The Arraignment

by Steve Martini

  “Those who knew Nick Rush will be happy to learn that even though Nick’s death was tragic and untimely, local attorneys Paul Madriani and Harry Hinds of the Coronado law firm of Madriani and Hinds effected a sizable insurance settlement ($3.8 million) for Nick’s family and survivors.

  “The settlement was grounded on evidence that Nicholas Rush was the innocent and unintended victim of a drive-by shooting, thereby availing his heirs of insurance reparations under the life insurance policy’s double indemnity clause for accidental death.”

  Lawyers, more than most, like to feed and water illusions of their own prowess. But I know that settlements like this don’t happen unless insurance adjusters and the people they report to are operating under the influence, in this case of Adam Tolt.

  I suspect Adam realizes, as well as I do, that it was a symbiotic relationship. We used each other. I wanted to maximize the dollar figure and get settlement as quickly as possible and get out of it. He wanted to dry clean the skirts of the law firm. If Tolt hadn’t suggested his office as the location for a settlement meeting, I would have.

  I assumed it would take several meetings and a few months to hammer something out and nail it down. Adam’s reach may be longer, and his grasp more vital, than I had imagined.

  The fact that he could get the carrier to open its purse so cheerfully and that they would allow Adam to publish the amount, which is what he really wanted, surprised even me.

  While my partner was doing his legal research to justify whatever we would get, I was doing my own. I knew that Adam sat on a number of corporate boards.

  Burrowing my nose into some publications, I discovered that the actual number was seven, unless I missed some, which I may have. All of these are large multinational businesses, with home offices in the U.S. Their boards include the usual list of corporate suspects, names you might recognize from government positions they’ve held in the past, or causes they’ve championed. These are people who make their living, to the tune of fortunes, just by being connected. They have developed a business celebrity. Corporations may wait in line to have them join their boards. Because they are on one board, they get on another. Because their name appears on those two, they pick up a third. Once they are there, competence is assumed. At the end of the day, they are sitting around the boardroom comparing handicaps on the back nine, making a million or more a year, and pocketing the company pens paid for by investors. It is not just in Hollywood where perception becomes reality.

  What I learned by doing my research was that three of the Devon Insurance board members cross-pollinated with Adam on other boards. That was all I needed to know.

  The settlement, and the publicity that now follows it, serves the purposes of Rocker, Dusha by bringing to an end any ugly speculation as to why Nick may have died. Confronted by client’s questions at a cocktail party, Adam or his partners can now say, “Haven’t you heard? Oh, yeah, Nick’s death was an accident.” To business clients for whom the exchange of dollars is like breathing air, the payment of cash is reliable evidence. The payment of nearly four million dollars by a sober and staid insurance company will be viewed as irrefutable proof that Nick was just another random victim in a violent world. Within a year, Adam will have most of his corporate clients trying to recall just how Nick died and thinking maybe it was lightning.

  I’d like to hope that Adam has more respect for me than to believe I would be flattered by his article. Though I suspect if he thinks it would sweeten his offer for Harry and me to join the firm, he would see no harm in a little icing on the cake.

  I scan the rest of the newsletter. Another office in the works. This one in Houston with an eye toward petroleum, gas, and oil ventures. All of the partners may not be happy, but Adam is still on the move, building his equity interest in Rocker, Dusha.

  I stick the newsletter behind the flap in the seat in front of me and turn to the computer printouts of Tresler’s campaign contributions that Harry has been working on. He has underlined two of the names from Nick’s list of PAC contributors. One is a partner in the firm’s office Washington, D.C. The other is one Jeffery Dolson, a partner in their San Francisco operation. Both men show up not only in the address book of Nick’s handheld device, but also in the date book, which shows meetings in their respective cities with times and dates. Dolson, in San Francisco, met with Nick twice in the two months before Nick was killed, if the date book is accurate. The last time was only nine days before the shootings. It’s the reason I am flying to San Francisco this afternoon instead of directly to Capital City.

  Rocker, Dusha’s offices in San Francisco are located at One Market Plaza overlooking the Bay Bridge and the waterfront. The location is pricey, but within grasping distance of the city’s financial district. Here the firm occupies two floors on the upper levels, squeezed in between another law firm downstairs and a securities trading company above.

  It is almost five o’clock, closing time as I step off the elevator onto carpeted floor and approach the reception counter.

  A young Asian woman with a telephone headset is seated at one of the stations behind the counter. Two other women are gathering their things getting ready to leave for the evening.

  The woman smiles. “Can I help you?”

  I give her my card. “I’m here to see Jeffery Dolson.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. I just flew into town this afternoon and took a chance that he might be in.”

  “Just a moment.”

  Dolson heads up the firm’s M&A division. Mergers and acquisitions is the place where lawyers capitalize on the laws businesses buy from Congress, the ones designed to ensure that wealth remains concentrated in as few hands as possible, usually by wiping out small investors. Talk to lawyers working in this field and they will tell you that corporate management getting rich when their companies go broke is just part of the normal business cycle. For people who believe the world is changing too fast, they should take comfort in the fact that a lot of money in America is still made the old-fashioned way, by stealing it.

  The receptionist is talking through the transparent tube on her headset to somebody in the back or upstairs.

