inch thick, 160 pages, eighty-one counts of conspiracy to smuggle cocaine. He had a copy of it in his box. Buster and his dad were barely mentioned in the 160 pages, but they were nonetheless named as defendants and lumped together with the man they'd sold the boats to, along with twenty-five other people they'd never heard of. Eleven were Colombians. Three were lawyers. Everybody else was from South Florida.
The U.S. Attorney offered them a deal-two years each in return for guilty pleas and cooperation against the other codefendants. Pleading guilty to what? They'd done nothing wrong. They knew exactly one of their twenty-six coconspirators. They'd never seen cocaine.
Buster's father remortgaged their home to raise $20,000 for a lawyer, and they made a bad selection. At trial, they were alarmed to find themselves sitting at the same table with the Colombians and the real drug traffickers. They were on one side of the courtroom, all the coconspirators, sitting together as if they'd once been a well-oiled drug machine. On the other side, near the jury, were the government lawyers, groups of pompous little bastards in dark suits, taking notes, glaring at them as if they were child molesters. The jury glared at them too.
During seven weeks of trial, Buster and his father were practically ignored. Three times their names werementioned. The government's principal charge against them was that they had conspired to procure and rebuild fishing boats with souped-up engines to transport drugs from Mexico to various drop-offs along the Florida panhandle. Their lawyer, who complained that he wasn't getting paid enough to handle a sevenweek trial, proved inefective at rebutting these loose charges. Still, the government lawyers did little damage and were much more concerned with nailing the Colombians.
But they didn't have to prove much.They had done a superior job of picking the jury. After eight days of deliberation, the jurors, obviously tired and frustrated, found every conspirator guilty of all charges. A month after they were sentenced, Buster's father killed himself.
As the narrative wound down, the kid looked as if he might cry. But he stuck out his jaw, gritted his teeth, and said, 'I did nothing wrong.'
He certainly wasn't the first inmate at Trumble to declare his innocence. Beech watched and listened and remembered a young man he'd sentenced once to forty years for drug trafficking back in Texas. The defendant had a rotten childhood, no education, a long record as a juvenile offender, not much of a chance in life. Beech had lectured him from the bench, high and lordly from above, and had felt good about himself for handing down such a brutal sentence. Gotta get these damned drug dealers off the streets!
A liberal is a conservative who's been arrested. After three years on the inside of a prison Hadee Beech agonized over many of the people he'd thrown the book at. People far guiltier than Buster here. Kids who just needed a break.
Finn Yarber watched and listened and felt immense pity for the young man. Everybody at Trumble had a sad story, and after a month or so of hearing them he'd learned to believe almost nothing. But Buster was believable. For the next forty-eight years he would wither and decline, all at taxpayer expense. Three meals a day. A warm. bed at night-$3 1,000 a year was the latest guess of what a federal inmate cost the government. Such a waste. Half the inmates at Trumble had no business being there. They were nonviolent men who should've been punished with stiff fines and community service.
Joe Roy Spicer listened to Buster's compelling story, and he sized the boy up for future use. There were two possibilities. First, in Spicer's opinion, the telephones were not being properly utilized in the Angola scam. The Brethren were old men writing letters as if they were young. It would be too risky to call Quince Garbe in Iowa, for example, and pretend to be Ricky, a robust twenty-eight-year-old. But with a kid like Buster working for them, they could convince any potential victim. There were plenty of young guys at Trumble, and Spicer had considered several of them. But they were criminals, and he didn't trust them. Buster was fresh off the streets, seemingly innocent, and he was coming to them for help.The bay could be manipulated.
The second possibility was an offshoot of the first. If Buster joined their conspiracy, he would be in place when Joe Roy was released. The scam was proving too profitable to simply walk away from. Beech andYarber were splendid at writing the letters, but they had no business sense. Perhaps Spicer could train young Buster here to fill his shoes, and to divert his share to the outside.
Just a thought.
'Do you have any money?' Spicer asked.
'No sir. We lost everything.'
'No family, no uncles, aunts, cousins, friends who could help you with your legal fees?'
'No sir. What kinds legal fees?'
'We usually charge for reviewing cases and helping with the appeals.'
'I'm dead broke, sir.'
'I think we can help,' Beech said. Spicer didn't work on the appeals anyway. The man never finished high school.
'Sort of a pro bono case, wouldn't you say?' Yarber said to Beech.
'A pro what?' Spicer asked.
'Pro bono,'
'What's that?'
'Free legal work,' Beech said.
'Free legal work. Done by whom?'
'By lawyers,' Yarber explained. 'Every lawyer is expected to donate a few hours of his time to help people who can't afford to hire him.'
'It's part of the Old English common law,' Beech added, further clouding the issue.
'It never caught on over here, did it?' Spicer said.
'We'll review your case,' Yarber said to Buster. 'But please do not be optimistic.'
'Thank you.'
They left the cafeteria in a group, three ex judges in green choir robes followed by a scared young inmate.
Frightened, but also quite curious.
TWENTY-TWO
BRANTS REPLY from Upper Darby, Pa., had an urgent tone to it:
Dear Ricky,
Wow! What a photo! I'm coming down even sooner. I'll be there on April 20. Are you available? If so, we'll have the house to ourselves because my wife will stay here for another two weeks. Poor woman. We've been married for twenty-two years and she doesn't have a clue.
Here's a picture of me. That's my Learjet in the background, one of my favorite toys. We'll buzz around in it if you want.
Write me immediately, please.
Sincerely,
Brant
There was still no last name, not that that was a problem. They would dig for it soon enough. Spicer inspected the postmark, and for a passing moment thought about how quickly the mail was running between Jacksonville and Philadelphia. But the photo kept his attention. It was a four-by-six candid shot, very similar to an ad for a get-rich-quick scheme where the huckster is pictured with a proud smile, flanked by his jet, his Rolls, and possibly his latest wife. Brunt was standing beside a plane, smiling, dressed neatly in tennis shorts and a sweater, with no Rolls in sight but with an attractive middle-aged woman next to him.
It was the first photo, in their growing collection, in which one of their pen pals had included his wife. Odd, thought Spicer, but then Brunt had mentioned her in both letters. Nothing surprised him anymore. The scam would work forever because there was an endless supply of potential victims willing to ignore the risks.
Brunt himself was fit and tanned, short dark hair with shades of gray, and a mustache. He was not particularly
