False Convictions

by Tim Green

  “She’s a sort of concierge,” he said. “Whenever I come to this island, or anyplace else for that matter, I have someone who takes care of things.”

  “How much do you come here?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes once or twice a year. I like Barbados, too, and St. John’s.”

  Charles appeared, silently deposited her bag, and left just as quietly as he’d come. Casey stared at Graham.

  “What?”

  “Kind of a strange coincidence,” she said, “you being a regular visitor at the place Nelson Rivers is hiding out at.”

  Graham stepped toward her and rested his hands lightly on her shoulders. Softly, he said, “Will you please stop? Do you think I’ve visited this island for years because Nelson Rivers is here? It doesn’t even make sense. Why? What’s the connection? Tell me if you can even think one up and I’ll fly you straight to Dallas. I told you, I visit other islands, too. It’s a coincidence. That’s it. Now please, can we enjoy this just a little bit?”

  Casey sighed and shook her head. “You’re right. Forgive me?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll even let you make it up to me. Take some time and get your things unpacked if you want and let’s take a swim, then dinner on the beach. What do you think?”

  “I think that water looks delicious.”

  Casey put some of her things away in the bathroom, then changed into a one-piece suit and found a light cotton robe in the closet. She slipped her feet into a pair of the sandals and wandered through the pool house, touching the shells in a bowl on the glass coffee table at the center of a curved sectional couch and opening the refrigerator to see fresh staples along with bottles of beer, seltzer water, and juice. She slid the glass door open and circled the pool before wandering down the curved staircase leading to the beach.

  Two red-and-white-striped lounge chairs lay facing the water with a small table between them on which rested an ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne as well as two more Pyramid Hefeweizens that appeared to be an afterthought. Casey laughed to herself and walked down to where the small waves lapped the shore. Between her toes, the white sand felt fine as flour, and when she stepped into the water it gave way beneath her feet like clean mud. In front of her, the setting sun left the sky in a wash of orange, red, and violet.

  “You beat me.”

  She jumped and turned to see Graham standing in his suit.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She followed him in, diving when he dove and swimming in slow easy strokes toward the horizon. About two hundred yards out, he stopped and treaded water. Around them, the sky had faded to twilight and a star or two winked down.

  28

  JAKE FUMBLED with his cell phone to make a 911 call.

  The man rapped the barrel of his gun on the window and shouted, “Put it down!”

  The man flung open the door and grabbed Jake by the collar, yanking him out of the seat and throwing him to the street. The cell phone clattered across the pavement. Jake’s hands went in the air instinctively, his eyes searching for help, maybe from the driver in the cab of the cement truck.

  The truck sat empty.

  “Get up,” the man shouted, hauling Jake to his feet with the gun pointed in his face.

  He spun Jake around and pounded him down into the hood of the Cadillac. Jake saw stars, the impact sending fresh pain through his head. He heard the rattle of handcuffs as the second man rifled through the car. Jake’s mind whirred in confusion.

  “You guys are cops?” Jake said.

  “No shit,” the cop said, clipping one of the bracelets on his left wrist. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m a reporter,” Jake said, his eyes still frantic for help from someone, any kind of passerby, but the industrial street remained empty. “Ever hear of the First Amendment?”

  The cop, whose crooked teeth now shone in the smile of his closely shaven head, brought his face close to Jake’s and asked, “A fucking reporter? From fucking where?”

  “Fucking American Sunday. I’m Jake Fucking Carlson.”

  The second cop rounded the car and peered at Jake’s face. “Shit, yeah. Hey, you used to be on the show about Hollywood. Did you really meet those people?”

  The first cop unsnapped the metal bracelet and let Jake up off the hood. Jake turned around, rubbing his wrist.

  “American Outrage,” Jake said, “that was the show.”

  “That’s not what you just said,” the first cop said, playing detective.

  “That show got canceled,” Jake said. “I’m with a new show now. It sounds similar, but it’s totally different, American Sunday.”

  “So what the fuck’s that to do with Mr. Napoli?”

  “Mr. Napoli?” Jake said.

  “We picked you up outside his house, starfucker,” the first cop said, “so cut the shit. It makes your eyes twitch.”

  Jake looked from one cop to the other. He’d done a story a few months back about dirty cops in New Orleans-cops on the payroll of gangsters running drugs, gambling, and girls-and he knew crooked cops were always subtle about shaking someone down.

  “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.”

  29

  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.”

  30

  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.

  “Does he speak?” Casey said under her breath, leaning toward Graham.

