John Grisham - The Racketeer

It’s almost midnight when I enter central D.C. I take a brief detour and drive along First Street, passing in front of the Supreme Court Building and wondering what will be the final outcome of the momentous case of Armanna Mines v. the Commonwealth of Virginia . One of the lawyers, or perhaps two or three of those involved in the case, once defiled the chambers of a federal judge with their filthy bribes. Said bribes are now in the trunk of my car. What a journey. I’m almost tempted to park at the curb, take out a mini-bar, and toss it through one of the massive windows.

However, better judgment prevails. I circle Union Station, follow the GPS to I Street, then to the corner of Fifth. By the time I park in front of the building, Mr. Quinn Rucker is bounding down the steps with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen. Our embrace is long and emotional. “What took so long?” he asks.

“Got here as fast as I could,” I reply.

“I knew you would come, bro. I never doubted you.”

“There were doubts, lots of them.”

We’re both stunned at the fact that we’ve pulled it off, and at that moment our success is overwhelming. We embrace again, and each of us admires how thin the other looks. I comment that I’m looking forward to eating again. Quinn says he’s tired of playing the lunatic. “I’m sure it comes natural,” I say. He grabs my shoulders, stares at my new face, and says, “You’re almost cute now.”

“I’ll give you the doctor’s name. You could use some work.”

I’ve never had a closer friend than Quinn Rucker, and the hours we spent at Frostburg hatching our scheme now seem like an ancient dream. Back then, we believed in it because there was nothing else to hope for, but deep down we never seriously thought it would work. Arm in arm, we climb the steps and enter the condo. I hug and kiss Vanessa, then reintroduce myself to Dee Ray. I met him briefly years ago in the visitors’ room at Frostburg when he came to see his brother, but I’m not sure I would recognize him walking down a street. It doesn’t matter; we are now blood kin, our bonds solidified by trust and gold.

The first bottle of champagne is poured into four Waterford flutes-Dee Ray has expensive tastes-and we chug it. Dee Ray and Quinn stick guns in their pockets, and we quickly unload my car. The party that follows would seem implausible even in a fantasy film.

With champagne flowing, the gold bars are stacked ten deep in the center of the den floor, all 524 of them, and we sit on cushions around the treasure. It’s impossible not to gawk and no one tries to suppress the laughter. Since I’m the lawyer and the unofficial leader, I commence the business portion of the meeting with some simple math. We have before us 524 little bricks; 5 were sold to a Syrian gold trader in Miami; and 41 are now resting safely in a bank vault on Antigua. The total taken from our dear pal Nathan is 570, worth roughly $8.5 million. Pursuant to our agreement, Dee Ray gets 57 of the glowing little ingots. His 10 percent was earned by fronting the cash Quinn was caught with; for paying Dusty’s legal fees; for supplying the four kilos of Nathan’s cocaine, along with the pistol and the chloral hydrate I used to knock him out. Dee Ray picked up Quinn when he walked away from Frostburg, and he monitored Nathan’s release from prison so we would know exactly when to start the project. He also paid the $20,000 deposit to the rehab center near Akron for Quinn’s phony cocaine problem.

Dee Ray is in charge of the yacht. As he’s getting drunker, he hands over an itemized list of his expenses, including the yacht, and rounds it all off at an even $300,000. We’re assuming a value of $1,500 an ounce, so we vote unanimously to award him another twenty bars. No one is in the mood to quibble, and when you’re staring at such a fortune it’s easy to be magnanimous.

At some unknown and unknowable point in the future, the remaining 488 bars will be equally divided among Quinn, Vanessa, and me. That’s not important now-the urgency is in getting the stuff out of this country. It will take a long time to slowly convert the gold to cash, but we’ll worry about that much later. For the moment, we are content to pass the hours drinking, laughing, and taking turns telling our version of the events. When Vanessa replays the moment in Nathan’s house when she stripped naked and confronted his buddies at the front door, we laugh until it’s painful. When Quinn recounts the meeting with Stanley Mumphrey in which he blurted out the fact that he knew Max Baldwin had left witness protection and left Florida, he imitates Mumphrey’s wild-eyed reaction to this startling news. When I describe my second meeting with Hassan and trying to count 122 stacks of $100 bills in a busy coffee shop, they think I’m lying.

The stories continue until 3:00 a.m., when we’re too drunk to go on. Dee Ray covers the gold with a quilt and I volunteer to sleep on the sofa.

We slowly come to life hours later. The hangovers and fatigue are offset by the excitement of the task at hand. For a young man who has lived on the fringes of an operation adept at smuggling illegal substances into the country, the challenge of smuggling our gold out is light lifting for Dee Ray. He explains that we are now avid scuba divers, and he has purchased an astonishing collection of gear, all of it stored in heavy, official U.S. Divers brand nylon duffel bags, each with a solid zipper and a small padlock. We hustle around the condo removing masks, snorkels, fins, regulators, tanks, weight belts, buoyancy compensators, gauges, dry suits, even spearguns, none of which has ever been used. It will be on eBay within a month. The gear is replaced by an assortment of smaller U.S. Divers snorkel backpacks and dry bags, all filled with gold mini-bars. The weight of each bag is tested and retested by the men to see how much can be carried. The bags are bulky and heavy, but then they would be if filled with scuba gear. In addition, Dee Ray has accumulated a variety of luggage, the sturdiest cases he could, and all on rollers. We place the gold in shoes, shaving kits, makeup bags, even two small tackle boxes for deep-sea fishing. When we add a few items of clothing for the trip, our bags and gear seem heavy enough to sink a fine boat. The weight is important because we do not want to raise suspicion. Of much greater significance, though, is the fact that all 524 bars are now packed, under lock and key, and safe, or so we pray.

Before we leave, I take a look around the condo. It is littered with diving gear and packing debris. On the kitchen table, I see empty Lavo cigar boxes and have a twinge of nostalgia. They served us well.

At ten, a large van arrives and we load the scuba duffels and the luggage inside. There’s barely enough room for the four of us. Vanessa sits in my lap. Fifteen minutes later we pull in to a parking lot at the Washington Marina. Its piers are lined with slips and hundreds of boats of all shapes rock gently on the water. The larger ones are at the far end. Dee Ray points in that direction and tells the driver where to go.

The yacht is a sleek, beautiful vessel, a hundred feet long, three decks high, brilliant white, and called Rumrunner , which seems vaguely appropriate. It sleeps eight comfortably and has a crew of ten. A month earlier, Dee Ray chartered it for a quick cruise to Bermuda, so he knows the captain and the crew. He calls them by name as we spill out and start grabbing bags. Two porters help with the scuba duffels and strain under the weight. But then, they’ve dealt with serious divers before. Passports are collected by the steward and taken to the bridge. Quinn’s is fake, and we’re holding our breath.

It takes an hour to inspect our quarters, get ourselves situated, and settle in for the ride. Dee Ray explains to the deckhands that we want the scuba gear in our cabins because we are fanatical about our equipment. They schlep it up from storage and haul it to our rooms. When the engines come to life, we change into shorts and congregate on the lower deck. The steward brings the first bottle of champagne and a tray of shrimp. We motor slowly through the harbor and into the Potomac. From passing boats, we get some looks. Perhaps it’s unusual to see a yacht loaded with African-Americans. This is a white man’s game, right?