The Arraignment (25 page)

The kid looks at me, not sure whether he should go or not. “Sir.”

“Get out,” says Tresler. “Get the hell outta here. Can’t you see I’m reading?”

“Your ten o’clock, sir.”

“I know. I heard you. You think I’m deaf?”

“Yessir.” The kid figures I’m on my own. He heads for the door, ice-skating across the marble on leather soles.

“Have a seat. I’ll be done here in a minute.” Tresler still hasn’t looked at me.

I sit in one of the leather armchairs in front of his desk, cross one leg over the other, and watch him. This goes on for a long enough period that I might wonder if he hasn’t passed out, except that his nose is still suspended over the pile of papers. Every minute or so, one hand will come up from behind the desk, off his lap to flip a page over onto the finished stack.

After a couple of minutes of this, I clear my throat.

“What are you here for? Ramiriz send you over here to kiss my ass?”

The Ramiriz he is talking about I assume is Bernardo, the presiding judge of the county’s superior court.

“Actually no. I’m here on my own.”

He finally looks up at me, a quizzical stare, then he reaches over and picks up a single sheet of paper. I can see through it, lines typed on the other side.

“Says here you’re with the county bar,” says Tresler. “Court budget.” He pushes his glasses back up toward the bridge of his nose and takes a long hard look at me.

I am guessing he is in his late sixties, maybe seventy. Ordinarily you would give the benefit to someone his age and assume that irritability overtook him about the same time as flatulence—and probably for the same reasons. In Tresler’s case, I suspect he came out of the womb this way.

“What do you want?” he says.

“Adam Tolt set up the appointment,” I tell him. “He did me the favor. That may be the reason for the confusion on your calendar.”

“Ahh. You’re a friend of Adam’s?” he says.

“We know each other.”

“How is Adam?” He puts his schedule back down on the desk, off to the side.

“When I saw him yesterday he was fine.”

“That’s good. Glad to hear it.” Tolt’s name seems to have the same soothing effect as a mild laxative.

“You got a card?” he says.

The kid was too frightened to hand him the one he had, so I get another from my pocket and hand it to him.

He examines this. “Mad-re-ani.”

“Mah-dree-ahnee,” I say.

“You say Tolt sent you?”

“No. He made the appointment. He didn’t send me. Adam and I are acquaintances,” I tell him. “He was kind enough to schedule the appointment since I didn’t know you.”

“I see. Worked on some cases with him, have you? Adam’s a good lawyer.” He takes his glasses off and squints at me now, so that I sense he can no longer see me. He feels around until he opens the center drawer of his desk, pulls out a small polishing cloth, and goes to work on each lens, exhaling a little warm breath on them as he works.

“Represented me on a couple of matters,” he says.

“I didn’t know that.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s been a few years,” he says. “Back in the sixties. Some property issues.”

“As you say, he’s a good lawyer.”

He puts the glasses back on, so he can focus again. The cloth disappears into the center drawer, everything in its place.

“So if it isn’t the court budget, what is it you need to see me about?”

“I’m looking for information on some appointments you made to the County Arts Commission some time ago?”

“People I appointed?” he says. “Why? One of them do something wrong?”

“One of them was killed,” I tell him.

“When was this?”

“Two months ago. I think you probably read about it in the papers. His name was Gerald Metz. He was shot and killed out in front of the federal courthouse, along with his lawyer.”

He looks at me, makes a face. “I remember seeing the headlines. But the name doesn’t ring any bells. I don’t think I know him.”

“You appointed him.”

“I appoint a lot of people to a lot of things. Doesn’t mean I know ’em. You have questions about this, you can get the information from my staff,” he says. “You go out the door there and find my secretary, give her your name, and she’ll get whatever information we have.”

“You say you don’t remember the name Gerald Metz?”

“That’s what I said.”

“I have two other names. Can I ask you if you know either of them?”

“Listen, I’m busy,” he says.

“What I need to know is, if you didn’t know them personally, were they recommended for appointment by someone else? And if so, who?”

“Why would you want to know that? Who did you say you worked for? Are you a reporter?” Fangs start to come out.