  “I couldn’t shut him up on the phone,” Graham said.

  It took less than a half hour before Rivers eased back on the throttles and the boat rocked forward close enough for the kid to hook a buoy with his gaff and tie them off. Rivers raised his beer can, not to sip at the dregs but to expel into it a stream of brown juice as he studied the water over the side.

  “Fifty-sixty feet of visibility,” he said, almost as if speaking to himself. “You’ll be fine. Probably see a reef shark or two.”

  “You’re going down with us, right?” Graham asked.

  Rivers scowled and pulled up the cuffed leg of his pants, exposing an ankle so red and bloated that the spur of the bone could hardly be made out.

  “Gout,” Rivers said. “Have fun.”

  The kid brought gear up from the cabin below and assisted them until they dropped over the side. Beneath the surface, they shrugged at each other and Graham signaled for them to follow him down the anchor line, indicating they might as well play it through and see what they could see since they were there.

  At forty feet, they found gullies of white sand beneath coral ridges thin with fish compared to what they’d seen the day before. Graham directed them to a cave beneath a ledge where a troop of king crabs stood frozen like giant spiders from a monster movie. Casey felt a chill that was instantly replaced by hot fear when she looked up and saw a shark moving swiftly above them like a gray and white missile. From the empty blue space in front of them, another ghostly shape appeared, its black eyes as lifeless as lumps of coal.

  When she saw the fourth and fifth, her heart began to thump. Graham shouted something through his regulator, pointing, and Casey looked up. Above them, not far from the boat, a scarlet cloud filled the water, shedding purple chunks that floated to the ocean floor like a grotesque rain. Through the cloud the sharks swam, twisting and snapping at the chunks and then each other.

  Graham tapped her shoulder and pointed to another shark, his own eyes wide with shock.

  Casey spun. Heading right at them was something she’d only seen on Discovery Channel, a snarling black bull shark more than two times the size of the others, its mouth pulled down in a wicked frown, teeth bared like a hundred blades.

  The shark plowed right through the three of them, racing for the pack and the cloud of chum. Casey kicked for the surface, fueled by panic and aware that the bull shark had torn into a wounded reef shark, thrashing and darkening the water to a purple gore. Casey broke the surface, ripped off her mask, and screamed for the boat. Graham surfaced beside her, yelling as well but grabbing hold of her shoulders.

  “Stay still!” he said, grabbing her vest and filling the BCD with air from her tank so she floated high in the water.

  The major surfaced but floated like a dead man, facedown.

  “Stop it!” Graham said. “The movement attracts them. Stay still. We’ll be fine.”

  He turned and shouted at the boat. “Rivers! Get over here, you stupid fuck!”

  The captain had already fired up his engines, dirtying the sky with a plume of black diesel and turning the sl
uggish boat their way, chugging right through the roiling, bloodstained water where dorsal fins and tails slapped the surface. Rivers waved from behind the wheel and Casey could see his enormous grin. When he pulled up alongside them, Graham handed her up to the boy, who hoisted her aboard the stern platform.

  Graham came next, followed by the major. Graham tore at his equipment, letting it drop to the deck as he surged forward. Rivers shared a laugh with his boy, and the sight of Graham made whatever it was even funnier for them until Graham grabbed the big man by the lapels and yanked him out of his swivel chair. The shirt’s material ripped and Rivers swatted at Graham’s hands.

  “What the fuck were you doing?” Graham shouted.

  “Hey, easy, easy,” Rivers said, pushing Graham away without success.

  “Are you trying to kill us?” Graham shouted, spit flying from his mouth as he shook the captain.

  Major Appleton shucked his gear and stepped forward, putting a firm hand on each man’s shoulder. “Robert.”

  “Yeah, calm down,” Rivers said, sulking. “People love to see the sharks. They won’t hurt you.”

  “Reef sharks won’t,” Graham said. “But there’s a bull shark down there, you stupid son of a bitch.”

  “Bull shark?” Rivers said, leaning for the gunwale as if to confirm. “A big one?”

  “Big enough.”

  “Well, I never had that happen before. Sometimes they come in to feed on a whale, but…”

  “You pull this kind of shit all the time?”

  “I told you, people like it. They love it.”

  “Take us back,” Graham said, then he stalked over to Casey and put a towel around her shoulders.

  She didn’t stop shivering until they hit the beach.

  “Christ,” Graham said as they sat down at the terrace table overlooking the ocean. “I’m sorry.”

  “How can he do something that crazy and get away with it?” Casey asked.

  Major Appleton said, “Who you gonna call?”