The Racketeer

pressed on: “So the guy gets out of prison. It’s not as though we’re releasing a serial killer or a sexual predator. If the guy is right, then this case is solved and we can go home. If the guy is conning us, what’s the big deal?”
    At that moment, no one around the table could envision a big deal.
    “Who will object to it?” McTavey asked.
    “The U.S. Attorney’s Office is not on board,” Westlake said.
    “No surprise there,” McTavey said. “I’m meeting with the Attorney General tomorrow afternoon. I can neutralize the U.S. Attorney. Any other problems?”
    Hanski cleared his throat again. “Well, sir, Mr. Bannister insists he will not give us the name until a federal judge signs an order of commutation. I’m not sure how this will work, but the commuting of his sentence will become automatic when the grand jury indicts our mystery guy.”
    McTavey brushed him off. “We got lawyers to handle all that. Does Bannister have one?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “Does he need one?”
    “I’ll be happy to ask him,” Hanski said.
    “Let’s get this deal done, okay?” McTavey said impatiently. “There’s a big upside and a small downside. Based on our progress so far, we’re due for a break.”

CHAPTER 10
    A month has passed since the murders of Judge Fawcett and Naomi Clary. Newspaper reports of the investigation have become shorter and less frequent. The FBI had no comment in the beginning, and after a month of frantic work with nothing to show for it, the task force seems to have vanished now. In the past month, an earthquake in Bolivia, a school-yard shooting in Kansas, the overdose of one rap star and the detoxification of another have all conspired to divert our attention to more important matters.
    This is all good news for me. The investigation may appear quiet on the surface, but internally the pressure grows. My worst nightmare is a bold headline announcing the arrest of someone, but that appears less and less likely. The days pass, and I wait patiently.

    I see clients by appointment only. I meet them at my cubicle in the library. They haul in their legal papers, a stack of assorted pleadings, orders, motions, and rulings that as inmates we have the right to keep in our cells. The COs cannot touch our legal papers.
    For most of my clients, two appointments will suffice to convince them that there is nothing to be done with their cases. During the first appointment, we review the basics, and I go through their papers. Then I’ll spend a few hours doing research. During the second appointment, I usually deliver the bad news that they’re out of luck. There’s no loophole to save them.
    In five years, I have helped six inmates gain early release from prison. Needless to say, this adds mightily to my reputation as a masterful jailhouse lawyer, but I caution every new client that the odds are stacked heavily against him.
    This is what I explain to young Otis Carter, a twenty-three-year-old father of two who’ll spend the next fourteen months here at Frostburg for a crime that should not have been a crime. Otis is a country boy, a Baptist with a deep faith, a happily married electrician who still cannot believe he’s in a federal prison. He and his grandfather were indicted and charged with violating the Civil War Battlefield and Artifact Preservation Act of 1979 (as amended in 1983, 1989, 1997, 2002, 2008, and 2010). His grandfather, aged seventy-four and suffering from emphysema, is in a Federal Medical Center in Tennessee, also serving fourteen months. Because of his medical condition, he will cost the taxpayers about $25,000 a month.
    The Carters were hunting for artifacts on their two-hundred-acre farm adjacent to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park, in the Shenandoah Valley, less than an hour from my hometown of Winchester. The farm has been in the family for over a hundred years, and from the time he could walk, Otis accompanied his grandfather as he “went digging” for Civil War relics and souvenirs. Over the decades, his family assembled an impressive collection of minié balls, cannonballs, canteens, brass buttons, pieces of uniforms, a couple of battle flags, and several dozen guns of all varieties. This they had done legally. It is illegal to remove artifacts and relics from a National Historic Landmark,which is federal land, and the Carters were well aware of this law. Their private little museum, in a converted hay barn, was stocked with items they