The Racketeer

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 sneaking 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.

The police found Nathan's truck at the general aviation area of the Roanoke Regional Airport late Tuesday morning. As expected, his employees at the bar became concerned Monday when he didn't show, and by late afternoon they were making calls. They finally contacted the police, who eventually scoured the airport. Nathan had boasted of flying to Miami on a private jet, so the search was not difficult, at least for his truck. Finding it did not automatically indicate foul play, and the police were in no hurry to start a manhunt. A quick background check on the name revealed the criminal record, and this did nothing to create sympathy. There was no family screaming for the lost loved one.

A computer search and a few phone calls revealed that Nathan had purchased the brand-new Chevy Silverado two months earlier from a dealer in Lexington, Virginia, an hour north of Roanoke on Interstate 81. The selling price was $41,000, and Nathan had paid in cash. Not the kind of cash often referred to when one writes a check, but hard cash. An impressive stack of $100 bills.

Unknown to the car dealer, or the police, or anyone else for that matter, Nathan had found himself a gold trader.

I finally find one myself.

After two trips into the vault of the Palmetto Trust in south-central Miami, I still have in my possession, in the trunk of my rented Impala, exactly forty-one of the precious little mini-bars, value of about $600,000. I need to convert some of them to cash, and to do so I am forced to enter the shady world of gold trading, where rules are pliant and adjusted on the fly and all characters have shifty eyes and speak in double-talk.

The first two dealers, lifted from the Yellow Pages, suspect I'm an agent of some variety and promptly hang up. The third one, a gentleman with an accent, which I'm quickly learning is not unusual in the trade, wants to know how I came to possess a ten-ounce bar of seemingly pure gold. "It's a long story," I say, then hang up. Number four is a small fry who pawns appliances out front and buys jewelry in the back. Number five shows some potential but, of course, will have to see what I've got. I explain that I do not want to walk into his store because I do not wish to be caught on video. He pauses and I suspect he's thinking about getting robbed of his cash at gunpoint. We eventually agree to meet at an ice cream shop two doors down from his store, in a shopping center, in a good part of town. He'll be wearing a black Marlins cap.

Thirty minutes later I'm sitting in front of a double pistachio gelato. Hassan, a large gray-bearded Syrian, is across from me and working on a triple chocolate fudge. Twenty feet away is another swarthy gentleman who's reading a newspaper, eating frozen yogurt, and probably ready to shoot me if I show the slightest sign of causing trouble.

After we try and fail at small talk, I slide over a crumpled envelope. Inside is a single gold bar. Hassan glances around, but the only customers are young moms and their five-year-olds, along with the other Syrian. He takes the mini-bar into his thick paw, squeezes it, smiles, taps it slightly on the corner of the table, and mumbles, "Wow." This he manages without the slightest hint of an accent.

I am amazed at how soothing that simple expression is. I have never thought about the gold being fake, but to have it legitimized by a pro is suddenly refreshing. "You like, huh?" I say stupidly, just trying to get something out.

"Very nice," he says, easing the bar into the envelope. I reach over and take it. He asks, "How many?"

"Let's say five bars, fifty ounces. Gold closed yesterday at $1,520 an ounce, so - "

"I know the price of gold," he interrupts.

"Of course you do. Do you want to buy five bars?"

A guy like this never says yes or no. Instead, he mumbles, talks in circles, hedges, and bluffs. He says, "It is possible, and it certainly depends on the price."

"What can you offer?" I ask, but not too eagerly. There are other gold dealers left in the Yellow Pages, though I'm running out of time and weary of the cold-calling.

"Well, that depends, Mr. Baldwin, on several things. One must assume in a situation like this that the gold is of, shall we say, the black-market variety. I don't know where you got it, and don't want to know, but there is a reasonable chance it was, shall we say, extracted from its previous owner."

"Does it really matter where - "

"Are you the registered owner of this gold, Mr. Baldwin?" he asks sharply.

I glance around. "No."

"Of course not. Therefore, the black-market discount is 20 percent." This guy doesn't need a calculator. "I'll pay $1,220 an ounce," he says softly but firmly as he leans forward. His beard partially covers his lips, but his accented words are clear.

