The Arraignment (14 page)

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve received a copy of the policy?”

“Yes.”

“And you know your name is on it as the beneficiary?”

“I do.”

“You’re also aware that there was a property settlement agreement at the time of the divorce?”

She looks at me but doesn’t respond. She knows this is the issue.

“I take it you’re represented by a lawyer in this matter?”

“Why should I have to tell you that?”

“You don’t have to tell me anything. If you are, represented by a lawyer I mean, that’s good. If so, I should be talking to him.”

“It’s a woman.” She says it in a tone that makes me think male lawyers are not to be trusted.

“If you’ll give me her name, I’ll take it up with her and she can communicate with you.”

“Her name is Susan Glendenin.”

“She works for the Petersen law firm downtown?”

“That’s right.”

“I know her.” A stroke of good luck. Susan Glendenin is a good lawyer; more important, she is a voice of reason in a bar increasingly peopled by lawyers who pride themselves on taking no prisoners and who operate on the maxim “screw reason, let’s go to war.”

“What’s important is to understand that this is a threshold legal issue, the question of who is to be paid under the insurance policy.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the way it’s structured, the insurance company has to pay somebody. They don’t particularly care who it is, just as long as they’re out from under when it’s all over.”

“And?”

“There may be a way for both of you to win.”

“What was your name again?”

“Paul Madriani.” I reach into the breast pocket of my suit coat, find the small stash of business cards, pull one out, and hand it to her.

“Let me tell you, Mr. Madriani, so that you understand.
I will take two million dollars and not a dime less,” she says. “You can go back to your client, that harlot, home wrecker,” she says, “and tell her that as far as I’m concerned she can go to hell. Fuck her, fuck you, and fuck the horse you rode in on. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things I have to take care of.” She gets up out of the chair.

“I have one question,” I say.

“What’s that?”

“Do you mean it when you say you’ll only release your claim to the insurance policy in return for two million dollars?”

She looks at me through mean little slits, the anger of a lifetime welled up in her eyes, bitterness and betrayal. “You can bet your life on it,” she says.

T
his morning Dana is wearing a pair of silk pajamas, black and slinky, bare-footed, sitting up straight on the edge of a wingback chair in her living room, one leg curled under her, trying to explain how she found Nick’s copy of the insurance policy but forgot to call and tell me.

“I swear to you, Mr. Madriani. I got busy. It slipped my mind.”

“Call me Paul,” I tell her.

“All right. Paul. I found it after we talked. It was up in his safe, in the study.” Dana looks at me over a haggard smile, desperate to be believed, innocent, beseeching, sitting next to the fireplace.

“You do believe me?” She flashes her long lashes in my direction. The body language is good, the shiver in her voice authentic, so if I didn’t know her better, I might even buy this. She sent me on a goose chase to the law firm to get a copy of the policy when she already knew what was in it.

“Please believe me,” she says.

I stop looking at her. Instead, seated on the couch, I turn my attention to one of those kinetic toys that Nick had strewn around his office. This one is on the coffee table, the kind with five shiny steel spheres on strings, clicking against one another as they transfer energy through a cycle. I let her listen to this for a second or two before I ask: “How did you get the safe open?”

“I found the combination.”

“Where was it?”

“It was in one of the drawers. In Nick’s desk upstairs.”

“Maybe we should look and see what else is inside the safe. There could be other important documents.” I start to get up off the couch.

“No. That’s not necessary,” she says. “I’ve checked everything that was there. There’s nothing else.”

I look at her. She refuses to return my gaze. “You know, you’re pretty good. You’re not the best, but then you haven’t had a lot of practice. At least I hope you haven’t.”

“Practice at what?”

“Lying.”

“What do you mean?”

“You expect me to believe that Nick would go to all the trouble of locking his private papers in a safe and then leave the combination in his desk drawer where any after-school roustabout teen who broke into his house could find it? Maybe you were married to a different Nick Rush than the one I knew.” I start to get up off the couch like I am going to leave.

