The Arraignment

CHAPTER EIGHT

Rocker, Dusha and DeWine is one of the old-line firms in town. No one can remember when Jeremiah Rocker died, and James Dusha’s picture in the outer lobby depicts a proper gent in waistcoat and staid collar, squinting at the camera lens through a pince-nez.

While the firm name may be old, there is nothing sedentary about their business plan. In the last few years, they have gobbled up two other sizable law firms and established other offices in San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C. They have moved to the power and money centers, and word is that they are on the prowl for more, always with an eye for people having contacts to corporate clients.

The firm looms large on the political scene. A few years ago RDD led the charge in Congress lobbying for a bill later known as the Corporate Lawsuit Reform Act. It carried all the right buzz words, everything people hate in the form of “corporations” and “lawsuits” and love by way of “reform.” This particular piece of mischief fed a steep recession, though you wouldn’t know it from the profits scooped in by RDD.

The legislation contained what is known as a “safe harbors” clause for accountants and lawyers, so they could shade their eyes from otherwise obvious fraud committed by their business clients, while taking hefty fees in the process. In this way, the lawyers and accountants could avoid both civil and criminal liability while their corporate clients stole billions from unwary investors. Within four years, mega corporations around the country began folding up like card tables, filing bankruptcy, throwing tens of thousands out of work and transforming retirement plans into piles of worthless paper. Of course RDD couldn’t be touched on any of this. They had legal immunity from Congress.

RDD has become a master player in this game. They have been known to lobby for legislation creating the crime and then to represent the injured in a class action lawsuit afterward. That the victims got three cents on the dollar, and that this was taken to pay gargantuan attorneys’ fees, does not even faze them.

The firm has more than three hundred lawyers and an untold number of legal assistants, secretaries, and drones, strapped to the oars and toiling to keep this great ship of commerce pointed in the right direction: always toward the bottom line. Few in the bar and certainly no one at RDD ever blanches at the notion that justice, if it exists at all, is a mere by-product of making money.

All of this shows up in the firm’s address and the tasteful appointments of its public spaces. RDD occupies the upper five floors of a highrise on the waterfront, overlooking the bay. It is well known that they own the rest of the building beneath them, renting it out until they can raid enough of the competition to fill steerage and bilge.

The executive suite is up on eleven. A Persian carpet long enough to cover the runway at LAX paves the way to the reception, enough knotted wool to have gnarled the fingers and blinded a generation of kids toiling in some dim Middle Eastern sweatshop.

A large bronze sculpture of whales, mother and calf, rests on a pedestal in the center of the room, a metallic statement of the firm’s sensitivity toward motherhood and the environment.

So as to cover all their bases and not offend commercial interests, oil paintings of ships, some of them under sail, dot the walls illuminated by halogen-spot museum lighting. None of this mars the uninhibited vista to the west, across the bay, an unparalleled view of the north end of Coronado Island and its sprawling naval base.

I approach the counter and drop a business card on it. “Paul Madriani to see Mr. Tolt.”

The receptionist, a slender redhead in a business suit and telephone headset, sports fingernails an inch long as she picks up my card and eyes it. I tell her I have an appointment.

“Just a moment.” She punches a button and calls to the back, mentions my name and the appointment, listens, smiles, then pushes the disconnect key. “Mr. Tolt’s assistant will be out in a moment. Please take a seat.”

I try the cushy couch under the massive oil painting of a square-rigged ship in storm-tossed seas and hope that I won’t get wet. The outer office is a busy place. There is the constant bleep of telephones, three receptionists pushing buttons repeating the mantra “Rocker, Dusha,” “Rocker, Dusha”-De Wine, it seems, has somehow gotten lost in the commercial flurry, every billable second being precious. Long-nailed fingers flail the buttons on phones with the speed of flamenco artists, connecting calls to the back offices and downstairs, feeding the money machine. Computerized billing devices attached to the phones will be clicking every six minutes, charging for each tenth of an hour. Slot machines in most casinos don’t provide the house with this steady a take.

In less than a minute, a well-dressed woman in a dark blue business suit appears from around the corner of the reception counter. She is smiling under blond shoulder-length hair. She stops for an instant to gather my card at the counter and then, still reading it, moves toward me.

