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 32-38Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 32 Summary
The next day, Vanessa gushes to Nathan about how much the film’s financial backers loved his footage. She claims that the investors want to meet Nathan and have access to the DEA’s files on Gene and the other victims. Nathan agrees to go to Miami on the Skelter Films company jet.
Unbeknownst to Nathan, Vanessa takes a detour to arrange a fake passport for him. She also collects a pistol and some sedatives.
Chapter 33 Summary
Vanessa takes an earlier flight to Miami. Nathan joins Malcolm on the chartered jet. They drink on the flight—beer for Nathan, non-alcoholic beer for Malcolm. When Nathan is thoroughly inebriated, Malcolm slips the sedative into his drink. As soon as Nathan is asleep, the jet turns toward Jamaica. As they approach their destination, Malcolm lifts Nathan’s keys and plants a fake driver’s license and the fake passport. He also plants four kilos of cocaine in Nathan’s bag.
Malcolm tells the pilot that Nathan is unconscious from alcohol and might need medical help when they land. When they touch down, two Jamaican immigration officers enter the plane and check Malcolm’s and Nathan’s passports. Nathan is first removed to an ambulance, and then the immigration officers find the cocaine in Nathan’s bag. While the plane’s pilot explains to the officers that the bag belongs to Nathan, Vanessa pulls up to the airport in a taxi, and Malcolm joins her, speeding away before anyone notices his departure.
Chapter 34 Summary
Victor Westlake receives word through the customs agency that Malcolm has just taken a private jet from Roanoke to Jamaica, accompanied by Nathan Cooley, who is traveling with a fake passport. Nathan wakes up in a hospital, unaware of where he is or how he got there. The police arrive and tell him that he is in Jamaica and is in custody for entering the country with a fake passport, a gun, and four kilos of cocaine. Nathan can’t understand what he is doing in Jamaica—much less with a gun and cocaine. He tells them that he is supposed to be in Miami and asks them to find “Reed Baldwin,” insisting that Reed will explain everything. They cuff him and take him to jail.
Vanessa returns to Roanoke. Malcolm finds a lawyer and explains about the film and Nathan’s arrest. He asks the lawyer, Rashford Watley, to protect him from the local police and to find out why Nathan was arrested. After some phone calls, Rashford reports that Nathan was carrying a gun and drugs and using a fake passport. He will likely spend the next 20 years in a Jamaican prison. Malcolm pretends to be shocked. He insists that he has to try to help Nathan and asks Rashford to get him in to see Nathan.
Chapter 35 Summary
At the city jail, Nathan has already been beaten up twice and is convinced that he won’t last a week in a Jamaican prison. Rashford tells him that he has been hired by Malcolm to represent him. Rashford warns Nathan that he may be sentenced to 20 years in prison and asks whether Nathan can post bail. Nathan claims to have a few assets but no ready cash.
Malcolm is next to speak to Nathan. He tells Nathan that they were prevented from landing in Miami by a tropical storm and were redirected to Jamaica to refuel. Nathan was too drunk to be awakened. The customs officers saw the fake passport, then found the gun and drugs in Nathan’s bag. Malcolm admits to having acquired the passport just in case they needed to show one at Miami National Airport. Malcolm states confidently that the police planted the coke and gun; he implies that crooked cops are using the drugs as an excuse for the Jamaican government to seize the plane and extort a payoff. He tells Nathan that the cops are probably intending to extort Nathan and Malcolm as well.
Chapter 36 Summary
Vanessa arrives back in Roanoke and goes to Nathan’s house with the keys that Malcolm took from Nathan’s pocket. She lets herself in and searches the house. After a night in jail, Nathan is desperate to get out. Malcolm tells him that the crooked cops are demanding $1 million from the jet’s owner and another half million for Nathan. Malcolm claims that they don’t understand that because neither Nathan nor Malcolm is the owner of the jet, they don’t have that amount of money. Nathan finally admits that he has a lot of money. In an aside, Malcolm’s narration states that this is the revelation he has been waiting for. If he is wrong about this, the whole con falls apart.
