Steve Martini - The Arraignment

At first I suspect that Nick was only practicing with the device, unwilling to toss his Day Runner in the trash until he had mastered all of its functions. But its true purpose surfaced with the discovery of another name. A single cryptic entry marked on the same day, repeated each month, the twenty-fifth at eleven A. M. Next to the time and the notation-“Money for Laura”-is an icon for an alarm so Nick wouldn’t forget. Next to this is another tiny icon, like a dog-eared piece of paper. I tap it with the stylus and a note opens. Laura’s name, first and last, along with her mother’s. There is an address and phone number.

This is not something Nick would have ever committed to a written calendar or address book in his office, where prying eyes might see it.

Laura would be almost four now, the result of a brief liaison with a young secretary Nick met outside the firm in the months before Dana, when his marriage to Margaret was crumbling. It was a tryst with an unhappy ending. The night Nick told me about the child he was drunk. His eyes filled with tears of regret for what might have been. He had asked the mother to marry him, but she declined, telling him he had no obligations. They kept their secret. She never sought support. Still, Nick visited the child several times a week at night after work. And each month there was an envelope with cash. He told me his daughter knew him only as Uncle Nick. He never told Margaret or Dana.

Why he told me I don’t know. Maybe it was the booze, the blinding clarity of failure offered by drink. Whatever it was, that night I became Nick’s confidant. It was like so much of Nick’s life, a talented gamester full of risk and hell bent for leather on a rocky road paved with luckless choices and a lot of pain.

In combat it is called “survivor’s guilt”-the fact that people who have witnessed a traumatic event, and lived to talk about it, will often embrace guilt rather than confront the more agonizing reality that matters were beyond their control, that they were helpless.

Since that day, the moments leading up to Nick’s murder have played in my mind like an endless loop of videotape. But the one I focus on, the most unfathomable, was the result of a momentary social impulse.

It is not the fact that I kicked Metz and his case back to Nick. Metz lied to me about money laundering and probably other things as well. I suspect Nick knew what he was shipping over when he sent me the case.

What bothers me is something far more innocuous. It is the fact that I didn’t make more of an effort to call to Nick out on the sidewalk that morning. I have thought about it at night before I sleep and in those endless hours before dawn, seeing my movements, analyzing them as a choreographer might review the sequence of steps in a dance.

To anyone not carrying the burden, hearing the shots or seeing the images of carnage on the street that morning, it might seem inane. But not to me.

I had yelled to Nick, only to be cut off by the bus as it drove between us down the street. I suppose I could blame the driver and his diesel engine, the transit authority, or the traffic. But after the bus passed, when I saw him standing there on the sidewalk next to Metz, I stopped. I could have called out again, but I didn’t. If I had and if I’d held up the device for him to see, Nick would have crossed over. He would have been standing with me on the other side of street when the shooters came by. But for my failure to act, Nick would be alive.

So why didn’t I call out? I’ve asked the question a hundred times, and every time I get the same answer: for the same reason we all dodge people we don’t like, the petty desire to avoid an uneasy moment, this one with Metz. Having spurned his case, it was more comfortable to avoid him and to return Nick’s handheld at a later time. So I slipped it into my pocket and walked away. I could not have known at that moment that a seemingly inconsequential omission-my failure to follow up, my distaste for Metz-would cost Nick Rush his life.

I’m sure any psychiatrist would tell me I was faultless. But a lawyer, a man trained to sharpen the point on guilt, might view it otherwise, as I do, as a proximate cause of death.

Survivor’s guilt, maybe. But it trumps all the other reasons for Nick’s death that I know, because it was the one I could have controlled. And until I know who shot him and why, it is certain to eat at me.

I wait a few days before I contact Dana, a respectful period, and place the call late in the afternoon. It is May, and the number may be new, but the phone system isn’t. It’s one of those voice-programmed things that give the caller options. “If you want to talk to Nick, press one. If you wish to speak to Dana, press two.” The eerie part is that the voice used to program it is something from the grave. It is Nick’s voice.

I press the number for Dana and wait for her to pick up.

It is answered by another woman, I assume a maid as Nick told me that Dana had hired one. There are intonations of a Mexican-Spanish accent.

“I will check to see if Mrs. Rush is in. Who is calling?”

“Paul Madriani.”

“One moment please.”

The phone goes to chamber music, a little NPR, as she puts me on hold. A few seconds later, the strings of Mozart are broken.

“Hello, Paul. It’s so good to hear from you.” Dana’s voice comes over the phone a bit breathless. I can visualize her flipping her pixie-style blond hair out of her eyes with a wag of her head as she speaks.

“I did want to talk with you, but I’d rather not do it over the phone. I wonder if you have time to come by the house?”

“Sure. When?”

“Can you make it this evening, say about six-thirty or seven?”

I look at my calendar. “Why not.”

“Good. I’ll look forward to it.” She hangs up.

From my office, the Cays are a skip and a jump, just a few miles from Coronado, down the Silver Strand. It is one of the more desirable locations to live, your only neighbor to the north being the navy’s amphibious training base, miles up the beach. It is close to the city for commuting. Some of the newer houses, mostly renovations, tip the scales at five million dollars a pop.

What makes it pricey is not only the vistas across the bay, but the fact that it is one of the few places left in California where you can own a private dock in your own backyard. The Cays offer direct access to the harbor and from there to the open Pacific, and some of the private pleasure craft moored here rival small cruise ships.

Dana has left my name on a list at the security kiosk out on the Strand, so when I arrive I am waved through the gate. Her place is situated on Green Turtle Cay. I have been here on a few occasions for social outings, the last being a bar association fund-raiser for some cause I do not remember.

I drive over the bridge and hang a left. The house is sheltered from the bay behind another man-made island called Grand Caribe Cay. As I pull up in front of the house, it is dusk. The view is a display of lights from across the water, the brilliance of the setting sun reflected off shimmering skyscrapers, an image of the mythical City of Oz, with the twinkle of houses in the hills behind it. I suspect it is part of the reason Nick bought the place, that and the fact that Dana tanned so well in her bikini out on the flying bridge of his boat in summer. He once told me he would lull under the giant aircraft carriers moored at the naval base on the north end of the island and watch as Dana untied the top to her bathing suit while she sunned herself lying facedown on the deck of his boat. Nick got a charge watching the sailors drool over the railings. Why have a trophy wife if you can’t enjoy it?

I step from the car, slam the door closed, and lock it. When I turn, I see Dana framed in the open doorway of the house, waiting for me. She is shoeless in dark nylons and a black dress that at the moment is well above her knees as her arms are stretched above her head bracing her lithe figure in the open door as if framing a picture.