The Racketeer (36 page)

Nathan is absorbing this as he stares at his bare feet. His pink-and-orange Hawaiian shirt has blood stains on it. There are scratches on his arms and hands. “Can you get me something to eat, Reed? I’m starving. They served lunch an hour ago, shit so nasty you can’t imagine, and before I could take a bite one of my cellies decided he needed it more than me.”

I say, “Sorry, Nathan. I’ll see if Rashford can bribe one of the guards.”

He mumbles, “Please.”

“Do you want me to call someone back home?” I ask.

He shakes his head no. “Who? The only person I halfway trust is the guy who runs my bar, and I think he’s stealing. I’m cut off from my family, and they wouldn’t help anyway. How can they? They don’t know where Jamaica is. Not sure I can find it on the map.”

“Rashford thinks they might charge me as an accomplice, so I might be joining you back there.”

He shakes his head. “You might survive because you’re black and you’re in good shape. A skinny white boy ain’t got a chance. As soon as I walked into the cell, this big dude says he really likes my Nikes. Gone. Next guy wants to borrow some money, and since I don’t have any money he wants me to promise to get some
real soon. This leads to the first fight, which involved at least three of these thugs beating the shit out of me. I remember hearing a guard laughing, saying something about a white boy who can’t fight too good. My spot on the concrete floor is right next to the toilet, which is nothing but an open hole, like an outhouse. The smell will make you gag and puke. If I move an inch or two, then I’m on somebody else’s turf and there’s a fight. There’s no air-conditioning and it’s like an oven. Fifteen men in a tight space, all sweating and hungry and thirsty and no one can sleep. I cannot imagine what tonight will be like. Please, Reed, get me outta here.”

“I’ll try, Nathan, but there’s a good chance these guys might try to nail me too.”

“Just do something. Please.”

“Look, Nathan, this is all my fault, okay? That means nothing at this point, but I had no way of knowing we were flying into a storm. The stupid pilots should’ve told us about the weather before we took off, or they should’ve landed somewhere on U.S. soil, or they should’ve had more fuel on the airplane. We’ll sue the bastards when we get home, okay?”

“Whatever.”

“Nathan, I’ll do anything I can to get you out of here, but my ass is still on the line too. It’s gonna come down to money. This is nothing but a shakedown, a grab for money by a bunch of cops who know how to play the game. Hell, they wrote the rules. Rashford says they’ll squeeze the owner of the jet and pocket a handsome bribe. They’ll throw a bone our way and see how much cash we can scrape together. Now that they know we have a lawyer, he thinks they’ll contact him pretty soon. They prefer to work their little bribery schemes before the case gets into court. After that, you got formal charges and judges watching everything. You understand all this, Nathan?”

“I guess. I just can’t believe this, Reed. This time yesterday I was at my bar, having a beer with a cute girl, bragging about
flying to Miami for the weekend. Now look at me—thrown into a filthy jail cell with a bunch of Jamaicans, and they’re all lined up waiting to kick my ass. You’re right, Reed, this is all your fault. You and your ridiculous movie. I should’ve never listened to you.”

“I’m sorry, Nathan. Believe me, I’m so sorry.”

“You should be. Just do something, Reed, and hurry. I can’t last much longer back there.”

CHAPTER 36

R
ashford gives me a ride to my hotel and, at the last minute, graciously extends an invitation to dinner. He says his wife is an excellent cook and they would be delighted to have such an accomplished filmmaker in their home. Though I am tempted, primarily because I have nothing to do for the next eighteen hours, I beg off with the lame excuse of feeling bad and needing sleep. I’m living a lie, and the last thing I need is a long dinner conversation about my life, my work, and my past. I suspect there will be serious people following my trail, sniffing for clues, and a stray word here or there could come back to haunt me.

It’s July, the tourist season is over, and the hotel is not busy. There’s a small pool with a bar in the shade, and I spend the afternoon under an umbrella, reading a Walter Mosley and sipping Red Stripe beer.

Vanessa lands in Roanoke at 7:00 Saturday evening. She is exhausted but rest is not an option. In the past forty-eight hours, she has driven from Radford to D.C. to Roanoke, and flown from Roanoke to Jamaica and back by way of Charlotte, Atlanta, and Miami. Other than a fitful three-hour rest in bed in Montego Bay, and several catnaps on airplanes, she has had no sleep.

She leaves the terminal with her small carry-on bag and takes her time finding her car. As always, she notices everything and everyone around her. We doubt if she’s being followed, but at this point in our project we take nothing for granted. She drives across the highway from the airport and gets a room at a Holiday Inn. She orders room service and eats dinner at the window as the sun goes down. At 10:00 p.m. she calls me and we speak briefly and in code. We’re on our third or fourth prepaid cell phone and it’s highly unlikely anyone is listening, but, again, we’re taking no chances. I conclude with a simple “Proceed as planned.”

She drives back to the airport, to the general aviation terminal, and parks next to Nathan’s pickup truck. It’s late on a Saturday night and there is no private air traffic, no movements in the empty parking lot. She puts on a pair of thin leather gloves and, using Nathan’s keys, unlocks his door and drives away. It’s Vanessa’s first drive in such a vehicle and she takes it easy. Not far down the road, she pulls in to a fast-food parking lot and adjusts the seat and mirrors. For the past five years she’s been driving a small Japanese model, and the upgrade is astounding and uncomfortable. The last thing we can afford is a fender bender or a set of flashing blue lights. Eventually, she makes it onto Interstate 81 and heads south, toward Radford, Virginia.

