The Arraignment

by Steve Martini

  “Did I say that? I didn’t say that. Why? Have you made a decision?”

  “I haven’t talked to Harry, but I don’t think it’s gonna work.”

  “Then you haven’t thought long enough. Take some more time. We can take Harry for a ride in the Gulfstream. Let him play with some of the corporate toys.”

  This could be dangerous. Harry has a fascination with the high life and would happily take the jet for a test run to Monaco. I decide to keep silent about my partner’s weak spot.

  “No need to decide now. Pick your moment.”

  Adam doesn’t want to take no for an answer.

  “The arm?” He motions to the bulge under my right shirtsleeve, puffed out by the bandage. “I assume that’s where he got you, the other guy. What was his name?”

  “Saldado.”

  “You could have told me about Espinoza.” Adam looks hurt.

  “At the time I couldn’t.”

  “Lawyer-client?”

  I nod.

  “The papers are saying he was connected with Nick’s shooting.”

  “There’s a lot of speculation,” I tell him. “Actually, Espinoza was out of the country at the time.”

  “I assume you’re trying to get answers?”

  “I admit it wasn’t a good way to go about it. Harry warned me.”

  “Harry must be the better half of the partnership. The part with judgment,” he says. “Did you learn anything?”

  “Espinoza was killed before I could.”

  “You weren’t troubled by the possibility of a conflict? Representing him?”

  “You sound like my partner.”

  “He has a point.”

  “Why are you so interested in this?” I ask him.

  “I have an interest in protecting the firm,” he says. “Yours, I assume, is driven by some perceived obligation you feel toward Nick?”

  I look at him, but I don’t answer.

  “You don’t have to explain. I understand. It’s why I called. I assume you’re up a dead end.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “What do you know about this other man, the one who attacked you?”

  “Not much. I got a good look at him.”

  “Did Metz ever mention him?”

  “No.”

  Adam sits back in the chair, looking at me, wondering, I suspect, if I’ve told him everything. “There is something else,” he says. “But before I tell you, I have to know. Is there anything else, anything you haven’t told me?”

  “About?”

  “Nick’s death.”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  Adam looks at me from behind the dark glasses, a pair of expensive aviation shades with gold rims, trying to mind meld with me. Lawyers know there is always a little something every other lawyer holds back, if for no other reason than to corner the market on secrets.

  “So what is this revelation?” I ask.

  “I shouldn’t tell,” he says.

  “You came all the way over here for you not to tell me?”

  “All right. Fine. I’ll tell you, but I want your word it doesn’t go beyond this table.”

  “You got it.”

  “It’s a letter. It was mailed to Nick at the office. It arrived two days after he was killed.”

  He lifts the large linen napkin that has lain folded neatly in two even halves on the table in front of him since my arrival. Underneath it is an envelope. He hands this to me.

  There is a mailroom stamp from the firm on the envelope, showing the date of receipt on the outside.

  “One of the secretaries found it. Somehow it got sorted off into a box downstairs. Never made it to Nick’s office from the mail room. Everything being in chaos after he got shot. The police got some of the stuff from his office, but it seems they never checked the mail room.”

  “When did you get it?”

  “This morning,” he says. “One of the secretaries going through the box found it. As soon as she saw Nick’s name and the cancellation date on the stamp, she brought it to me. So naturally I opened it.”

  “Naturally.”

  “It was sent to the firm.” Adam is a little defensive on this point.

  There’s a foreign stamp up in the corner, something in Spanish. Adam is up-front about the date.

  “I’ve checked it. The man is real. Quite prominent. According to my information, he owns a chain of banks and resort hotels in Mexico.”

  I open the envelope, remove the letter, and unfold it, heavy parchment. It is typed, written in English, and dated four days before Nick was killed. The letterhead is embossed, a seal, what looks like an ancient warlord’s helmet and under it a phone number, a single digit area code (9) followed by three numbers and a dash, two more numbers, another dash and two numbers. I have seen this particular sequencing of phone numbers before. They were on the cellular telephone statement of the man Saldado, sent to me by Joyce the collector, though there they included the country code for Mexico.

  There is what appears to be an address: something called Blvd. Kukulcan, Km. 13 Z.H., and a city, Cancún, Q. Roo, Mexico, C.P. 77500.

  The letter itself is brief. Two short paragraphs.

  Dear Mr. Rush:

  I am given your name by associates. I have been told you are a prudent man of business, a lawyer. I write so that you will know that I am informed of the recent activities of my sons. As a father I am not pleased with their undertaking. I wish to take the opportunity to assure you that they will not be permitted to continue. So that you know, I am pledged to this.

  I assure you that I will deal with my sons in an appropriate manner. I would ask that as a man of judgment you consider this with regard to any future actions you might wish to take.

  Yours truly,

  Pablo Ibarra

  I finish reading, study the letter for a moment, then read it again, trying to capture the import of the message.

  “What do you make of it?” he says.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It sounds to me like he’s trying to get Nick to back off from going after his two boys. The part about assuring Nick that he will deal with his sons in an appropriate way. Sounds to me as if he’s trying to say there’s no need for you to do it. I’ll do it. Doesn’t it to you?”

