The Arraignment Read Free Page B

week. It’s on me. I promise. We’ll do it at the club. You haven’t seen the club. It comes with the partnership,” he says. “That and a window.”
    Nick has what he wants: me on the hook. “Dana told him you’d give him a call to set up an appointment.”
    “I thought you said he was gonna call me?”
    “Did I? You better call him. He might forget. I told Dana you’d understand.”
    I was wrong. Nick has already gotten his treat from Dana.
    “Listen, I’m sure this guy’s clean. I mean, my wife doesn’t run around with felons.” He looks at me over the top of his half-frames. “That’s my job.”
    He’s got me by the arm now, guiding me toward the side door, the one that leads to the hallway outside instead ofreception where he has clients stacked up like planes at La-Guardia.
    “How well does Dana know this guy?”
    “Listen, I gotta tell you a story.” Nick changes the subject. He’s good at that.
    “A couple of weeks ago, Dana takes me to this exhibit. The guy who gets the blue ribbon. Catch this. His piece of art is a cardboard wall painted dark blue with all this glitter shit on it. It’s covered with condoms, all different colors, glued on like deflated elephant trunks. The artist calls the thing ‘Living Fingers.’ I ask Dana what it means. She says she doesn’t have a clue.”
    “Maybe it’s in the eye of the beholder,” I tell him.
    “Something’s in somebody’s eye,” says Nick. “Because later that night this particular Picasso sells for twenty-seven hundred bucks to some old broad wearing a silk cape and a felt fedora with a feather in it. I guess she figures the fingers will come to life when she gets it home. Don’t get me wrong,” he says. “I like art as well as the next guy.”
    This from a man who in college took art history early in the morning so he could sleep through the slide presentations in the dark.
    “You didn’t answer my question.”
    “What’s that?” he says.
    “How well does Dana know this guy?”
    “Who, the guy who did the painting?”
    “Gerald Metz,” I say.
    “Oh, him. She doesn’t know him at all. They meet once a month. Give him a call. And next week we’ll do lunch,” he says. He looks at me with those big brown eyes, the last thing I see as I find myself standing just across the threshold of his door, watching the walnut paneling as it swooshes closed in my face. Chalk another victory up to Nick Rush.

CHAPTER TWO
    “ I t’s bullshit. I don’t know what Rush told you, but you can take my word. I never been involved in anything illegal. Check me out if you don’t believe me. I never even been arrested.”
    Gerald Metz is fit, tall, and tan. He has the look of a man who works out-of-doors, except that he doesn’t do this with his hands. His nails are manicured and his palms uncalloused, causing me to suspect that the only thing they’ve grasped recently are the drivers and irons from a golf bag.
    His speech is a little rough, hints of the self-made, up from what may have been some rough streets in another life. He is not what one conjures when thinking of the arts and those who patronize them. He wears a polo shirt under a blue blazer.
    “That’s why when this stuff came up, I was surprised. Why the hell would the grand jury want to talk to me?”
    It has been two weeks since I met with Nick, and Metzis in my office, a thin leather folio in his lap and a lot of nervous chatter on his lips.
    If I had to guess, I would say he is in his mid-forties. He is angular, with a high forehead and receding hairline slicked back on the sides.
    He hands me a bunch of papers from his briefcase, then leans back in the chair, trying to put on an air of confidence like someone putting on a suit of clothes that doesn’t quite fit. The fingers of one hand tap a cadence on the arm of his chair, one leg crossed over the other, while his eyes dart nervously around the office, trying to find something to settle on besides me. Beads of perspiration