by John Grisham
“I’ll leave in a couple of days, then it’s all yours.”
“So you are leaving the area?” Diana asks.
“I didn’t say that. I said I’m leaving the condo.” I look at Westlake and say, “And please stop following me. There’s a good chance someone is watching you as you watch me. Give me a break here, okay?”
“That’s not true, Max.”
“You don’t know what’s true. Just stop following me, okay?”
Of course he does not say yes. His cheeks are red and he’s really pissed, but then again this is a man who usually gets his way. I walk to the door, yank it open, and say, “If you won’t give me a ride, I’ll just walk.”
“Take him back,” Westlake says.
“Thanks,” I say over my shoulder and leave the cottage. The last thing I hear is Raynor calling out, “You’re making a big mistake, Max.”
I ride in the backseat of the Jeep as the same two agents chauffeur me in silence. In the parking lot outside the gym, I get out and say nothing. They drive away, but I doubt they go far. I get into my little Audi, put the top down and go for a drive along the beach on Highway A1A. I refuse to look in the rearview mirror.
Victor Westlake returned to Washington on a government jet. When he arrived in his office after dark, he was briefed on the news that Judge Sam Stillwater had denied the defense motion to suppress the confession of Quinn Rucker. While no great surprise, it was still a relief. He called Stanley Mumphrey in Roanoke and congratulated him. He did not inform the U.S. Attorney that their star witness was about to leave witness protection and disappear into the night.
CHAPTER 26
I sleep with a gun, a Beretta 9-millimeter, legally purchased by me and duly licensed by the State of Florida. I haven’t fired a weapon in twenty years, since my days as a Marine, and I have no desire to start shooting now. It’s resting on the cardboard box that passes as a nightstand beside my bed. Another box on the floor is filled with the possessions I need-my laptop, iPad, some books, a shaving kit, a Ziploc bag filled with cash, a couple of files with personal records, and a prepaid cell phone with unlimited minutes and a Miami area code. A cheap suitcase, one that will fit into the Audi’s rather small trunk, is packed with my wardrobe and ready to go. Most of these items-the gun, the cell phone, the suitcase-were purchased recently just in case a quick exit became necessary.
Well, said exit is now at hand. Before dawn, I load the car and wait. I sit on my terrace for the last time, sipping coffee and watching the ocean fade into pink, then orange as the sun peeks over the horizon. I’ve watched this many times and never grow tired of it. On a clear morning, the perfect sphere rises from the water and says hello, good morning, what another fine day it’s going to be.
I’m not sure where I’m headed or where I’ll end up, but I plan to be near a beach so I can begin each day with such quiet perfection.
At 8:30, I walk out of the condo, leaving behind a refrigerator half filled with food and beverages, a motley assortment of dishes and utensils, a nice coffeepot, some magazines on the sofa, and some bread and crackers in the pantry. For forty-six days I lived here, my first real home after prison, and I’m sad to be leaving it. I thought I would stay longer. I leave the lights on, lock the door behind me, and wonder how many more temporary hiding places await me before I am no longer forced to keep running. I drive away and am soon lost in the heavy commuter traffic going west into Jacksonville. I know they’re back there, but maybe not for long.
Two hours later, I enter the sprawl north of Orlando and stop for breakfast at a pancake house. I eat slow, read newspapers, and watch the crowd. Down the street, I check into a cheap motel and pay cash for one night. The clerk asks for some ID with a photo and I explain that I lost my wallet last night in a bar. She doesn’t like this, but she likes the idea of cash, so why bother. She gives me a key and I go to my room. Working the Yellow Pages and using my prepaid cell phone, I eventually find a detail shop that can squeeze me in at three that afternoon. For $199, the kid on the other end promises to make my car look like a new one.