“All right.” Now the pleading tone is gone from her voice, replaced by an edge. Her posture sags in the chair, as she looks down, smoothing the soft wrinkles from the silk fabric on one thigh. “Fine. I had the insurance policy all the time.” Then in a softer, weaker voice, the kind she uses for feminine persuasion, she says, looking up at me, “But I didn’t know what to do. I saw her name on it and I panicked. I was desperate, broke. I had no one to turn to. You do understand? You don’t know what it’s like not having someone . . . Well you know. Someone to rely on.”

“Someone like Nick?” I say.

“Well, yes. He handled everything. Our finances, taxes, the investments. I had no idea. I thought we were secure. I don’t know anything about that stuff.”

“Then how do you know you’re broke?”

She takes a deep breath, sighs, looks away from me at a blank wall. “I, I had Nathan look at our finances. After Nick died.”

“Fittipaldi?”

She nods.

“It’s good to know you weren’t entirely alone,” I tell her.

She doesn’t appreciate the sarcasm. “I had to turn to someone. What did you expect me to do?”

“Why didn’t you turn over the insurance policy to Mr. Fittipaldi?”

“We talked about it. He didn’t know what to do either.”

“Ahh-uhh.”

“I figured you were a friend of Nick’s. I thought . . . I thought that since you’d known Nick before we were married, that perhaps . . .”

“You thought I’d go over to the firm, find out that your name wasn’t on the policy, that I might feel sorry for you, and that maybe I would go over and talk to Margaret Rush, is that it?”

“Well.” First she looks at the ceiling, then back to me, batting her lashes a little. “Yes. I thought you might know her. That maybe you were a friend.”

“You thought I might be able to intercede, is that it?”

“Was I wrong?” she says.

“No. Maybe a little naive,” I tell her, “but that was more than made up for by your seamless manipulation of the situation. I mean it was worth a try, friends being friends and all.”

“Yes. I thought she might listen to you.”

I laugh and click the little steel balls on the table one more time. “Actually I’ve only met her once. But even if we were bosom buddies, you’d have to think very highly of friendship to believe that Maggie Rush or anybody else
would give up a claim on two million bucks based on that.”

“So she refused?”

“In words that I wouldn’t want to repeat in polite company,” I tell her.

Dana is up out of the chair, turns her back to me, the nails of one hand to her mouth as if she’s going to bite them to the quick. I gaze at her reflection in the mirror over the fireplace. She stands there, nibbling, pupils searching an invisible horizon as she contemplates her next move.

Suddenly she turns, looks at me, and says: “What do we do now?”

Before I can say anything, she’s sitting on the couch next to me, pushing the kinetic toy out of reach so that she has my undivided attention. Silk rubbing against the worsted wool of suit pants.

“I suppose you should call Nathan and give him the news,” I tell her. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Probably go back to the office and get some work done.”

“You know what I mean,” she says. She reaches over and takes my left hand in both of hers. “You will help me, won’t you? You talked to the woman. You know how she feels toward me. She hates me. You know that Nick didn’t intend to leave her all that money. They were divorced.”

“That’s true.” I start to get up off the couch.

“You’re not going?” she says. “Please don’t go. You’re the only one who can help me. You talked to the firm. You know they treated Nick unfairly. You would think they would want to help now.”

“I talked to Adam Tolt.”

“And?”

“It seems he’d rather not get involved. As far as he’s concerned, it’s between you and the insurance company.”

This ratchets up her anxiety so that she squeezes my hand until the blood leaves my fingertips.

“You were Nick’s friend. You wouldn’t let them do this. I mean not to your friend’s wife. Tell me you wouldn’t.”

“You need to get a good lawyer,” I tell her. Harry would be proud of me.

“I’ve got one,” she says. “You.”

“No, I mean a lawyer who knows how to find his way around an insurance policy. Trap all those little wiggle words, nail down the exclusions, screw the definitions to the floor so the insurance company can’t move them around on you. And that settlement agreement Nick had with Margaret. I hope he had a good lawyer draw it up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because that’s the key,” I tell her. “If that wasn’t drafted properly, well, let’s just say no lawyer, especially a good one who knows insurance, is going to want to waste much time on it.”