“Mr. Madriani.”

I push myself up from the couch.

“Glenda Rawlings, Mr. Tolt’s administrative assistant. If you will come this way.”

I follow her past reception and down the corridor. There is only one large double door at the end of the hall. On the dark mahogany in gold letters is the name “Adam Tolt.” She knocks.

“Come in.” The voice is muted behind the solid wood.

She opens the door and leads the way. I have never met Tolt before. He appears as a gray eminence behind a massive dark desk twenty feet away. God would have such surroundings if he had more money. There are Greek vases lining a continuous shelf on three of the four walls, the other being glass. These are obvious relics of great value in earthen hues. On the wall behind Tolt’s desk is a Matisse, not a copy, an original, in shocking colors, vibrant blues and greens.

The surface of Tolt’s desk reveals swirls of inset bird’s-eye inlaid in a delicate border around an exotic dark polished slab that spent an eon surviving on the floor in some primeval tropical forest. It is swept clear of everything except an ornate silver pen set, a telephone with a zillion buttons, and a large leather blotter. On the blotter is a sheaf of papers to which the man is giving his undivided attention. He doesn’t look up as I enter.

“Glenda, I’m going to need the file on the Masery case. Tell Halston I want to see him before I leave. And call Schafer and tell him I want a briefing on the Electric Stylus matter when I get back on Friday.”

With the point of his fountain pen, he scratches a diagonal line across the page he is reading.

“This memo to Wentworth needs some work.” He flips it at her so it sails and she has to catch it in the air a foot off the surface of his desk.

“I don’t know who did the figures,” he says, “but they don’t add up.” By now he is already looking at the next piece of paper in the stack.

“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it right away.”

He scratches the scrawl of his signature, the point of his pen like a needle over the linen letterhead, lifts the page and repeats the process. He does this four more times in quick succession, his name represented by what looks like two letters, an A with a T through it, followed by an inky squiggle. He affixes this to the paper with the staid majesty of one using sealing wax and the royal signet ring to endorse an imperial commission.

Tolt is a fixture not only in the politics of this state, but on the national scene. As a young man he is reputed to have led a trade delegation to the Orient where, within a year, rumors of bribes to foreign officials began to surface, rumors that blossomed into scandal, and led to the collapse of a government over the purchase of defense equipment. The fact that one of Tolt’s clients was the supplier of this equipment did not seem to tarnish the man. That he could do this, his name never being mentioned in the press or any of the inquiries that followed, coined for him the title, in darker corners and behind his back, the “Stealth Fixer.”

Tolt’s political tracks have the same illusive qualities as a shadow. Shine light on them and they disappear. There are those who suspect that his fingerprints would not even adhere to the smooth leather surface of his own briefcase. Currently he sits on more than a dozen corporate boards, as well as the national committee of one of the two great political parties. Given the moral compass of the country over the past quarter century, one day we will no doubt find him on the Supreme Court or in a presidential cabinet.

He doesn’t look up at me until he is twisting the cap back on his pen.

“And Glenda, hold my calls, and call the airport and make sure the Gulfstream is fueled and ready. I don’t want to wait for the crew again.”

“Yes, sir. Your car is downstairs. The driver’s waiting.”

“Thank you, Glenda.”

She hustles out, the picture of efficiency, and closes the door behind her.

Tolt picks up my business card, which she has placed on the blotter near his right hand, and examines it. He wears glasses under a creased forehead. His face is well tanned, and he seems fit for a man I would guess is in his early sixties. “Mr. Mad-re-ani?”

“Mah-dree-ahnee. The a’s are long,” I tell him.

“Have a seat. I don’t have much time. I have to leave for D.C. on business,” he says.

This makes me want to send a national consumer alert to taxpayers. He looks at his watch. “I was told you wanted to see me. Something having to do with Nick Rush.”

“If it would be more convenient, we could meet when you have a little more time. Perhaps when you get back…”

“No. No.” He would rather get rid of me now.

