The Racketeer

I'm back in the warden's office and something is up. He's wearing a dark suit, starched white shirt, paisley tie, and his pointed-toe cowboy boots are fairly gleaming with fresh wax and polish. He's still smug as ever but somewhat twitchy.

"I don't know what you told them, Bannister," he's saying, "but they like your story. I hate to repeat myself, but if this is your idea of a prank, then you'll pay dearly for it."

"It's not a prank, sir." I suspect the warden was eavesdropping next door and knows exactly what I told them.

"They sent four agents here two days ago, snooped all over the place, wanted to know who you hung out with, who you did legal work for, who you played checkers with, where you worked, who you ate with, who you showered with, who you celled with, and on and on."

"I shower alone."

"I guess they're trying to figure out who your buddies are, is that right?"

"I don't know, sir, but I'm not surprised. I figured as much." I knew the FBI was snooping around Frostburg, though I did not see the agents. Secrets are extremely hard to keep in prison, especially when outsiders appear and start asking questions. In my opinion, and based on some experience, it was a clumsy way to dig into my background.

"Well, they're back," he says. "They'll be here at ten and they said it might take some time."

It is five minutes before 10:00 a.m. The same sharp pain hits my gut again, and I try to breathe deeply without appearing obvious. I shrug, as if it's no big deal. "Who's coming?" I ask.

"Hell if I know."

Seconds later, his phone buzzes, and his secretary relays a message.

We're in the same room adjacent to the warden's office. He, of course, is not present. Agents Hanski and Erardi are back, along with a fierce young man named Dunleavy, an assistant U.S. Attorney from the Southern District of Virginia, Roanoke office.

I'm gathering steam, gaining credibility and curiosity. My little group of interrogators is looking more impressive.

Though Dunleavy is the youngest of the three, he is a federal prosecutor, and the other two are simply federal cops. Therefore, Dunleavy has seniority at this moment and seems rather full of himself, not an unusual posture for a man in such a position. He can't be more than five years out of law school, and I assume he'll do most of the talking.

"Obviously, Mr. Bannister," he begins with an obnoxious condescending tone, "we wouldn't be here if we didn't have some interest in your little story."

Little story. What a prick.

"Can I call you Malcolm?" he asks.

"Let's stick with Mr. Bannister and Mr. Dunleavy, for now anyway," I respond. I'm an inmate, and I haven't been called Mr. Bannister in years. I kind of like the sound of it.

"You got it," he snaps, then quickly reaches into a pocket. He pulls out a slender recording device and places it on the table, halfway between me on one side and the three of them on the other. "I'd like to record our conversation, if that's okay."

And with that, my cause takes a giant leap forward. A week ago, Hanski and Erardi were reluctant to remove their pens and take a few notes. Now the government wants to capture every word. I shrug and say, "I don't care."

He flips a switch and says, "Now, you say you know who killed Judge Fawcett, and you want to swap this information for a ticket out of here. And once out, you want our protection. That the basic structure of the arrangement?"

"You got it," I say, mimicking his own words.

"Why should we believe you?"

"Because I know the truth, and because you guys are nowhere near it."

"How do you know this?"

"I just do. If you had a serious suspect, you wouldn't be here talking to me."

"Are you in contact with the killer?"

"I'm not answering that question."

"You gotta give us something, Mr. Bannister, something that will make us feel better about this little deal of yours."

"I wouldn't characterize it as little."

"Then we'll call it whatever you want. Why don't you explain it. How do you see this big deal happening?"

"Okay. It has to be a secret, highly confidential. We have a written agreement, approved by the U.S. Attorney's offices in both the Northern District, where I was prosecuted and sentenced, and the Southern District, where this investigation is taking place. Judge Slater, who sentenced me, will have to sign off on the agreement. Once we've agreed, then I'll give you the name of the killer. You grab him, investigate him, and when the grand jury indicts him for the murder, I will suddenly be transferred to another prison. Except I will not be serving any more time. I leave here as though I'm being transferred, but instead I go into your witness protection program. My sentence will be commuted, my record expunged, my name changed, and I'll probably want some plastic surgery to alter my appearance. I'll get new papers, new looks, a nice federal job somewhere, and, to boot, I get the reward money."

