Steve Martini - The Arraignment

It is vintage Nick Rush, surfing the lawyer’s version of the pipeline in a typhoon, standing out on the tip with all ten toes over the edge. Doing everything at the last minute is a test of the man’s deftness and a measure of his ego.

He has operated his entire career on the notion that any lawyer who needs more than twenty minutes to get ready for anything in court should find another line of work. I have seen him kick the butts of ambitious young prosecutors who spent a year building a case only to watch it get flushed like Tidy-Bowl when Nick got loose in front of the jury.

It is the reason he is double- and triple-booked on his calendar. If you’ve embezzled a few million from your company’s accounts or you have half a ton of white shit under the floorboards of your house and get caught with grow lights sucking energy from the grid while a jungle of Mary Jane sprouts in your basement, the man to call is Nick Rush. Whether you’re cooking amphetamines or corporate books, his soothing words uttered in tones of divine confidence will ease your anxieties faster than a handful of Percocet.

Nick decided it wasn’t necessary to spend a lot of time with Metz as long as I’d prepped him. I warned him that Metz was dynamite on a stick with a short fuse up his ass, but Nick saw only the challenge. Besides, he told me it doesn’t matter what they have, Nick is pleading him not guilty and sorting it out later. According to Nick, he has disclosed his conflict with Metz over the phone, and Metz has signed a waiver that they have sent back and forth.

As I approach, he smiles broadly but doesn’t take his hands out of his pockets to shake. “I can now confirm Hemingway’s thesis-the sun also rises,” he says. He looks up at the fog-shrouded sky. “Though you wouldn’t know it from standing here.”

“Hemingway was too blitzed in the morning to know it himself. He took it from the Bible,” I tell him.

“That’s what I like about you. You know all the trivial shit you know.”

“It comes in handy when I have to deal with people like you.”

“And what kind of people am I?”

“People who deal only in the big picture,” I tell him.

He laughs, but it’s true. Nick doesn’t waste energy on details that aren’t essential to the grand picture, the task at hand at any given moment. He has an intellect like a vacuum. He can suck up the minutest details of a trial in three minutes, organize them in the order of importance, and march them out like an army to do battle in court while his opponent is still trying to get his briefcase open.

“I thought all the while you were doing these early morning court calls,” I tell him.

“That’s why God invented young associates,” he says. “If Dana wasn’t involved with this prick, he’d be dealing with the federal public defender.”

I warn him that after he hears what I have to tell him, he might want to reconsider taking the case. I suggest the cafeteria in the courthouse. Nick says he favors a little coffee shop around the corner and across the street, so he leads the way.

This is federal territory, the few blocks around the two United States courthouses-one reserved for bankruptcy proceedings, and the other for more serious stuff. Like the Indian nations of old, this part of town has different rules and a culture of its own. Here the cops are the FBI, IRS, DEA, and a dozen other alphabet empires, each striving to showcase their indispensable primacy in the public-safety pecking order.

The federal courts are realms of limitless marble and gray-haired marshals in blue blazers standing like men in livery. It is more refined and genteel than anything at the local level. It speaks of limitless budgets and the boundless tax reach of the federal government whose hands are in everyone’s pockets and moving now from the elbow up to the shoulder. It is a world I do not often frequent; instead I confine myself to the lowly and somewhat disheveled state courts where those who set policy cannot print their own money.

Nick thrives in all of this. He will go toe to toe with the most austere members of the local federal bench and on occasion walk the fine line of contempt.

As if to reinforce this, he takes me to the seedy coffee shop at the street level under the old Capri Hotel.

“I’ve been having coffee here for twenty years. Every morning,” he says. He leads me down a flight of stairs, chipped plaster and peeling paint. The handrail on one side is missing. Some vagrant must have borrowed it.

“I used to know the guy who owned the place,” Nick says.

I follow him through the door to the coffee shop. We get inside and I stop. The place is a dump.

“I didn’t know you were so well connected,” I tell him.

“It looked better back then,” he says. “It’s gone downhill in recent years.”

“You’re kidding. I would never have known.”

The walls in the coffee shop are that dingy brown color you know is not paint. The stainless steel hood over the grill in the kitchen is impregnated with enough grease that the cook could open his own tallow works.

“Best of all, it’s quiet.”

“I can see why.”

I’m afraid to ask him about the hotel upstairs. Any little shake, and it may visit us while we’re sitting here.

“The owner’s name was Wan Lu Sun. Chinese,” he says. “Good businessman. But he died a couple of years ago. His kids have the property now. Not like the old man. The new generation. They have no sense of values. Americanized,” he says.

“If you say so.” I’m still taking it all in, trying not to inhale for fear the dust particles floating in the isolated ray of sunlight that’s managed to penetrate one of the encrusted windows might be asbestos.

“The developers are lined up like vultures ready to whack the place with their wrecking balls,” he says.

“This isn’t the place you’re…”

“Yeah.” Nick smiles at me.

“Tell me it’s not true.”

“It’s true,” he says.

I’ve been reading about it in the papers for almost a year. A group of community preservationists have launched a campaign to save some downtown structures they claim are historic. Every few months Nick’s name pops up in print, leading the charge.

“Take my advice,” I tell him. “This place needs a good wrecking ball.”

“Stick around. It’ll grow on you.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. You must have better things to do than this?”

“I do, but I figure I owe it to the old man,” he says.

“What old man?”

“Lu Sun,” he says. “Hell, if he was around, developers wouldn’t get near this place. Not unless they posted their first born as collateral. The old man would have gotten an arm and a leg for the land.”

Nick has tilted at a few windmills in his time, but this is a stretch even for him.

“I knew you were stirring the embers of discontent,” I tell him. “But this is a side of you I’ve never seen. Your passion for preservation.”

“I’ve come to it late in life.” He smiles, then winks at me. “Actually, between you and me, I just like to stir the shit.”

“I would have never guessed.”

“The firm gives us time to devote to community activities. I had to find something to do. Besides, I don’t like walking two more blocks down to Starbucks just to make an executive decision on what kind of beverage I want in the morning. Here I got the place to myself. Have a seat. The booth over there in the corner is mine. It’s the one without holes in the Naugahyde,” he laughs.

Nick knows the waitress by her first name. She looks as if she’s worked here since the hotel’s grand opening.

“Two coffees, Marge. We’ll take them at the booth.” He passes on menus and grabs some Equal from what appears to be a private stash under the register.