The Racketeer

happened.
          Q UINN: Nothin’ happened. I didn’t kill nobody. They tricked me into the confession, like I said. I want something done about Bannister.
          D EE R AY: He’s in prison, right?
          Q UINN: Probably not. Knowing Bannister, he probably used Rule 35 to get out.
          D EE R AY: Rule 35?
          Q UINN: Everybody on the inside knows Rule 35. Ain’t important now. He’s out and he needs to be found.
    A long pause.
          D EE R AY: Lot of time, lot of money.
          Q UINN: Look, little brother, don’t tell me about time. The Fibbies got nothin’ on me, I mean nothin’. That don’t mean they can’t nail my ass. If this thing goes to trial in a year or so, Bannister might be their star witness, hear what I’m sayin’?
          D EE R AY: And what’s he gonna say?
          Q UINN: He’ll say whatever it takes, he don’t care. He’s out, man, he cut the deal. He’ll say we talked about Judge Fawcett back in prison. That’s what he’ll say.
          D EE R AY: Did you?
    Another long pause.
          Q UINN: Yeah, we talked about him all the time. We knew he kept cash.
    A pause.
          Q UINN: You gotta get Bannister, Dee Ray. Okay?
          D EE R AY: Okay. Let me talk to Tall Man.

CHAPTER 21
    T hree weeks post-surgery and I’m climbing the walls. The bandages are off and the stitches are gone, but the swelling is taking forever. I look in the mirror a hundred times a day, waiting for things to improve, waiting for Max to emerge from the bruising and puffiness. My surgical team stops by constantly to tell me how great I look, but I’m sick of these people. I can’t chew, can’t eat, can’t walk for more than five minutes, and so most of my time is spent rolling around in a wheelchair. Movements must be slow and calculated; otherwise, I could rip out some of the fine artwork that has gone into the face of Max Reed Baldwin. I count the days and often think I’m in prison again. Weeks pass, and the swelling and bruising slowly go away.

    Is it possible to be in love with a woman you’ve never actually touched? I have convinced myself the answer is yes. Her name is Vanessa Young, and I met her at Frostburg, in the visitors’ room on a cold wintry Saturday morning. I shouldn’t say that I met her, but I saw her for the first time. She was there visiting her brother, a guy I knew and liked. We met later, during another visit, but we couldn’t touch. I wrote her letters and she wrote a few back, but itbecame painfully obvious, at least to me, that my infatuation with Vanessa was not exactly a two-way street.
    I cannot begin to contemplate the hours I’ve invested fantasizing about this woman.
    Over the past two years, our lives have changed dramatically, and now I am emboldened to contact her. My new best friend, Pat Surhoff, informed me that I cannot write or receive letters while at Fort Carson, but I write one anyway. I work on it for days, tweaking, editing, killing time. I bare my soul to Vanessa, and practically beg her to see me.
    I’ll find a way to mail it later.

    Surhoff is back to fetch me. We leave Fort Carson in a hurry and drive to Denver, where we board a nonstop flight to Atlanta. I wear a baseball cap and big sunglasses, and I do not catch a single curious glance. I bitch about the seating arrangement; we’re sitting side by side in coach, not first class. Pat says Congress is cutting budgets everywhere. After a hearty lunch of raisins and Cokes, we get down to business. He opens a delightful little file with all sorts of goodies: a Virginia court order changing my name to Max Reed Baldwin; a new Social Security card issued to the same guy; a birth certificate proving I was born in Memphis to parents I’ve never heard of; and a Florida driver’s license with a fake photo taken from the computerized rendering my doctors and I concocted before the surgery. It looks so real that not even I can tell it’s fake. Pat explains that I’ll get another in a month or so when my face finally comes together. Same for a passport. We fill out applications for Visa and American Express cards. At his suggestion, I’ve been practicing a different handwriting, one that resembles chicken scratch but is not much worse than the old one. Max signs a six-month lease for a one-bedroom condo in Neptune Beach, a few miles east of Jacksonville, and he appliesfor a checking account at SunCoast Bank. Pat tells me