The Racketeer

Reed. That’s one reason I moved over here, away from my family. They’re still cooking meth and selling it, not me.”
    “Okay. Just think of Gene.”
    Cody puts the mike on him and we get situated. We’re on a set, in folding chairs with lights and wiring all around us. The camera is over my shoulder, and for a moment I feel like a real kick-ass investigative journalist. I look at Gwen and say, “Did you forget the still shots? Come on, Gwen!”
    She jumps as I bark and grabs a camera. I say, “Just a couple of stills, Nathan, so we’ll have a clear record of the lighting.” He frowns at first, then smiles at Gwen as she snaps away. Finally, after we’ve been here for an hour, we start filming. I hold a pen with my left hand and scribble on a legal pad.
    Malcolm Bannister was right-handed, just in case Nathan might be suspicious, which he does not seem to be.
    To loosen him up, I start with all the basics: name, age, employment, education, prison, criminal record, children, no marriages, and so on. A couple of times I tell him to relax, repeat something, we’re just having a conversation. His childhood—different homes, schools, life with his big brother, Gene, no father, a rockyrelationship with his mother. At this point, he says, “Look, Reed, I’m not going to say bad things about my mother, okay?”
    “Of course not, Nathan. That’s not at all what I intended.” And I quickly change the subject. We get around to the meth culture of his youth. With some hesitation, he finally opens up and paints a depressing picture of a rough adolescence filled with drugs, booze, sex, and violence. By the time he was fifteen, he knew how to cook meth. Two of his cousins were burned alive when a lab blew up in a mobile home. He was sixteen when he first saw the inside of a jail cell. He dropped out of school and life got crazier. At least four of his cousins have served time for drug distribution; two are still locked away. As bad as prison was, it did get him away from the drugs and alcohol. He was sober for the five years he was incarcerated and is now determined to stay away from the meth. Beer is another matter.
    We break at noon. The sun is overhead, and Slade is concerned about the brightness of the conditions. He and Cody stroll around, looking for another spot. “How long can you go today, Nathan?” I ask.
    “I’m the boss,” he says smugly. “I can go in whenever I want.”
    “Great. So a couple more hours?”
    “Why not? How am I doing?”
    “Terrific. It took you a few minutes to settle down, but now you’re very smooth, very sincere.”
    Gwen adds, “You’re a natural storyteller, Nathan.” He likes this. She’s back with the makeup routine, wiping perspiration from his forehead, brushing, touching, flirting, revealing. He craves the attention.
    We brought sandwiches and soft drinks and eat under the shade of an oak tree next to the toolshed. Slade likes this spot and we decide to move the set. Gwen whispers to Nathan about using the restroom. This makes him uncomfortable, but by now he can hardly keep his eyes off her legs. I walk away and pretend to be on the cell phone, talking to important people in Los Angeles.
    Gwen disappears into the back door of the house. She will later report that the house has two bedrooms but only one with furniture, nothing in the den but a sofa, a chair, and a huge HD television, one bathroom in need of a good scrubbing, a kitchen with a sink full of dirty dishes and a refrigerator filled with beer and cold cuts. There is an attic with a fold-down staircase. The floors are covered with cheap carpeting. There are three doors—front, back, and garage—and all three are secured with thick dead bolts that have obviously been added recently. There appears to be no alarm system—no keypads or sensors over the windows and doors. In his bedroom closet, there are two rifles and two shotguns. In the closet in the spare bedroom, there is nothing but a pair of muddy hunting boots.
    While she is inside, I continue my fake phone chat while I watch Nathan from behind large sunglasses. He keeps his eyes on the back of his house, nervous that she is inside, alone. Slade and Cody are getting the set rewired. When she returns, Nathan relaxes and apologizes for his sloppy housekeeping. She coos and works on his hair. When everything is in place, we plunge into the afternoon session.
    He mentions a motorcycle accident when he was fourteen, and I dissect this for half an