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 of reception 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
“ It’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 Metz is 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 pop out like acne on his forehead.
“Mind if I smoke?” he says.
“Prefer it if you don’t.”
He exhales a deep breath. If he is called before the grand jury, the man is going to sweat a river.
I read through the papers he has handed me.
“Didn’t even know these people. Met ’em once,” he says.
“Uh-huh.” What I’m seeing are a lot of first names on the salutations of their letters to him: “Dear Jerry.”
From the left sleeve of Metz’s blazer pokes an expensive-looking gold Rolex. He keeps sneaking peaks at it as he talks.
“Do you have another appointment?” I ask.
“Hmm. No, no.” He tugs the sleeve down to cover the watch and puts his hand over it.
“I’m just wondering if this is gonna take long.”
“That depends. Are these all the papers you have?”
He nods. “That’s it.”
There’s a hint of an accent, nothing strong. I’m thinking Florida by way of New Jersey.
“We didn’t even do the deal,” he says. “The whole thing fell apart.” Comes the flood of nervous talk. “Can’t figure why they’d be interested in me. Maybe you could just call ’em and tell ’em that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know, tell the attorney I don’t know nothin’.”
“The U.S. attorney?”
“Why not?”
I look at him and smile. “If I did that, they would subpoena you for sure.”
“Why?”
“Trust me.”
“Fuckin’ government always on your ass. Last time it was an audit.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know. Few years ago. Screwed me around for over a year. IRS demanding every scrap I had. Fourteen months they couldn’t find a damn thing. Now this. You ask me, I think it’s retaliation.”
“For what?”
“Cuz they’re pissed that they couldn’t find nothin’. All I know is my name keeps coming up in this grand jury thing. Word gets out, it’s gonna kill my business.”
“What do you mean, your name keeps coming up?”
“People called to testify, former employees of my company. They call and they tell me that they’re being asked all kinda questions about me and my business-you know, with these people down in Mexico.” He nods toward the letters on my desk.
“These witnesses, did they call you or did you call them?”
“Hell, I don’t know. What difference does it make? One of them called me; I called somebody else. After a while they’re all telling the same thing. This attorney. This federal guy.”
“The deputy U.S. attorney.”
“That’s the one. He keeps bringing my name up asking questions.” He thinks for a second. “I didn’t do anything wrong by talking to these people. The witnesses, I mean.”
“Probably not.”
“What do you mean probably?”
“They’re free to talk to you about their own testimony. If they want to. You say they’re former employees? What type of work did they do?”
He gives me names. “One was a secretary; the other was my bookkeeper.”