  I read it again. “It’s possible.”

  “If he was . . . I mean if Nick was in some fashion going after the sons, it’s possible they could have killed him.”

  I concede the point with a look.

  “That’s why it’s important that you tell me everything you know about this man Ibarra.”

  “What makes you think I know anything?”

  “Because you knew Nick. You interviewed Metz. You’re the only one who may know how the pieces fit.”

  “What pieces?”

  “Is there a drug connection? You don’t have to be prescient to read the signs. The letter comes out of Mexico; the sons are in some kind of trouble. Nick’s expertise is in narcotics cases. Connect the dots,” he says.

  “Have you told the police about this, the letter I mean?”

  He shakes his head, almost ignoring me, occupied with other problems at the moment. “I wanted to talk to you first. Avoid getting blindsided.”

  “Wonderful.” I drop the letter and let it float like a leaf onto the table between us.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is my prints are now all over the letter.”

  “Yes?”

  “You can be sure the cops will dust it for prints when you turn it over,” I tell him. “Something like this coming to them late in the game, they’re sure to. They’ll want to know where it’s been all this time, and who’s touched it.”

  “I didn’t think of that. So what do we do?”

  Two lawyers sitting at lunch in a swank restaurant trying to figure how to cover their tracks on a piece of concealed evidence in a homicide case. Not exactly a question you’d want to see on the bar exam.

  “
You can tell I don’t do criminal work,” he says. “But we’re in the soup together. I touched it too.”

  “Except that your prints will be easy to explain. The letter came to your firm. You had to open it to see what it was. Whether it was covered by some client confidence. Now the cops are going to want to know why you brought it to me.”

  He takes his glasses off, puts them on the table. Looks at me as he rubs his chin with one hand, contemplating the problem. “We could wipe it with a cloth or something.”

  “Not a good idea, Adam.”

  “No, I suppose it’s not.” I can tell Adam would have rather I’d come up with that idea. It’s the kind of questions you see in transcripts of hearings before the bar, before they suspend your license. “And who suggested this course of action?”

  “It’s the problem with physical evidence,” I tell him. “Sometimes it’s not what’s there, but what’s missing that gets you in trouble. We’d end up taking Ibarra’s prints off the letter. They’d wonder why they weren’t there.”

  He looks at me, a pained expression.

  “It’s all right. We’ll just tell them the truth. You knew I’d be curious. I was a friend of Nick’s. You wanted to know if I knew anything about it. So you gave me the letter to read. It just means the cops are going to have a lot more questions for me.”

  “Yes. I suppose that’s always the best approach,” he says. “The truth. So, do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Know anything about it?” He picks the letter up from the table in front of me, this time carefully handling it from the edges, and gently folds it, putting it back in the envelope. All the while looking at me, waiting for a response.

  “The letter, no. I’ve never seen it before.”

  “I assumed that much,” he says. “Otherwise you would have told me, right?” What he means is just like I told him about Espinoza.

  I dodge the question by taking a healthy swallow of ale, filling my mouth.

  Adam is shrewd. Whether he’d thought about my prints on the letter or not, he is determined to screen every piece of information that comes his way so that none of the dirt flies up and hits the firm. He also guesses that I am holding back, as I assume he is.

  “Have you ever heard of the guy before? This Pablo Ibarra?”

  Now it would require an affirmative lie. “I’ve heard the name. Tell me, how long have you had the letter? Really?”

  Adam smiles. “What difference does it make?”

  “The cops will want to know.”

  “I got it this morning,” he says.

  “Tell me you didn’t go down and sweep the mail room the night Nick was killed?”

  “Who’s asking, you or the police?”

  “Maybe I don’t want to know.”

  “Trust me, you don’t,” he says. “Where did you hear the name? This man, Ibarra?”

  “Gerald Metz gave it to me.”

  “Metz?” He thought I was going to say Nick. Now it comes out of left field.

  “During my initial interview with him. He’d done some work with the sons. Said it was a construction job.”

  “Right. Did he ever mention the father?”

  “In passing.”

  “Did Metz know him?”

  “It depends on whether you believe Metz. According to him, he only knew the name. He’d never met him.”

  “You didn’t tell me this before.”

  “I didn’t tell the police, either. Like you with the letter.” Touché. “Piece of advice,” I tell him.

  “What’s that?”

  “If you’re going to take it to the cops with your story, I suppose your secretary will verify it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You might want to make sure she touches the envelope at least.”

  He smiles. Adam’s already made a mental note.

  “What else did Metz say about them?”

  “He also said the father was upset about something. That’s why his deal fell through. If anything Metz said was credible.”

  “Go on,” he says.

  “That’s it.”

  “If the papers get their hands on this, they’ll crucify us. They’ll be crawling all over the firm, demanding to know what Nick was involved in. Wanting to know if we’re being investigated, whether we’ve been shredding documents. Legalgate,” he says.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking the answer lies in Mexico. I’ve booked a flight for tomorrow, the earliest I could get there. I want some information. I’m not going to wait for it to come to me.”