“No, sir. I’m a lawyer. I had a friend who was also killed. He was the attorney who was killed.”

He nods soberly. “I remember the shooting. Saw it in the papers. A terrible thing.”

“The client’s name was Gerald Metz.”

“Emm.”

“You didn’t know that one of the men who was shot in that incident was someone you had appointed to the arts commission?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “No one told me that. I knew Mrs. Rush was on the commission,” he says. “I take it her husband was your friend.”

“You know Dana?”

“No. I can’t say I ever met her. But I knew the husband.”

“How did you know Nick?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Met him somewhere. An event, a fund-raiser. We’d met a few times. He seemed like a nice enough guy. What was the client’s name again?”

“Gerald Metz.”

He thinks about this, shakes his head slowly. “No. I don’t think I know that name. I’m not saying I didn’t appoint him. I just don’t remember the name.”

“So you wouldn’t know offhand why you might have appointed Mr. Metz to the commission?”

“I’m sure he was qualified. But offhand I can’t say.”

“Would there be documents anywhere that might show whether there were recommendations made by others to your office regarding these appointments?”

“Could be,” he says. I get the sense that the answer to this might depend on what I want to use these records for.

“Can you tell me how Dana Rush, Nick’s wife, got appointed?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” he says. “Her husband asked me to appoint her.”

“Nick?”

“I assume that’s the only husband she had.”

“Then you must have known Nick pretty well?”

“As I said, over the years we’d met a few times. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“Where can I get the records for these appointments?”

“Talk to my staff,” he says. Tresler is back to his pile of papers, trying to get rid of me.

“Can I ask you about one more name?”

“Who is it?” Now he’s getting short.

“The name is Nathan Fittipaldi.”

He thinks about this for a second, searches his memory quickly, then shakes his head. “Never heard of him.”

“You appointed him to the commission as well.”

“Like I say, I appoint a lot of people. If you have questions, talk to my staff,” he says. “Now, get out.”

I
t has taken Harry less than two days to run down Tresler’s list of campaign contributors. As expected, Adam Tolt shows up everywhere.

“The man’s on everybody’s list of givers,” says Harry. Harry is sprawled in one of my client chairs, scanning the computer printouts as he summarizes his discoveries.

“Congress, half the state legislature, city council. Tolt gave to both candidates for governor the last time around. You’d think that would piss somebody off,” he says. “Apparently not. The guy’s name and address must come preprinted on everybody’s Rolodex when they buy ’em. Remind me never to get involved in giving money,” says Harry.

For some reason I don’t think this is going to be a problem.

“Tolt gave to all five supervisors,” he says. “No favorites. Two hundred and fifty dollars each. The max for individuals. He gave the same amount to Tresler.” Harry figures we
can use this as a benchmark to judge the others. “He’s got a lot of money, but he gives in small amounts.”

It is one of the urban myths, that high rollers by definition give large amounts. Even wealthy ones usually confine it to a few hundred dollars per candidate. They just spread it around more.

“Metz and Fittipaldi both show up,” says Harry. “But again small. Metz gave a hundred. Fittipaldi a hundred and a half. What’s interesting is they only gave to Tresler. My guess is they had a goal in mind.”

“Appointment to the commission,” I say.

Harry nods. “And while I don’t like to disappoint you, Dana doesn’t show up at all.”

It seems she wasn’t lying. Dana is nonpolitical, at least when it comes to politics.

“But there is a bell ringer,” says Harry. “Guess who shows up as a major donor?”

“Nick.”

“How did you know that?”

“Call it a hunch,” I tell him. Tresler knew him. A politician with three hundred thousand constituents in his district isn’t likely to remember your first name unless you fall in one of two categories: You have clout or you’ve done something for him recently.

“How much?” I ask.

“Maybe you’d like to guess that too? Pick a number.”

“A thousand?” I say.

“Try ten,” he says.

This sits me up in my chair. No wonder Tresler knew his name.

“And to get around the giving limits,” says Harry, “he set up a PAC. Citizens for County Government.”