Three stone faces stare at me. Dunleavy finally says, "Is that all?"

"That's it. And it's not negotiable."

"Wow," Dunleavy mumbles, as if in shock. "I guess you've had plenty of time to think about this."

"Far more than you."

"What if you're wrong? What if we pick up the wrong guy, somehow get an indictment, you walk, then we can't prove a case?"

"That'll be your problem. You screw up the prosecution, then it's your fault."

"Okay, but once we have our man, how much evidence will there be?"

"You have the entire federal government at your disposal. Certainly you guys can find enough evidence once you have the killer. I can't do everything for you."

For drama, Dunleavy stands and stretches and paces to one end of the room, as if tortured and deep in thought. Then he returns, takes his seat, glares at me. "I think we're wasting our time here," he says, a bad bluff delivered lamely by a kid who has no business even being in the room. Hanski, the veteran, lowers his head slightly and blinks his eyes. He can't believe how bad this guy is. Erardi never takes his eyes off me, and I can sense the desperation. I can also feel the tension between the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office, which is not at all unusual.

I slowly get to my feet and say, "You're right. We're wasting our time. I'm not meeting with you again until you boys send in someone with more than peach fuzz. I've given you my deal, and the next time we chat I want Mr. Victor Westlake at the table, along with one of your bosses, Mr. Dunleavy. And if you're in the room, then I'll walk out."

With that, I leave. I glance back as I close the door, and Hanski is rubbing his temples.

They'll be back.

The meeting could have been scheduled to take place at the Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington. Victor Westlake would have been happy to return home briefly, see the boss, check on his staff, have a nice dinner with his family, and so on. However, the Director wanted to take a quick road trip. He needed to get away from the building for a few hours, so he loaded his entourage onto a sleek private jet, one of four controlled by the FBI, and took off for Roanoke, a forty-minute flight.

His name was George McTavey, aged sixty-one, a career man and not a political appointee, though his politics currently had him in hot water with the President. According to the relentless gossip inside the Beltway, McTavey was barely hanging on to his job. The President wanted a new Director of the FBI. After fourteen years, McTavey needed to go. Morale was low inside the Hoover Building, so the gossip went. In the past few months, McTavey rarely passed up a chance to leave Washington, if only for a few hours.

And it was almost refreshing to focus on such an old-fashioned crime as murder. He had been fighting terror for ten years now, and there had yet to be even the slightest hint that Fawcett's death was related to al-Qaeda or homegrown cells. Gone were the glory days of fighting organized crime and chasing counterfeiters.

In Roanoke, a black SUV was waiting at the bottom of the jet's staircase, and McTavey and his team were rushed away as if snipers were watching and waiting. A minute later they rolled to a stop outside the Freezer and hustled inside.

A field visit by the Director had two purposes. The first was to raise the spirits of the task force and let them know that in spite of their lack of progress their work had the highest priority. The second was to ratchet up the pressure. After a quick tour of the makeshift facilities and a round of handshakes that would have impressed a politician, Director McTavey was led to the largest meeting room for the briefing.

He sat next to Victor Westlake, an old friend, and they munched on doughnuts as a senior investigator gave a windy summary of the latest, which wasn't much at all. McTavey didn't need to be briefed in person. Since the murder, he'd been talking to Westlake at least twice a day.

"Let's talk about this Bannister fellow," McTavey said after half an hour of a dull narrative that was going nowhere. Another report was quickly passed around the table. "This is the latest," Westlake said. "We started with high school classmates, then moved on to college and law school, and there are no viable suspects. No record of any friends or close acquaintances, of no one, really, who ever crossed paths with Judge Fawcett. No gang members or drug dealers or serious criminals. Next we tracked down as many of his former clients as possible, though this was difficult because we can't get access to a lot of his old files. Again, no one of interest there. He did the small-town-lawyer gig for about ten years, with two older African-American lawyers, and it was a squeaky-clean operation."

"Did he do business in Judge Fawcett's court?" McTavey asked.

"There's no record of him handling a case there. He didn't do much federal work, and besides he was in the Northern District of Virginia. It's fair to say that Mr. Bannister was not a widely sought-after trial lawyer."

