The Racketeer

FedEx wins the race. The first packages arrive Monday around noon, and because I have been anxiously roaming the grounds of Sugar Cove, I see the truck when it pulls up. Miss Robinson, the pleasant lady who runs the office, has by now heard the full version of the fiction. I am a writer/filmmaker, holed up in her villas for the next three months, working desperately to finish a novel and a screenplay based on said novel. My partners, meanwhile, are already filming preliminary scenes. Blah, blah, blah. Therefore, I am expecting approximately twenty overnight packages from Miami: manuscripts, research memos, videos, even some equipment. She is visibly impressed.

I’m really looking forward to the day when I can stop lying.

Inside my villa, I open the boxes. A backgammon set yields two bars; a toolbox, four; a hardback novel, one; and another backgammon set, two. A total of nine, all apparently untouched during their journey from Miami to Antigua. I often wonder about their history. Who mined the gold? From which continent? Who minted it? How did it get into this country? And so on. But I know these questions will never be answered.

I hustle into St. John’s, to the Royal Bank of the East Caribbean, and put the precious ingots to rest.

My second e-mail to Messrs. Westlake and Mumphrey reads:

Hey Guys:

It’s me again. Shame on you for not responding to my e-mail of two days ago. If you want to find Judge Fawcett’s killer, then you need to work on your communication skills. I’m not going away.

I’ll bet your initial reaction is to trump up some bogus indictment and come after me and Qui

But I digress. Forget another indictment. You can’t make the charges stick, not that that has ever slowed you down, but there is simply no section of your vast Federal Code that you can possibly use against me.

More important, you can’t catch me. Do something stupid, and I’ll disappear again. I’m not going back to prison, ever.

I have attached to this e-mail four color photographs. The first three are of the same cigar box, a dark brown wooden box handcrafted somewhere in Honduras. Into this box, a worker carefully placed twenty Lavos, a strong, black, rich, near-lethal cigar with a cone tip. The box was shipped to an importer in Miami, and from there sent to Vandy’s Smokes in downtown Roanoke where it was purchased by the Honorable Raymond Fawcett. Evidently, Judge Fawcett smoked Lavos for many years and kept the empty boxes. Perhaps you found a few when you searched the cabin after the murders. I have a hunch that if you check with the owner of Vandy’s he’ll be well acquainted with Judge Fawcett and his rather rare taste in cigars.

The first photo is of the box as it would appear in a store. It’s almost a perfect five-inch square, and five inches in height—unusual for a cigar box. The second photo is a side shot. The third is of the box’s bottom, clearly showing the white sticker of Vandy’s Smokes.

This box was taken from Judge Fawcett’s safe shortly before he was executed. It is now in my possession. I would give it to you, but the killer’s fingerprints are most certainly on it, and I’d hate to ruin the surprise.

The fourth photo is the reason we’re all at the table. It is of three, ten-ounce, gold ingots, perfect little mini-bars without the slightest hint of registration or identification (more about this later). These little dudes were stacked thirty to a cigar box and tucked away in Judge Fawcett’s safe.

So, one mystery is now solved. Why was he murdered? Someone knew he had a pot of gold.

The big mystery, though, still haunts you. The killer is still out there, and after six months of bumbling, stumbling, goose chasing, puffing, posturing, and lying, you DO NOT HAVE A CLUE!

Come on guys, give it up. Let’s cut a deal and close this file.

Your friend, Malcolm

Victor Westlake canceled yet another di

McTavey had been fully briefed, so there was no need to cover old territory. He began with his trademark “Is there anything that I don’t know?” This question could always be anticipated, and it had damned well be answered truthfully.

“Yes,” Westlake replied.

“Let’s hear it.”

“The spike in the price of gold has created a huge demand for the stuff, so we’re seeing all sorts of scams. Every pawnbroker in the country is now a gold trader, so you can imagine the crap that’s being bought and sold. We ran an investigation last year in New York City involving some rather established traders who were melting gold, diluting it, then passing it along as basically pure. No indictments yet, but the case is not closed. In the course of this, an informant who worked for a dealer got his hands on a ten-ounce bar with no ID stamped on it. Ninety-nine point nine percent pure, really fine stuff, and an unusual price. He dug around and found out that a man named Ray Fawcett came in from time to time and sold a few bars, at a slight discount, for cash of course. We have a video of Fawcett in the store on Forty-Seventh Street back in December, two months before he was murdered. Apparently, he drove to New York a couple times a year, did his trading, and drove back to Roanoke with a sackful of cash. The records appear to be incomplete, but based on what we have it looks as though he sold at least $600,000 worth of gold over the past four years in New York City. There is nothing illegal about this, assuming, of course, the gold was rightfully owned by Fawcett.”

“Interesting, but?”

“I showed Ba

“And your theory is?”

“Malcolm Ba

“Wouldn’t he have to kill the killer to get his gold?”

Westlake shrugged because he had no idea. “Maybe, but maybe not. Ba

“That’s always comforting,” McTavey said. “What’s the downside of dealing with Ba

“We dealt with him last time and he lied to us.”

“Okay, but what does he gain by lying now?”