The Arraignment

by Steve Martini

  “Go on.”

  “I figured they probably crossed a few official palms with some gold. Way of life down there.” He says it as if graft doesn’t exist north of the border.

  “How were they going to pay you?”

  “Some cash up front and then a piece of the ownership.”

  “How big a piece?”

  “Ten percent. They were gonna develop the property, get it in shape where foundations could be poured, then spin it off to some hotel chain to build the resort. We were all supposed to cash in at that point.”

  “You say the deal didn’t go through?”

  “No. I was told the old man pulled the plug. He controlled the funds. There was some kind of falling out and the deal collapsed. That’s it. Long and short of it.”

  “Everything?”

  “Pretty much. You gotta remember this was a while ago. You can’t expect me to remember all the details. The whole thing lasted a total of a few months. It never got beyond some letters and telephone calls.”

  “But you said you went down there?”

  “Well, sure. They paid my way. Why not?”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Shit, I don’t know, a few days, maybe a week. This was two years ago.”

  Well within any statute of limitations for money laundering, though I don’t mention this to Metz.

  “Did any of their agents or employees meet with you in this country?”

  “No. Not that I can remember. No, wait a second. There was one guy. I can’t remember his name. We met once and talked on the phone a couple of times. I may still have his card.” Metz pulls out his wallet and starts picking through the contents—rat-eared receipts, licenses, a social security card that looks like it’s been around since the Civil War, a collection of business cards. Finally he finds the one he’s looking for.

  “Here it is.” He holds it out at arm’s length as if glasses might be in order for reading. “ ‘Miguelito Espinoza.’ Mexican labor contractor.”

  He hands me the card and I make a note—an address in Santee with a phone number. On the other side of the card, everything under the name is printed in Spanish, including a title notario publico. In this case it means the man holds a license as a notary public. He can verify documents and put his seal on them. The designation is often used north of the border to give a false implication to those not speaking English that the holder is a lawyer, as the title would signify in Mexico.

  “Anything else?”

  He shakes his head. “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There are a few things you should understand. The fact that you haven’t been called to testify is not necessarily a good thing.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Have you received any correspondence from the U.S. attorney in connection with this matter?”

  “Like what?”

  “Perhaps a letter?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good. Because if you’re a target of their investigation they will be sending you a target letter. It will tell you about the proceedings, warn you not to destroy documents, tell you about your right to confer with counsel outside the jury room and your right not to testify.”

  “Why the hell would I be a target?”

  “I’m not saying you are. But the fact that they haven’t called you to testify and that they’re questioning former employees is not good.”

  This puts a look of anxiety on his face. Metz is no longer looking at his watch.

  “How many telephone conversations did you have with these people?”

  “I don’t know. How the hell am I supposed to remember something like that?”

  “You can be sure the DEA or the FBI will know the answer,” I tell him. “If they’re investigating you, they may already have your telephone records. They’ll know how many times you talked to the brothers in Mexico and how long each conversation lasted. They may know about this man Espinoza. They’ll have that at a minimum, unless of course the Mexican authorities tapped into the brother’s phone lines down there, in which case they’re likely to know a great deal more.”

  I can tell that this is a sobering thought.

  “Did you send them anything in writing, any letters?” All I have before me are letters from the one brother to Metz, nothing going the other way.

  “I, ah. I don’t think so.”

  “You do keep copies of your business correspondence?”

  “Yeah. But you know how things are. Sometimes they get away from you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s everything I could find.”

  “You mean you may have written letters to these people, but you can’t find them?”

  “It’s possible. I can’t remember.”

  This is not looking good.

  “What if the prosecutor subpoenas them?”

  “I’ll give them what I can find. What the hell else am I supposed to do? If I can’t find ’em, I can’t find ’em. Right?”

  “You said one of the witnesses was a former secretary to your company. How many office employees do you have?”

  “One. Sometimes I don’t have any. People quit, come and go. Stuff gets lost. I told my gal in the office to get whatever was in the files, like you asked. That’s what she got.” He points to the few letters on my desk.

  “And what if your secretary is called to testify. What will she say?”

  He gives me a steely-eyed look. “That she gave me everything she could find,” he says.

  “And that this is it?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’m not trying to be difficult,” he says. “It’s just that I can’t give ’em what I don’t have.”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Tell me, did you sign a contract on this business in Mexico?”

  “We never got that far.”

  “Did they pay you anything, compensation?”

  “Like I said, they paid for my trip down there. Traveling expenses and the like.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know, maybe four thousand, forty-five hundred dollars. And there were some consulting fees.”

  “Consulting for what?”

  “The location, difficulty of getting heavy equipment in and out of the job site.”

  “How much did they pay you for this?”

  “I can’t remember exactly.”

  “An estimate?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “More than a thousand dollars?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “More than five thousand?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  My eyes are off my notepad now, looking at Metz. “How much?”

