Steve Martini - The Arraignment

“What do you mean you’re not sure?”

“Well they could have things I don’t know about. But I don’t think they have it. At least not yet.”

“Why are you doing this? What do you want? Is it money?”

“What makes you think I might want money?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. It’s just, this makes no sense. My name in Nick’s calendar. I told you I don’t know anything. I take it you haven’t talked to Adam about this?”

“Tolt? No. Do you think I should?”

He doesn’t say yes or no, so I turn the screws a little more. “But so that you know, you’re not alone.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There are other names on the calendar. Meetings with other members of the firm. Dates and times.”

He doesn’t say anything, just looks at me.

“Why don’t you tell me what the meetings were about?”

“So then Nick didn’t tell you?”

“He would have, if I’d asked him. But somebody shot him first.”

“The meetings had nothing to do with that. Besides, the article says it was an accident.”

“Well sure. But then that was written by your firm. Of course they would want to keep their skirts clean. When a partner is killed, better an accident than something more sinister. Don’t you think?”

“I think you should go now.” Dolson has regrouped, gathered enough courage to convince himself that I don’t know anything. “I think you should forget about the calendar or whatever it is you saw or think you saw.”

“You can kid yourself if you want, but the calendar exists.”

“You want to know what I think?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t think there is a calendar with my name on it. I think you made it up. Where is it? Did you bring it with you?”

“If it doesn’t exist, how would I know the date of your meeting with Nick?”

“I think maybe that’s all Nick told you. Or maybe you just overheard it. As I said, it was social.” He turns, heading for his desk. “I have work to do. I’d like you to leave.”

Whatever it is, Dolson’s fear is erecting a stone wall around it. He reaches his desk, and looks at me. “Are you going to leave or would you rather I call security?” He picks up the receiver like it’s a weapon, his fingers ready to punch buttons on the phone.

“If that’s the way you want it.”

“I take it you can find your way out?”

He watches from the open door of his office as I leave, his eyes on me until the elevator doors shut behind me. The one thing I can be sure of, whatever Nick and Dolson discussed, it wasn’t social chitchat.

It’s only a few blocks, maybe a mile, from Dolson’s office to one of the three addresses listed on the memo pad of Nick’s handheld. The other two of these are in Washington, D.C., and New York.

By the time I find the address, it’s getting late. Downtown San Francisco, like most big cities, is a disaster when it comes to parking, even after hours. It takes me ten minutes to find a space. It’s after six, so I can ignore the meters. I lock up the rental car and walk two blocks back toward the address in the handheld.

The address is mixed in with some trendy restaurants, an antique shop with expensive Asian art in the window, a place some tony interior decorator might shop for well-heeled customers. The neighborhood is just off the Embarcadero but farther west than the RDD offices.

The building I’m looking for takes up about a quarter of the block, four stories and modern, a lot of smoked glass. But there is something strange; not a single light in any of the offices facing this side of the building. Usually in any business there is somebody working late, or at least a janitor.

I check the street name against what is entered in Nick’s Palm device. I could have shown the calendar to Dolson, but it wouldn’t have done any good. He would have accused me of making the entries in the device myself. It’s the problem the cops would have at this point, unless of course Nick had synced the information in the device by copying it to his computer, which by now I’m certain he did not. The information in the handheld has been out of the victim’s possession for too long a period to be credible. Anybody could have used a stylus to add or delete things. The verification for its authenticity is my word. A criminal defense lawyer, a friend of the deceased, who has withheld evidence in a murder case. Any testimony I offered would come apart like wet tissue paper.

It is the right street, so I head around the corner and up the block along what appears to be the front of the building.

This side faces the bay. Two blocks away I can hear traffic moving past on the Embarcadero in front of the wharfs with their cavernous arched doors and giant numbers on their overhead facades. I can feel a chilly breeze off the water and the smell of salt in the air. There are no lights visible on the upper floors here either, but I see what appears to be the front entrance about fifty yards up the street.

I turn the collar up on my suit coat, put my hands in my pockets, and walk as the wind whips the cuffs on my pant legs.

As I approach I see the street number over the front door, the same number that Nick entered in his memo pad. There is no mistake. It’s the right address. But whoever Nick visited is gone. The place is empty. A large sign taped to the inside of the glass double doors in front reads:

AVAILABLE FOR LEASE

It is mid-morning, Thursday, and as I pull into the underground structure at Susan Glendenin’s downtown office, I recognize the large, dark blue, sixties-vintage Lincoln parked a few spaces away.

This car, the size of a boat, once belonged to Nick. Actually it would be more accurate to say that the car possessed him.

The Lincoln convertible with a folding hardtop that slipped into the trunk was an experiment by Ford. Only four of them were ever made, all handed out to high executives for testing. For whatever reason, production never got off the ground, with the result that the car and its innovations died on the drawing boards.

Nick picked it up in the early eighties as part of his fees from a client who got caught moving drugs under the folded hardtop in the trunk. This was before the government seized such property.

The car got more attention than most beauty queens. With the top down it looks amazingly like the presidential limo in which Kennedy was assassinated, and in fact it was used once in a major motion picture to re-create the scene. Nick was sure he had the only remaining vehicle of its kind still on the road. He worshiped it, shrouded and protected it like the Israelites with the Ark of the Covenant. For this reason, Margaret wound her lawyers up and took particular pleasure in stripping it from him in the divorce.

This I know because each time I met him over drinks or a meal he would revisit this like a slow-mo instant replay of some blindsided, bone-jarring hit in the Super Bowl. Of all the sharp and painful impacts of his domestic crash, the loss of these prized wheels seemed the sharpest and most painful of all. The worst part was that Margaret was driving his big blue baby all over town, refusing to sell it, parking it in tight spaces at the grocery store just to put dents in the doors, so the next time Nick saw it he could count them. Margaret is apparently already here waiting for me upstairs.

It took three days in Capital City to finish up my business while Sarah stayed with friends. Harry and I can’t seem to let the old office go, so we have subleased most of the space out to two young lawyers and retained a single office for ourselves to share.

This morning when I get back, Harry is feeling somewhat self-satisfied, having done his measure of good works for the day. We have mailed a hefty check for Dana’s fees, to Nick’s daughter, Laura, along with a letter explaining that the money is from Nick’s estate.