"Morning, Harold. Marcus," Ray smiled, setting his mug on the stone table.
"Morning, Donald," I replied, taking a slow sip of my coffee. "What news from Marion?"
Ray opened the blue folder.
Inside was a single sheet of certified legal bond paper:
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NOTICE OF INMATE STATUS CHANGE.
INMATES: VON HAUFF, FRIEDRICH & VANCE, ARTHUR.
LOCATION: USP MARION & FCI BUTNER.
STATUS: PERMANENT REMAND — TOTAL FORFEITURE RATIFIED.
PETITION FOR EXECUTIVE CLEMENCY: DENIED UNANIMOUSLY BY THE PARDON ATTORNEY.
The paper was signed by the President of the United States.
Friedrich von Hauff and Arthur Vance had spent three years in solitary federal confinement, watching their seventy-million-dollar empire of stolen vehicles dismantled piece by piece, every cent transferred into our youth engineering scholarships.
Two months ago, von Hauff’s final appeal had been dismissed with prejudice by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals; the prison reports noted that he spent his days in the institutional library, staring out the window at the cornfields, completely forgotten by the aristocratic circles of Europe.
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