Steve Martini - The Arraignment

“Is that something else your father told you?”

“Read it on some guy’s toe tag at the morgue. He was sitting on the tracks when a train hit him, and all they could find was his foot.”

I know the story to be true. Coroner’s bedside manner.

“Besides, I’ve got a few irons in the fire.”

“What?”

“Can’t talk about them right now.” With Nick, it’s always the big mystery. The next major coup in his life.

“Hell, at least with Margaret she didn’t care,” he says. “Whatever I wanted to do was fine, as long as we could pay the bills.”

“Sounds like you regret leaving her.”

“Only once a month,” he says. “When I’m making the support payment.” Then he thinks for a moment. “No. That’s not true. Sometimes I see her in my dreams,” he tells me. “Coming at me with an ax.” Nick’s laugh at something like this is always the same, a kind of shrill, pitched giggle you wouldn’t expect from a man his size with a barrel chest. It was a bitter divorce.

“There’s an old saying,” says Nick, “that the truth shall set you free. I’m living proof. I told her the truth, and she divorced me. But at least I left her with a song in her heart.”

With this he smiles. Nick’s parting was not exactly a class act. It was talk all over town, gossip at all the watering holes. A man possessed of a tongue gilded with enough silver to waltz embezzlers and corporate confidence artists out of court couldn’t figure out how to tell his wife he wanted another woman.

Even after she caught him with Dana, Margaret was prepared to forgive him. But Nick thought of a way to save her from herself; with the lyrics to a piece by Paul Simon-“Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover”-playing on an old turntable and a farewell note propped above it on the shelf.

Margaret had her revenge in the divorce and the support hearings that followed. Nick is likely to be practicing well into his eighties to pay the bills, though I suspect his annual income before taxes is into seven figures. I can imagine he might now be in a financial pinch.

“You’re probably wondering why I asked you to come over.” He cuts to the chase.

The hair on the back of my neck goes up. Nick wants a favor.

“I want you to understand it isn’t me asking; it’s really Dana.”

“That makes it easier to say no,” I tell him.

“Be nice. She likes you. She’s the one who suggested I come to you.”

Now I am nervous.

“She has a friend. This guy sits on the county arts commission with her. Seems he got himself involved in some kind of grand jury probe.”

I’m already shaking my head.

“Listen, don’t be negative,” he says. “Hear me out. The guy’s just a witness. He may not even be that. He hasn’t even been served with a subpoena yet.”

“Then why does he need a lawyer?”

“Well, he thinks he will be. I know. And I wouldn’t ask you to do it, except I got a conflict. I can’t represent him. The man’s in business.”

“So is the Colombian cartel. It’s nothing personal,” I tell him.

“As far as I know, he’s clean. No criminal history. He’s a local contractor.”

Knowing Nick, the guy is probably drilling tunnels under the border crossing at San Ysidro. Nick would tell a jury his client was drilling for oil, and they’d probably believe him.

“So why would the U.S. attorney want to talk to a local contractor?”

“They got some wild hair up their ass on money laundering. That’s all I know. Probably one of their snitches got into a bad box of cookies. The feds go through this every once in a while. It’s like the cycles of the moon,” he says. “One of their snitches has a bad trip, starts hallucinating, and half a dozen federal agencies go on overtime. From what I gather, it’s the people down in Mexico they’re looking at.”

“What people down in Mexico?”

“You can get all the details when you talk to the guy.”

“That assumes I’m going to talk to him.”

“Dana’s friend’s name.” He ignores me. “Actually he’s not even a friend. She just met him a few months ago. Apparently his name was mentioned by another witness in front of the jury.”

“How did that happen? More to the point, how do you know what a witness said in front of a grand jury? Last time I looked, they lock the door and pull all the blinds inside grand jury rooms.”

“Don’t ask me things I can’t tell you,” he says. “Hell, if I was subpoenaed in front of a grand jury, I’d probably end up mentioning your name.”

“Thanks.”

“No. I mean it. If I told ’em ‘I went to lunch with my friend Paul,’ the FBI would start sifting through your trash. They do this all the time. They’ll spend two years doing an investigation, dig up your garden, talk to all your friends, tell your boss it’s nothing to worry about, they just want to look in your desk for heroin, and then they stop. Nobody gets indicted, and nobody ever knows why. Of course, all your neighbors drag their kids in the house, draw the drapes, and chain their doors every time you walk by. But that’s life in a democracy, right?”

I’m still wondering who’s down in Mexico.

“Listen. All I’m asking is that you talk to the guy. It’ll probably just go away. I doubt if they’ll subpoena him.”

“They were sifting my garbage a couple of seconds ago.”

“Yeah, but you’re not as squeaky clean as this guy. Listen, all he needs is somebody to hold his hand.”

“Sounds like a perfect case for you, to turn over a new leaf,” I tell him. “You said he was a businessman.”

“I would if I could. But we’ve got a conflict. The firm did some work, a civil case against his company a few years ago. You know how it is? Dana did this big buildup on her husband the lawyer. She’s new on the arts commission. She wanted to make a good impression. So when this guy tells her about his legal problems, she says ‘I’ll have my husband talk to you.’ Now she can’t. What do you want me to do? You want her to lose face?”

Knowing Dana, the guy was probably trying to come on to her. I don’t share this thought with Nick.

“She’s trying to make an impression,” he says. “Besides, the man’s a big giver. He digs deep for all the right causes.”

“So if he’s into so many good works, why does the grand jury want to talk to this Brother Teresa?”

“It’s probably nothing.”

I begin to waffle and Nick can smell it.

“You’d be doing me a huge favor. I’d owe you my life,” he says. “Well, maybe not that much.”

“What you mean is I’d be doing Dana a big favor.”

“Same thing.”

I can already see him edging her toward the sack tonight whispering in her ear about how he took care of her friend, put him in good hands, all the while looking for a little sweet reciprocity.

“What’s his name? This client?” I got one of his business cards and my pen to make a note.

“Gerald Metz. I’ll have him give you a call.”

“No drugs, Nick. I don’t do drug cases. You know that.”

“I know. It’s not drugs. Trust me. As far as I know, the guy’s clean. His name is being dragged into it because he had one business deal with some people. You know how it is?”

“I know how it is.” I hold up a hand and cut him off before he can start all over again. Chapter two, Rush on civil rights.

“Listen to his story, tell him not to worry, and charge him a big fee,” he says.

“What if the grand jury calls him to testify? Does he understand I can’t go into the jury room with him?”

“You’re borrowing problems. Hey, if he gets called, you advise him of his rights. Tell him to take the Fifth.”

“I thought you said he was clean.”