Free The Arraignment by Steve Martini Page A

one of them was probably the source for the press. These people have no sense of respect for those in grief.” It is unclear whether Fittipaldi is talking about Nick’s criminal clients or the fourth estate, though I suspect he would lump them both in the same social set. I suspect that Dana was not alone in her low opinion of Nick’s clientele.
    He jots the new unlisted number on the back of a business card and hands it to me.
    “Good to meet you,” he says. “Dana tells me you are a good friend. She will need us all in the weeks and months ahead.”
    I smile but say nothing.
    Then before I can ask why she wants to see me, he is gone, around the back of the limo. He disappears into the open door on the other side, it closes, and the procession pulls away.
    “What’s that all about?” says Harry.
    “I don’t know.” I look at the business card in my hand,expensive velum with a watermark no less. I turn it over to the printed side. It reads:
F ITTIPALDI A RT & A NTIQUITIES
    Nathan Fittipaldi, Owner
    Agents for Acquisition by the Discreet Collector
London, New York, Beverly Hills, San Diego
    There is no phone number, only a fax and a web address, “Discretion.com”.
     
    Home at night with Sarah is not always a quiet time. She does her homework, one leg folded under the other in one of the sofa-style armchairs in our living room, with the television going full bore, watching Star Trek . With this she gets straight As. How she does it, I don’t know.
    Her hair, thick as a pony’s tail, brunette with flashes of auburn like spun copper whenever sunlight hits it, is put up in cornrows tonight, something new. She says it makes it easier to handle in the morning.
    She is becoming a young woman, not only in the way she dresses and cares for her appearance, but in matters of judgment as well. Sarah is her own person. When peer group pressures seem to slay other kids, my daughter has demonstrated a maturity that at times embarrasses me in my more exuberant and rash moments. We have played board games of conquest in which she has demonstrated a kind of strategic thinking I would never have credited to someone her age, with an element of compassion for those lesser competitors, protecting them from my native male aggressions, until she crushed me. This, at fifteen. I shudder to consider the heights to which this may take her, but feel more confidence in that generation knowing there are people like her in it.
    Tonight we are left to our own thoughts. Sarah to her science and history, and me to the little Palm device that belonged to Nick. So far I’ve figured out the screen and the little green button at the bottom that turns it on. But I’ve beenafraid to do much beyond this without instructions, afraid that given my ten thumbs for all things computer, I will lose the data stored inside. It is one thing to walk off with possible evidence in a capital case. It’s another to lose it.
    At the top of the screen, each time I turn it on, is an image of a battery. It appears to be draining slowly. The black shaded area of energy sliding a little more to the left each day. When it disappears, I suspect I will lose whatever information is stored inside.
    I lift the tiny battery cover in the back. Two AAAs are housed inside. I study these for a moment.
    “Sarah?”
    “Emm?” She doesn’t look up from her schoolwork, her focus riveted on the book cradled in her lap.
    “Do we have any batteries, triple As?”
    “The small ones?”
    “Yes.”
    “I think so.” She goes to the refrigerator where she keeps these, mostly for the walkman she listens to constantly in the car.
    “Like this?” She holds one up.
    “That’s it.”
    “How many do you need?”
    “Two.”
    She brings them over to me. “What’s that?”
    “I think they call it a handheld device.”
    “Shuur. I know that. But what’s the little thing on top?”
    “It’s a cell phone.”
    “Cool. Where’d you get it?”
    “It belonged to a friend.”
    “He