The Arraignment Read Online Free PDF Page A

Traveling expenses and the like.”
    “How much?”
    “I don’t know, maybe four thousand, forty-five hundred dollars. And there were some consulting fees.”
    “Consulting for what?”
    “The location, difficulty of getting heavy equipment in and out of the job site.”
    “How much did they pay you for this?”
    “I can’t remember exactly.”
    “An estimate?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “More than a thousand dollars?”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    “More than five thousand?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    My eyes are off my notepad now, looking at Metz. “How much?”
    “Somewhere in the neighborhood of two million,” he says.
    “Dollars?”
    He nods.
    I sit there staring at him, the gaze of an animal in front of a speeding locomotive at night.
    “For consulting fees?”
    “Well, no, no, it was . . . actually, it was a security deposit.”
    “Security for what?”
    “My equipment. Hell, you don’t think I’m gonna take heavy equipment across the border without some security up front. This is expensive stuff. A front-end loader, a big one, the kind that articulates, can set you back a quarter of a million dollars. What if it disappears? I mean, this is not Nevada we’re talking about. If they greased somebody’s palm forpermits and the sky falls in, a fuckin’ swamp without a permit to drain it ain’t worth shit,” he says. “The first thing the Mexican government does is grab my equipment.”
    “So what was the understanding as to this money, this security deposit?”
    “I’d hold their money until the job was done. Then I’d get my equipment back and get paid. They’d get their deposit back.”
    “But you never signed a contract and you never sent any equipment across the border?”
    “No.”
    “And they gave you two million dollars on a handshake?”
    “That’s right.”
    “So what happened when the deal went bust?”
    “They got their money back.”
    “All of it?”
    He makes a face. Scrunches up his mouth a little. “Everything except the ten percent,” he says.
    I look at him.
    “For my time.”
    “What time?”
    “You know, puttin’ the thing together. Talking. Goin’ down there?”
    “But you said they paid for your trip?”
    “Yeah. But my time’s worth something, ain’t it? Like I say, consulting fees.”
    “But you had no contract or written arrangement for these fees before you went down there?”
    “No.”
    “A week of your time in Mexico, not considering traveling expenses, which they paid, is worth two hundred thousand dollars?”
    “I could have been doin’ other work,” he says.
    “You lost a big job because of this week in Mexico, did you?”
    “I might have. I mean I could have. I don’t know.”
    By now I am scribbling furiously, trying to get Metz’sstory down on paper before the ludicrous logic of it disappears like a vapor.
    “And what did you do with the two million deposit money? Did you put it in a bank in this country?”
    “Not right away,” he says.
    I stop writing and look up again. “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, I brought my money up here after the deal fell through . . .”
    “Your money?”
    “The two hundred K. Over a period of time,” he says.
    “Stop. Did you maintain a foreign bank account?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Where?”
    “Belize,” he says.
    “Why Belize?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Did you report this account on your taxes for that year?”
    “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