Steve Martini - The Arraignment

“Hate the Sweet’n Low,” he says as he waltzes me toward the booth. “It leaves a taste.” We sidle into the bench seats, something out of the fifties, probably the last time the place was remodeled.

“You have to admit it has a certain ambiance,” he says. “All it needs is some drunk to drive a Cadillac with fins through the front wall, and it would be chic.”

Marge comes over with her glass pot and pours. He asks her how she’s doing. They chat.

No doubt my senses are colored by the odor of smoldering grease from the kitchen, where nothing in particular is being cooked unless the cook is eating it, but the coffee seems to slide out of the pot, instead of pour. Some of it is fluid, but there are a lot of black lumps like tar.

“You know, on second thought,” I tell her, “I think I’ll have tea.”

“All we got is Earl Grey,” she says.

“That’ll be fine.” As long as I can see the bottom of my cup through the hot water.

She leaves to get it.

Nick catches me looking at his cup as he loads three little packets of pretend sugar and stirs in cream. “What’s wrong?”

“I just don’t like to use purification tablets this early in the morning.”

“Hey, this is the real shit,” he says.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Actually, if you want to know, the real shit is in London. I was reading this article the other day.” This is vintage Nick. Everything reminds him of a story, even on a deadline with a case in less than a hour.

“They’ve got this stuff over there they call Crappuccino. People pay through the nose. It’s brewed from some kind of coffee berries that pass through monkeys.”

“Nick. I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

“You wanna eat? I’ll have her bring a menu.”

“No!”

He laughs.

“Yeah, I’m not kidding. Five hundred dollars an ounce and you have to use toilet paper as a filter. They say it has a very earthy taste.”

“No wonder the Brits drink tea,” I tell him.

“Really, the coffee here is fine,” he says. Still, he’s looking off in the distance as if maybe he’d like to try this Crappuccino someday.

“Time is getting short,” I tell him. “Do you want to know about Metz or not?”

“Not to worry. The arraignment’s only a first appearance. You know,” he says. He’s looking around again, taking it all in, his private dining room. “You have any idea what this place is probably worth? I don’t mean the building. I mean the location?”

I shake my head. “But I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

He takes out what looks like a cell phone. Lately Nick has been playing with this gadget. I call them all PalmPilots. He calls this one a Handspring, every electronic device imaginable in a package the size of a deck of cards.

He slides the little stylus out of its holder on the side and starts tapping the screen.

“What, you’re not going to call somebody now?”

“Just working the calculator.”

“Nick, listen. I’ve got work waiting for me back at the office.”

“Keep your shirt on. Relax. Why are you so uptight all the time?”

“I’m not uptight. I just have better things to do.”

This is the Nick I know, putting me on the defensive while he kills my morning musing about downtown real estate prices.

“Figure you can get it for eight million, maybe eight and half,” he says.

Metz is probably wearing out shoe leather right now, out in front of the courthouse, wondering if he will be sleeping in his own bed tonight or in one of the bunks at the federal lockup.

“And it’s outside the corridor, the approaches to Lindbergh Field. That’s important,” he says. “You wanna know why?”

“Not really, but you’re going to tell me, I’m sure.”

“Because outside the corridor, you can go as high as you want, as long as you get a variance. You know, get around the current height restrictions.”

“Are you becoming a realtor?”

“No, but I ought to,” he says. “Some developer’s gonna come in here, buy the place cheap, go to his friendly planning commissioner or a county sup, and multiply his investment by a factor of four overnight. All he has to do is get a variance to go up higher. He wouldn’t even have to do anything with the property. Just turn it over. Make a cool what, twenty, twenty-five million? And these assholes call our clients crooks.”

“That’s business,” I tell him.

“Yeah. The business we ought to be in.” Nick smiles. “But we’re too honest,” he says. He’s back to bullshit. “And besides, I like to preserve the past. Dana has her causes; I have mine.”

“Now can we get back to Metz?” I ask.

“Are you sure you wanna give this thing up?”

“What?”

“Metz.” He looks at me as if I’ve been off on some other track. “I mean, it could be an opportunity.”

“I’m sure.”

“We could do it together,” he says. “After all, you are the only person I’ve ever shared one of the few true secrets of my life with.”

“What’s that?”

“Laura.” Nick is stone serious when he says this.

I had almost forgotten. I thought Nick was too far into the sauce to remember the night he let it slip over drinks after a bad day in court. He was feeling a failure, even with a sassy new wife. Laura is the mystery in Nick’s life-and probably the only female he will ever truly love.

“Have you seen her lately?”

“Last week,” he says. “Only for a few minutes. Listen to me. Metz is good for a sizable fee.” Nick is good at changing the subject. Especially if it’s something he doesn’t want to talk about. “He wouldn’t be involved with the arts if he didn’t have money.”

I laugh.

“It’s true. I’ve never seen one of those people yet didn’t have money. Lack of taste, maybe, but they all have bucks. It’s a precondition. Otherwise they don’t get into the fraternity. You don’t get on the A-list for the auctions and fund-raisers. Get your face on the social sheet in the Trib and the Times.”

“Is that how you did it?”

“I did it through my wife. She has class and taste,” he says.

“And your checkbook.”

“That too.” He drinks some coffee, and I have to divert my eyes. “What else are you gonna do for fun when you get old and flatulent?”

“I’ve never viewed art auctions as that much fun,” I tell him.

“I wasn’t talking about art.” He’s talking about Dana. “Come on. Why not? You can hold Metz’s hand and I’ll do the trial. We’ll lift him by the heels and shake him, see what’s in his pockets.”

“You might not be prepared for what falls out,” I tell him.

“That bad?” he says.

Nick and I haven’t talked since our conversation four days ago. I played telephone tag with him for a week before I finally caught him in his office, and then he didn’t want to discuss the details over the phone. It’s the nature of Nick’s practice. You can never be sure whether your phone is tapped.

“You want my honest opinion?”

He nods.

“All of the pieces are in place, including the transfer of large sums of cash and the laundry fee.” He listens as I fill him in.

“If your man’s to be believed, he took two hundred thousand dollars while he parked two million of his partner’s money in an account in Belize.”

None of this unnerves him. “Go on.”

“He calls his part a consulting fee, but it never shows up on his company’s books.”

“So we have an accounting error,” says Nick.

“He tells me the money was actually intended as security on heavy equipment he was supposed to ship south to do a job. Except that none of the equipment was ever moved. According to Metz, the deal never got off the ground. He took one trip down to Mexico that lasted maybe a week, and for this he charged a two-hundred-thousand-dollar fee.”