“It sounds to me like he’s trying to get Nick to back off from going after his two boys. The part about assuring Nick that he will deal with his sons in an appropriate way. Sounds to me as if he’s trying to say there’s no need for you to do it. I’ll do it. Doesn’t it to you?”
I read it again. “It’s possible.”
“If he was… I mean if Nick was in some fashion going after the sons, it’s possible they could have killed him.”
I concede the point with a look.
“That’s why it’s important that you tell me everything you know about this man Ibarra.”
“What makes you think I know anything?”
“Because you knew Nick. You interviewed Metz. You’re the only one who may know how the pieces fit.”
“What pieces?”
“Is there a drug connection? You don’t have to be prescient to read the signs. The letter comes out of Mexico; the sons are in some kind of trouble. Nick’s expertise is in narcotics cases. Connect the dots,” he says.
“Have you told the police about this, the letter I mean?”
He shakes his head, almost ignoring me, occupied with other problems at the moment. “I wanted to talk to you first. Avoid getting blindsided.”
“Wonderful.” I drop the letter and let it float like a leaf onto the table between us.
“What’s the problem?”
“The problem is my prints are now all over the letter.”
“Yes?”
“You can be sure the cops will dust it for prints when you turn it over,” I tell him. “Something like this coming to them late in the game, they’re sure to. They’ll want to know where it’s been all this time, and who’s touched it.”
“I didn’t think of that. So what do we do?”
Two lawyers sitting at lunch in a swank restaurant trying to figure how to cover their tracks on a piece of concealed evidence in a homicide case. Not exactly a question you’d want to see on the bar exam.
“You can tell I don’t do criminal work,” he says. “But we’re in the soup together. I touched it too.”
“Except that your prints will be easy to explain. The letter came to your firm. You had to open it to see what it was. Whether it was covered by some client confidence. Now the cops are going to want to know why you brought it to me.”
He takes his glasses off, puts them on the table. Looks at me as he rubs his chin with one hand, contemplating the problem. “We could wipe it with a cloth or something.”
“Not a good idea, Adam.”
“No, I suppose it’s not.” I can tell Adam would have rather I’d come up with that idea. It’s the kind of questions you see in transcripts of hearings before the bar, before they suspend your license. “And who suggested this course of action?”
“It’s the problem with physical evidence,” I tell him. “Sometimes it’s not what’s there, but what’s missing that gets you in trouble. We’d end up taking Ibarra’s prints off the letter. They’d wonder why they weren’t there.”
He looks at me, a pained expression.
“It’s all right. We’ll just tell them the truth. You knew I’d be curious. I was a friend of Nick’s. You wanted to know if I knew anything about it. So you gave me the letter to read. It just means the cops are going to have a lot more questions for me.”
“Yes. I suppose that’s always the best approach,” he says. “The truth. So, do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Know anything about it?” He picks the letter up from the table in front of me, this time carefully handling it from the edges, and gently folds it, putting it back in the envelope. All the while looking at me, waiting for a response.
“The letter, no. I’ve never seen it before.”
“I assumed that much,” he says. “Otherwise you would have told me, right?” What he means is just like I told him about Espinoza.
I dodge the question by taking a healthy swallow of ale, filling my mouth.
Adam is shrewd. Whether he’d thought about my prints on the letter or not, he is determined to screen every piece of information that comes his way so that none of the dirt flies up and hits the firm. He also guesses that I am holding back, as I assume he is.
“Have you ever heard of the guy before? This Pablo Ibarra?”
Now it would require an affirmative lie. “I’ve heard the name. Tell me, how long have you had the letter? Really?”
Adam smiles. “What difference does it make?”
“The cops will want to know.”
“I got it this morning,” he says.
“Tell me you didn’t go down and sweep the mail room the night Nick was killed?”
“Who’s asking, you or the police?”
“Maybe I don’t want to know.”
“Trust me, you don’t,” he says. “Where did you hear the name? This man, Ibarra?”
“Gerald Metz gave it to me.”
“Metz?” He thought I was going to say Nick. Now it comes out of left field.
“During my initial interview with him. He’d done some work with the sons. Said it was a construction job.”
“Right. Did he ever mention the father?”
“In passing.”
“Did Metz know him?”
“It depends on whether you believe Metz. According to him, he only knew the name. He’d never met him.”
“You didn’t tell me this before.”
“I didn’t tell the police, either. Like you with the letter.” Touche. “Piece of advice,” I tell him.
“What’s that?”
“If you’re going to take it to the cops with your story, I suppose your secretary will verify it?”
“Absolutely.”
“You might want to make sure she touches the envelope at least.”
He smiles. Adam’s already made a mental note.
“What else did Metz say about them?”
“He also said the father was upset about something. That’s why his deal fell through. If anything Metz said was credible.”
“Go on,” he says.
“That’s it.”
“If the papers get their hands on this, they’ll crucify us. They’ll be crawling all over the firm, demanding to know what Nick was involved in. Wanting to know if we’re being investigated, whether we’ve been shredding documents. Legalgate,” he says.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking the answer lies in Mexico. I’ve booked a flight for tomorrow, the earliest I could get there. I want some information. I’m not going to wait for it to come to me.”
“If you want to talk to Ibarra, you could just call him on the phone.”
“I thought about that. The problem is, for all we know, he may have killed Nick himself. I don’t mean pull the trigger. But he might have hired somebody. If he didn’t, he may come to the same conclusion we did, that his boys are involved. You think he’s going to talk to me about something like that over the phone?”
“Probably not.”
“I don’t think so either. Besides, if I call him, even if he’s willing to talk to me, he’s going to want me to come down there, and he’s going to want to set the terms and conditions, no doubt a meeting on his turf.”
“I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do. When people start asking questions, I want to be