I take a seat. “I’m here at the request of Mrs. Dana Rush. Nick’s widow. She asked me if I could look into some business matters for her.”

“I see.” He shakes his head solemnly. “Tragic,” he says. “How someone with that much promise could be cut down in his prime.” Tolt makes it sound as if the greatest loss is that Nick’s fingers are no longer plying the billing machine in his office.

“Specifically the question regards insurance on her husband’s life, the firm’s key-man policy.”

“Uh-huh.” Suddenly he’s looking for something, swiveling in his chair. Then he sees it: the attache case on the floor behind him, under his credenza. He wheels around so his back is to me for a second as he reaches for it.

“I don’t usually get involved in these kinds of details,” he says. “Have you talked to Humphreys?” Tolt is back around to face me, the attache case open on his desk in front of him. For an instant, I think maybe he has a copy of the key-man policy in this briefcase. Then I realize he doesn’t. He is just packing up, getting ready to leave.

“Humphreys is your man,” he says. “He’s the firm’s business manager. He handles all that stuff. If you have an insurance claim, you lodge it with him.”

“I talked to Mr. Humphreys yesterday. He’s the one who set up our appointment. He said there was some problem, but he couldn’t discuss it. He said I would have to talk with you.”

“Problem? I don’t know anything about a problem. Who do you say you represent?”

“Mrs. Rush, Dana Rush.”

He looks at me as if the name doesn’t click. “Hang on a second.” He picks up the receiver on the phone, hits one of the hot keys on the bottom, and waits for it to ring.

“Hello, George, this is Adam upstairs.” He swings around in his chair, back to me again. “I have a man up here, name of Paul Mad-ri-ani. Says he talked to you on the phone about the key-man policy on Nick Rush.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

“Well, why wasn’t I told?

“Uh-huh.

“Well, yes, but I should have been told.

“Uh-huh. Really. Is anybody looking into this?

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well that’s fine but what’s…

“Uh-huh. So what’s it look like? Does Jim think we’re going to be in the middle?

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, keep me posted, OK?” He hangs up, picks up my card again, taking another look at it.

“You’re right. It looks like there could be a problem,” he says.

“What’s that?”

He puts my card down and is back to piling some papers from a desk drawer into the open attache case in front of him.

“The good news is there was a key-man policy out on Nick. The policy was taken out when he joined the firm. The firm paid the premiums and all,” he says. “It’s part of the compensation package for partners. In return for the insurance payout, heirs agree to forego any claim as to an interest in the law firm,” he says. “The key-man policy is a good way to make sure nobody gets hurt.”

“And?”

“The bad news,” says Tolt, “is that the named beneficiary doesn’t seem to be your client.”

“What do you mean?”

“How well did you know Nick?” he asks.

“Pretty well.”

“Then you knew he was married once before.”

I nod.

“That’s the problem,” he says. “The former wife’s name is on the policy. I think I met her once at a firm social function. Name of Margaret. Do you know her?”

I take a deep sigh and nod.

“She probably doesn’t know her name is still on the policy. Not yet anyway.” He’s futzing in the briefcase, making sure he has everything. “It puts us in a difficult position,” he says. “Any claim on the policy by somebody else, and the carrier is going to have to notify her. Doing insurance work, I’m sure you understand.”

“I don’t do insurance work.”

“I thought you said…”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your card says you’re a lawyer.”

“I do criminal work. That’s how I knew Nick.”

“Oh,” he says and stops packing. His bushy eyebrows, furry and gray, turn heavy hooded and move to the center of his forehead like two migrating mice.

He picks up my card once more and takes a closer look this time, reading it as if to himself: “Madriani. Madriani. I remember. You defended in that thing about a year ago, they found the body in her office out by the beach. What was it?”

“The Hale case.”

“That’s it. The old man who won the lottery. The victim was a woman.”

“Zolanda Suade,” I say.

“That’s the one.” He closes the lid on the attache case and looks at me. “That was a fair piece of work,” says Tolt. “And all that free publicity.”

“And I thought nobody noticed.”

“Ever do any white-collar work?” he asks.

“Some.”

