The Racketeer Page 0,86

of his cousins have served time for drug distribution; two are still locked away. As bad as prison was, it did get him away from the drugs and alcohol. He was sober for the five years he was incarcerated and is now determined to stay away from the meth. Beer is another matter.

We break at noon. The sun is overhead, and Slade is concerned about the brightness of the conditions. He and Cody stroll around, looking for another spot. "How long can you go today, Nathan?" I ask.

"I'm the boss," he says smugly. "I can go in whenever I want."

"Great. So a couple more hours?"

"Why not? How am I doing?"

"Terrific. It took you a few minutes to settle down, but now you're very smooth, very sincere."

Gwen adds, "You're a natural storyteller, Nathan." He likes this. She's back with the makeup routine, wiping perspiration from his forehead, brushing, touching, flirting, revealing. He craves the attention.

We brought sandwiches and soft drinks and eat under the shade of an oak tree next to the toolshed. Slade likes this spot and we decide to move the set. Gwen whispers to Nathan about using the restroom. This makes him uncomfortable, but by now he can hardly keep his eyes off her legs. I walk away and pretend to be on the cell phone, talking to important people in Los Angeles.

Gwen disappears into the back door of the house. She will later report that the house has two bedrooms but only one with furniture, nothing in the den but a sofa, a chair, and a huge HD television, one bathroom in need of a good scrubbing, a kitchen with a sink full of dirty dishes and a refrigerator filled with beer and cold cuts. There is an attic with a fold-down staircase. The floors are covered with cheap carpeting. There are three doors - front, back, and garage - and all three are secured with thick dead bolts that have obviously been added recently. There appears to be no alarm system - no keypads or sensors over the windows and doors. In his bedroom closet, there are two rifles and two shotguns. In the closet in the spare bedroom, there is nothing but a pair of muddy hunting boots.

While she is inside, I continue my fake phone chat while I watch Nathan from behind large sunglasses. He keeps his eyes on the back of his house, nervous that she is inside, alone. Slade and Cody are getting the set rewired. When she returns, Nathan relaxes and apologizes for his sloppy housekeeping. She coos and works on his hair. When everything is in place, we plunge into the afternoon session.

He mentions a motorcycle accident when he was fourteen, and I dissect this for half an hour. We delve into his sketchy employment history - bosses, co-workers, duties, wages, dismissals. Back to the drug trade with details about how to cook meth, who taught him, key ingredients, and so on. Romances, girlfriends? He claims to have impregnated a young cousin when he was twenty, but has no idea what happened to the mother or child. He had a serious girl before he went to prison, but she forgot about him. Judging by the way he looks at Gwen, it's obvious this boy is wired.

He's thirty years old, and other than the death of his brother and a prison sentence his life has been unremarkable. After three hours of prodding and poking, I extract anything and everything of interest. He says he needs to get to work.

"We have to visit the place where Gene was killed," I say as Slade turns off the camera and everybody relaxes.

"It's outside of Bluefield, about an hour from here," he says.

"Bluefield, West Virginia?"

"That's right."

"And why were you there?"

"We were making a delivery, but the buyer was an informant."

"I have to see this, Nathan, to walk through it all, to recapture the scene, the violence, the moment, the place where Gene was shot and killed. It was at night, right?"

"Yeah, long after midnight." Gwen is tapping his face with a cloth, removing the makeup. "You're really good on camera," she says softly, and he smiles.

"When can we go there?" I ask.

He shrugs and says, "Whenever. Tomorrow if you want."

Perfect. We agree to meet at his house at 9:00 a.m. and caravan through the mountains into West Virginia, to the remote, abandoned mine site where the Cooley brothers walked into a trap.

We've had a good day with Nathan. He and I got on well as