False Convictions

by Tim Green

  “How about that?” he said to her. “You wanted media, you got media.”

  “Take these stupid things off, you son of a bitch,” Casey said. “And hand me my phone.”

  “After we’re done processing you with prints and mug shots, you’ll get all the calls you like,” the chief said, removing his hat and smoothing the thin strands of hair over the top of his bald head.

  The two arresting cops appeared and led Casey into the back. Secretaries at their desks and cops leaning on walls all stopped to stare. Casey grit her teeth and went through the indignity of having ink smeared across all her fingers and holding up a thin metal frame full of numbers as her photo was snapped.

  As the cop named Hank led her to the holding cage, he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt and said, “I guess your reporter boyfriend’s out there making all kinds of noise. Won’t be surprised if he makes his way into lockup himself from what they’re saying.”

  Casey said nothing as he handed her into the metal cage where a ragged woman with frizzy orange hair lay snoring on the bench, with an arm over her eyes and the rest of her face caked with dried blood.

  “What the hell is that?” Casey asked.

  “Domestic,” Hank said, “got into it with her old man then cauterized his nuts with a clothes iron after he passed out on the bed.”

  “Looks like he deserved it,” Casey said, studying the purple blots across her cheeks and arms.

  “They all say that,” the cops said, and slammed shut the cage.

  54

  JAKE LOOKED OUT through his open door and into Dora’s hotel room across the hall. They’d taken the conference call with the head of the network on their respective cell phones and didn’t want to disrupt the call with any annoying feedback, so they stayed in their own rooms but left the doors open so they could communicate nonverbally if needed. Quinton Walsh, the network president, complained about Jake’s personal involvement with Casey.

  “Well, he’s very close to it, Mr. Walsh,” Dora said, giving Jake a pleading look, “but that’s the trademark you’ve worked so hard to establish. We get closer. We don’t make the news, but we’re right there when it happens, watching. The rest of them report on what they hear secondhand. Jake’s right there on this.”

  “With a story that contradicts everything else we’re hearing,” Quinton Walsh said.

  “Because we’re breaking this thing,” Jake said, excited, and feeling as if he’d turned a corner in his quest to convince the network executive that Casey was being framed. “We’ve got the real story. Everyone else is chasing some Macy’s Thanksgiving Day float, blown into being by a lot of Madison Avenue windbags working for the real culprit here.”

  “This woman judge, this Rivers?” Walsh said. “You can’t tell me that’s not a story.”

  “She’s a story, but page four compared to the real conspiracy,” Jake said, adrenaline flowing. “Graham created the story to discredit her. He’s got a billion dollars in gas leases that would go belly-up if she got onto that court, and some pretty shady partners-”

  “We think,” Dora said, waving both hands downward to keep him from going over the edge.

  Jake nodded at her and said, “He tries to buy her off, but that doesn’t work. What’s he do? A snake like Graham, plugged in like he is-the great philanthropist-he writes a script that exposes her past indiscretions and he does it in a way that gets everyone’s attention. Brad Pitt, for Christ’s sake, did you see that?”

  “This is our theory,” Dora said, cutting in again.

  “Your theory?” Walsh asked.

  “Yes,” Dora said, giving Jake a curt nod across the hallway, “that’s what we’re working on.”

  “A very complex conspiracy theory,” Walsh said, his voice flat. “The other networks are having a field day with this crazy redheaded lawyer, who happens to be gorgeous. She sprung her law professor-a serial killer. Took on a sitting US senator-he gets murdered a few months after the dust settles. And now this. Lifetime even announced they’re rerunning the movie they made about her, but we’ve got a conspiracy theory. Are you listening to yourselves?”

  “Why let the truth get in the way of good TV, right?” Jake said, scowling big enough for Dora to see.

  “Listen, Blond Bomber,” Walsh said, his voice sour. “I was digging into the Bay of Pigs when you were a wet dream, so don’t get cute.”

