The Arraignment by Steve Martini Page A

as if they were flown in for the occasion from Saville Row.
    Dana is fortunate to live in a gated community where they are not trampling her front lawn and poking through her windows on ladders with their cameras. Security has kept themedia herd huddled out near the Silver Strand and away from her house.
    This morning Harry is in the office early, ready to run interference when the cops finally show up. We have been expecting them. I have told Harry about Nick’s electronic handheld device. As with most things electronic it is a mystery to Harry, though he thinks I should turn it over to the cops and let them figure it out. I want to know more about it, and whatever information is inside, before I do that.
    I hear the voices in the outer office—some lieutenant of detectives and his partner. I miss their names. They want to see Mr. Madriani.
    Harry stalls to give me time to prepare myself. In a voice loud enough to raise Nick, he asks what it’s about. The police are no doubt tracking backward over the hours before Nick’s death, piecing together the people he met, whom he talked to. They have either caught up with Marge, the waitress at the grease spot under the Capri Hotel, who gave them my description, or Dana. She would have known that Nick and I had a meeting that morning. If my guess is correct, and Nick was doing a head job on his wife with Metz, she would have given the cops my name. Nick would have laid it on thick, telling her how he tried to get me to take the case and how I refused.
    No doubt it has occurred to her that had I taken Metz on, it might be me who was lying on the slab at the morgue instead of her husband. There has been little else in my own thoughts since the event. Guilt, alleviated by the thought of my daughter Sarah as an orphan.
    Seconds later there is a knock on my door. Harry’s head pops through, followed by his body, as he slides through the crack and closes it behind him.
    “Two of them,” he says and hands me a business card, official police stationery with the city’s seal and the name Lt. Richard Ortiz, Homicide Division.
    “May as well show them in.”
    “You don’t have to talk to them,” he says.
    “It’s either now or later. Besides, what’s to hide? They probably know more than I do, at least let’s hope so.”
    Harry gives me the look of a lawyer whose client has just refused to take good advice. Sullenly, he opens the door wide. “You can come in,” he says.
    A moment later, two men step into my office. One of them is tall, slender, dark hair cropped close, a face with a lot of crags and eyes set so deep that I would need a diving bell with lights to tell their color. There is a certain hungry look about him, human descendent of the vulture family. I would guess he is in his mid-thirties. From his looks, any mirth has been long since squeezed from him by his occupation.
    The other guy is built like an Ohio State linebacker—short blond hair, neck like a bull, and biceps that are stretching the arms on his sport coat. He is younger.
    “Mr. Madriani, I’m Lieutenant Ortiz.” The tall vulture is in charge. “My partner, Sergeant Norm Padgett.”
    Before I can say a word, a rush of panic sets in, adrenaline high. My eyes pass over Nick’s Palm device on the far corner of my desk where I’d dropped it this morning after finding it in my coat pocket. It’s too late now.
    “Have a seat,” I say. If I reach over and grab it, they may wonder why. If Dana told them Nick had one and they didn’t find it in a search of his office, they would be looking for it.
    “Would you guys like coffee?” I ask.
    They both decline.
    “What can I do for you?”
    Harry rests part of his weight on the credenza against the far wall of my office and settles in. The sergeant turns to look at him.
    “I’m sorry. You’ve met my partner, Harry Hinds.”
    “We met,” says Ortiz. “This is a confidential investigation,” he says.
    “I understand,” says Harry. “We’ll keep