The Arraignment (8 page)

It is a large and hushed crowd that gathers under the hand-hewn beams of the old Spanish baroque church, its thick adobe walls magnifying every cough and the shuffling of shoes on the Spanish tile floor.

We go through the calisthenics of a Catholic service, from the pews to the kneelers and up on our feet again as the priest intones a final blessing over the coffin, sprinkles it
with holy water, and swings a giant brass incense burner from a chain as it issues clouds of gray smoke.

The information from the cops has been running through my head like a ticker tape since our meeting—the name Jamaile Enterprises and the assertion that Metz and Nick were in business together.

It is possible they were simply trying to get a rise. If Ortiz and his partner failed in that regard, they did manage to plant a seed that is now sprouting suspicion. The question being: If Nick knew Metz from some prior dealings, why wouldn’t he tell me? I have thought about little else for the past two nights. I have no hard answer, and this is troubling. Was Jamaile a criminal enterprise? It is possible, though knowing Nick he would never be so thick as to put his own name on the documents of formation—unless perhaps he discovered the nature of the business after the fact. This would explain why he wanted to shed Metz as a client. Which leads to another question: Did Nick see the situation as dangerous? I saw no signs of it that morning when we talked in the restaurant. I find it hard to believe he would use me in that way. I am convinced that whatever happened, Nick never saw it coming.

His coffin rests on a rolling gurney centered before the gilded altar above which plaster saints stand like stone guards in their alcoves. A large wooden crucifix bearing the figure of Christ dominates this picture. The odor of incense and burning candle wax hangs thick in the air as if suspended from the rafters.

Harry and I have arrived late and stand in one of the pews near the rear of the church. There are a few political figures here, people Nick knew and worked with over the years, two judges from the federal courts and a city councilman. A few pews up, there is a former state legislator for whom Nick beat a narcotics rap years ago. Nick was sufficiently slick that even the voters acquitted the man at election time, leaving him in office until term limits finally tapped him out.

Senior partners from Nick’s firm take up two rows in the
front, right behind Dana, who is decked out in black complete with a veil and flanked by friends handing her Kleenex.

I have looked for Margaret, Nick’s first wife, but if she is present I don’t see her. It is one of those things you think about, even with all the acrimony of the divorce, would she make an appearance? If she has, she has burrowed into the crowd quietly.

The wheels of the gurney, one of them squeaking as if in protest, rumble over the ancient Spanish tiles, as the pallbearers slowly roll the coffin down the aisle toward the door and the waiting hearse. Interment is to be at Eternal Hills a few miles away, a private affair for family and close friends.

The casket rolls by, followed by Dana, her face covered by the veil. By her side is the tall gentleman I had seen on the television news driving her to and from the house—austere and slender, dark hair with just enough gray around the temples to offer the image of authority. He steadies her, a hand on her elbow, the other around her shoulder. An older blond woman is on the other side, probably a sister as there is a clear family resemblance.

The mourners file out behind them from the front of the church, so Harry and I are almost the last to leave. As we make our way to the great plaza in front of the mission, the hearse is already loaded. The undertaker’s staff scurries about trying to get the family into the limos and the floral arrangements back onto the trucks for the ride to the cemetery.

The limo carrying Dana is pulled up tight behind the last gleaming black truck, its windows darkened, its rear door on the other side open.

“Mr. Madriani.” I hear my name before I can see where the voice is coming from. When I turn, standing in front of me is the man who had been holding up Dana as she walked down the aisle.

“We’ve not met,” he says and extends a hand. “I’m Nathan Fittipaldi, a friend of Mrs. Rush.”

We shake.

He wears a dark striped Italian suit and silk tie, an
expensive linen shirt, and hand-burnished calf-leather black loafers with tassels poking from beneath pant legs pressed to the sharpness of a knife’s edge. Everything has the sartorial pedigree of being worn once and discarded.

“She’s asked me if I would talk to you. She’s not really in any shape right now.”

“I understand.”

