The Racketeer

soften the blame for their misguided prosecution. Dusty and I object, and the language is eventually removed. The order is e-mailed to the magistrate in Roanoke, and he signs it immediately.
    Next is a Rule 35 motion to commute his sentence and set him free. It has been filed in the D.C. federal court from which he was sentenced for cocaine distribution, but Quinn is still in jail in Roanoke. I repeat what I’ve said several times already: I will not complete my end of the deal until Quinn has been released.Period. This has been agreed upon, but it takes the coordinated movements of several people, with instructions now coming from the speck of an island nation known as Antigua. Quinn’s sentencing judge in D.C. is on board, but he’s tied up in court. The U.S. Marshals Service feels the need to intrude and insists on moving Quinn when the time comes. At one point, five of the six lawyers in my meeting are on their cell phones, two while pecking away at laptops.
    We take a break, and Vic Westlake asks me to join him for a cold drink. We find a table under a terrace beside a pool, away from the others, and order iced tea. He feigns frustration with the wasted time and so on. I am assuming he’s wearing a wire of some variety, and he probably wants to talk about the gold. I’m all smiles, the laid-back Antiguan now, but my radar is on high alert.
    “What if we need your testimony at trial?” he asks gravely. This has been discussed at length and I thought things were clear. “I know, I know, but what if we need some extra proof?”
    Since he does not yet have the name of the killer, or the circumstances, this question is premature, and it’s probably a warm-up to something else.
    “My answer is no, okay? I’ve made that clear. I have no plans to ever return to the U.S. I’m seriously considering renouncing my citizenship and becoming a full-fledged Antiguan, and if I never set foot on U.S. soil again, I’ll die a happy man.”
    “Somewhat of an overreaction, don’t you think, Max?” he says in a tone I despise. “You now have full immunity.”
    “That might be easy for you to say, Vic, but then you’ve never spent time in prison for a crime you didn’t commit. The Feds nailed me once and almost ruined my life; it’s not going to happen again. I’m lucky in that I’m getting a second chance, and for some strange reason I’m a bit hesitant to subject myself to your jurisdiction again.”
    He sips his tea and wipes his mouth with a linen napkin. “A second chance. Sailing off into the sunset with a pot of gold.”
    I just stare at him. After a few seconds he says, a bit awkwardly, “We haven’t discussed the gold, have we Max?”
    “No.”
    “Let’s give it a go, then. What gives you the right to keep it?”
    I stare at a button on his shirt and say, clearly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I do not have any gold. Period.”
    “How about the three mini-bars in the photo you e-mailed last week?”
    “That’s evidence, and in due course I’ll give them to you, along with the cigar box in the other photo. I suspect these little exhibits are covered with fingerprints, both Fawcett’s and the killer’s.”
    “Great, and the big question will be, Where’s the rest of the gold?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Okay. You must agree, Max, that it will be important to the prosecution of the killer to know what was in Judge Fawcett’s safe. What got him killed? At some point, we’ll have to know everything.”
    “Perhaps you won’t know everything; you never will. There will be ample evidence to convict this killer. If the government botches the prosecution, it will not be my problem.”
    Another sip, a look of exasperation. Then, “You don’t have the right to keep it, Max.”
    “Keep what?”
    “The gold.”
    “I do not have the gold. But, speaking hypothetically, in a situation like this it seems to me the loot belongs to no one. It’s certainly not the property of the government; it wasn’t taken from the taxpayers. You never had possession of it, never had a claim. You’ve never seen it and you’re not sure, at this point, if it even exists. It doesn’t belong to the killer; he’s a thief as well. He stole it from a public official who obtained it, we assume, through corruption. And if you could possibly identify the original source ofthe loot and tried to return it, those boys would either dive under a desk or run like hell. It’s just out there, sort of in the