The Racketeer

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, fencedindog 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, wehave 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