Buck’s Pro Shine is on the backside of a large assembly-line car wash that’s doing a bustling business. My car and I are assigned to a skinny country kid named Denny, and he takes his job seriously. In great detail, he lays out his plan for washing and shining and is surprised when I say that I’ll wait. “Could take two hours,” he says. “I have nowhere to go,” I reply. He shrugs and moves the Audi onto a wash rack. I find a seat on a bench under a canopy and start reading a Walter Mosley paperback. Thirty minutes later, Denny finishes the exterior wash and starts the vacuum. He opens both doors, and I ease over for a chat. I explain I’m leaving town, so the suitcase stays in the backseat and the cardboard box in the trunk is not to be touched. He shrugs again, whatever. Less work for him. I take a step closer and tell Denny that I’m going through a bad divorce and I have reason to believe my wife’s lawyers are watching every move I make. I strongly suspect there is a GPS tracking device hidden somewhere in or on the car, and if Denny finds it, I’ll slide him an extra $100 bill. At first he is hesitant, but I assure him it’s my car and there’s nothing illegal about disarming a tracking device. Her slimy lawyers are the ones breaking the law. Finally, there’s a twinkle in his eye and he’s on board. I pop the hood, and together we start combing the car. As we do so, I explain there are dozens of different devices, all shapes and sizes, but most are attached with a strong magnet. Depending on the model, the battery can last for weeks, or the device can even be hot-wired to the car’s electrical system. Some antennas are external, some internal.
“How do you know all this?” he asks, flat on his back, his head under the car, poking around the chassis.
“Because I hid one on my wife’s car,” I reply, and he finds it funny.
“Why haven’t you looked for yourself?” he asks.
“Because I was being watched.”
We search for an hour and find nothing. I am beginning to think maybe my car was bug-free after all when Denny removes a small panel behind the right headlight. He’s on his back, his shoulder squeezed against the right front tire. He snaps something loose and hands it to me. The waterproof covering is the size of a cell phone and made of hard black plastic. I remove it and say, “Bingo.” I’ve looked at a hundred of these online and have never seen one like this, so I assume it’s government issued. No brand name, no markings, numbers, or letters. “Nice work, Denny,” I say, and hand him a $100 bill.
“Can I finish detailing now?” he asks.
“Sure.” I drift away, leaving him to his labors. Next to the car wash there is a small shopping center with half a dozen low-end stores. I buy a cup of stale decaf and sit in the window of a coffee shop, watching the parking lot. An elderly couple in a Cadillac park, get out, and shuffle into a Chinese buffet. As soon as they’re inside, I exit the coffee shop and walk through the lot as if I’m headed to my car. Behind the Cadillac, I quickly bend over and slap the tracking device onto the bottom of the fuel tank. Ontario license plates-perfect.
Denny is washing windows, sweating profusely, lost in his work. I tap him on the shoulder, startle him, and say, “Look, Denny, nice work and all, but something’s come up. I need to hit the road.” I’m peeling off cash and hand him three $100 bills. He’s confused, but I don’t care.
“Whatever you say, man,” he mumbles, staring at the money.
“Gotta run.”
He pulls a towel off the top of the car. “Good luck with the divorce, man.”
“Thanks.”
West of Orlando, I take Interstate 75 north, through Ocala, then Gainesville, then into Georgia, where I stop in Valdosta for the night.
Over the next five days, my wanderings take me as far south as New Orleans, as far west as Wichita Falls, Texas, and as far north as Kansas City. I use interstate highways, state routes, country roads, and national parkways. All expenses are paid in cash, so, to my knowledge, there is no trail. I double back a dozen times and beco
me convinced there is no one behind me. My journey ends in Lynchburg, Virginia, where I roll in just after midnight and once again pay cash for a motel room. So far, only one place has refused to do business because I claim to have no ID. Then again, I’m not lodging at Marriotts or Hiltons. I’m tired of the road and eager to get down to business.
I sleep late into the next morning, then drive an hour to Roanoke, the last place anyone who knows Max Baldwin would expect to find him. Fortified with that knowledge, and a new face, I am confident I can move around with anonymity in a metro area of 200,000 people. The only troublesome part of my package is the Florida license plates on my car, and I contemplate renting another one. I decide against this because of the paperwork. Plus, the Florida angle will pay off later.