“She would like you to stop by her house. She would like to talk with you. I told her I was sure you wouldn’t mind.”

“Of course not. When?”

“Whenever it’s convenient. I wouldn’t do it today,” he says.

“Sure.”

“You might call before you drive out, just to make sure she’s in. I’ll give you the number.”

I tell him I have it. He tells me it’s been changed. It seems Dana has been getting phone calls from the press.

“Mr. Rush had given it out to some clients,” says Fittipaldi. “We suspect one of them was probably the source for the press. These people have no sense of respect for those in grief.” It is unclear whether Fittipaldi is talking about Nick’s criminal clients or the fourth estate, though I suspect he would lump them both in the same social set. I suspect that Dana was not alone in her low opinion of Nick’s clientele.

He jots the new unlisted number on the back of a business card and hands it to me.

“Good to meet you,” he says. “Dana tells me you are a good friend. She will need us all in the weeks and months ahead.”

I smile but say nothing.

Then before I can ask why she wants to see me, he is gone, around the back of the limo. He disappears into the open door on the other side, it closes, and the procession pulls away.

“What’s that all about?” says Harry.

“I don’t know.” I look at the business card in my hand,
expensive velum with a watermark no less. I turn it over to the printed side. It reads:

F
ITTIPALDI
A
RT
& A
NTIQUITIES

Nathan Fittipaldi, Owner

Agents for Acquisition by the Discreet Collector
London, New York, Beverly Hills, San Diego

There is no phone number, only a fax and a web address, “Discretion.com”.

Home at night with Sarah is not always a quiet time. She does her homework, one leg folded under the other in one of the sofa-style armchairs in our living room, with the television going full bore, watching
Star Trek
. With this she gets straight As. How she does it, I don’t know.

Her hair, thick as a pony’s tail, brunette with flashes of auburn like spun copper whenever sunlight hits it, is put up in cornrows tonight, something new. She says it makes it easier to handle in the morning.

She is becoming a young woman, not only in the way she dresses and cares for her appearance, but in matters of judgment as well. Sarah is her own person. When peer group pressures seem to slay other kids, my daughter has demonstrated a maturity that at times embarrasses me in my more exuberant and rash moments. We have played board games of conquest in which she has demonstrated a kind of strategic thinking I would never have credited to someone her age, with an element of compassion for those lesser competitors, protecting them from my native male aggressions, until she crushed me. This, at fifteen. I shudder to consider the heights to which this may take her, but feel more confidence in that generation knowing there are people like her in it.

Tonight we are left to our own thoughts. Sarah to her science and history, and me to the little Palm device that belonged to Nick. So far I’ve figured out the screen and the little green button at the bottom that turns it on. But I’ve been
afraid to do much beyond this without instructions, afraid that given my ten thumbs for all things computer, I will lose the data stored inside. It is one thing to walk off with possible evidence in a capital case. It’s another to lose it.

At the top of the screen, each time I turn it on, is an image of a battery. It appears to be draining slowly. The black shaded area of energy sliding a little more to the left each day. When it disappears, I suspect I will lose whatever information is stored inside.

I lift the tiny battery cover in the back. Two AAAs are housed inside. I study these for a moment.

“Sarah?”

“Emm?” She doesn’t look up from her schoolwork, her focus riveted on the book cradled in her lap.

“Do we have any batteries, triple As?”

“The small ones?”

“Yes.”

“I think so.” She goes to the refrigerator where she keeps these, mostly for the walkman she listens to constantly in the car.

“Like this?” She holds one up.

“That’s it.”

“How many do you need?”

“Two.”

She brings them over to me. “What’s that?”

“I think they call it a handheld device.”

“Shuur. I know that. But what’s the little thing on top?”

“It’s a cell phone.”

“Cool. Where’d you get it?”

“It belonged to a friend.”

“He let you borrow it?”

“Sort of,” I tell her. “Do you know anything about them?”

“Some of the kids at school have them. Theirs aren’t that nice.” Sarah’s looking over my shoulder, big brown eyes checking out the device. “What do you want to know?”

