The Racketeer (37 page)

“Hang on, Nathan,” I say, pulling back and throwing up both palms. “You expect me to leave here, go home, then come back with a sackful of money and bribe the Jamaican police? Are you serious?”

“Please, Reed. There’s no one else. I can’t call anyone at home. No one there understands what’s happening here, only you. You gotta do it, Reed. Please. My life depends on it. I can’t survive here. Look at me. Please, Reed. You do what I ask, get me out, and you’ll be a rich man.”

I back away some more as if he’s contagious.

He’s begging: “Come on, Reed, you got me into this mess, now get me out.”

“It might be helpful if you explain how you made so much money.”

“I didn’t make it. I stole it.”

No surprise there. “Drug money?” I ask, but I know the answer.

“No, no, no. Are we partners, Reed?”

“I don’t know, Nathan. I’m not so sure I want to start bribing Jamaican police. What if I get busted? I could end up just like you.”

“Then don’t come back. Send the money to Rashford, get him to make the delivery. You can figure it out, Reed, hell you’re a smart man.”

I nod as if I like the way he’s thinking. “Where’s the money, Nathan?”

“Are we partners, Reed? Fifty-fifty, just me and you, man?”

“Okay, okay, but I’m not risking jail over this, you understand?”

“I got it.”

There’s a pause as we study each other. His breathing is labored and every word is painful. Slowly, he extends his right hand; it’s puffy and scratched. “Partners, Reed?” he asks, pleading. Slowly, I shake his hand and he grimaces. It’s probably broken.

“Where’s the money?” I ask.

“It’s at my house,” he says slowly, reluctantly, as he gives away the most precious secret of his life. “You’ve been there. There’s a storage shed in the backyard, full of junk. It has a wooden floor,
and to the right, under an old Sears push mower that doesn’t work, is a trapdoor. You can’t see it until you move the mower and some of the junk around it. Watch out for snakes—there are a couple of king snakes that live there. Open the trapdoor, and you’ll see a bronze casket.” His breathing is labored and he is sweating profusely. The physical pain is obvious, but he’s also tormented by the pain of such a momentous revelation.

“A casket?” I ask, incredulous.

“Yes, a child’s casket. Closed and sealed, waterproof and airtight. There’s a hidden latch at the narrow end, where the feet would go. When you lift it, the seals release and you can open the casket.”

“What’s inside?”

“A bunch of cigar boxes wrapped in duct tape. I think there are eighteen of them.”

“You hid cash in cigar boxes?”

“It’s not cash, Reed,” he says as he leans closer. “It’s gold.”

I appear too dumbfounded to speak, so he continues, almost in a whisper. “Mini-bars, each weighing ten ounces, as pure as anything being mined in the world. They’re about the size of a large domino. They’re beautiful, Reed, just beautiful.”

I stare at him for a long time in disbelief, then say, “Okay, as hard as it is, I’ll resist asking a lot of obvious questions. I’m supposed to hustle home, go fetch the gold from a casket, fight off some snakes, somehow find a dealer who’ll swap me gold for cash, and then figure out a way to smuggle a half a million bucks back here into Jamaica where I’ll fork it over to some crooked Customs agents and police who’ll then set you free. That pretty well sum it up, Nathan?”

“It does. And hurry, okay?”

“I think you’re crazy.”

“We shook hands. We’re partners, Reed. You figure out a way to do it, and you’ll be a rich man.”

“How many dominoes are we talking about?”

“Between five and six hundred.”

“What’s gold worth these days?”

“Two days ago it was trading for fifteen hundred bucks an ounce.”

I do the math and say, “That’s between seven and a half and eight million bucks.”

Nathan is nodding. He does the math every day of his life as he watches the price fluctuate.

There is a loud knock on the door behind me, and one of the jailers appears. “Time’s up, mon,” he says, then disappears.

“This is probably one of the stupidest things I’ll ever do in my life,” I say.

“Or maybe one of the smartest,” Nathan replies. “But please hurry, Reed. I can’t survive long.”

We shake hands and say good-bye. My last visual of Nathan is a battered little man trying to stand, in pain. Rashford and I leave in a hurry. He drops me off at my hotel, where I run to my room and call Vanessa.

She’s in the attic, where it’s 120 degrees, picking through old cardboard boxes and broken furniture. “It’s not there,” I announce. “It’s outside, in the storage shed.”

“Hang on,” she says as she climbs down the retractable ladder. “Has he told you?” she asks between breaths.

“Yes.”

“Someone’s here,” she says, and through the phone I hear a loud doorbell chime. Vanessa ducks low in the hallway and reaches for the Glock. “I’ll call you right back,” she whispers into the phone and turns it off.