Harry is talking about a political action committee, people with a common interest pooling their money for effect.

“They gave in five-thousand-dollar increments over two years. All of it to Tresler. Nick shows up as the treasurer. He gave to the individual max, two hundred and fifty dollars each year.”

“Let me see that.” Harry hands me the computer printout. I scan down the list. I don’t have to go far to find the PAC. The donors are listed in the order of the amount given, large contributors at the top.

Harry can tell by my look that this is not something I had expected.

There are twenty names on Nick’s PAC, a separate list for each year, but the names are pretty much the same. Some of them are out of county. Two are out of state.

“Did you ever know him to get involved?” asks Harry.

“Nick didn’t have a high interest in civics,” I tell him.

“That’s what I thought. But I checked it anyway. He didn’t give to anybody else. I looked for local, state, and federal, under donor names. Not a single hit for Nick, except on Tresler. So what do you think he was after?”

I shake my head. Not a clue.

“We can assume,” says Harry, “that this would be a lock, ten thousand, to put his wife on this commission. But you’d have to admit it’s a bit of an overkill. Especially for a guy who’s missing house payments.”

I settle back in my chair, still studying the list of names underneath Nick’s.

“There was no hint from Tresler when you talked to him, right?”

“No.”

“Maybe you should go back and ask him.”

“He’d just tell me what every politician tells anybody who asks. ‘I’m above all that. I never look.’ He’d act surprised and tell me that Nick must have been a follower of his philosophy—senile belligerence,” I tell him. “That’s if I got through the front door. By now Tresler probably has my name on the list under ‘cranks and the demented’ with security in the lobby. Still he didn’t try to hide the fact that he knew Nick.”

“It’s good to know that at least Nick’s money bought him a little recognition, even if it was posthumous,” says Harry. “We’re no better off now than we were before.”

The phone on my desk rings.

“Except now we have more questions.” Harry finishes the thought as I answer the call.

“Hello.”

“I don’t know any other lawyers answer their own phone.” I recognize the raspy voice on the other end. “Joyce here,” she says. “I bet you thought I died and went to hell.”

She tells me she and Benny checked out the neighborhood, the drug dealer’s house last night. “But not to worry,” she says. “Benny had his gun. Double-barrel shotgun, both of them loaded. We had to make sure of the address,” she says.

“You didn’t trust me?”

“We’re professionals,” she says. “Like to do it right.”

I can see her up on the porch with one of those flashlights that takes a battery the size of a bread box, with a notepad writing down the names off the mailbox, while Benny sat in the car at the curb with his blunderbuss, ready to blow the shit out of the front of the place if anybody walked out the door. There are at least three felonies here that I can count. It’s the problem with Joyce. I know mobsters with more discretion.

“What did you find out?”

“Your man. It’s one Hector Saldado,” she says.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. We got him dead,” she says. “Trus’ me.”

“Just a second.” I grab a pen and some Post-its from the holder on my desk.

“Spell it?”

She does. “Not only is he the only one with a cell phone lives there,” she says. “You know, of the other names you gave me?”

“Yes.”

“But he makes regular calls down to Mexico.”

She can tell by the silence coming from my end that this is something of note.

“I thought you might be interested,” she says. “There were a lotta them. These calls. At least three or four almost every day. None of them long. You know, a minute, maybe two. But how long can it take to order up some drugs? I
mean, less time than a pizza, I’m sure. There’s no special toppings.”

“You have his cell statement?”

“I tol’ you I’d get it, didn’t I? You want it all? It’s pretty long. You know, a minute here, two minutes there. A lot of the same phone numbers too,” she says. “I checked it. The country code and area. Mexico,” she says.

“Where? Do you know what part of Mexico?”

“Just a sec,” she says. “Let’s see, I got it here someplace.”

I can hear her hand muffle the mouthpiece, papers shuffling.

“Here it is,” she comes back on. “Cancún. Quin-tan-aroo? Is that right?”

“I’ve heard of it,” I tell her. It’s the area Metz visited when he did business with the two Ibarra brothers. “Listen. I have another job for you.”