The Racketeer

“My answer is no, okay? I’ve made that clear. I have no plans to ever return to the U.S. I’m seriously considering renouncing my citizenship and becoming a full-fledged Antiguan, and if I never set foot on U.S. soil again, I’ll die a happy man.”

“Somewhat of an overreaction, don’t you think, Max?” he says in a tone I despise. “You now have full immunity.”

“That might be easy for you to say, Vic, but then you’ve never spent time in prison for a crime you didn’t commit. The Feds nailed me once and almost ruined my life; it’s not going to happen again. I’m lucky in that I’m getting a second chance, and for some strange reason I’m a bit hesitant to subject myself to your jurisdiction again.”

He sips his tea and wipes his mouth with a linen napkin. “A second chance. Sailing off into the sunset with a pot of gold.”

I just stare at him. After a few seconds he says, a bit awkwardly, “We haven’t discussed the gold, have we Max?”

“No.”

“Let’s give it a go, then. What gives you the right to keep it?”

I stare at a button on his shirt and say, clearly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I do not have any gold. Period.”

“How about the three mini-bars in the photo you e-mailed last week?”

“That’s evidence, and in due course I’ll give them to you, along with the cigar box in the other photo. I suspect these little exhibits are covered with fingerprints, both Fawcett’s and the killer’s.”

“Great, and the big question will be, Where’s the rest of the gold?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay. You must agree, Max, that it will be important to the prosecution of the killer to know what was in Judge Fawcett’s safe. What got him killed? At some point, we’ll have to know everything.”

“Perhaps you won’t know everything; you never will. There will be ample evidence to convict this killer. If the government botches the prosecution, it will not be my problem.”

Another sip, a look of exasperation. Then, “You don’t have the right to keep it, Max.”

“Keep what?”

“The gold.”

“I do not have the gold. But, speaking hypothetically, in a situation like this it seems to me the loot belongs to no one. It’s certainly not the property of the government; it wasn’t taken from the taxpayers. You never had possession of it, never had a claim. You’ve never seen it and you’re not sure, at this point, if it even exists. It doesn’t belong to the killer; he’s a thief as well. He stole it from a public official who obtained it, we assume, through corruption. And if you could possibly identify the original source of the loot and tried to return it, those boys would either dive under a desk or run like hell. It’s just out there, sort of in the clouds, like the Internet, owned by no one.” I wave my hands at the sky as I finish this well-rehearsed response.

Westlake smiles because we both know the truth. There’s a twinkle in his eye, as if he wants to laugh in surrender and say, “Helluva job.” Of course, this doesn’t happen.

We make our way back to the suite and are told that the judge in D.C. is still occupied with more important matters. I’m not about to lounge around the table with a bunch of federal boys, so I go for a walk on the beach. I call Vanessa, tell her things are proceeding slowly, and, no, I have not seen handcuffs or guns. So far, it’s all aboveboard. Qui

During his lunch break, the judge who had sentenced Qui

Qui

It’s almost 2:30 by the time all the orders and documents are properly signed, examined, and verified, and at the last minute I step outside the room and call Dusty. He assures me we’ve “got ’em by the throat,” all paperwork is in order, all rights are being protected, all promises are being fulfilled. “Start singing,” he says with a laugh.

Six months after I arrived at the Louisville Federal Correctional Institution, I agreed to review the case of a drug dealer from Cinci

Around this time, a guy we called Nattie entered my life and consumed more time than I wanted to give. He was a ski

As a child, Nattie was an accomplished petty thief, and in his teenage years drifted into the world of meth. He moved around a lot, dodging drug enforcement agents, bill collectors, deputies with warrants, fathers with pregnant daughters, and pissed-off rivals from other meth gangs. He tried several times to go straight but easily fell back into a life of crime. He was watching his cousins and friends ruin their lives with drugs, as addicts and convicted felons, and he really wanted something better. He had a job as a cashier in a country store, deep in the mountains around the small town of Ripplemead, when he was approached by a stranger who offered him $10 an hour for some manual labor. No one in the store had ever seen the stranger, nor would they ever again. Nattie was making $5 an hour, cash, off the books, and jumped at the chance to earn more. After work, Nattie met the stranger at a pre-arranged spot and followed him along a narrow dirt trail to an A-frame cabin wedged into the side of a steep hill, just above a small lake. The stranger introduced himself only as Ray, and Ray was driving a nice pickup truck with a wooden crate in the back. As it turned out, the crate contained a five-hundred-pound safe, too much for Ray to handle by himself. They rigged a pulley with a cable over a tree branch and managed to wrestle the safe out of the truck, onto the ground, and eventually into the basement of the cabin. It was tedious, backbreaking work, and it took almost three hours to get the safe inside. Ray paid him in cash, said thanks and good-bye.

Nattie told his brother, Gene, who was in the vicinity hiding from the sheriff two counties away. The brothers became curious about the safe and its contents, and decided to investigate. When they were certain Ray had left the cabin, they attempted to break in but were stopped by heavy oak doors, unbreakable glass, and thick dead bolts. So they simply removed an entire window in the basement. Inside, they could not locate the safe but did manage to identify Ray. Riffling through some papers at a worktable, they realized their neighbor was a big-shot federal judge over in Roanoke. There was even a newspaper article about an important trial involving uranium mining in Virginia, with the Honorable Raymond Fawcett presiding.