50 pages • 1 hour read
John GrishamThe Racketeer
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 39-44Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 39 Summary
Vanessa meets with Quinn’s attorney. She announces that she is Quinn’s sister and that she can prove Quinn’s innocence. She states that she and the rest of the family had put him in a drug-rehabilitation facility, where he had been for 21 days before the judge and his mistress were found dead. She has paperwork from the facility that he was there, including DNA evidence. His confession and subsequent moody behavior is explained by his diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
Nathan’s employees report that he has gone missing. The police find Nathan’s car, but no one connects him to the Nathan Coley who was arrested in Jamaica in Malcolm’s company. Meanwhile, Malcolm finds a gold dealer and converts several of the gold bars into cash. He buys several laptops, books, and toolboxes; places some of the bars inside the items; and packages them for shipping. Vanessa does the same. Malcolm sends an email to Stanley Mumphrey and Victor Westlake, telling them that he has realized that his accusation of Quinn was in error and that Quinn’s confession is bogus. Quinn’s lawyer now has proof of an airtight alibi. Malcolm knows the identity of the real killer, and if the FBI wants to catch that killer, they will have to cooperate with Malcolm, who has no plans to return to the US.
Chapter 40 Summary
Malcolm ships his packaged items with the gold bars to Antigua. He takes a small private jet to Antigua himself. Mumphrey and Westlake receive Malcolm’s email. They debate whether to trust Malcolm again. He claims to have made a mistake about Quinn, but they suspect that he actually lied to them. They are also suspicious of his movements over the last few weeks. It looks to them like a conspiracy—in other words, racketeering. On the other hand, if Quinn has a solid alibi, then they have no idea who really killed the judge. They debate whether to try to extradite Malcolm from Antigua—a process that would probably take months. They consider coming up with some charges against him. They have nothing definite, but although they think they could bend the racketeering laws and find something that would stick, they decide instead to wait to see what Malcolm knows.
Chapter 41 Summary
Malcolm rents two safe deposit boxes. When his packages containing the gold bars arrive, he places them inside. He sends a second email to Westlake and Mumphrey. This one includes photos of the cigar boxes that contained the gold and photos of some of the gold bars. He explains that the gold was the real motive for the murder and reminds them that they still don’t know the culprit.
The FBI finds out that Judge Fawcett was indeed selling small quantities of gold to small-time dealers at different intervals. The gold bars he sold were identical to those in Malcolm’s photo. They conclude that Malcolm and Quinn must have been closer friends in Frostburg than anyone realized. One of them knew about the gold. Malcolm and Quinn set up Quinn’s escape and alibi, then waited for the real killer to strike. When he did, they set their plan in motion. The agents anticipate that Malcolm will use Rule 35 to get Quinn off the hook for his escape and his remaining prison sentence. The FBI director, George McTavey, begins to laugh as they all start to realize how clever Malcolm’s plan has been; the FBI look like fools, and McTavey appreciates a good con. He jokes that they should hire Malcolm. The agents decide to meet with Malcolm and find out what he has to say.
Chapter 42 Summary
Vanessa arrives in Antigua, and Malcolm meets with Victor Westlake and Stanley Mumphrey. They arrange immunity for Malcolm, Vanessa, and Dee Ray, then get Quinn’s sentence commuted under Rule 35. Quinn is released. Westlake takes the opportunity to speak privately with Malcolm and asks him about the gold. Malcolm claims not to know anything about it. Westlake argues that Malcolm has no right to keep it, but Malcolm points out that there is no way to return the gold to the criminals the judge got it from. With the judge gone, the gold really has no rightful owner.
Malcolm tells the agents that the killer and thief was Nathan Cooley, who is currently being held in a Jamaican jail. He tells them how he found out about Nathan Cooley and the gold. Malcolm had been doing a lot of work as a jailhouse lawyer, and Nathan asked him to review his case. Nathan told Malcolm that he knew how to get his hands on a lot of gold bars; Nathan had been struggling to go straight before his final drug arrest. He was asked by a stranger to help him move a heavy safe into the basement of his vacation cabin. Later, Nathan and his brother Gene broke into the cabin and found out that the stranger was a judge presiding over a uranium-mining case. Locating the safe, they were unable to open the digital lock. They spied on the judge and finally saw him taking gold out of the safe. Before they had a chance to get the gold, Gene was killed in the DEA bust and Nathan went to prison. After his release, he tortured the judge and his mistress, got the code to the safe, killed them both, and took the gold.
