The Arraignment (33 page)

“Maybe he needed the money. We’ve looked at his bank account,” says Padgett. “The cupboard was getting a little bare. Besides, you think cops and prosecutors never turn to the dark side?” says Padgett.

“In your case, I’d make an exception,” I tell him.

What is bothering me is not that Nick was above reproach, but that he was no man’s fool.

“Besides, Nick would never get involved in a drug deal with a client. That would be like serving candy to you people. Tell me your mouth doesn’t salivate at the thought? Nailing some defense attorney caught up with somebody like Metz. Hmm?” Ortiz gives me a face of concession. “Now tell me, have you found any drug connection in this thing? With either of them?”

“You just gave us one. The two brothers down in Mexico,” says Padgett.

“I didn’t say it was drugs.”

“But that’s what you thought.”

“And maybe that’s where we’re making our mistake.”

“So what do you think it was?” says Ortiz.

I take a deep breath, blow out some air, look at Harry, about to cross the Rubicon. “Ever heard of something called Mejicano Rosen?”

Ortiz looks at his partner, who shakes his head. “What is it?”

“We don’t know. According to Espinoza, it’s what these people in Mexico were dealing.”

“Maybe something new. Manufactured,” says Padgett. “I can check with the narcs, DEA. They mighta heard of it.”

“I’ve made phone calls,” I tell them. “Nobody who does narcotics cases in California has ever heard of it. I don’t think it’s narcotics,” I tell him.

“So what is it?” says Ortiz.

I shake my head. “I was hoping to talk to Espinoza and find out.”

“We know who paid to spring him. Hired the lawyer and posted the bail,” says Ortiz. “Three guesses. The first two don’t count.”

“Saldado.”

“I figured he must have picked him up from outside the facility. He wasn’t going to let him go far.”

“Is that his real name?” says Harry.

“We don’t know. We’re checking prints from the apartment. If he’s ever been booked in the states, they should have something. We may get another name.”

“More than likely, you’ll get twenty of them,” says Harry.

“We couldn’t find a driver’s license under Hector Saldado. So there’s a good chance it’s an alias,” says Padgett.

“What about the car?” I ask.

“What car?”

“The one out in front. The rusted-out Blazer.”

Ortiz looks at me like I’m speaking Farsi.

“Broken back window. Black plastic.”

Ortiz looks at Padgett, who shakes his head.

“There wasn’t any car.” By the time Ortiz looks back at
me, he knows there was. “Where the hell did it go? You didn’t happen to get a number off the plates?”

I shake my head. “It was there when I went in. You’re telling me it was gone before your people got there?”

“We know he didn’t take it.” Padgett’s up out of his chair now, worried that somehow he might have let it slip through his fingers. He had the outside detail.

“Check with traffic. They cordoned the area around the house,” says Ortiz.

“Maybe it wasn’t his?” says Padgett.

“Espinoza told me about it. It’s how I found the place. The way he talked, he thought it belonged to Saldado.”

“Then who took it?” says Ortiz.

I don’t have an answer.

Ortiz turns to his partner. “Check the other tenants in the building, see if anybody besides Saldado is missing. Now,” he says. “Use the phone outside. And get a description out on the car.”

I give them details about the black plastic over the back window.

“That should make it easier to I.D.,” says Ortiz. “Get somebody on the horn. Find out who’s over there. We still have somebody on site?”

Padgett is not sure.

“See if any of the neighbors have anything on the plates. One of them might remember. And Norm—” Padgett is already out the door. He sticks his head back in. “Call down to the border. Have ’em put a stop on the vehicle if it tries to cross.”

T
his morning Adam Tolt calls. He wants to meet for lunch. I suspect he wants an answer on his offer to join the firm.

Just after noon, and I find him at a table on the terrace of the Del Coronado, sitting under one of the large umbrellas and looking over the top of his menu toward the blue Pacific. It is one of those days that makes everyone want to move to San Diego.

“Sorry I’m late.”

“No problem.” He already has a drink. “What can they get you?”

I order one of the boutique brews on tap, and the waiter goes to get it. I slip my coat over the back of the chair and sit.

“It must be casual Wednesday,” I tell him. Tolt is sans the suit and tie today, wearing slacks and a polo shirt.

“A few times a year I swing through the other offices unannounced. Just drop in, little inspection, see how things are going, talk to the partners, that sort of thing. I take the
Gulfstream since it gets me there quickly, and I may as well be comfortable,” he says.

“Must be nice.”

“Leaving tonight. It’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

There is a pause. “I read about what happened in the papers,” he says. “This fellow Espinoza.” He takes a sip from his tumbler, scotch on the rocks. Adam wants to know what’s going on. Why I didn’t tell him about Espinoza before this.

“You have a more exciting practice than most of us,” he says.

“What? Does this mean the firm is no longer interested?”

“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.”