Tim Green - False Convictions

There was a pause.

“You think I don’t know that?” Graham said. “I’m more exposed than anyone, you know that.”

Jake heard what sounded like papers being stuffed into a briefcase.

“What?” Graham said. “It has nothing to do with that. Listen, Massimo, if they’d taken care of her when I asked, the way I asked, we wouldn’t be ‘fucking around with this charade,’ as you call it, but I was told to fix it and if anyone has a better idea how, you just let me know.”

Another pause.

“No, Massimo. I’m not talking to you like that,” Graham said, “but do I really have to? I mean, can’t he just pick up the phone? We’re in the twenty-first century.

“I’m just saying,” Graham said, his voice lowering so that Jake could barely hear it. “Yes, I’ll be there. Let me finish this first and I’ll leave right away. No, I don’t have an attitude, Massimo. I’m sorry. Yes. Good-bye.”

Jake waited and watched the building, expecting Graham any second. Nothing happened. Finally, to ease the tension by sharing the excitement, he dialed Casey’s cell phone.

“Everything okay?” he asked her, wriggling out of his suit coat.

She told him how it went with the judge, sounding pleased.

“Good,” Jake said, his eyes still glued to the front door of Graham’s offices. “Sounds like you put the judge’s cojones in a vise.”

“That’s not what you meant, is it? When you asked if everything was okay,” Casey said. “You meant something else.”

Jake told her about the conversation he overheard Graham having on the phone without telling her how he heard it, then said, “When he talked about a charade I was thinking maybe this whole thing with your killer and the Freedom Project-I don’t know. It was as much the tone of Graham’s voice as the things he said. The man sounded scared, and when he said ‘if they’d taken care of her when I asked, the way I asked,’ I could only think of you.”

“It could be anyone, though,” Casey said thoughtfully.

“Right, me just being paranoid,” Jake said, nodding to himself. “I hope that’s true, but I like to play things safe, so in the meantime, I want you to watch your back.”

“And you?”

“I’m going to see if I can follow him,” Jake said. “Obviously, he’s being summoned by someone who makes him pee down his leg, and I’m going to find out who.”

“Be careful,” Casey said.

“Touching,” Jake said, allowing himself a smile. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“I care,” Casey said. “Don’t act like an idiot.”

“It’s tough,” Jake said, “but I’ll try.”

Jake hung up and waited. It was almost three when the billionaire came out of the offices and got into a silver Range Rover. Jake started his engine and followed. As they headed west on the Thruway, Jake figured Graham was heading for the airport. He called a contact at the FAA in Washington and used a favor to track down the location and flight plan of Graham’s private jet.

“Victor Tango seven-seven-nine,” his man said, “owned by Robert Graham. Landed in Rochester at oh-six oh-seven this morning. Let’s see… scheduled to depart from Rochester to PLS at fifteen hundred.”

“That’s-”

“In three minutes,” his man said.

“He can’t make it,” Jake said.

“Maybe he’s not going.”

“Maybe they’ll take off late?”

“Could be.”

“What’s PLS, anyway?” Jake asked.

“Ah, I think one of those islands in the Caribbean, you want me to tell you which one?”

“Just call me if it takes off, will you?”

“Sure.”

Jake hung up and gripped the wheel, knowing the track would go cold if he couldn’t follow Graham and wondering how he could get permission from his executive producer to do it, anyway. His next call went to Don Wall, an old friend in the FBI, who answered his cell phone in a whisper.

“Bad time?” Jake asked.

“Stakeout,” Wall said. “Bored out of my mind, but there’s an old lady upstairs who’s got nothing better to do than listen at the air vent, so I got to keep it down. What’s up?”

“How up are you on your organized crime trading cards?” Jake asked, wrinkling his brow as Graham’s Range Rover kept going west on the Thruway, past the exit he should have taken north to the airport.

“Colombian, Russian, Vietnamese, Albanian, or Italian?” Wall asked, the sound of some kind of shell cracking in the background before he began to crunch into the phone.

“Italian, for sure,” Jake said. “Guy named Massimo.”

“To the max,” Wall said. “That’s what it means.”

“Heard of anyone?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean so much,” Wall said. “I’ve been on this fucking Al Qaeda thing for the last nine months and all I’ve seen is some douche bag from Iowa growing a beard. Let me make a call. My old partner is in Philly working some heroin angle and I swear the only reason he’s on it is because the shit is coming in from Afghanistan. I got to tell you, it’s got to be good to be an American criminal these days. You ought to do a story on that.”

“Maybe I am,” Jake said, weaving in and out of the traffic to avoid being boxed in by a tractor trailer as Graham picked up his speed. “Meantime, would you see if you can get anything on an Italian gangster from Buffalo whose name is Massimo?”

“I’ll get back to you.”

Jake thanked him and clicked over to another incoming call.

“It’s up,” his FAA man said.

“Thanks,” Jake said. “You don’t know when it’s coming back, do you?”

“No return flight plan filed yet.”

Jake thanked him again, hung up, and settled in, pleased that whoever Graham was going to meet, he wasn’t flying to get there.

“Buffalo,” Jake said to himself as they passed the only exit Graham would have taken if he was going south to Pennsylvania. “Lots of Italians there. No sense in flying.”

He wondered briefly who was inside Graham’s jet, but it could be anyone for a million different reasons. When the Range Rover slowed down and got off the Thruway at the exit for the express to downtown Buffalo, Jake nodded to himself. But before reaching the center of the city, Graham got off the expressway and headed through a run-down industrial area toward the river. Empty weed-ridden lots and crumbling brick buildings surrounded a towering yellow brick cereal factory still belching smoke. The rich smell of yeast and baking wheat filled Jake’s nostrils as he followed Graham over a steel trestle that lay like a sleeping giant across the river’s span. Grain bins ten stories high lined the river’s bank as the road turned to follow its course down a finger of land that split the river.

Chain-link fences surrounded the different warehouses and abandoned mills, and Graham turned his Range Rover into the parking lot of one. Jake drove past the entrance and just caught sight of Graham pulling his SUV right into the big open bay of an abandoned mill before disappearing into its dark bowels. Half a block down, an old ball-bearing factory had a broken parking lot nearly a quarter full with rusty pickup trucks and late model cars. Several cars had been parked along the street and Jake found a spot among them, scanning the area before he got out and walked quickly back toward the warehouse.

As the open bay of the hulking concrete building came into view through the fence, Jake searched for signs of life, seeing none. Down where the road took a turn in front of the cereal factory, a dusty cement mixer pulled out and rumbled away. Past the warehouse, late afternoon sunlight glittered on the broken mud-brown surface of the river. A deep strumming sound of heavy diesel preceded a vast tanker that surged into view like a skyscraper laid on its side, pushing a four-foot wake from its bow as it surged upriver.