Chapter 43 Summary
Malcolm then tells a second story about the judge. Judge Fawcett had been presiding over a trial concerning a uranium-mining company in Virginia. The company paid the judge $10 million in gold for a favorable verdict. Malcolm tells the FBI that if they don’t pursue that crime, he will give the details to the news reporter who has been covering the uranium story; the reporter would love to add an FBI cover-up to the story.
Malcolm and Vanessa take a private jet to Miami. They split up again, each going to their respective gold stashes, where they clean out the safe deposit boxes. In DC, they join Quinn Rucker and his brother Dee Ray. Quinn greets Malcolm enthusiastically. Malcolm reveals that Dee Ray was the one who picked up Quinn when he walked away from Frostburg. Dee Ray also watched for Nathan’s release—which would signal the start of the con—and supplied all the cash up front. The four conspirators plan to divide the spoils once they get the gold smuggled out of the country.
Chapter 44 Summary
They pack the gold into bags disguised as scuba gear, load it onto a yacht, and head for Antigua. Malcolm describes the relationship between the four of them as family—Quinn, who is the best friend he ever had, and now a brother through Vanessa—and the family now includes Dee Ray, their fourth conspirator, a brother through Quinn and Vanessa as well.
Chapters 37-44 Analysis
This section of the novel relates the climax and denouement of the heist story. Unlike in a thriller or a detective novel, the climax of a heist is not in the capture of a criminal but rather in the discovery of the scheme. In this genre, the author waits until the last possible moment to reveal the various layers of the game and any previously unseen connections. For example, Malcolm’s narration reveals the true depths of his friendship with Quinn and relates the fact that Vanessa is Quinn’s sister. He also reveals that Dee Ray is the stranger who picked up Quinn when he escaped from Frostburg. One side benefit of Malcolm’s sting is that he takes revenge on the FBI for their dishonesty by making fools of the organization as a whole. Malcolm has described the justice system as a game in which all parties cheat. Accordingly, it is significant that upon realizing the extent to which his agents have been duped, FBI director McTavey is amused rather than angered, for he perceives their pursuit of the judge’s killer to be a game of wits and leverage more than a quest for justice. For him, a well-played game is nearly as satisfactory as beating his opponent. Since Malcolm ultimately makes good on his offer to give the FBI the real killer, McTavey still has the opportunity to win the game and get the glory and prestige of catching his true prey. His admiration for Malcolm and his appreciation for The Long Con therefore contributes to his willingness to work with him.
The denouement shows the triumphant conspirators enjoying their loot, thus providing a much-needed catharsis for the long and twisted plot. By this point in the novel, the forces of disorder and deception have been beaten at their own game, and Grisham allows readers to indulge in a vicarious sense of freedom from oppressive social and legal constraints. Grisham invokes an additional degree of satisfaction in the reality that although the rules have been broken, no one has been seriously hurt—at least, no one who didn’t deserve it—and justice has been done despite the best (or worst) efforts of the FBI.
The novel’s conclusion also establishes Malcolm’s status as an antihero, for although his questionable actions do result in a crooked version of justice, his abandonment of former family and friends exhibits a shadow of the ruthlessness of the true con artist. Now that he is free, he could easily contact those who were closest to him, but he chooses not to. Malcolm’s greatest act of ruthlessness is therefore in leaving his son, who adored him. Malcolm claims he is choosing not to disrupt his son’s relationship with his new foster father, but walking away nonetheless seems suspiciously easy for him. Ultimately, Malcolm adopts a new family through Quinn and Vanessa, and this shift in values powerfully exhibits how thoroughly Malcolm’s wrongful conviction has changed him. Quinn is a genuine criminal, yet Malcolm describes him as the best friend he ever had. Vanessa, though not directly involved in their drug-dealing family, has a streak of the family lawlessness. Thus, it is clear that Malcolm now sees criminals as being more trustworthy than the representatives of justice and law. In a wider sense, Grisham uses Malcolm’s transformation to make a philosophical statement: An unjust justice system creates conditions under which civilians cannot trust the laws and law enforcement agencies meant to protect them. When that happens, individuals feel entitled take the law into their own hands to achieve real justice.
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By John Grisham