It’s late Sunday morning. Nathan’s truck is in his driveway. Assuming his friends would know he was away for the weekend, the presence of his truck would raise questions. The doorbell chimes again, and someone starts pounding on the front door. Then he yells, “Nathan, you in there? Open up.”

Vanessa crouches but doesn’t move. The banging continues, then someone else is knocking on the back door and yelling for Nathan. There are at least two of them, with voices of young men, no doubt friends of Nathan’s who stopped by for some reason. They show no signs of leaving. One of them taps on his bedroom window, but he cannot see inside. Vanessa eases into the bathroom and wipes her face. Her breathing is heavy and she’s shaking with fear.

They’re pounding and yelling and will soon come to the conclusion that something is wrong with Nathan. They’ll kick in a door. Instinctively, Vanessa strips down to her bikini panties, dries the sweat off her body, leaves the Glock near the bathroom sink, and steps to the front door. She opens it widely and the young man gets a most unexpected treat. Her brown breasts are large and firm; her body athletic and toned. His eyes drop from her chest to the panties, pinched together to reveal as much flesh as possible, then he catches himself. She’s smiling and saying, “Maybe Nathan is busy right now.”

“Wow,” he says. “Sorry.”

They’re facing each other through a screen door, neither in a hurry to leave. Over his shoulder he says, “Hey, Tommy, over here.” Tommy arrives at the front door in a rush and can’t believe his eyes.

Vanessa says, “Come on, guys, give us some privacy here, okay? Nathan’s in the shower and we’re not finished with our business. Who shall I tell him stopped by?” She then realizes that in her haste she forgot to remove the latex gloves. Red panties, aquamarine gloves.

Neither can take his eyes off her breasts. One says, “Uh, Greg and Tommy, we, uh, were just sorta passing by.” Both are entranced by her nakedness and baffled by the gloves. What on earth has this gal been doing with our buddy?

“I’ll be happy to tell him,” she says with a cute smile as she slowly closes the door. Through the window she watches as they back away, still slack-jawed and confused. They finally get to their truck, climb in, and start laughing as they leave the driveway.

After they’re gone, Vanessa fixes a glass of ice water and sits at the kitchen table for a few moments. She’s rattled and ready for a meltdown but cannot afford one. She’s sick of the house and has serious doubts about the entire project. But she has to go on.

I’m in the back of a cab headed for the airport when I see the call. I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes imagining various scenes and conflicts inside Nathan’s house, none of them with good endings. “Are you okay?” I ask.

“Yes, just a couple of rednecks looking for Nathan. I got rid of them.”

“How?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Did they see you?”

“Oh yes. It’s cool. We’re fine. Where’s the stuff?”

“Out back, in the storage shed. I’ll stay on the phone.”

“Okay.” Vanessa checks the driveway once more to make sure there are no more visitors, then hurries out the back door and to the storage shed. The dog is growling and barking frantically, and I can hear him clearly in Jamaica.

I cannot make myself warn her about the snakes, so I silently pray that she does not encounter them. Digging through a
grungy outbuilding is bad enough; throw in the snakes and she might freak out and disappear. When she steps into the shed, she describes the interior. She says it’s like an oven. I relay Nathan’s instructions, and we sign off. She’ll need both hands.

She moves two empty paint thinner cans, kicks aside a burlap bag, pushes the Sears mower as far away as possible, lifts a sheet of plywood, and finds a rope handle. It’s stuck, so she yanks it harder and harder until the door opens. There are no hinges, so the entire trapdoor bolts from the floor and falls against the wall. Under it, on the ground, as advertised, is a soiled bronze casket no more than four feet in length. Vanessa gawks at it in horror, as if she has stumbled upon a crime scene and found some poor child’s body. But there is no time for fear or second-guessing, no time to ask, What in hell am I doing here?

She tries to lift the casket, but it is too heavy. She finds the latch, twists, and half of the top lid opens slowly. Mercifully, there is no dead baby inside. Far from it. Vanessa pauses to study the collection of small wooden cigar boxes all sealed with a band of silver duct tape and for the most part stacked in rows. Sweat is dripping from her eyebrows and she tries to swipe at it with a forearm. Carefully, she removes one of the boxes and steps outside under the shade of an oak. Glancing around, seeing no one, nothing but the dog, who’s tired of barking and growling, Vanessa peels off the tape, opens the box, and slowly removes a layer of wadded newspaper.

Mini-bars. Little bricks. Dominoes. An entire casket full of them. Millions upon millions.

She removes one and examines it. A perfect rectangle, not quite a half inch thick, lined with a tiny border ridge that allows for precise stacking and storage. On the front side is stamped “10 ounces.” And under that: “99.9%.” And nothing else—no bank name, no indication of where it came from or who mined it. No registration number.