It’s almost midnight when she leaves the state highway and turns onto the country lane to Nathan’s house. She passes the double-wide trailer, home to Nathan’s nearest neighbor, at fifteen miles per hour, making virtually no noise. In her own car, she’s driven this road a dozen times and knows the terrain. The road winds past Nathan’s and through some pastureland before passing another home, almost two miles farther into the country. Beyond that, the asphalt fades into gravel, then to dirt. There is no traffic because there is so little population. It seems odd that a thirty-year-old bachelor would choose such a secluded place to live.

She parks in his driveway and listens. Nathan’s yellow Lab is in the backyard, in the distance, barking inside a large, fencedin
dog run with a cute little house to keep him dry. Other than the dog, though, there are no sounds. The darkness is broken slightly by a small yellow porch light. Vanessa has a 9-millimeter Glock stuck in a pocket, and she thinks she knows how to use it. She walks around the house, careful where she steps, listening to everything. The dog barks louder, but no one, other than Vanessa, can hear him. At the rear door, she starts using the keys. The first three fit neither the locked knob nor the dead bolt, but numbers four and five do the trick. She takes a breath as she pushes the door open. There are no sirens, no frantic beepings. She had walked through the same door just five days earlier during the first session of filming and noticed the dead bolts and the absence of an alarm system.

Once inside, Vanessa peels off the leather gloves and puts on a pair of disposable latex gloves. She is about to examine every inch of the house, and she cannot leave a single print. Walking quickly, she flips on lights, pulls down all the shades, and cranks up the air-conditioning. It’s a cheap rental house being leased by an unmarried hillbilly who’s spent the last five years in prison, so the decor and furnishings are sparse. There are a few sticks of furniture, the obligatory oversized television, and sheets on some of the windows. There are also dirty dishes stacked by the kitchen sink and dirty clothes on the bathroom floor. The guest bedroom is used to store junk. Two dead mice lay perfectly still in traps, their necks snapped in two.

She begins in Nathan’s bedroom by going through a tall chest of drawers. Nothing. She looks under his bed and between the mattress and the box spring. She examines every inch of his cluttered closet. The house has a conventional, framed foundation, no concrete slab, and the hardwood flooring gives way slightly with each step. She taps the flooring, searching for a more hollow sound, for evidence of a hiding place.

I suspect Nathan has hidden his loot somewhere in the house, though probably not in one of the main rooms. Nonetheless, we
have to look everywhere. If he’s smart, which is a stretch, he has split it and is using more than one hiding place.

From his bedroom, Vanessa inspects the guest room, giving the dead mice plenty of space. At 12:30, she begins turning off lights, as if Nathan is winding down. Room by room she goes, checking every corner, every plank, every pocket. Nothing goes unturned or untested. It could be in the walls, the floors, the dry-wall above the ceilings, or it could be buried in the backyard or stashed in a safe at Bombay’s.

The cramped basement has seven-foot ceilings, no air-conditioning, and unpainted cinder-block walls. After spending an hour there, Vanessa is soaking wet, and too tired to go on. At 2:00 a.m., she stretches out on the sofa in the den and falls asleep with her hand on the Glock’s holster.

If Rashford was hesitant to work on Saturday, he was almost belligerent on Sunday, but I gave him little choice. I pleaded with him to accompany me to the jail and pull the same strings he’d pulled the day before. I gave him a $100 bill to facilitate matters.

We arrive at the jail just before 9:00 a.m., and fifteen minutes later I am alone with Nathan in the same room used yesterday. I am shocked at his appearance. His injuries are evident and substantial, and I wonder how long the guards will allow the abuse to continue. His face is a mess of gashes, open wounds, and dried blood. His upper lip is bloated and protrudes grotesquely from under his nose. His left eye is completely shut and his right one is red and puffy. He is missing one front tooth. Gone are the cutoffs and cute Hawaiian shirt, replaced by a dirt-stained white jumpsuit covered with dried blood.

We both lean forward, our faces just inches apart. “Help me,” he manages to say, almost in tears.

“Here’s the latest, Nathan,” I begin. “The crooks are demanding
$1 million from the jet’s owner, and he’s agreed to pay it, so these scumbags will get their money. They’re not going to charge me with anything, as of this morning. For you, they want a half a million bucks. I’ve explained, through Rashford, that neither of us has that kind of money. I’ve explained that we were just passengers on someone’s jet, that we’re not rich, and so on. The Jamaicans don’t believe this. Anyway, that’s where we are as of right now.”

Nathan grimaces, as if it hurts to breathe. As bad as his face looks, I’d hate to see the rest of his body. I’m imagining the worst, so I don’t ask what happened.

He grunts and says, “Can you get back to the U.S., Reed?” His voice is weak and scratchy; even it is wounded.

“I think so. Rashford thinks so. But I don’t have a lot of cash, Nathan.”

He frowns and grunts again and looks as though he may either faint or cry. “Reed, listen to me. I have some money, a lot of it.”

I’m staring him straight in the eyes, or at least his right one because his left one is closed. This is the fateful moment upon which everything else has been created. Without this, the entire project would be a gargantuan disaster, one horrific and lousy gamble.

“How much?” I ask as he pauses. He does not want to go on, but he has no choice.

“Enough to get me out.”

“A half a million dollars, Nathan?”

“That, and more. We need to be partners, Reed. Just me and you. I’ll tell you where the money is, you go get it, you get me out of here, and we’ll be partners. But you gotta give me your word, Reed. I have to trust you, okay?”