False Convictions

by Tim Green

  “Blackmail?” Marty said.

  “But his partners,” Jake said, “they didn’t really do anything wrong. Graham gave them the statements.”

  “Right, but the IRS doesn’t care about that,” Marty said. “I’ve seen it. You don’t pay taxes like this? It’s no one’s fault but your own. It’s your responsibility. These guys would go to jail in a heartbeat.”

  “Like Al Capone,” Jake said. “Murder, bootlegging, extortion, but they got him on tax evasion. That’s how they put him away. If the FBI got wind of this gang, they’d be back on them like white on rice, which reminds me, breakthrough or no, I’ve got to eat before I pass out.”

  Jake dug into a wax bag of egg rolls and passed them around.

  “There’s something else,” Casey said, dipping the end of her roll into a little foam dish of duck sauce.

  “Something else, what?” Jake asked.

  “This is Graham’s Get Out of Jail Free card,” Casey said.

  “How so?”

  “You said the FBI is investigating him?” Casey said. “I promise you, whatever they have on him, this would get him out of it.”

  “Whatever?”

  “This would serve up a dozen or more people with ties to organized crime,” Casey said.

  “They’re, like, retired, though, right?” Marty said. “These guys left the dark side.”

  “You think the FBI cares?” Casey asked. “These guys dodging them for all those years? FBI agents are like elephants with this stuff. They’d be all over it. If Graham was my client and we offered them John Napoli and his gang? I’d get him total immunity, maybe even a pat on the back from the Justice Department, witness protection, whatever we wanted. Are you kidding? This is Graham’s free pass if anything happens to him.”

  “Jake said it’s something worth killing for,” Marty said, “and it is. But if Napoli finds out, Graham won’t be the only one who’d kill for it.”

  Jake scowled for a moment before he held his egg roll up in the air as if he were making a toast.

  “To blackmail, then,” Jake said, touching his roll to Casey’s and then Marty’s before crunching it in his mouth, “because it works both ways.”

  65

  CASEY WORKED with Marty until the early morning hours, drafting the documents she needed to make their plan work. She let Marty and Jake out of her room and saw that the sky was already growing pale. She didn’t think she could sleep, but after removing her shoes and lying flat on her back, the next thing she knew, morning light was filtering through the crack in the dark brown curtains. She jumped up and found her toothbrush, spreading a towel on the sticky linoleum floor in the bathroom so her feet wouldn’t have to touch it. She pulled aside the mildewed plastic curtain but thought better of a shower after one glance at the rusty fixtures and the permanent ring around the inside of the tub.

  She found a washcloth, more gray than white, but that smelled clean enough for her to brave a sponge bath in the sink before changing into some fresh clothes from her luggage. She stepped outside, where the damp air held a chill. Casey shivered at the sound of traffic droning by on the Thruway she couldn’t see through the mist. She stood, trying to decipher it until she smelled coffee and wheeled around.

  “Morning,” Jake said, removing a paper cup from his carrier and offering it to her. Under his arm was a folder of documents.

  “Morning,” she said, taking the coffee.

  “You’re thinking.”

  “The mist,” she said. “When I represent people, everything seems clear. Sometimes I get impatient with them, the confused looks when I tell them what to say and how to say it, but this…”

  She waved vaguely out over the railing before gripping its slick surface.

  “It’s a lot,” he said. “Someone says they’re one thing and you believe them, then they turn out to be something totally different.”

  “Totally evil,” she said. “This whole thing. It’s humiliating.”

  “People who know you, they know,” he said, placing a hand on hers. “I know.”

  “Thank you,” she said, breathing easier before nodding at the folder tucked under his arm. “You got everything printed?”

  “I did.”

  Casey asked, “What are you telling your show?”

  “That I’m working on one hell of a story,” Jake said, blowing into his lid before taking a sip. “They believe me.”

  Casey took a sip of her own and said, “You know who we need to sit down with.”

  Jake stared off into the mist. “I think I’ll have a better chance to get the story I need if I do this part of it alone.”