"For five bars?" I ask. "Fifty ounces?"

"Assuming the other four are of the same quality."

"They are identical."

"And you have no registration, records, paperwork, nothing, correct, Mr. Baldwin?"

"That's right, and I want no records now. A simple deal, gold for cash, no receipts, no paperwork, no videos, nothing. I came and went and vanished in the night."

Hassan smiles and offers his right hand. We shake, the deal is done, and we agree to meet at nine the following morning at a deli across the street, one with booths where we can do our counting in private. I leave the ice cream parlor as if I've committed a crime and repeat to myself what should be obvious; to wit, it is not against the law to buy and sell gold, at discounted prices or at inflated ones. This is not crack we're peddling on the street, nor is it inside information from a boardroom. It's a perfectly legitimate transaction, right?

Anyone watching Hassan and me would swear they were observing two crooks negotiating a crooked deal. Who could blame them? At this point, I am beyond caring.

I'm taking risks, but I have no choice. Hassan is a risk, but I need the cash. Getting the gold out of the country will require risks, but leaving it here could mean losing it.

I spend the next two hours shopping at discount stores. I buy random items such as backgammon sets, small toolboxes, hardback books, and three cheap laptop computers. I haul my goods into a ground-level motel room south of Coral Gables and spend the rest of the night tinkering, packing, and sipping cold beer.

From the laptops, I remove the hard drives and the batteries, and manage to replace them with three of my little bricks. Inside each hardback, I stuff one mini-bar wrapped in newspaper and aluminum foil, then bind it tightly with duct tape. In the toolboxes, I leave the hammer and screwdrivers, but remove everything else. Four mini-bars fit nicely into each one. The backgammon sets hold two bars without feeling suspicious. Using supplies from FedEx, UPS, and DHL, I carefully package my goods as the hours pass and I'm lost in another world.

I call Vanessa twice and we replay our days. She's back in Richmond, doing the same thing I'm doing. We're both exhausted, physically and mentally, but we encourage each other to keep going. Now is not the time to slow down or get careless.

At midnight, I finish and admire my handiwork. On the credenza there are a dozen overnight packages, all sealed and properly air billed, efficient-looking, not the least bit suspicious, and together holding thirty-two mini-bars worth roughly $500,000. For international shipments, the paperwork is tedious and I am forced to fudge on the contents. The sender is Mr. M. Reed Baldwin of Skelter Films in Miami, and the recipient is the same guy at Sugar Cove Villas, Number 26, Willoughby Bay, Antigua. My plans are to be there to receive them. If they arrive at their destination without incident, Vanessa and I will probably try similar shipments in the near future. If something goes wrong, we'll make new plans. Shipping like this is another risk; the packages might be searched and confiscated; the gold could be stolen somewhere along the way. However, I'm reasonably confident it will find its new home. I remind myself we're not shipping banned substances here.

I'm too wired to sleep, and at 2:00 a.m. I turn on the lights and my laptop and fiddle with the e-mail. It is to Mr. Stanley Mumphrey, U.S. Attorney, Southern District of Virginia, and Mr. Victor Westlake, FBI, Washington. The current draft reads:

Dear Mr. Mumphrey and Mr. Westlake:

I'm afraid I've made a grave mistake. Quinn Rucker did not kill Judge Raymond Fawcett and Ms. Naomi Clary. Now that I'm out of prison, it has taken me several months to realize this, and to identify the real killer. Quinn's confession is bogus, as you probably know by now, and you have zero physical evidence against him. His attorney, Dusty Shiver, now has in his possession clear proof of an airtight alibi that will clear Quinn, so prepare yourselves for the reality of dropping all charges against him. Sorry for any inconvenience.

It is imperative that we talk as soon as possible. I have a detailed plan of how to proceed, and only your total cooperation will lead to the apprehension and conviction of the killer. My plan begins with the promise of complete immunity for myself and others, and it ends with the precise result that you desire. Working together, we can finally resolve this matter and bring about justice.

I am out of the country and have no plans to return, ever.

Sincerely, Malcolm Bannister