I drive around the city for a while, checking out the landscape, downtown, the old sections, and the inevitable sprawl. Malcolm Bannister visited Roanoke on several occasions, including once as a seventeen-year-old high school football player. Winchester is just three hours north, on Interstate 81. As a young lawyer there, Malcolm drove down twice to take depositions. The town of Salem adjoins Roanoke, and Malcolm spent a weekend there once at a friend’s wedding.
That marriage ended in divorce, same as Malcolm’s. The friend was never heard from again after Malcolm went to prison.
So I sort of know the area. The first motel I try belongs to a national chain and has rather strict rules about registration. The old lost-wallet ruse fails me, and I am denied a room when I cannot produce an ID. No problem-there is an abundance of inexpensive motels in the area. I drift to the southern edge of Roanoke and find myself in a less than affluent part of Salem where I spot a motel that probably offers rooms by the hour. Cash will be welcomed. I opt for the daily rate of $40 and tell the old woman at the front desk I will be around for a few days. She’s not too friendly, and it dawns on me that she might have owned the place back in the good ole days when blacks were turned away. It’s ninety degrees, and I ask if the air-conditioning is working. Brand-new units, she says proudly. I park around back, directly in front of my room and far away from the street. The bed linens and floors are clean. The bathroom is spotless. The new window unit hums along nicely, and by the time I unload my car, the temperature is below seventy. I stretch out on the bed and wonder how many illicit hookups have occurred here. I think of Eva from Puerto Rico and how nice it would be to hold her again. And I think of Vanessa Young and what it will be like to finally touch her.
At dark, I walk down the street and eat a salad at a fast-food place. I’m down twenty pounds since I left Frostburg, and I’m determined to keep losing, for now anyway. As I leave the restaurant, I see stadium lights and decide to take in a game. I drive to Memorial Stadium, home of the Salem Red Sox, Boston’s Class High-A affiliate. They’re playing the Lynchburg Hillcats before a nice crowd. For $6, I get a seat in the bleachers. I buy a beer from a vendor and soak in the sights and sounds of the game.
Nearby is a young father with his two sons, T-ballers, I suspect, no more than six years old and wearing Red Sox jerseys and caps. I think of Bo and all the hours we spent playing catch in the backyard while Dionne sat on the small patio and sipped iced tea. It seems like yesterday that we were all together, a little family with big dreams and a future. Bo was so small and cute, and his father was his hero. I was trying to turn him into a switch-hitter, at the age of five, when the Feds entered my life and wrecked things. What a waste.
And, other than myself, no one really cares anymore. I suppose my father and siblings would like to see my life made whole again, but it’s not a priority. They have their own lives to worry about. Once you go to prison, the world assumes you deserve it, and all pity comes to an end. If you polled my former friends and acquaintances in my hometown, I’m sure they would say something like, “Poor Malcolm, he just crawled in bed with the wrong people. Cut some corners. Got a bit greedy. How tragic.” Everyone is quick to forget because everyone wants to forget. The war on crime needs casualties; poor Malcolm got himself captured.
So it’s just me, Max Reed Baldwin, free but on the run, scheming some way to exact revenge while riding off into the sunset.
CHAPTER 27
For the sixth day in a row, Victor Westlake sipped his early morning coffee while scanning a brief memo on Mr. Max Baldwin. The informant had vanished. The GPS tracker had finally been removed from a Cadillac Seville owned by an elderly Canadian couple as they ate lunch near Savannah, Georgia. They would never know they had been cyber-tracked by the FBI for three hundred miles. Westlake had punished the three field agents assigned to monitor Baldwin’s car. They lost him in Orlando and picked up the wrong scent as the Cadillac headed north.
