Steve Martini - The Arraignment

She turns it on me as I walk up the path toward the house. Her hands remain on the doorframe as she tosses her head to one side to flip her hair from her eyes.

“God, I’m glad to see you,” she says. “I saw you at the funeral, but I just couldn’t deal with all the people.”

“I understand.”

She takes me by one hand and pecks me on the cheek. “I don’t know what I would do without friends,” she says. “You and Nathan.”

“That would be Mr. Fittipaldi?” I say.

“Emm.” She nods. “You wouldn’t believe how good he’s been.”

“How long have you known him?”

“I don’t know. A year maybe. He’s on the arts commission with me.”

“He’s a member?”

“Emm. Very influential.” She leads me into the house and closes the door behind us. “Nathan has galleries all over, in Beverly Hills, New York, Europe.” She guides me toward the living room.

“I saw his card,” I tell her. “What is it exactly that he does? I mean besides being a friend.”

She looks over her shoulder at me, the kind of sultry grin that tells me I could get on that list too. Be her friend.

“He’s in art acquisitions, for important clients. Private collectors, large museums, that sort of thing.”

“It sounds impressive.”

“He is,” she says. “But let’s not talk about that right now.”

So I turn to another topic. “How are you doing?”

“You can’t imagine. No one could,” she says, “until it happens.” Then she looks at me, hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“I forgot you lost your wife.” I don’t know if this is her ham-handed way of reminding me that I am available. With Dana you never know.

“Nikki died some years ago,” I tell her.

“Nikki. That was her name?”

I nod.

“Still, it was thoughtless,” she says. “What was I thinking? Of myself obviously. My mind. It’s not all there. Nick told me about it. What did she die of? I forget.”

“Cancer.”

“That’s right. And you have a daughter?”

“Sarah.”

“How old is she?”

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen. I remember that,” she says. “What an age. And I’ll bet she steals the hearts of all the boys too. You’ll have to bring her by sometime so I can meet her.”

“Sometime,” I tell her.

“I suppose it is a little different. I mean Nick being killed and all. And your wife dying of natural causes. You must have had some time to prepare.” Dana has switched gears again, perhaps a measure of her state of mind.

“Not that that eases the pain, I’m sure. But this. It was the shock as much as anything. One minute he’s here, the next he’s gone. And the press. You don’t know what it’s like until you have to deal with those people. They have absolutely no respect for anything. One of them actually rented a boat and motored up to our dock for pictures. The police had to haul him away.”

“I saw a couple of them out by the gate, parked in their cars,” I tell her.

“They’re animals,” she says. “Well, at least the TV cameras are gone. I mean I couldn’t even drive out. They had the exit blocked. The homeowner’s association had to call the police twice to get them to move. It’s like a bad dream. I keep waiting for Nick to come walking through the door. But I can’t wake up. It doesn’t go away.”

“You’re right,” I tell her. “I can’t imagine.”

“I don’t know what to do.” She looks up at me.

I have no answers, but as she steps toward me and puts her arms around my neck, resting her head on my chest and pressing her body against me, it’s clear that Dana does. She’s trying a new set of shoulders on for size.

The smell of perfume, odors of sandalwood and Indian jasmine, wafts up to seduce me.

“Somebody killed him, Paul. And I don’t know why.”

I shake my head. “Somebody killed him, but it was an accident.”

“An accident.” She tilts her head up and looks me in the eye.

“I’m sure whoever did it wasn’t shooting at Nick.”

She doesn’t say anything. Certainly this thought must have entered her mind before now. The papers have been filled with the theory that Metz was the target. “I never thought of it as an accident,” she says.

“Nick was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I tell her.

I’m not sure this eases her mind, but we uncouple and she steps away, new thoughts obviously running through her head.

She leads me toward a table where a silver tray has been laid out with coffee in a china pot and two cups. She offers me some and prepares it.

“Sugar?”

“No thanks.”

“Cream?”

I shake my head.

“Please sit down,” she says.

I settle into the large tufted sofa. She hands me a cup, then places her own on a table next to an armchair and sits down. One leg is curled under her so that the dark stocking-covered knee is exposed, showing a run in the nylon. She sees this and covers it with a hand as she smiles-that cute schoolgirl grin that she has patented.

“I must look a mess.” She bites her lower lip.

“You look fine.”

“You’re just being nice,” she says, then runs her hands through her hair in an effort to straighten it. This only musses it a little more. She glances down at the bodice of her dress to make certain that everything is in place.

“I’m a wreck and I know it. I haven’t been able to sleep since it happened.” The redness of her eyes confirms the fact. Her dress is creased as if perhaps she had been lying down before I arrived.

“I suppose I should explain to you why I asked to you to come over. You were one of Nick’s best friends.”

“I was a friend.”

“No,” she says. “You weren’t just a friend. You were a good friend. And Nick didn’t have many of those. I know.

“The partners at the firm. They didn’t socialize with us. Oh, they made a big show at the funeral, but outside the office they didn’t want anything to do with Nick.”

“That’s not what Nick told me. He told me that some of the partners wanted to put him on the firm’s management committee.”

“Nick was dreaming.” She ignores my protest. “They were all, you know, big business lawyers, civil litigators.” She slurs the word a little so that I wonder if maybe she’d had a few drinks before I arrived. “You know they made big promises to Nick to get him to go over there. And then they didn’t follow through. Adam Tolt,” she says. “He rolled out the red carpet to get Nick. Told him they would work him into civil cases, move him upstairs. Then Nick got there and found out it was nothing but lies. They took the money he earned, but they didn’t want anything to do with Nick or his clients. But you, you were different. You were his friend.”

“Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we had the same kind of clients.”

“Except you wouldn’t do drug cases,” she says.

When she looks up from her coffee cup at me, she can see that this stung.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean it that way. Actually I respect you for having standards. It’s something Nick could never do. I told him he was better than that. But I don’t think he ever believed me. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that if you’d taken the case, Mr. Metz, that Nick would be alive and you’d be dead. You shouldn’t think like that.”

Obviously Dana has thought of it.

“You can’t blame yourself,” she says. “If anybody’s to blame, it’s me.”

“You?”

She nods. “I was the one who brought Metz to him. I was the cause of Nick’s death.”

“No. That’s not true.”

“It’s true enough,” she says. “If I hadn’t known him from the arts commission, none of this would have happened.”