  “I’m sorry, Quinton,” Jake said, his voice subdued, “but I’m right, goddamn it. You know I don’t just say things like this.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  “This isn’t about his contacts, is it, Quinton?” Jake asked. “Because I got a mandate from somewhere on high to do this puff piece on the guy, and I’ve got to tell you, it is not what we normally do.”

  “You ever take biology, Jake?” Walsh asked after another uncomfortable pause.

  “Uh, sure, freshman year at Cornell.”

  “Remember the frogs? The ones you cut up?”

  “Couldn’t get the smell off my hands for about a week,” Jake said, giving Dora a quizzical look and rotating his index finger around his ear.

  “You make your H cut and peel back that white belly and there it is,” Walsh said, “the perfect machine, but by the time you’re done taking the pieces out, you’ve got a mess. Something you couldn’t put back together in a million years.”

  “You lost me at the H cut,” Jake said.

  “Don’t try to dissect this, Jake,” Walsh said. “No one likes a man with stinky hands.”

  “So you’re pulling the plug?” Jake said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  Walsh sighed in a gust. “I didn’t say that, Jake. I just said let the surgeon be the one to paw around in the guts. Don’t go poking around about his high-up contacts with the network. Leave that part out of it.”

  Walsh paused, then said, “Okay, you two go ahead and I’ll tell the evening news to hold back. If it’s a dead end, then we’ll have struck out in the top of the first.”

  “If not,” Dora said, giving Jake a silent thumbs-up and a wink from across the hall, “grand slam.”

  55

  RIDING THE BACK of the body odor stench and urine was the sharp scent of alcohol. The cage rested in a dusty old storage room with moldy boxes and papers bowing the wooden shelves on the wall and a single cheap globe light casting meager shadows. Casey sat in the corner of the cage clasping her knees, sticking her nose out through the bars, as far away from the sleeping woman as possible. Casey suspected that the woman had peed herself.

  When the wooden door swung open, Casey stood.

  “Your lawyer,” a woman cop said in a bored tone.

  “Marty?” Casey said. “Who sent you?”

  Marty held his long arms up in the air, raising his suit coat and making himself look like a living scarecrow. “Nobody. Not Graham. Not my uncle.”

  “Somebody,” Casey said.

  “Me.”

  Casey considered him. “Can you get me the hell out of here?”

  “I think I can,” Marty said. “I might have to eat the cost of the reception hall, but I figure I can take the honeymoon trip with a buddy of mine from law school.”

  “Your fiancée?” Casey said.

  Marty shrugged. “She might get over it. Judge Kollar probably won’t.”

  “What did you do?”

  “He’s not the only judge,” Marty said, sniffing the air.

  Casey angled her head over her shoulder and Marty flinched at the sight of the beaten woman.

  “He’s got arraignments today, but they finish around eleven. I used a couple favors and got the desk sergeant to hold the arraignment back, then push it out this afternoon to Judge Hopkins in the city court,” Marty said. “She got in when the Dems were riding high with Bill Clinton. She doesn’t even like Judge Kollar.”

  “No million-dollar bail?” Casey said with a wry smile.

  “No,” Marty said, “but this is no joke. They’re charging you with criminal tampering,
tampering with public records, and felony conspiracy. The whole bundle adds up to about ten years if things go against you, and I’ve got to say, you don’t have a lot of friends around here.”

  “Really?” she said. “They gave me one hell of a reception.”

  “They’re saying you switched the samples out at the storage facility the hospital uses,” Marty said, frowning as he lowered his voice. “They’ve got a night watchman who says you paid him off, but when he saw you on the news he had to come forward. Said he couldn’t live with himself, thinking he’d helped to free a murderer. Claims he had no idea what you were up to.”

  “He got paid off all right,” Casey said.

  Marty raised his eyebrows.

  “Not me,” she said. “Graham.”

  “Sure,” Marty said, his face going red before he looked down at the floor. “They’re also saying you got the sample from Nelson Rivers yourself.”

  “That is so sick,” Casey said, clenching the mesh of the cage. “You’ve got to stop that right now, Marty. Get out there and tell the reporters.”