  “I don’t know. Just a minute. I’ll ask him.” She looks at me. “Can I ask you what it regards?”

  “I had lunch with Adam Tolt in San Diego this afternoon, and I wanted to stop in and see Mr. Dolson.” All of this is true, none of it responsive to her question. Just the same, Tolt’s name does its magic. As the woman turns her back to me, she cups a hand over the end of the little tube, but I can hear her mumble into the mouthpiece. “Apparently, he’s been referred by Mr. Tolt.”

  Open sesame. Three minutes later, I’m being ushered up the elevator by a secretary with my business card in one hand and a key to let us off the elevator on the executive level in the other. I follow her through the labyrinth of partitions to the far side of the building where the hallway is wide and the rosewood paneling is real. She knocks on the door at the end of the hall, the one with Dolson’s name engraved in plastic on the wall next to it.

  “Yes. Come in.”

  The door is opened, and I can see a large corner office with windows on two walls. One of these looks out at the cabled spans of the Bay Bridge. Through the other, I can see the single spire of the Ferry Building.

  The man behind the desk is young. I would guess mid-thirties. He is straightening his tie, and from the look of his desk, with some papers sticking out of the partially closed top drawer, I suspect he has been cleaning up for my arrival. What the dropping of an important name can do to create a little anxiety.

  Dolson shimmies around the partially open drawer that he has now given up on, and makes his way to my side of the desk. We shake hands as he looks at my card. “I understand you just flew into town?”

  “Yes. A flight from San Diego. I had lunch with Adam Tolt today, and your name came up a couple of times. I thought that as long as I was coming north on other busine
ss it might be a good idea if we met.”

  “My name?” he says. “How is he? Mr. Tolt, I mean. I see him about once every six months or so. When some of the division heads get together to compare notes.”

  “He’s fine. Doing great,” I tell him.

  “So did Adam, Mr. Tolt, send you to see me?”

  “No. Actually your name came up in another context. I understand that you knew Nick Rush?”

  His pupils float away from my face over to the wall of windows behind me and back again, as if they crossed the bridge and returned, all within less than a second.

  “Nick Rush?” he says.

  “Yes. Nick was a friend,” I say. “And your name came up.”

  “Really?” This is an octave higher than his last statement. I can tell he’d like to ask in what context Nick might have mentioned his name, but he doesn’t.

  “It’s terrible what happened to him,” he says.

  “I understand that Nick came up here to your office, to meet with you about a week or so before he was killed?”

  Like he’s been hit by a train. “Ugh? What?”

  “I understood the two of you had a meeting here in your office?”

  His lips are moving, sort of quivering, but nothing is coming out. “Oh. Oh that,” he says. “Guess with everything going on I forgot about it.”

  How do you forget your last meeting with a man who is murdered nine days later?

  “Then the police haven’t talked to you?”

  “Why would they want to talk to me?”

  “They usually talk to anyone who had contact with one of the victims shortly before a murder.”

  “I couldn’t tell them anything. How did Nick tell you . . . I mean why did Nick talk to you about our meeting?”

  “Nick and I didn’t have a lot of secrets.”

  “Oh. I see.” Right now his eyes look as if they could swallow the couch I’m sitting on. His complexion has gone pale. “Tell me,” he says. “How exactly do you know Adam Tolt?” Dolson is trying to put all the pieces together.

  I open my briefcase and pull out the firm’s newsletter. Hot off the presses in San Diego, it hasn’t made its way to the colonies yet. I hand it to him, pointing to the story under the fold with my name in the headline.

  “I did the settlement on the insurance for Nick’s wife.”

  He compares the name on my business card with the headline. Then reads the article as if he is sucking the print off the page with his eyes. When he’s finished, he looks at me. “Good result,” he says.

  This is the lawyer’s equivalent of a high five after moon walking in the end zone.

  “I understand Nick had a couple of meetings with you up here?”

  I can tell by the look that he isn’t sure whether I know, and if so how much. He’s trying to regroup but has the look of a man struggling to fight off panic.

  “It was social,” he says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “My meeting. My meetings here with Nick. They were social.” He says it with all the certitude of a guess on a multiple choice quiz.

  I don’t say anything. I look at him. What to do with a witness who’s nervous. Let him talk.

  “He just sorta dropped by from time to time. We talked. That’s all,” he says.

  “So Nick came all the way up from San Diego just to socialize with you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But he came up specifically to meet with you?”

  “Oh no. I don’t think so.”

  “That’s what his calendar says.”

  He looks at me. It’s the kind of expression you might expect from someone who is swallowing his tongue. “His calendar?”

  “Yeah.” I don’t tell him it was on a handheld and that I probably have the only copy.

  “Nick put my name on his calendar?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You’ve seen this?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “This is his office calendar?”

  “One of them.”

  “Then I suppose the San Diego office has seen it?”

  “I’d have thought you might be more interested in whether the police have seen it?”

  “Oh. Well sure. That’s why you thought they might want to talk to me?”

  “Sure. Why? Is there some other reason?”

  “I told you. I don’t know anything. Have they seen the calendar? The police, I mean?”

  “Actually, I’m not sure.”

  “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

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  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.