The Racketeer

them. I’ll call in the grand jury tomorrow, and we’ll have an indictment within twenty-four hours. How much trouble will it be grabbing Bannister in Antigua?”
    “A pain in the ass. He’ll have to be extradited. Could take months. Plus, he might vanish again. This guy is good. Let me talk to the boss before you call in the grand jury.”
    “Okay. But if Bannister wants immunity, then it sounds as though he’s committed a crime and wants a deal, right?”
    Westlake paused a second, then said, “It’s pretty rare for an innocent man to ask for immunity. It happens, but not very often. What crime are you thinking about?”
    “Nothing definite, but we’ll find one. Racketeering comes to mind. I’m sure we can bend RICO to fit these facts. Conspiracy to impede the judicial process. Lying to the court and the FBI. Come to think of it, the indictment is growing the longer we talk. I’m getting pissed, Vic. Bannister and Rucker were pals at Frostburg and cooked up this scheme. Rucker walked away in December. Judge Fawcett was killed in February. And now it looks like Bannister fed us a bunch of crap about Rucker and his motives. Don’t know about you, Vic, but I’m beginning to feel as though we’ve been duped.”
    “Let’s not overreact here. The first step is to determine if Bannister is telling the truth.”
    “Okay, and how do we go about doing that?”
    “Let’s wait on Dusty and see what he has. In the meantime, I’ll talk to my boss. Let’s chat again tomorrow.”
    “You got it.”

CHAPTER 41
    A t a tobacco store in downtown St. John’s, I see something that freezes me, then makes me smile. It’s a box of Lavos, an obscure cigar hand wrapped in Honduras and costing twice as much in the States. The four-inch torpedo model sells for $5 in Antigua and $10 at the downtown Roanoke tobacco store called Vandy’s Smokes. It was there that Judge Fawcett routinely purchased his favorite brand. On the bottom side of four of the fourteen Lavo boxes we now have stashed in banks, there are white square stickers advertising Vandy’s, with phone number and street address.
    I buy twenty of the Lavo torpedoes, and admire the box. It’s made of wood, not cardboard, and the name appears to have been hand carved across the top. Judge Fawcett was known to drift around Lake Higgins in his canoe, puffing on Lavos while fishing and enjoying the solitude. Evidently, he saved the empty boxes.
    The cruise ships have not arrived yet, so downtown is quiet. Merchants sit in the shade outside their shops, chatting and laughing in their seductive, lilting version of the King’s English. I drift from shop to shop, oblivious to time. I have gone from the stultifying tedium of prison life, to the jolting madness of tracking a killer and his loot, to this—the languid pace of island living. I prefer the latter, for obvious reasons, but also because it is now,the present, and the future. Max is a new person with a new life, and the baggage is quickly falling by the wayside.
    I buy some clothes, shorts and T-shirts, beach stuff, then wander into my bank, the Royal Bank of the East Caribbean, and flirt with the cute girl working the front desk. She directs me on down the line, and I eventually present myself to the vault clerk. She studies my passport, then leads me into the depths of the bank. During my first visit nine weeks ago, I rented two of the largest lockboxes available. Alone with them now, I leave some cash and worthless papers, and I wonder how long it will be before they are filled with little gold bars. I flirt on the way out and promise to be back soon.
    I rent a convertible Beetle for a month, put the top down, fire up a Lavo, and begin a tour of the island. After a few minutes, I feel dizzy. I can’t recall the last time I smoked a cigar and I’m not sure why I’m doing so now. The Lavo is short and black and even looks strong. I toss it out the window and keep driving.

    FedEx wins the race. The first packages arrive Monday around noon, and because I have been anxiously roaming the grounds of Sugar Cove, I see the truck when it pulls up. Miss Robinson, the pleasant lady who runs the office, has by now heard the full version of the fiction. I am a writer/filmmaker, holed up in her villas for the next three months, working desperately to finish a novel and a screenplay based on said novel. My partners, meanwhile, are already filming preliminary scenes. Blah, blah, blah. Therefore, I am expecting