  “They know you flew down there,” Marty said, still averting his eyes.

  “I flew down there after we got the sample from the hospital,” Casey said. “Tell them that. Have them look at the flight records.”

  Marty bit into his lip and wagged his head. “Ralph is saying he flew down with you the first time, before you went with Graham, that you went under another name. There’s a woman in the flight record.”

  “A woman?” Casey said. “A whore. She had to have a passport to come back into the country. Tell them to check.”

  “They’re saying it was a fake record,” Marty said. “Ralph is falling on his sword, taking the blame. He says Graham told him to assist you with whatever you needed and that you insisted on going under a false name and that he was just following orders. Says he didn’t see how you filled out the immigration papers or what passport you showed the agent coming back in. Graham is saying he’s appalled. That’s what he said, ‘appalled.’ ”

  “But you saw me in the hotel that night,” Casey said.

  “I did,” Marty said, nodding, “but no one is listening to me and no one else saw you. Remember? You didn’t even order room service.”

  Casey bit her lip and asked, “They’re talking to the media? When?”

  “They had a press conference right after you got arrested,” Marty said. “It looked like a circus, all the trucks and reporters packing up and heading up the hill in a wave to the courthouse steps. That’s where Graham did it. He’s calling for the police to take Dwayne Hubbard into custody. Says the reputation of the Freedom Project is at stake now because of you. They’ve got a manhunt going.”

  “He destroyed Patricia Rivers,” Casey said, “now he’s saving his own ass.”

  Marty only nodded and looked up, staring at her through his glasses.

  “Marty?” Casey said quietly. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I want to be a lawyer,” Marty said, “not someone’s bagman because my uncle knows everyone. I want to really practice, write briefs, make oral arguments, all the stuff you dream about in law school. I didn’t go to get a merit badge that earns me a six-figure salary, I want to make a difference.”

  Casey smiled at him.

  “You’re the first person who treated me like I could even do this,” Marty said.

  “I wasn’t so nice.”

  “You let me help with that brief. No one does that with me. How can you get better if all they ask you to do is get drinks and sandwiches? I figure, I get in now and I’ll get to be your right-hand man on this thing.”

  “You didn’t think I’d hire a first-class criminal lawyer with experience?” Casey asked.

  “No,” Marty said, slowly shaking his head, “I figured you’d do this yourself, but you need local counsel, just like you did for Hubbard.”

  “You never heard the saying ‘A lawyer who represents herself has a fool for a client’?” Casey asked.

  “Well,” Marty said, dropping his eyes again.

  “Right,” Casey said. “So, thanks, and go get me out of here.”

  56

  JAKE’S FINGERS worked the keyboard, and without looking up, he said, “Quinton may wake up tomorrow morning and change his mind.”

  “There are more patient men,” Dora said.

  Jake got into the secretary of state’s Web site and input the account name and password Casey had set up that morning.

  “With a little luck,” he said out loud, tapping the enter key. The computer beeped and the screen changed. Waiting for him were two PDF files, which he opened.

  “It’s the same guy,” he said, pointing to the name and signature on the screen at the bottom of the document.

  “John Napoli?” Dora said. “The same guy as who?”

  Jake snatched up his cell phone and began dialing Don Wall.

  “An old man in a wheelchair who has some goon driving him around town in a silver Mercedes SUV,” Jake said, listening as Don’s phone rang. “He’s the lawyer for the city on some project, but he’s much more than that… Don? It’s me, Jake.”

  “I’m thrilled,” Don said. “My first two days at home in a month, so I wouldn’t expect anyone else. How may I serve you?”

  Jake heard the sound of kids in the background, but pressed on. “Remember that John Napoli?”

  Don heaved a sigh and said, “You got a corrupt attorney? Wow. Come out to Des Moines with me and do a story. They’re calling this guy the next Adam Gadahn.”

  “Right,” Jake said, “Al Qaeda in America. I’m serious. Napoli’s plugged in.”