  “If you want to talk to Ibarra, you could just call him on the phone.”

  “I thought about that. The problem is, for all we know, he may have killed Nick himself. I don’t mean pull the trigger. But he might have hired somebody. If he didn’t, he may come to the same conclusion we did, that his boys are involved. You think he’s going to talk to me about something like that over the phone?”

  “Probably not.”

  “I don’t think so either. Besides, if I call him, even if he’s willing to talk to me, he’s going to want me to come down there, and he’s going to want to set the terms and conditions, no doubt a meeting on his turf.”

  “I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do. When people start asking questions, I want to be able to tell them Rocker, Dusha and De Wine were not involved in anything illegal. If anyone says we were, they’re going to be looking at an action for business disparagement that will take their house, their dog, their wife, and their retirement, not necessarily in that order.

  “I’m coming with you. The Gulfstream is already fueled, at the airport,” he continues. “It would take us about four, four and a half hours flight time. We can leave tonight. In fact, there’s a firm we do business with down in Mexico City, security and investigations. I’ve used them before. I could arrange to have their services available. One of the biggest drug rings in the world operates out of the Yucatán Peninsula. Hell, I’ve read that half the resorts in Cancún were built with drug money. Given the kind of people we are dealing with, I think it would be wise to have some extra ‘insurance.’ ”

  This sounds good but incredibly expensive. “I don’t want to cost the firm a ton of money.”

  “Nonsense. I may not be as adventuresome as you are, but I like to have an edge before I go sticking my nose in.”

  He looks at his watch. “I think Cancún is Central time zone. We wouldn’t be able to do anything down there until tomorrow anyway. Say we meet at the airport in Carlsbad at nine o’clock tonight. McClellan-Palomar, that’s where we keep the plane. Do you know where the field is?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  The waiter brings our lunch. Adam picks up the envelope with Ibarra’s letter so it doesn’t get splattered with soup.

  “In the meantime, I’ll have the secretary touch this a few times and have it delivered to the police by courier in the morning, after we’re gone.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Three hours in and the sleek Gulfstream is knifing through the night sky on its way south. I gaze out the tiny oval window and listen to the drone of the twin jet engines as we skim above humid thunderheads, wondering where we are and what is beneath us.

  Adam is asleep on the couch across from me, a seat belt loosely draped over his midsection and buckled on the outside of a blanket that covers him. Shoes off, his stocking feet are sticking out beyond the end of the blanket.

  He is a man grown accustomed to the finer things. It’s what a life of privilege can do. He has no sense of airport security lines that look like a scene from Gandhi. If I told him they stopped serving meals on trays with real silverware, I don’t think he would believe me. If you suggested that security now prevents even the use of plastic utensils on airliners, his first question would be, “How are you supposed cut your steak?” Man out of touch with the world.

  His mouth is open, sleeping like a baby. I suspect he is snoring, though with the sound of the en
gines, I can’t hear it.

  I look at the stars, holes in the dark sky, and finally doze off.

  The next thing I know, Adam is shaking me by my good arm. Fully dressed, his shoes back on, he is straightening his tie.

  “We’re descending toward the airport in Cancún. You might want to freshen up.”

  Twenty minutes later we’re on the ground, rolling down one of the taxiways toward a hangar with its yawning door open, all lit up inside. The pilot pulls right in and shuts the engines down.

  As he does, three large SUVs, dark and gleaming under the bright lights, drive up and park in an arc around the wing on Adam’s side. I start to get my bags from the back.

  “You can go ahead and leave the bag,” says Adam. “They’ll get ’em for us.”

  I follow him to the door. Adam slaps the pilot on the arm. “Good flight. Very comfortable. Now, you guys are heading back to San Diego, as I understand it, tonight.”

  “Right. Be back here tomorrow night. Then we’ll be on the ground here ’til Sunday evening.”

  “Great,” says Adam, and he heads down the stairs with me right behind him. Before I get to the ground, he is already shaking hands, smiling at two men who have gotten out of one of the cars. He motions me over.

  “Julio. Like you to meet Paul Madriani. Paul. This is Julio Paloma. Julio’ll be our guide while we’re down here. I hope you don’t mind. Our firm has used Julio’s company for security on trips down here before. I took the liberty.”

  “Not at all.” We shake hands. Julio is a big man, I’d say six-foot-five, a broad grin, white even teeth, and a hand that swallows my own. Neck like a bull, shoulders like an NFL lineman, he’s the biggest man I’ve ever seen except for the one standing next to him.

  Adam introduces me to Herman Diggs, an African-American mountain who I am told is from Detroit. I look up at him. His top front tooth is chipped like a jagged piece of ice. I don’t ask how it got that way. I’d like to have my hand back. Both of them are decked out in slacks and dark blazers, enough cloth to sail a good-sized ship, each with a patch sporting a company logo over the breast pocket.

  Adam tells me they are specialists in corporate security. They conduct some small talk with Adam while their minions gather our luggage.