“You don’t think I have a chance?” I’ve seen people accused in capital cases with less apprehension etched in their eyes. “Have you looked at it?” she says. “The settlement agreement.”

“No. But contract law is not my strong suit.”

She drops my hand like a dead fish.

“Who, who should I get?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must know somebody. If it’s money, I can pay,” she says.

“I thought you were broke.”

“I can get it.”

“It’s not just money.”

“Then what is it?”

“Let me think about it for a few days,” I tell her.

“Oh, good. Of course. Take all the time you need. You must think I’m awful. I mean to get you involved like this.”

“What are friends for, right?”

“I knew you’d help me.” At the moment the friends she’s thinking about all have Grant’s picture engraved on them.

“Nick must have shared a great deal with you,” I tell her.

“What?” Her mind is other places.

“I mean about his work. What he did?”

“Not really.”

“From what he told me, the two of you were very close.”

“Well, yes, we loved each other, if that’s what you mean.”

“And I’ll bet there was pillow talk.” I look at her. She looks at me. I smile. She blushes.

“Well, a little.”

“Good. Then he must have told you about Jamaile Enterprises?”

She looks at me, a quizzical expression. “No. I don’t think so. What is it?”

“It’s a corporation—or was until it failed to pay its franchise tax fee.”

“What does it have to do with Nick?”

“He was one of the corporate directors.”

“I don’t know anything about it. I’ve never heard of it. He never said anything to me,” she says.

“I thought he might have, since the only other officer in this company was an acquaintance of yours.”

“Who is that?”

“Gerald Metz.”

Her eyes grow dark with this news, pupils shifting as she processes the information. “What? No. He never said a thing.” I can sense questions fulminating in her mind like popcorn over a hot fire. “When did they do this? Did Nick tell you?”

“Over a year ago, and no, Nick didn’t tell me.”

If she knows anything, you would not be able to detect it from the expression of confusion on her face. “I don’t understand.”

“That makes two of us. Nick told me you met Mr. Metz on the arts commission.”

“That’s right.”

“When was that?”

“I don’t know. Probably the first meeting I attended,” she says. “Now that you mention it, he seemed to know who I was.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. He just came up and introduced himself. Said, ‘You’re married to Nick Rush, aren’t you?’ ”

“Then he admitted he knew Nick?”

“No. I asked him, and he said he only knew him by name. He’d seen it in the paper. That sort of thing. With the kind of clients Nick had, he couldn’t keep his name out of the papers even if he wanted to, which he didn’t.”

I sit there silently mulling this information. Dana’s not looking at me. Instead her eyes are cast down at the carpet.

“How did you find out about this, this business thing between the two of them?”

“The police,” I tell her. “We were able to confirm . . .”

“The police?”

“Yes.”

“They never said anything to me.”

“Maybe they didn’t want to bother you with it.” I can tell this weighs heavily.

“How did they find out?”

“I don’t know.”

There’s a long silence as she thinks. “I told them that I had referred Metz to Nick,” she says.

“Well, as far as you knew at the time, that was the truth. Right?”

“Absolutely.”

I can tell from the stark expression this has not been one of Dana’s better days. First the insurance, now the cops with information that her husband had dealings with Metz before she knew him, information that is inconsistent with what she had told them. She has to wonder what they are thinking.

“How did Metz approach you regarding his legal problems?” I ask. “What exactly did he say?”

I can tell her mind is already headed in the same direction, trying to reconstruct events. “It . . . it was at a meeting.” Now she’s flustered. Information overload, too much of it disturbing, or maybe she just wants me to think so.

“I think it was in March. Last spring anyway. He came up to me after the meeting and said he knew that I was married to a good lawyer and that he needed some help with a
business problem he was having. I told him my husband did criminal law, and he said that—that’s what he needed.”

“Did he give you any details about this problem?”