  “Jake, listen to yourself,” Don said. “D’Costa? Fabrizio? Napoli? You think everyone whose name ends in a vowel is plugged in with organized crime? I told you, D’Costa was a cop who now runs a seventy-million-dollar business.”

  “At this moment,” Jake said, “I am looking at a certificate of incorporation with Napoli’s name on it for a company that owns a billion dollars in gas leases in the Marcellus Shale Formation.”

  “In the what? What is that, French?” Don said.

  “It’s an underground geological formation,” Jake said, “in the Atlantic states. Lots in New York. One of the biggest natural gas reserves in the world. Napoli is tied in with Robert Graham and a bunch of other names who are trying to keep the courts in New York from ruining their chance to get it out of the ground. There’s some environmental issues, and these guys have enough at stake that Graham just spent a lot of time and money to ruin the person next in line for the court, Patricia Rivers.”

  “Rivers? I saw that in the airport last night on CNN,” Don said. “Figured that Graham guy couldn’t get his dad to play catch in the yard growing up and he just needed some attention.”

  “There’s a lot more to it,” Jake said. “I’ve got information about Graham that goes back for years. He’s had some mysterious silent partners, and now this. The game within the game.”

  “Sounds interesting, Jake, and when I get back to Des Moines, I’ll ring you up and we can chat, but I’ve got Melissa showing me the five-hundred-dollar bill she just got for hitting Free Parking and it’s my turn.”

  “Don, wait,” Jake said, using his shoulder to pin the phone to his ear so he could work the computer. “I’m coming there. I need you to get me the old organized crime files from Buffalo. Anything with Napoli. Something’s got to be there, somewhere. You said you had a guy in Philly who used to work western New York. He’ll know. The cops there said something about Buffalo twenty years ago. I need that stuff. I need Napoli’s role. I need the other names, and I bet half of them are on the list I’ve got from the political action committee that tried to bribe the judge Graham just destroyed.”

  “Look,” Don said, “I’ll get to it, Jake.”

  “I know,” Jake said, his fingers dashing across the keys, “I just found a flight to Reagan National out of Syracuse that arrives at five-thirty. We can have dinner at the Legal Sea Fo
ods right there in the airport. I’ll be sitting down to a pint of Sam Adams and a bread bowl of that chowder they serve at the inaugurations by six o’clock. Did I mention I’m buying?”

  “I’m not having dinner with you, Jake,” Don said, anger creeping into his voice. “I haven’t seen my family in three and a half weeks and I’ve only got two fucking days before I fly back to Bum-fuck.”

  “Remember that agent who was giving you a hard time?” Jake asked. “The one who got personally involved with that stripper?”

  “And I thanked you repeatedly for that,” Don said.

  “And you owe me,” Jake said. “That would’ve added a lot to my piece. But you asked me to think of his family while he was out with dollar bills in his teeth and all you really wanted was something to hold over his head.”

  “What the hell, this is it?” Don said, raising his voice. “This is your marker? I’ve got hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place and you’re sending me into the office? You’re calling in your marker? ’Cause you don’t get two of these, my friend.”

  “You ever get the oysters at Legal’s?” Jake said. “I love those things.”

  “For the record, he didn’t put the dollar bills in his teeth,” Don said. “But I think he stuck ’em everywhere else.”

  57

  JAKE PACKED everything he had and left Dora to line up interviews with Judge Rivers and Martin, if she could, or at least quiz them for the names of other people from the past who could verify their version of what happened. He tried Casey’s cell phone on his way to the airport. He got her voice mail and left a message before checking in with Marty, who updated him on the likelihood of her being released by four o’clock.

  “Make sure she calls me right away,” Jake said. “My flight is supposed to leave at four-ten. Tell her if she doesn’t get me that I’ll call when I land. Tell her I’m heading to Washington. I’ve got a file waiting for me down there that requires some personal attention. With any luck, I’ll be back late tonight, but tell her if she can’t get me to head for the place we talked about staying. I’ll meet her.”