  “Well, thanks for not coming right out with a John Wayne imitation,” Casey said. “My uncle used to imitate John Wayne and we all thought it was funny till we learned he got a head injury in the war. Just be real.”

  Jake looked somewhat startled. “I am real. For good or bad, I’ve been in this kind of shark tank before.”

  “Look, I had a client who was a serial killer and a US senator taking pages out of Joséf Mengele’s playbook who wanted me dead,” she said. “So thanks for the coffee, but don’t patronize me, and next time I’ll take it with milk.”

  Jake gave her an amused smile. “I am not taking the kid.”

  “He works on traffic tickets.”

  “I thought he was your lawyer,” Jake said.

  “And you never want to do anything stupid in the presence of your lawyer,” Casey said, pulling open the door to her room. “We going right now?”

  “Napoli told me ten o’clock,” Jake said. “I figured I’d take my coffee for the road.”

  Casey gathered her things and got into Jake’s Cadillac.

  “You going to tell him?” Casey asked, nodding toward Marty’s room.

  “I left him a note,” Jake said, backing out.

  They took the Thruway to Buffalo. Bambino’s Espresso was a small brick building on the edge of downtown with a dirty glass storefront window and a red neon sign shaped like Italy. Napoli’s silver G55 sat in front like a dog on the stoop. A thick-necked man sat behind the wheel, reading a paper until he put it down to watch them and scan the street. In front of that was a black Lincoln Navigator and a midnight blue Bentley Coupe.

  Jake got the door for her. A bell tinkled, announcing their entrance, and an old man in a white apron and a paper hat looked up from his tray of biscotti before darting his eyes across the empty tables toward the corner. Fresh cigar smoke clouded the corner, its smell mixing with that of freshly ground coffee and warm dough from behind the counter. Next to the wizened old man in a wheelchair sat a man so large that his face seemed small and lost in its cowl of fat. The old man, Casey knew, was Napoli. On his other side sat a beefy brute in a tailored suit with slicked-back hair, a pinkie ring, and manicured nails.

  When they approached the table, no one stood up or offered a hand, but the fat man nudged the metal leg of an empty chair with his toe as if to offer it up. He spoke in a high voice that belied his great size.

  “You have something for us?” he said, more as a statement than a question.

  “We have something,” Jake said.

  The fat man nodded, rolling a lit cigar in his stubby fingers before marrying it to his pink lips. Jake pulled out a chair for Casey before sitting down beside her in a cloud of fresh smoke. Casey placed the file on the table in front of her.

  “I know John Napoli,” Jake said, gesturing to the old man and then the beefy one, “and Massimo D’Costa, but I don’t know who you are.”

  “And you don’t have to,” Napoli said, struggling upright in his wheelchair, a fire in his eyes.

  The fat man considered Napoli, slowly nodding his encouragement.

  “On the phone, you talked about Buffalo Oil and Gas,” Napoli said, crushing a small piece of lemon rind and dropping it into his tiny cup before taking a sip.

  “Niko Todora,” Casey said, watching the fat man’s eyes widen just a hint, otherwise he remained impassive. “Chic
ken wings, plumbing fixtures, and gas leases.”

  Todora looked at Napoli.

  “Our group has varied interests,” Napoli said.

  “Your group may be under indictment,” Casey said. “Every one of you.”

  “I saw you on TV,” Napoli said, squinting, “and I told Mr. Todora you reminded me of Louie Fitch’s assistant. Louie was a magician in the day, and his assistant had red hair like you, pretty, too. He’d saw her in half and bingo, he’d put her back together and there’d she’d be with those terrific legs in that black fishnet. You got some tricks of your own. I see that.”

  “And your partner Robert Graham is the magician,” Casey said, holding his pale green eyes with her own, “but you’re not going to like his tricks.”

  “Like?”

  Casey looked at Jake. He inclined his head to her.

  “Graham has a file of income reports that you haven’t seen,” Casey said. “You put your money into the company, and you collect your checks. Big checks. The problem is how he’s reporting the income he pays out to you and your partners. He makes it look like it’s not taxable, but it is.”

