“I don’t remember. Have to talk to my accountant.”
“Is this the accountant who’s already been called to testify before the grand jury?”
“Yeah. I suppose so.”
“And the ten percent you kept. What did you do with that?”
“I transferred it here.”
“To a U.S. bank?”
“That’s right.”
“But not all at once?”
“No. Like I said, over a period of time, as I needed it.”
“Let me guess. Ten thousand at a time?”
He nods.
This is the legal limit for cash coming into the country. I don’t have to ask how he got it all here. Metz is not going to wait twenty years to move two hunderd K into the country at ten grand a year. No doubt he’s used mules, friends, or employees on junkets down to Belize to carry it back whenever he needed cash.
“I’m hesitant to ask, but was this money paid to you or your company?”
“It’s confusing sometimes to keep track of what income is payable to my corporation and what is payable to me. For services.”
“I’ll bet. Especially when it’s consulting fees, is that it?”
“Yeah.” His eyes light up, thankful for the suggestion.
“Mr. Metz, I don’t think we’re going to be able to do business. But I will give you some advice since you’re paying for my time, at least for this visit.”
He looks at me, the first glimmer of surprise.
“If you were my client, which you are not, and you were called to testify before the grand jury, I would advise you to take the Fifth.”
CHAPTER THREE
I t’s late April, and Nick stands out on the sidewalk with his hands thrust into the deep pockets of a belted trench coat he has worn on cool mornings ever since I’ve known him. He is out near the curb, fifty feet from the sign
over the door, big gold letters, each one larger than a tombstone, spelling out: EDWARD J. SCHWARTZ UNITED STATES COURTHOUSE.
Rush is the only lawyer I know who has never carried a briefcase. It is against his religion and might dispel the impression that he can do anything on the fly and off the cuff.
As I approach, he expels clouds of warm breath into the chilly morning mist. He sees me a block away and smiles, gives me a nod like “what’s up,” rocking forward and back, heel to toe to keep warm. It is cold for San Diego, the season of early morning fog. By afternoon people will be on the street in shirtsleeves.
Eight-thirty. We are meeting for a quick briefing over coffee so that I can hand off Metz. Nick is to meet with the client at nine. If I am lucky, I will be out of here before it happens. I have no desire to be drawn into this thing further. Nick will then have half an hour before he has to appear with Metz in front of a judge. Nick’s instincts were right on one point. Metz was never called before the grand jury. Six days after our conversation, he was indicted on multiple counts of money laundering and international currency violations. He is scheduled to appear for arraignment in federal district court this morning. My guess is that the feds are just warming up.
It is vintage Nick Rush, surfing the lawyer’s version of the pipeline in a typhoon, standing out on the tip with all ten toes over the edge. Doing everything at the last minute is a test of the man’s deftness and a measure of his ego.
He has operated his entire career on the notion that any lawyer who needs more than twenty minutes to get ready for anything in court should find another line of work. I have seen him kick the butts of ambitious young prosecutors who spent a year building a case only to watch it get flushed like Tidy-Bowl when Nick got loose in front of the jury.
It is the reason he is double- and triple-booked on his calendar. If you’ve embezzled a few million from your company’s accounts or you have half a ton of white shit under the floorboards of your house and get caught with grow lights sucking energy from the grid while a jungle of Mary Jane sprouts in your basement, the man to call is Nick Rush. Whether you’re cooking amphetamines or corporate books, his soothing words uttered in tones of divine confidence will ease your anxieties faster than a handful of Percocet.
Nick decided it wasn’t necessary to spend a lot of time with Metz as long as I’d prepped him. I warned him that Metz was dynamite on a stick with a short fuse up his ass, but Nick saw only the challenge. Besides, he told me it doesn’t matter what they have, Nick is pleading him not guilty and sorting it out later. According to Nick, he has disclosed his conflict with Metz over the phone, and Metz has signed a waiver that they have sent back and forth.
As I approach, he smiles broadly but doesn’t take his hands out of his pockets to shake. “I can now confirm Hemingway’s thesis-the sun also rises,” he says. He looks up at the fog-shrouded sky. “Though you wouldn’t know it from standing here.”
“Hemingway was too blitzed in the morning to know it himself. He took it from the Bible,” I tell him.
“That’s what I like about you. You know all the trivial shit you know.”
“It comes in handy when I have to deal with people like you.”
“And what kind of people am I?”
“People who deal only in the big picture,” I tell him.
He laughs, but it’s true. Nick doesn’t waste energy on details that aren’t essential to the grand picture, the task at hand at any given moment. He has an intellect like a vacuum. He can suck up the minutest details of a trial in three minutes, organize them in the order of importance, and march them out like an army to do battle in court while his opponent is still trying to get his briefcase open.
“I thought all the while you were doing these early morning court calls,” I tell him.
“That’s why God invented young associates,” he says. “If Dana wasn’t involved with this prick, he’d be dealing with the federal public defender.”
I warn him that after he hears what I have to tell him, he might want to reconsider taking the case. I suggest the cafeteria in the courthouse. Nick says he favors a little coffee shop around the corner and across the street, so he leads the way.
This is federal territory, the few blocks around the two United States courthouses-one reserved for bankruptcy proceedings, and the other for more serious stuff. Like the Indian nations of old, this part of town has different rules and a culture of its own. Here the cops are the FBI, IRS, DEA, and a dozen other alphabet empires, each striving to showcase their indispensable primacy in the public-safety pecking order.
The federal courts are realms of limitless marble and gray-haired marshals in blue blazers standing like men in livery. It is more refined and genteel than anything at the local level. It speaks of limitless budgets and the boundless tax reach of the federal government whose hands are in everyone’s pockets and moving now from the elbow up to the shoulder. It is a world I do not often frequent; instead I confine myself to the lowly and somewhat disheveled state courts where those who set policy cannot print their own money.
Nick thrives in all of this. He will go toe to toe with the most austere members of the local federal bench and on occasion walk the fine line of contempt.
As if to reinforce this, he takes me to the seedy coffee shop at the street level under the old Capri Hotel.
“I’ve been having coffee here for twenty years. Every morning,” he says. He leads me down a flight of stairs, chipped plaster and peeling paint. The handrail on one side is missing. Some vagrant must have borrowed it.
“I used to know the guy who owned the place,” Nick says.
I follow him through the door to the coffee shop. We get inside and I stop. The place is a dump.
“I didn’t know you were so well connected,” I tell him.
“It looked better back then,” he says. “It’s gone downhill in recent years.”
