The Racketeer Page 0,112

have an ice cream twice a month. I'm sure he still remembers me, but the memories are certainly fading. Dionne is a smart, lovely woman, and I'm sure she and her second husband are providing a happy life for Bo. Why should I, a virtual stranger and a guy who certainly looks like one, pop into their world and upset things? Once I convinced Bo I was really his father, how would I rekindle a relationship that's been dead for over five years?

To stop this torment, I try to focus on the next few hours, then the next few days. Crucial steps lie ahead, and a screwup could cost me a fortune and possibly send me back to prison.

I stop for gas and a vending-machine sandwich near Savannah, and two and a half hours later I'm in Neptune Beach, my old, temporary stomping ground. At an office supply store I purchase a heavy, thick briefcase, then drive to a public parking area for the beach. There are no security cameras and no foot traffic, and I quickly open the trunk, remove two of the cigar boxes and place them in the briefcase. It weighs about forty pounds, and as I walk around the car I realize it's too heavy. I remove one container and return it to the trunk.

Four blocks away, I park at First Coast Trust, and nonchalantly walk toward the front door. The digital thermometer on the bank's rotating billboard reads ninety-six degrees. The briefcase gets heavier with each step, and I struggle to act as though it contains nothing but some important papers. Twenty pounds is not a lot of weight, but it's far too much for a briefcase of any size. Every step is now being captured on video, and the last thing I want is the image of me lumbering into the bank with a heavy satchel. I worry about Vanessa and her efforts to access her lockboxes in Richmond with such a burden on her shoulder.

Heavy as it is, I can't help but smile at the astonishing weight of pure gold.

Inside I wait patiently for the vault clerk to finish with another customer. When it's my turn, I give her my Florida driver's license and sign my name. She checks my face and my handwriting, approves, and escorts me to the vault in the rear of the bank. She inserts the house key into my lockbox, and I insert my own. Noises click perfectly, the box is released, and I carry it to a narrow, private closet and close the door. The clerk waits outside, in the center of the vault.

The lockbox is six inches wide, six inches tall, and eighteen inches long, the largest available when I leased it a month ago for one year, at $300 per. I place the cigar box inside. Vanessa and I labeled each one with the exact number of mini-bars. This one has thirty-three, or 330 ounces, roughly $500,000. I close the box, admire it, kill a few minutes, then open the door and report to the clerk. Part of her job is to remain aloof with no suspicions whatsoever, and she does it well. I suppose she's seen it all.

Twenty minutes later, I'm in the vault at a branch of the Jacksonville Savings Bank. The vault is larger, the lockboxes smaller, the clerk more suspicious, but everything else is the same. Behind a locked door, I gently place another stash of mini-bars into the box. Thirty-two gorgeous little ingots worth another half a million bucks.

At my third and final bank, not a half mile from the first one, I make the last deposit of the day, then spend an hour looking for a motel where I can park just outside my room.

In a mall on the west end of Richmond, Vanessa wanders through a high-end department store until she finds the ladies' accessories. Though she acts calm, she is all nerves because her Accord is alone out there in the parking lot just waiting to be vandalized or stolen. She selects a chic red leather shoulder bag large enough to be called luggage. Its designer is well-known, and it will probably be noticed by the female clerks who run the banks. She pays cash for it and hustles back to her car.

Two weeks earlier, Max - she had always known him as Malcolm but she liked the new name better - had instructed her to rent three lockboxes. She had carefully selected the banks around Richmond,