Immigration and Customs agents go through their routines, I realize there are no scanners for the private passengers and their bags. Excellent! I say good-bye to the pilots. Outside the small building, I watch the other Americans load into a waiting van and disappear. I sit on a bench until my cab appears.
The villa is on Willoughby Bay, twenty minutes from the airport. I ride in the back of the cab, windows down, warm salty air blowing in my face, as we twist around one side of a mountain and slowly descend the other. In the distance, there are dozens of small boats moored in a bay, resting on blue water that seems perfectly still.
It is a furnished two-bedroom condo in a cluster of the same, not directly facing the beach but close enough to hear the waves break. It’s leased in my current name, and the three-month rental was covered by a Skelter Films check. I pay the cabdriver and walk through the front gate of Sugar Cove. A pleasant lady in the office gives me the key and a booklet on the ins and outs of the unit. I let myself in, turn on the fans and air-conditioning, and check out the rooms. Fifteen minutes later, I’m in the ocean.
At precisely 5:30 p.m., Stanley Mumphrey and two of his underlings gathered around a speaker in the center of a conference room table. Within seconds, the voice of Victor Westlake came on, and after quick hellos Westlake said, “So, Stan, what do you make of it?”
Stanley, who’d been thinking of nothing else since receiving the e-mail four hours earlier, replied, “Well, Vic, it seems to me that we first need to decide whether we’re going to believe this guy again, don’t you think? I mean, he admits he got it wrong the last time. He doesn’t admit to lying to us, but instead says he just made a mistake. He’s playing games.”
“It will be hard to trust him again,” Westlake said.
“Do you know where he is right now?” Mumphrey asked.
“He just flew from Miami to Antigua, on a private jet. Last Friday, he flew from Roanoke to Jamaica on a private jet, then reentered the country Sunday as Malcolm Bannister.”
“Any idea what he’s doing with all these weird movements?”
“Not a clue, Stan. We’re baffled. He’s proven himself quite adept at disappearing and at moving money around.”
“Right. I have a scenario, Vic. Suppose he lied to us about Quinn Rucker. Maybe Rucker is part of the scheme and he played along so Bannister could get himself out of prison. Now they’re trying to save Rucker’s ass. Sounds like a conspiracy to me. Lying, conspiracy. What if we pop them with a sealed indictment, scoop up Bannister and throw him back in jail, then see how much he knows about the real killer. He might be more talkative from the other side of the bars.”
“So you believe him now?” Westlake asked.
“Didn’t say that, Vic, not at all. But if his e-mail is true, and if Dusty Shiver has an alibi, then we’re screwed with this prosecution.”
“Should we talk to Dusty?”
“We won’t have to. If he’s got the evidence, we’ll see it soon enough. One thing I can’t figure out, one of many, is why they sat on the evidence for so long.”
“Same here,” Westlake said. “One theory we’re floating is that Bannister needed the time to find the killer, if, of course, we are to believe him. Frankly, I don’t know what to believe at this point. What if Bannister knows the truth? We have nothing on our end. We don’t have a shred of physical evidence. The confession is shaky. And if Dusty has a smoking gun, then we’re all about to eat a bullet.”
Mumphrey said, “Let’s indict them and squeeze 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
At 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 approximately twenty overnight packages from Miami: manuscripts, research memos, videos, even some equipment. She is visibly impressed.
I’m really looking forward to the day when I can stop lying.
Inside my villa, I open the boxes. A backgammon set yields two bars; a toolbox, four; a hardback novel, one; and another backgammon set, two. A total of nine, all apparently untouched during their journey from Miami to Antigua. I often wonder about their history. Who mined the gold? From which continent? Who minted it? How did it
