Tim Green - False Convictions

“It’s not about him,” Jake said. “You know Robert Graham?”

The cop snorted and said, “Of course. Guy’s got the city’s pants down around its knees. He’s got a boat anchored out there full of machines that equal about five thousand factory jobs if we bend over far enough. So, you’re saying that you’re following Mr. Napoli because of their deal?”

“What’s the deal got to do with John Napoli?”

“Some reporter,” the bald cop said. “Napoli is represnting the city’s development board. He’s working the deal. That’s the place right up there.”

The bald cop nodded toward the factory Jake had been in the day before.

“Graham wants the city to clean that shit hole and give him about a zillion dollars in tax breaks,” he said. “Some people are pretty hot about the deal not going through by now. Napoli’s had some death threats. We think from the union rank and file, and then you show up tailing him in a rented Cadillac.”

“You have something against renting?” Jake asked, smiling despite the pain in his head. “I was thinking Napoli and a guy I saw him meet with the other day, a guy named Massimo, the Italian connection. That kind of mob thing.”

“The Italian thing? You’re thinking twenty years ago,” the bald cop said, shaking his head and attaching the cuffs to his belt, “the old Buffalo. The Todora family owns a pizza and wings empire and everyone knows Massimo D’Costa’s a doughnut man. Used to be a cop till he got smart. He’s a big player now. Runs an environmental company. He’s in line to clean up all the toxic shit at that place if it ever goes through. You got the wrong bunch of wops.”

“Hey, what happened to your head?” the shaggy cop asked. “We didn’t do that.”

Jake reached up and gently felt the contours on the back of his skull. “I got sucked down a big drainpipe.”

The two cops looked at each other. The shaggy one said, “Sounds like somebody got it right.”

The bald one bent down for Jake’s cell phone. He dusted it on his sleeve and handed it back. The two cops holstered their guns and stalked off as if they had had nothing to do with yanking Jake from his car.

Before he climbed in behind the wheel, the bald cop said, “I’m not big on Westerns, so I’m not going to give you any bullshit about getting out of town, but the people you’re following around are legit, and they’ve got plenty of friends. So, I got to figure there’s a lot better stories in a lot friendlier places for you than this.”

WHEN SHE WOKE, Casey pulled the cotton sheet up around her neck against the ocean breeze spilling in through the open windows. The surf heaved itself against the beach outside, sighing with the effort. She blinked at the bright sunlight and the spinning paddle fan above her bed, reconstructing the night before. A half-empty decanter of port and the service staff melting for good into the darkness beyond the torchlight. A kiss under the moon.

She rose and showered and followed the scent of fresh coffee to the veranda outside the kitchen of the main house. Graham sat in a cotton robe with a glass of carrot juice, reading the New York Times.

“Sleep well?” he asked.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Only ten,” he said. “Run on the beach?”

“Coffee first,” she said, pouring herself a cup from the silver urn and sitting so she could face the ocean.

“Good news and bad news,” he said, lowering the paper.

“Bad news first.”

“I got a text from our Captain Rivers. His engine blew a valve so he had to cancel our dive.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Good news is that he assures me we’re on for tomorrow and I was able to get Fifi Kunz to take us out for a half day to see a wreck I know you’ll love. Fish everywhere, like a galaxy of color.”

“Fifi Kunz?”

“Fifi.”

“And a real wreck?”

“Which is why it’s going to be so incredible,” Graham said. “I love an adventurous woman.”

“You’re just trying to get in my pants.”

Graham leaned toward her, eyes glittering, and said, “Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

“I’m your enemy now?”

“No, your morals are.”

After lunch Fifi pulled his charter boat Hercules up to the beach and took them to a wrecked eighteenth-century English warship called the Endymion. Only thirty feet down, Casey was comfortable enough to lose herself in the ancient cannons, coral, and sea life. Before she knew it, Graham was tapping the gauge of his air supply and pointing toward the surface.

That night, Casey took the lime-colored Catherine Malandrino sundress from the closet and pulled her hair up, clipping it with a spray of purple orchids. When she met him on the terrace for a drink, his jaw fell and she blushed. They had the grilled lobsters he’d promised and they were as good as he said they would be. After a barefoot walk on the beach, they kissed again and she let his hands have their way until his fingers crept up her thigh from beneath the hem of the dress and she whispered good night.

“I knew it,” she said.

“What is it you want?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll let you know. I’m not shy.”

AT BREAKFAST in the morning an island cop with a stiff back and a British accent sat in the chair with the view. A small breeze pushed feathers of light brown hair from his forehead, revealing a bronzed landscape of leathery crevices. He introduced himself as Major Appleton from the nearby island of Grand Turk, and Casey didn’t know if the title referred to his current position or something from his past. He looked like a man who’d seen more than he cared to tell. Graham’s levity had disappeared and they talked seriously about getting saliva from Nelson Rivers without him knowing.

Casey finally excused herself and changed before meeting them on the beach. Graham pointed out to sea and Casey followed the trail of black diesel smoke as an old wooden fishing trawler chugged toward the beach. Faded and leprous, the dilapidated boat wore an old coat of baby blue paint with a single grease-smeared white stripe. The boat pulled to a stop just outside the waves and a dinghy dropped down off the stern, rowed to shore by a thin black boy who looked to be no older than twelve.

“You come boat,” the boy said in clipped English, wagging his head and steadying the dinghy at the edge of the surf.

The three of them looked at one another and climbed aboard. As the stern came into view, Casey read the boat’s name.

“Come Crazy?” she said. “What the hell kind of name is that for a boat?”

Graham’s face colored and he shook his head in disgust.

When they embarked on Rivers’s boat, the captain sat hunched over the wooden-spoke wheel, paying them no mind at all. The fat hung from his sides and back in slabs that stretched the rayon material of a double X Tampa Bay Buccaneers golf shirt. Faded blond locks spilled from a moldy Greek fisherman’s cap. Uneven gray and blond stubble covered much of his face and he kept his eyes hidden behind a pair of Panama Jack sunglasses. His hands, though, moved with expert dexterity, working the throttle levers to spin the boat around and ease them out beyond the reef.

The boat’s tanks stood in a cobbled-together bin constructed from two-by-fours and chicken wire. They sat along a wooden bench beneath the gunwale and the kid offered them scratched bottles of orange Fanta from a battered cooler. For Rivers, the kid delivered a frosty can of Bud Light that the captain upended and finished in a series of quick doglike gulps before wiping his mustache and setting the can daintily into a cup holder. He then removed a tin of tobacco from the back pocket of his khakis and added a pinch to his lower lip.