Baldwin wasn’t using his iPhone, his credit cards, or his initial Internet service provider. The court-approved snooping on those fronts would expire in a week, and there was almost no chance it would be renewed. He was neither a suspect nor a fugitive, and the court was reluctant to allow such extensive eavesdropping on a law-abiding citizen. His checking account at SunCoast had a balance of $4,500. The reward money had been tracked as it was split and bounced around the state of Florida, but the FBI eventually lost its trail. Baldwin had moved the money so fast the FBI lawyers could not keep pace with their requests for search warrants. There were at least eight withdrawals totaling $65,000 in cash. There was one record of a wire transfer of $40,000 to an account in Panama, and Westlake assumed the rest of the money was offshore. He had grudgingly come to respect Baldwin and his ability to disappear. If the FBI couldn’t find him, maybe he was safe after all.
If Baldwin could avoid credit cards, his iPhone, use of his passport, and getting himself arrested, he could remain hidden for a long time. There had been no more chatter from the Rucker clan, and Westlake was still dumbfounded by the fact that a gang of narco-traffickers in D.C. had located Baldwin near Jacksonville. The FBI and the Marshals Service were investigating themselves, but so far not a clue.
Westlake placed the memo in a pile of papers and finished his coffee.
I find the office of Beebe Security in a professional office building not far from my motel. The Yellow Pages ad boasted twenty years of experience, a law enforcement background, state-of-the-art technology, and so on. Almost all of the ads in the Private Investigations section used this same language, and I cannot remember, as I park my car, what attracted me to Beebe. Maybe it is the name. If I don’t like the outfit, I’ll go to the next name on my list.
If I had seen Frank Beebe walk down the street, I could’ve said, “There goes a private detective.” Fifty years old, thick-chested with a gut pressuring his shirt buttons, polyester pants, pointed-toe cowboy boots, full head of gray hair, the obligatory mustache, and the cocky swagger of a man who’s armed and unafraid. He closes the door to his cramped office and says, “What can I do for you, Mr. Baldwin?”
“I need to locate someone.”
“What type of case?” he asks as he lands hard in his oversized executive chair. The wall behind him is covered with large photos and seminar certificates.
“It’s not really a case. I just need to find this guy.”
“What will you do after you find him?”
“Talk to him. That’s all. There’s no cheating husband or delinquent debtor. I’m not looking for money or revenge or anything bad. I just need to meet this guy and find out more about him.”
“Fair enough.” Frank uncaps his pen and is ready to take notes. “Tell me about him.”
“His name is Nathan Cooley. I think he also goes by Nat, too. Thirty years old, single, I think. He’s from a small town called Willow Gap.”
“I’ve been through Willow Gap.”
“Last I knew, his mother still lives there, but I’m not sure where Cooley is now. A few years back, he got busted in a meth sting-”
“What a surprise.”
“And spent a few years in federal prison. His older brother was killed in a shoot-out with the police.”
Frank is sc
ribbling away. “And how do you know this guy?”
“Let’s just say we go way back.”
“Fair enough.” He knows when to ask questions and when to let them pass. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Look, Mr. Beebe-”
“It’s Frank.”
“Okay, Frank, I doubt there are many black folks in and around Willow Gap. That, plus I’m from Miami, and I have Florida tags on my little foreign car. If I show up and start poking around, asking questions, I probably won’t get too far.”
“You’d probably get shot.”
“I’d like to avoid that. So, I figure you can do the job without raising suspicion. I just need his address and phone number if possible. Anything else would be gravy.”
“Have you tried the phone book?”
“Yes, and there are quite a few Cooleys around Willow Gap. No Nathan. I wouldn’t get too far making a bunch of cold calls.”
“Right. Anything else?”
“That’s it. Pretty simple.”
“Okay, I charge a hundred bucks an hour, plus expenses. I’ll drive to Willow Gap this afternoon. It’s about an hour from here, way back in the boondocks.”
“So I’ve heard.”
The first draft of my letter reads:
Dear Mr. Cooley:
My name is Reed Baldwin and I am a documentary filmmaker in Miami. Along with two partners, I own a production company called Skelter Films. We specialize in documentaries dealing with the abuse of power by the federal government.
