The Racketeer

clouds, like the Internet, owned by no one.” I wave my hands at the sky as I finish this well-rehearsed response.
    Westlake smiles because we both know the truth. There’s a twinkle in his eye, as if he wants to laugh in surrender and say, “Helluva job.” Of course, this doesn’t happen.
    We make our way back to the suite and are told that the judge in D.C. is still occupied with more important matters. I’m not about to lounge around the table with a bunch of federal boys, so I go for a walk on the beach. I call Vanessa, tell her things are proceeding slowly, and, no, I have not seen handcuffs or guns. So far, it’s all aboveboard. Quinn should be released soon. She tells me Dee Ray is in Dusty’s office waiting for their brother.

    During his lunch break, the judge who had sentenced Quinn to seven years for trafficking reluctantly signed a Rule 35 order of commutation. The day before he had chatted with Stanley Mumphrey, Victor Westlake and his boss, George McTavey, and to underline the importance of what was before him, the Attorney General of the United States.
    Quinn was immediately taken from the jail in Roanoke to the law offices of Dusty Shiver, where he hugged Dee Ray and changed into some jeans and a polo. One hundred and forty days after being arrested as a fugitive in Norfolk, Virginia, Quinn is a free man.
    It’s almost 2:30 by the time all the orders and documents are properly signed, examined, and verified, and at the last minute I step outside the room and call Dusty. He assures me we’ve “got ’em by the throat,” all paperwork is in order, all rights are being protected, all promises are being fulfilled. “Start singing,” he says with a laugh.

    Six months after I arrived at the Louisville Federal Correctional Institution, I agreed to review the case of a drug dealer from Cincinnati. The court had badly miscalculated the term of his sentence, the mistake was obvious, and I filed a motion to get the guy released immediately with time already served. It was one of those rare occasions in which everything worked perfectly and quickly, and within two weeks the happy client went home. Not surprisingly, word spread through the prison and I was immediately hailed as a brilliant jailhouse lawyer capable of performing miracles. I was inundated with requests to review cases and do my magic, and it took a while for the buzz to die down.
    Around this time, a guy we called Nattie entered my life and consumed more time than I wanted to give. He was a skinny white kid who’d been busted for meth distribution in West Virginia, and he was adamant that I review his case, snap my fingers, and get him out. I liked Nattie, so I looked at his papers and tried to convince him there was nothing I could do. He began talking about a payoff; at first there were vague references to a lot of money stashed somewhere, and some of it might be mine if I could only get Nattie out of prison. He refused to believe I could not help him. Instead of facing reality, he became more delusional, more convinced I could find a loophole, file a motion, and walk him out. At some point, he finally mentioned a quantity of gold bars, and I figured he had lost his mind. I rebuffed him, and to prove his point he told me the entire story. He swore me to secrecy and promised me half of the fortune if I would only help him.
    As a child, Nattie was an accomplished petty thief, and in his teenage years drifted into the world of meth. He moved around a lot, dodging drug enforcement agents, bill collectors, deputies with warrants, fathers with pregnant daughters, and pissed-offrivals from other meth gangs. He tried several times to go straight but easily fell back into a life of crime. He was watching his cousins and friends ruin their lives with drugs, as addicts and convicted felons, and he really wanted something better. He had a job as a cashier in a country store, deep in the mountains around the small town of Ripplemead, when he was approached by a stranger who offered him $10 an hour for some manual labor. No one in the store had ever seen the stranger, nor would they ever again. Nattie was making $5 an hour, cash, off the books, and jumped at the chance to earn more. After work, Nattie met the stranger at a pre-arranged spot and followed him along a narrow dirt trail to an A-frame cabin wedged into the side of a steep hill, just above a small lake. The stranger introduced himself only as Ray, and Ray was driving a nice pickup