“Really.” His eyebrows go up a notch, wondering, I’m sure, how fast my fingers might be able to work the billing software on the unattended computer in Nick’s office. He leaves the closed briefcase on his desk and settles back in his chair. “How long did you say you knew Nick?”

“We go back a few years.”

He sits silent, looking over the desk at me, waiting for details. I offer none.

“Unfortunately I didn’t know him all that well. I regret that I didn’t take more time with the man. I suspect he resented it, but unfortunately Nick didn’t understand how hard it is running a firm like this. Grumbling partners, every one of them wanting bigger bonuses at the end of the year, having to reason with them constantly in order to expand. Practicing law in a firm like this is like trying to herd cats and they’re trying to fight. It doesn’t help that the last two years we’re down on profits.”

I’m starting to bleed for him, looking at the priceless Matisse framed in gilt behind his chair.

“Too many lawyers,” he says.

“From what I hear, still looking for more.”

He smiles.

“Nick and I would pass each other coming and going. Talk at Christmas parties. I think we collaborated twice on cases. Client business matters that went awry.”

What he means is that Nick was called in when the firm needed help cleaning up a criminal mess left behind by one of their clients whose business practices went up on two wheels cutting corners.

“And then he did a few drug cases. I don’t think there were a lot of them. We tried to keep him in the white-collar area as much as possible.”

“I see. That’s as far down the criminal food chain as the firm wanted to go, is that it?”

“Something like that. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want you to think I would disparage what other lawyers do. Their clients are certainly entitled to a vigorous defense.”

“But not here?”

“Well…” The answer is in his expression. “Unfortunately we’re a little thin on the criminal side right now. I mean we have a couple of young associates, but Nick was the guiding light. So we couldn’t afford to have him doing other things. And now we do have a problem. With Nick gone, we have to start looking for somebody to fill the void. Nick had cases. They need tending,” he says. “That’s your field. Maybe you could give us some recommendations?”

If I didn’t know better, I might think he was offering me a job. Crisis of the moment: like men of power everywhere, Adam Tolt realizes the only problems that count at this moment are those belonging to him.

“Maybe we should wait for the body to get cold,” I tell him.

“Of course,” he says. “Thoughtless of me.” The words may pass through his lips, but the commercial squint does not leave his eyes. Tolt is a cross between FDR and the devil. He has the toothy grin, the flamboyant hail-fellow-well-met, and the presence of command, everything but the cigarette holder and the paralysis. In fact, he seems remarkably fit and moves like a man half his age.

“I wish I could do more for you,” he says. “But you understand the problem? On the insurance?”

“Yes.”

“What do you plan to do now?”

“I’ll go back and tell Mrs. Rush. Can I get a copy of the policy?”

“I don’t see why not. I’ll make a note and have one mailed to your office. Of course, they could resolve it,” he says. “The two wives.”

“How?”

“Agree to share the policy.”

“What’s the face amount?” I ask.

“Two million,” he says. “They’d have to agree to each take half.”

“Why would the named beneficiary agree to that?”

“Well, she could have some problems too. There could be a property settlement agreement when they divorced that could undercut her claim to the insurance.”

“Is there a settlement agreement?”

“I assume,” he says. “You would think leaving her name on the policy after a divorce was an oversight.” He looks at me over steepled forefingers, his elbows on the arms of the chair, then sits up and clicks the snap locks closed on his briefcase. A grand an hour, a hundred sixty-five dollars every ten minutes, small talk off the clock gets expensive.

“And if it can’t be resolved by settlement?” I ask.

He makes a face, looks at me. “Then I suppose the carrier will have to file an interpleader.”

What he means is a stakeholder’s action, a legal free-for-all in which the insurance company will throw up its hands, confess that it owes money but doesn’t know who to pay. A court will have to sort it out. After a year or two of litigation, with lawyers for the insurance company and the two women brawling in open court, a check will be made out, but whose name will be on the payout line is anybody’s guess. The only thing more certain than death is that the lion’s share will go to the lawyers.

Harry was right. I’ve stepped in it. Now I will have to call Dana and give her the sorry news. The old saw is on the mark: the last people on earth to have their wills up-to-date and their affairs in order when they die are attorneys.