High Crimes (1988)

John Westermann's novel, first published by Soho Press in 1988, follows Detective "Tree" Nelson, who hits golf balls into the bay from the condo his wealthy father owns and puts in routine police time, and his partner Jimmy Tibaldi, until the Jamaican drug lord Gladstone Lanier, who has wiped out the Hispanic competition and worships the dead emperor of Ethiopia, puts them at the top of a hit list. Annie Sutherland, who went to Smith and married a doctor and now pumps gas in a halter top, spends some nights with Tree; the old informant Jensen Macomber runs a flower shop with a shotgun in his lap. (Open Library)

Watches

Casio (unidentified model): Alone in the condo, brooding on why he joined the cops and on how far he and Jimmy are from collaring Gladstone Lanier, Tree finds the cupboard bare and a lonely ten in his wallet and decides against a run to the cash machine. From the balcony he sees Annie tie up her dinghy in the slip far below, Ozone racing down the dock, and instead of calling down he times her on his Casio: four minutes and eighteen seconds until his telephone rings and she says she is back. He asks her to the Brophys' cookout. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: Tree doesn't call down, just watches her disappear into the building. He times her on his Casio watch. Four minutes and eighteen seconds elapse. His telephone rings. (John Westermann, High Crimes, scan cataloged as Pocket Books, 1989, p. 159; the copyright page records the Soho Press edition of 1988 by its Library of Congress number and the cover copy names Detective "Tree" Nelson; Internet Archive scan OCR)