  Casey looked around at them, Massimo D’Costa and John Napoli scowling, Niko Todora passive with the cigar hanging limp from his lips.

  “So we didn’t pay taxes,” Napoli said.

  “But you should have,” Casey said.

  Napoli’s lower teeth showed like small yellow posts as he looked from one of his partners to the other.

  “That’s his problem,” Massimo said in a rumble.

  “No,” Casey said, “really, it’s yours. He’s been holding these files like an ace up his sleeve. If he never needs to play it, fine. No harm, no foul.”

  “But if he ever goes down,” Jake said, “and he will go down-the FBI has an active investigation going on Graham-then he uses the file to give you up instead.”

  “The FBI would much rather put a bunch of reformed”-Casey, searching for the right words, said-“would much rather toss all of you in jail than one well-known philanthropist. It doesn’t matter that you all thought what you were doing was legitimate. He’s your partner. You’re expected to know. Graham has personally made millions off you and your other partners.”

  “Jail?” Massimo said, placing his meaty fists on his thighs and leaning forward.

  “Tax evasion,” Casey said, “to the tune of about 120 million dollars. That’s how they got Al Capone.”

  Napoli set his jaw, and the ember on the tip of Niko Todora’s cigar blazed. His eyes shifted around. He squinted at her through the smoke.

  Todora removed the cigar from his mouth and leaned forward, pointing with it at the folder in front of Casey. “Is that the file?”

  “That’s not the file,” Jake said, drawing a vicious stare. “Of course we have it.”

  “But you want us to have it,” Todora said.

  “Graham is a problem,” Jake said.

  “He’s our partner,” Napoli said. “He has a fiduciary duty to our money. He shouldn’t be punished for that.”

  “Your money’s gone,” Casey said. “Graham stole it and tried to get it back by fixing the outcome of The Nature Conservancy v. Eastern Oil & Gas, the court case that shut down the Marcellus Shale drilling. I’m sure you know. I’m sure he asked you to get rid of Judge Rivers, which, to your credit, you wanted nothing to do with. Everyone inside the gas business knew those leases would be worthless unless Eastern won their appeal. Graham bought them up at a huge discount. You thought you were getting a twenty to thirty percent return on investment? All Graham did was give you back some of your own money. The rest he spent on airplanes and champagne.”

  Todora looked at Napoli. “True?”

  “It could be,” Napoli said, gumming his lip.

  Todora sat back and sighed, flicking his ashes on the floor. “Graham. He’s like a toxic waste. Massimo knows all the landfills, so I think that’s something we can take care of.”

  “That’s not what we want,” Casey said, shaking her head.

  Todora glowered. “Money?”

  She shook her head. “I have a reputation.”

  Massimo snickered, slicked his hair, and said, “Yeah, you do. Going all the way to the Caribbean for some guy’s load. You’re some gal.”

  Napoli coughed and gave her a yellow grin.

  Casey’s spine stiffened. “Robert Graham needs to admit publicly that he’s a piece of shit, that he twisted this case, that he lied, faked the evidence, everything. He needs to fall on his sword. You do that and you’ll get your files. Otherwise, the hell with all of you. Those blaze orange jumpsuits will go good with your tans.”

  Casey stood, sending her chair screeching across the floor.

  Napoli shook his head at Jake and said, “That’s not smart.”

  “She’s not a good listener,” Jake said, rising from the table himself, “but let’s not get excited. This’ll be easier than you think.”

  “We’re talking about a lot of money we stand to lose if our partner isn’t successful,” Todora said. “That’s not something we can overlook. It’s too much.”

  “That’s why I brought you this,” Casey said, patting the folder.

  “Quit with the riddles,” Todora said.

  “When this story breaks,” Casey said, “everything Graham has is going to come unraveled. His entire empire will fall. The banks, investors, every creditor he’s got will be scrambling for hard assets.”

  “You mean us, too,” Napoli said.