My current project deals with a series of cold-blooded murders carried out by agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration. This topic is very close to me because three years ago my seventeen-year-old nephew was gunned down by two agents in Trenton, New Jersey. He was unarmed and had no criminal record. Of course, an internal investigation showed no fault on the part of the DEA. The lawsuit filed by my family was dismissed.
In researching this film, I believe I have uncovered a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of the DEA. I believe certain agents are encouraged to simply murder drug dealers, or suspected drug dealers. The purpose is twofold: First, such murders obviously stop criminal activity. Second, they avoid lengthy trials and such. The DEA is killing people instead of arresting them.
To date, I have uncovered about a dozen of these suspicious killings. I have interviewed several of the families, and they all feel strongly that their loved ones were murdered. This brings me to you: I know the basic facts regarding the death of your brother, Gene, in 2004. There were at least three DEA agents involved in the shooting, and, as always, they claim they acted in self-defense. I believe you were on the scene at the time of the shooting
Please allow me the opportunity to meet, buy you lunch, and discuss this project. I am currently in Washington, D.C., but I can drop things here and drive to southwest Virginia at your convenience. My cell phone number is 305-806-1921.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely
M. Reed Baldwin
The clock slows considerably as the hours pass. I go for a long drive south down Interstate 81 and check out Blacksburg, home of Virginia Tech, then Christiansburg, Radford, Marion, and Pulaski. It’s mountainous terrain and a pretty drive, but I’m not sightseeing. I may need one of these towns in the near future, and so I take notes of truck stops, motels, and fast-food joints near the interstate. The truck traffic is heavy and there are automobiles from dozens of states, so no one notices me. Occasionally, I leave the four-lane and venture deep into the hills, driving through small towns without stopping. I find Ripplemead, population 500, the nearest hamlet to the lakeside cabin where Judge Fawcett and Naomi Clary were murdered. I eventually wander back to Roanoke. The lights are on; the Red Sox are playing again. I buy a ticket and have a hot dog and a beer for dinner.
Frank Beebe calls me at eight the next morning, and an hour later I’m in his office. As he pours coffee, he says, matter-of-factly, “Found him in the town of Radford, a college town of about 16,000. He got out of prison a few months ago, lived with his mother for a while, then moved away. I talked to his mother, a tough old gal, and she said he bought a bar in Radford.”
I’m curious, so I ask, “How did you get her to talk?”
Frank laughs and lights another cigarette. “That’s the easy part, Reed. When you’ve been in this business as long as I have, you can always spew some bullshit and get people talking. I figured his mother still has a healthy fear of anyone connected to the prison system, so I told her I was a federal prison agent and needed to chat with her boy.”
“Isn’t that impersonating an officer?”
“Nope, no such thing as a federal prison agent. She didn’t ask for a card, and if she had, then I would’ve given her one. I keep a bunch of cards. On any given day, I can be one of many different federal agents. You’d be amazed how easy it is to fool people.”
“Did you go to the bar?”
“I did, but I didn’t go in. I wouldn’t fit. It’s just off the campus of Radford University, so the crowd is a lot younger than me. It’s called Bombay’s and it’s been around for some time. According to city records, it changed hands on May 10 of this year. The seller was one Arthur Stone, and your boy Nathan Cooley was the buyer.”
“Where does he live?”
“Don’t know. Nothing in the land records. I suspect he’s renting, so there would be no record of that. Hell, he could be sleeping above the bar. It’s an old two-story building. You’re not going there, are you?”
“No.”
“Good. You’re too old and you’re too black. It’s an all-white crowd.”
“Thanks. I’ll meet him somewhere else.”
I pay Frank Beebe $600 in cash, and on the way out I ask, “Say, Frank, if I needed a fake passport, you got any ideas?”
“Sure. There’s a guy in Baltimore I’ve used before, does most anything. But passports are tricky these days, Homeland Security and all that crap. If they catch you, they really get excited.”
I smile and say, “It’s not for me.”