The Arraignment by Steve Martini Read Free Book Online Page A

the block before I see him. Nick’s hands are again buried in the pockets of his coat as he hustles down the sidewalk a hundred feet ahead of me, with four lanes of traffic between us. I cup my hand over my mouth to holler, but a city bus gets between us. Belching fumes, its engine drowns any hope of being heard. By the time it passes, it’s too late. Nick is standing on the sidewalk in front of the walkway leading to the courthouse. He is talking to Metz.
    I take my hand from my mouth, pat the little device in my pocket, and continue on toward my car a block away. I’ll have to call him later and make arrangements to get it to him.
    As I walk, I can’t help but toy with the possible angles he has been playing. I suspect that he knew all along that Metz was up to his ass in laundering money. If so, he also knew I wouldn’t take the case. So why would he try and refer it? One possibility, he wanted to shield himself from a close-up inspection of the particulars until I had filtered them for him. My interview with Metz. This way he could shade his eyes, take a more artful approach at sculpting the facts in his initial discussions with the man. In this way Nick could lead Metz to tell him stories that would be more helpful while avoiding a flat-out suborning of perjury. It is the kind of Machiavellian mental coil I might expect from Nick.
    But there is another possibility, one that is more likely. This one involves Dana. From what Metz told me, if I believe anything, it is that Dana knew the broad outline of his problem, that it could be drug related. If she is, as Nick says, hot to clean up his practice, Dana wouldn’t want him handling this, particularly with a client in her own social orbit.
    Knowing Dana, her first concern would be that it could splash on her, that some enterprising reporter from the society section might pick up on the fact that Metz served on the commission with his lawyer’s wife, all of this while she was striving to steer Nick toward more genteel clients and climb the social rungs of the city’s arts community.
    She could have told Metz to take his problems elsewhere, but that wouldn’t prevent him from calling Nick on his own. Supporter of the arts he may be. But knowing Dana, she was looking for a sure way to sidestep a possible embarrassment. Nick’s story of a conflict with Metz and the ease with which he disposed of it seems a little too convenient to be believed. Nick decided he would refer the case elsewhere.
    So who does he call? The one lawyer in town he knows who will not touch a drug case. And kazam, poof, it bounces back to him. Now he is not only able to take the case, he is able to tell Dana that he had no choice. He will take care of her friend, but she will pay the price. That brain would be doing double time with the thought that this would not only give him chits in his marriage but latitude in his practice.How could she complain when it was she who brought this particular client to his doorstep? And after all, he had tried to get rid of it.
    By the time I reach the end of the block, I am smiling to myself, convinced that I have untangled the sordid intrigue of Nick’s marital machinations. I am savoring this little victory so that I fail to hear them as individual reports but instead as a continuous burst, like a loud zipper being opened. The shots resonate off the concrete walls of the buildings around me and echo off the four-story government offices that span Front Street. My arms go up, and I crouch against a wall, the instincts of survival taking hold.
    It isn’t until I hear the sound of screeching rubber on the roadway behind me that I turn. A small dark sedan leaves a cloud of exhaust and burned rubber as it peels away from the curb in front of the courthouse. I can hear the engine hammering on eight cylinders, the raw power of an engine pushed to the limit as the car slides through a left turn onto Broadway. The cross traffic braking, screeching to a stop to avoid