  “That’s why we put these together,” Casey said, opening the file and pushing it across the table to Napoli. “Confessions of judgment. You get Graham to sign these and you walk away with his mansions in Seattle, Aspen, and Palm Beach. His jet and a three-hundred-foot yacht. Over ninety million in assets are yours, and you’re almost whole.”

  Napoli looked through the papers and said, “Yes.”

  “You get Graham to come clean, first,” Casey said, “then you have him sign those papers, then we give you his tax files.”

  “In the environmental business,” Massimo said in a growl, “things get cleaned up just one way, and the mess stays gone.”

  “I’ll do the cleaning,” Jake said, taking something small from his pocket and holding it out so that all three men leaned close. “You just call a sit-down with Graham. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  66

  LITTLE HOUSES stood crowded together along twisting streets that overlooked the river. Next to the railroad tracks below, the broken rubble of a razed factory sprouted blue PVC piping, wells sunk deep in the ground to collect and filter the poison of bygone days. On the corner, Ferrari’s Restaurant stood like a resolute ironworker, aged and worn but refusing to fall victim to the blight surrounding him. The restaurant boasted a wooden sign, the red-and-black shield of the famous carmaker.

  Casey and Jake walked through the bar, past the dining room and the kitchen, then followed Dora up a narrow set of stairs in the back. The equipment had been set up around what looked like the bedroom of a child, with a circuit board and a computer resting on the single bed and several monitors crowded onto the desktop amid sloppily painted toy soldiers. Colored cables twisted themselves into a spaghetti of confusion on the braided rug in the center of the cramped room. A faded Bills banner hung on one wall and a Sabers pennant hung by two thumbtacks on the slanted ceiling. Gray light seeped in through a single narrow window, but their eyes were glued to the monitors, which gave them five different angles of the table in the corner.

  “I set the whole thing up on my own,” Dora said proudly. “Had the crew drop everything on the curb. Angelo gave them a bag of egg and pepper sandwiches and off they went to the casino in Niagara Falls. Didn’t want anyone asking questions.”

  “It looks great,” Jake said.

  “Yeah,” Casey said, trusting Jake’s opinion and taking a seat next to him in a rickety folding chair.

  They didn’t have long to wait. Only twenty minutes passed before John Napoli got
rolled in by his driver, who positioned himself at the corner table and then quickly disappeared. The waitress muttered shyly and Napoli ordered anisette and a plate of olives. Niko Todora appeared in the entryway and swam through the tables, pushing chairs aside to make room for his bulk. Todora sat in the corner and Massimo took the chair opposite Napoli. While Massimo asked for a glass of Chianti, Todora ordered only Pellegrino and limes and told the girl to have Angelo send out some food.

  The food came in waves, salad swimming in a bowl of dressing, a similar family-style bowl full of Italian potatoes, plates of lasagna, dishes of cooked greens. Todora began to eat and Massimo tucked a napkin into the collar of his custom shirt before digging in. Napoli picked at his olives and sniffed at the mounds of food. As the three men ate, they talked about the Buffalo Bills’ offense and whether the new quarterback could put up the points necessary to make their games interesting. Casey could only assume by their casual demeanor that deception was a regular part of their business and something as comfortable as a featherbed.

  Dora began to fret, checking her watch and shaking her knee until Jake encouraged her to show Casey how she could adjust the shots, zooming in and out with several deft strokes on her computer.

  “Obviously, I can’t pan side to side,” Dora said.

  Casey gave her a look.

  “The filaments are embedded in the wall,” Dora said. “Nothing bigger than a pinhole, so while in and out works, there’s no lateral movement.”

  “That’s why we’ve got five cameras,” Jake said.

  “To give us some different angles when we cut it,” Dora said.

  “It’s amazing how well you can hear them,” Casey said. “Like we’re sitting at the table.”

  “Two mikes,” Dora said, pointing to the screen. “One in the candle and the second is more directional, and I put it on the side of that picture frame.”

  Casey studied the screen to show her appreciation.

  “He’s here,” Jake said, sitting straight and pointing to the screen on the left, which showed the entrance to the dining room and Robert Graham striding in. “You rolling?”