight, gets arrested, and he’s got a pocketful of cash. There are a lot of gaps here, Miss …”

  “Yes, there are, and with time the gaps will be filled in. Right now, though, it’s not that important, is it? What’s important is that you have clear proof of his innocence. Other than the bogus confession, the government has no evidence against my brother, right?”

  “That’s correct. There’s no physical evidence, just a lot of suspicious behavior. Such as, why was he in Roanoke? How did he get there? Where did he get all that cash? Where did he buy the stolen guns? Lots of questions, Miss, but I suppose you don’t have the answers, right?”

  “Correct.”

  Dusty locks his hands behind his head and stares at the ceiling. After a long, silent gap he says, “I’ll have to investigate this, you know. I’ll have to go to the rehab center, interview the people there, take affidavits and such. The Feds are not about to roll over until our file is much thicker and we can hit them over the head with it. I’ll need another $25,000.”

  Without hesitation, she says, “I’ll discuss it with Dee Ray.”

  “The pretrial conference is in two weeks, so we need to move fast. I’d like to file a motion to dismiss the charges before the conference.”

  “You’re the lawyer.”

  Another pause as Dusty leans forward on his elbows and looks at Vanessa. “I knew Judge Fawcett well. We weren’t friends, but friendly acquaintances. If Quinn didn’t kill him, any idea who did?”

  She is already shaking her head. No.