Nathan claims that he has money hidden in a storage shed behind his house. Under a trapdoor are a bunch of cigar boxes containing $8 million worth of small gold bars. If Malcolm can get the gold and pay off the Jamaican cops, Nathan promises to split the rest of the gold with him. Hurrying back to his hotel, Malcolm phones Vanessa at Nathan’s house and tells her where to find the gold. Following his instructions, Vanessa finally finds it. She reports back to Malcolm, who tells her to just keep following the plan.
Chapter 37 Summary
Vanessa transfers the gold into backpacks and keeps moving to make sure she is not being followed. Malcolm returns to the United States and meets Vanessa in North Carolina. Together, they count the gold, which comes out to about $8.5 million.
Chapter 38 Summary
The FBI has traced Malcolm to Jamaica and learned that someone named Nathan Coley (the name on Nathan Cooley’s fake passport) is in jail there. They fail to trace Malcolm further.
Malcolm and Vanessa split up, each taking half the gold. Malcolm drives south into Florida and deposits $3 million in gold in each of three different safe deposit boxes in three different banks. Vanessa does the same in Richmond, Virginia, leaving them holding $1 million apiece.
Chapters 28-38 Analysis
With Nathan now securely hooked, the second part of Act 2 requires Malcolm to con Nathan into revealing the location of the stolen gold. Initially, Grisham sets up this part of the story to elicit sympathy for Nathan, who still appears to have nothing to do with Quinn or the murdered judge. In fact, if his story about his brother’s death is true, he is the victim of a brutal injustice. He also claims to have gone straight since being released from prison, and his thoughtful assessment of the economic role of the drug trade paints it—and him—in a more nuanced light. Grisham therefore uses this scene to briefly explore the theme of Injustice in the Justice System from a fresh angle before resuming the primary storyline, which will eventually reveal Nathan to be a true villain in his own right.
Because the success of The Racketeer hinges upon Grisham’s clever use of the unreliable narrator to force readers to play detective, the true endgame always remains just out of reach, and each new plot development is designed to invoke bewilderment over Malcolm’s true motives. This section of the novel also introduces the possibility that Malcolm is an antihero whose morals fall far outside the realm of what mainstream society would consider noble or justified. The end goal of Malcolm’s con finally appears when Nathan admits to having a lot of money, for the sheer magnitude of the hidden gold casts doubt on every mitigating factor that has portrayed Nathan in a sympathetic light thus far. The possession of $8 million in gold is inconsistent for a small-time drug runner and bar owner, to say the least. However, Malcolm’s narrative still gives no hint as to Nathan’s true connection to the judge, so the most obvious explanation is that Nathan acquired the gold as a part of some drug deal. At this point, it appears that Malcolm is an opportunist who is taking advantage of a naive young man, but because he is stealing the gold from drug dealers, the morality underlying his actions remains ambiguous.
Nathan’s admission that he has access to ready money marks a significant turning point and the point of greatest risk in Malcolm’s plot, for he has based the whole plan on the presumption that Nathan Cooley did indeed kill the judge. If Malcolm cannot offer up the true murderer, the FBI will come after him for giving false testimony, and Quinn will be returned to prison to complete his original sentence. Malcolm has also been cagey about his relationship with Vanessa. He has mentioned in previous chapters that Vanessa did not return his attraction, but as it turns out, this is only part of the story. As Grisham inches closer and closer to unveiling his protagonist’s true goals, Malcolm reveals a progression in his relationship with Vanessa that he failed to mention earlier. This more intimate dynamic becomes more prominent when Vanessa wishes Malcolm luck, a statement that shows she is aware of his true plans. Malcolm’s narration still refrains from lying outright, but at this point, the cascade of subtle contradictions in his story indicates that something entirely different is at work here.
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By John Grisham