"So you believe that whoever killed Fawcett is someone Mr. Bannister met in prison, assuming, of course, we believe he knows the truth."

"Correct. He served the first twenty-two months of his sentence in Louisville, Kentucky, a medium-security facility with two thousand inmates. He had three different cell mates, and he worked in the laundry and the kitchen. He also developed his skills as a jailhouse lawyer and actually helped at least five inmates get out of prison. We have a list of about fifty men he probably knew fairly well, but frankly it's impossible to know everyone he came into contact with at Louisville. And the same at Frostburg. He's been there for the past three years and has served time with a thousand men."

"How long is your list?" McTavey asked.

"We have about 110 names, give or take, but we don't feel too confident about most of these guys."

"How many were sentenced by Fawcett?"

"Six."

"So there's no clear suspect in Bannister's prison history?"

"Not yet, but we're still digging. Bear in mind, this is our second theory, the one that assumes whoever killed the judge was carrying a grudge because of a bad outcome in his court. Our first theory is that it was an old-fashioned murder-robbery."

"Do you have a third theory?" McTavey asked.

"The jealous ex-husband of the dead secretary," Westlake replied.

"That's not credible, right?"

"Right."

"Do you have a fourth theory?"

"No, not at this time."

Director McTavey sipped his coffee and said, "This is really bad coffee." Two flunkies at the far end of the room bolted to attention and disappeared in search of something better.

"Sorry," Westlake said. It was widely known that the Director was a serious coffee man and to provide a brew that didn't measure up was an embarrassment.

"And Bannister's background again?" he asked.

"Ten years, RICO, got caught up in the Barry Rafko mess a few years back, though he wasn't a big player. He had handled some land deals for Barry and got himself convicted."

"So he was not in bed with sixteen-year-old girls?"

"Oh no, that was just our congressmen. Bannister appears to be a good guy, former Marine and all, just picked the wrong client."

"Well, was he guilty?"

"The jury felt so. As did the judge. You don't get ten years unless you've screwed up somewhere."

Another cup of coffee was placed in front of the Director, who sniffed it, then finally took a sip as everyone stopped breathing. Then another sip, and everyone exhaled.

"Why do we believe Bannister?" McTavey asked.

Westlake quickly passed the buck. "Hanski."

Agent Chris Hanski was sitting on go. He cleared his throat and dove in. "Well, I'm not sure we believe Bannister, but he makes a good impression. I've interviewed him twice, watched him carefully, and I've seen no signs of deception. He's bright, shrewd, and has nothing to gain by lying to us. After five years in prison, it's quite possible he bumped into someone who wanted to knock off Judge Fawcett or to rob him."

"And we really have no idea who this person might be, right?"

Hanski looked at Victor Westlake, who said, "As of today, that's right. But we're still digging."

"I don't like our chances of discovering the identity of the killer based on who Mr. Bannister may have bumped into in prison," McTavey said, sounding perfectly logical. "We could be chasing dead ends for the next ten years. What's the downside of cutting a deal with Bannister? Look, the guy is a white-collar crook who has already served five years for criminal activity that seems rather harmless in the scheme of things. Don't you think so, Vic?"

Vic was nodding gravely.

McTavey pressed on: "So the guy gets out of prison. It's not as though we're releasing a serial killer or a sexual predator. If the guy is right, then this case is solved and we can go home. If the guy is conning us, what's the big deal?"

At that moment, no one around the table could envision a big deal.

"Who will object to it?" McTavey asked.

"The U.S. Attorney's Office is not on board," Westlake said.

"No surprise there," McTavey said. "I'm meeting with the Attorney General tomorrow afternoon. I can neutralize the U.S. Attorney. Any other problems?"

Hanski cleared his throat again. "Well, sir, Mr. Bannister insists he will not give us the name until a federal judge signs an order of commutation. I'm not sure how this will work, but the commuting of his sentence will become automatic when the grand jury indicts our mystery guy."

McTavey brushed him off. "We got lawyers to handle all that. Does Bannister have one?"

"Not that I know of."

"Does he need one?"

"I'll be happy to ask him," Hanski said.

"Let's get this deal done, okay?" McTavey said impatiently. "There's a big upside and a small downside. Based on our progress so far, we're due for a break."