“How to change the batteries.”

“Oh, Dad. Here, give it to me.” She reaches for it, but I hold it away.

“I can’t take a chance on losing the information stored inside.”

“Maybe it has a bubble memory,” she says.

I’ve heard of bubble gum and bubblehead. But bubble memory is a new one.

“If it does, then everything’s stored inside, on a chip or something. We learned about it in technology. Even if you disconnect the power it stays there.”

“How do I find out if it has one of these memories?”

“You could look online. Something that cool must have a site. How much does it cost?”

“I don’t know.”

“My birthday’s coming up,” she says.

“I’m buying you batteries,” I tell her.

She gives me that look of mock exasperation, something of her mother’s to remember her by.

“Can I see it? I won’t break it. I promise,” she says. Reluctantly I hand it over.

“Hey, this little button on top. It’s the cell phone.”

“I know. Don’t touch it.”

“Relax,” she says. The same thing Nick told me before they shot him. “Why can’t we just turn it on? See if it works.”

“Because it may drain the batteries.” I don’t tell her that the cops have probably landed on Nick’s cell phone account by now. If so, the service provider will have a trap on the line so they can isolate the cell by location if any signals go out from the phone, even if it’s just looking to go online.

“If there’s a site on the Internet, do you think you could find it?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I could look.”

It takes her less than five minutes. Sarah works her nimble fingers over the keyboard and rolls the mouse, using Yahoo! to check sites. On the fourth one she hits pay dirt, a logo that matches the one on the device, two curved crossed slashes with a dot between them at the bottom, Handspring.com.

We scan the page for half a minute or so.

“I don’t see anything that looks like directions. Do you?” she says.

“No. So what do we do?”

“Gimme a second.” She punches the button on the page for customer support. An e-mail message screen pops up.

Sarah types out a message, telling them that we’ve lost the directions and need to know how to change the batteries. And asks whether we’ll lose any stored data.

Ten minutes later there’s a reply. Attached are a set of instructions for operation. The e-mail message itself advises us to sync the device to a desktop computer and then change the batteries. It tells us that if we can’t do this, we have only one minute once we start removing the old batteries to replace them with new ones. After that the device will crash and we will lose any data inside.

“Looks like there’s no memory inside,” she says, “unless there’s batteries.”

Without the hot-sync cradle to attach to the computer and the software to run it, we can’t back up the device by syncing it to the desktop.

“You want to do it or do you want me to?” Sarah’s talking about changing the batteries.

“I’ll do it.”

Armed with the two new batteries and the printout from the Internet, I lift the battery cover off the back once more with my fingernail. My hands are shaking as if I’m defusing a bomb. I pull one battery and quickly slide a fresh one into the slot. I pull the second. I pop the other one in, then realize I’ve gotten it in backward. I almost drop the device on the floor. Sarah grabs it before it can hit the carpet. She holds it while I turn the battery around and slip it in the right way. Then I look at her. “You think we got it?”

“I don’t know. Turn it on.”

I snap the battery cover back in place, flip the device over in my hand, and hit the green button on the bottom. When the screen pops up, the battery indicator hasn’t moved. It’s still where it was before, near empty. Oh, shit. An instant later it flickers. The shaded area suddenly slides across the
image of the battery, all the way to the right. It is now fully charged. I let out a sigh.

“Gee, Dad, you really ought to calm down. This stuff really gets you uptight. It’s just a little computer,” she says.

“Yeah. Right.”

“Here, let me see it.”

I hand it over and try to catch my breath.

Sarah starts tapping the screen with the stylus. “You can do graffiti on it too,” she says. “Do you want me to show you?”

“No. No graffiti,” I tell her.

“Dad, it’s not the kind of graffiti you think. Look,” she says. “You can write letters on this section of the screen to call things up. See?” She orders up Nick’s address book and makes the letter “c” in a small window at the bottom of the screen. Suddenly the book jumps to the section with names starting with “C.”