  “Somewhere in the neighborhood of two million,” he says.

  “Dollars?”

  He nods.

  I sit there staring at him, the gaze of an animal in front of a speeding locomotive at night.

  “For consulting fees?”

  “Well, no, no, it was . . . actually, it was a security deposit.”

  “Security for what?”

  “My equipment. Hell, you don’t think I’m gonna take heavy equipment across the border without some security up front. This is expensive stuff. A front-end loader, a big one, the kind that articulates, can set you back a quarter of a million dollars. What if it disappears? I mean, this is not Nevada we’re talking about. If they greased somebody’s palm for permits and the sky falls in, a fuckin’ swamp without a permit to drain it ain’t worth shit,” he says. “The first thing the Mexican government does is grab my equipment.”

  “So what was the understanding as to this money, this security deposit?”

  “I’d hold their money until the job was done. Then I’d get my equipment back and get paid. They’d get their deposit back.”

  “But you never signed a contract and you never sent any equipment across the border?”

  “No.”

&nbs
p; “And they gave you two million dollars on a handshake?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So what happened when the deal went bust?”

  “They got their money back.”

  “All of it?”

  He makes a face. Scrunches up his mouth a little. “Everything except the ten percent,” he says.

  I look at him.

  “For my time.”

  “What time?”

  “You know, puttin’ the thing together. Talking. Goin’ down there?”

  “But you said they paid for your trip?”

  “Yeah. But my time’s worth something, ain’t it? Like I say, consulting fees.”

  “But you had no contract or written arrangement for these fees before you went down there?”

  “No.”

  “A week of your time in Mexico, not considering traveling expenses, which they paid, is worth two hundred thousand dollars?”

  “I could have been doin’ other work,” he says.

  “You lost a big job because of this week in Mexico, did you?”

  “I might have. I mean I could have. I don’t know.”

  By now I am scribbling furiously, trying to get Metz’s story down on paper before the ludicrous logic of it disappears like a vapor.

  “And what did you do with the two million deposit money? Did you put it in a bank in this country?”

  “Not right away,” he says.

  I stop writing and look up again. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I brought my money up here after the deal fell through . . .”

  “Your money?”

  “The two hundred K. Over a period of time,” he says.

  “Stop. Did you maintain a foreign bank account?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?”

  “Belize,” he says.

  “Why Belize?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you report this account on your taxes for that year?”

  “I don’t remember. Have to talk to my accountant.”

  “Is this the accountant who’s already been called to testify before the grand jury?”

  “Yeah. I suppose so.”

  “And the ten percent you kept. What did you do with that?”

  “I transferred it here.”

  “To a U.S. bank?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But not all at once?”

  “No. Like I said, over a period of time, as I needed it.”

  “Let me guess. Ten thousand at a time?”

  He nods.

  This is the legal limit for cash coming into the country. I don’t have to ask how he got it all here. Metz is not going to wait twenty years to move two hunderd K into the country at ten grand a year. No doubt he’s used mules, friends, or employees on junkets down to Belize to carry it back whenever he needed cash.

  “I’m hesitant to ask, but was this money paid to you or your company?”

  “It’s confusing sometimes to keep track of what income is payable to my corporation and what is payable to me. For services.”

  “I’ll bet. Especially when it’s consulting fees, is that it?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes light up, thankful for the suggestion.

  “Mr. Metz, I don’t think we’re going to be able to do business. But I will give you some advice since you’re paying for my time, at least for this visit.”

  He looks at me, the first glimmer of surprise.

  “If you were my client, which you are not, and you were called to testify before the grand jury, I would advise you to take the Fifth.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  It’s late April, and Nick stands out on the sidewalk with his hands thrust into the deep pockets of a belted trench coat he has worn on cool mornings ever since I’ve known him. He is out near the curb, fifty feet from the sign over the door, big gold letters, each one larger than a tombstone, spelling out: EDWARD J. SCHWARTZ UNITED STATES COURTHOUSE.

  Rush is the only lawyer I know who has never carried a briefcase. It is against his religion and might dispel the impression that he can do anything on the fly and off the cuff.

  As I approach, he expels clouds of warm breath into the chilly morning mist. He sees me a block away and smiles, gives me a nod like “what’s up,” rocking forward and back, heel to toe to keep warm. It is cold for San Diego, the season of early morning fog. By afternoon people will be on the street in shirtsleeves.

  Eight-thirty. We are meeting for a quick briefing over coffee so that I can hand off Metz. Nick is to meet with the client at nine. If I am lucky, I will be out of here before it happens. I have no desire to be drawn into this thing further. Nick will then have half an hour before he has to appear with Metz in front of a judge. Nick’s instincts were right on one point. Metz was never called before the grand jury. Six days after our conversation, he was indicted on multiple counts of money laundering and international currency violations. He is scheduled to appear for arraignment in federal district court this morning. My guess is that the feds are just warming up.

  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.