The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (16 page)

I'd read about it. "The guns weren't there."

Neely looked to me once before going back to the
harbor.

"That's right, John. Some telephone poles were
sticking out of the bunkers, to fool the aerial reconnaissance. But
our intelligence people had fouled up. They didn't know the Germans
had moved the guns away from the shoreline, and they should have."
Neely drummed his index finger against the arm of his chair by the
scotch. "They should have known that, John."

"Maybe they knew it, but couldn't get word to
you."

"They had radios. And even carrier pigeons that
could cross the Channel with little rolled messages in metal quivers
on their legs."

"The weather was pretty rough during the week
before D-Day, wasn't it?"

"Awful."

"So, maybe they tried to send a message by radio
or pigeon, but it didn't get through to England."

"No, John, no. They just didn't follow up on
that casemate before we embarked. Oh, we found the guns
eventually—inland a ways—and blew them to kingdom come with
thermite grenades. But we wouldn't have had to climb that goddamn
cliff and take more than fifty percent casualties doing it. We were .
. . let down by our own people, John. And that's a pill too bitter to
swallow."

I thought of Saigon during the Tet Offensive. "I
know."

Neely suddenly leaned back. "Sorry. You've
probably got your own memories like that."

My face may have shown him something. He said, "After
we first spoke this afternoon, I made a few phone calls. You were
Military Police in Vietnam."

"For a while."

Neely sipped some more of his scotch. "I learned
one thing that day at Pointe-du-Hoc, John. You lose your innocence
when somebody your own age dies in front of you."

That was the first thing Neely had said that sounded
practiced, a line rolling a little too smoothly off the tongue.

He set his drink down again. "And I've learned
maybe one thing since. Old age has no purpose, except to remind you
of being young and to punish you for having pissed it away."

I gestured with my own glass. "I wouldn't
exactly say all this came from 'pissing it away'."

"No." Neely grinned sheepishly. "No,
'all this' is the product of a lot of hard work. When I first got
started in practice, clients came to you because they trusted you,
like the family doctor. And they took your advice, so you and the
other lawyers could run the system, keep everything going for
everybody. You decided to form a partnership, it was just a handshake
among honorable men. And documents were typed up by secretaries you
worked with forever. Now, nobody trusts lawyers, and the clients have
taken over the system. Getting a big case is like a beauty contest,
where you have to show up in a corporation's conference room and
actually 'bid' on representing the company in a lawsuit. Attorneys
spend more time in front of a computer 'on-line' than they do in a
courtroom 'on-trial,' and with so many younger ones out there, the
competition for even the smaller cases is fierce. Clericals of both
genders are suing their firms for sexual harassment, and nobody's
civil to anybody anymore. It's all cutthroat, John, just another
business instead of an honored profession. Things have gotten to the
point that lawyers are even hiring themselves out as temps."

"Is that what you'll do?"

Neely seemed thrown by the question. "What?"

"Is that how you'll deal with the loss of
Woodrow Gant, bring in some temporary attorneys to replace him?"

"No. No, for a couple of reasons. First, I don't
believe in hiring attorneys except for the long haul."

"As opposed to clerical staff?"

Neely picked up his glass, tilting it toward me.
"
Touché
, if that
doesn't date me even more than the war stories. You're right, we hire
temps for support purposes because it's cost effective. But the kind
of practice Woodrow had, the clients are hiring the lawyer, not the
firm. I couldn't just bring in a 'substitute teacher' to cover his
divorce cases, even if I wanted to. And it'll take a while to find
someone who's good enough to join us. You see, Woodrow had a way
about him that inspired confidence, and we'll just have to let his
clients find other counsel. With our help, if needed."

"Which means you'll lose the fees from those
cases."

"The unearned portions. But Imogene is going
through the files and billing records, and we'll resolve that."
Neely looked over at me. "I will have to replace Woodrow with
someone soon, though, and so I'm going to ask you one question that
I'd like a straight answer to."

I set down my drink. "Go ahead."

"A little while ago, I said there was no real
purpose to getting old. But it does help with reading people. I'm
reading you now, and I don't think you're just going through the
motions."

"Regarding Alan Spaeth, you mean?"

"That's what I mean."

"You said as much in your office earlier."

Neely fixed me with the same look he used down there.
"I know I did, John, but I have a firm to run here."

"I don't think I've heard your 'one question'
yet."

Neely eased off the look. "It's because I need
the answer but don't really want to hear it." His eyes moved to
the scotch, then back to me. "Did you find out anything from us
that suggests your client didn't kill Woodrow?"

The man had been straight with me, allowing me access
he didn't have to, and I wanted to be straight with him. "Just
what you told me about the insurance."

“
The insurance?"

"Yes. You said Mr. Gant's 'family members' were
the beneficiaries on his life policies."

Neely raised his drink. "Mother Helen and
brother Grover—'Grover Cleveland Gant.' I checked the paperwork
after we spoke down in my office, but I'd written the company myself
on their behalf, so I was pretty sure of the proceeds."

"Which were?"

"One hundred thousand each."

"How about the balance of Mr. Gant's estate?"

Neely took some more scotch, nearly finishing it.
"His will became public record once it was filed, so I guess
there's no harm in telling you what it says. Everything to the
mother, with Grover as contingent beneficiary."

I nodded.

Neely said, "You're thinking the brother?"

"I've been wondering why Ms. Burbage would keep
him waiting in the reception area rather than let him go to Mr.
Gant's office."

Neely considered something. "That was Woodrow's
instruction, actually."

"His instruction?"

"Yes." Neely rolled the cubes in his glass.
"It seems that once—when Imogene did have Grover wait in
Woodrow's office—there was something . . . missing afterward."

"What was it?"

"Cash, a couple hundred that Woodrow kept as an
emergency fund in his desk."

I had the same habit, though my stash was tucked
halfway through an old photo album in one of my desk's lower drawers.

Neely drained the last of the scotch. "Woodrow
told me his brother has a problem with gambling."

"Thanks for the information."

"One other thing, John?"

"Yes?"

"It wasn't part of the firm coverage, but
something Woodrow took out on his own."

"What was?"

"You knew he'd gotten divorced himself?"

"Just that, no details."

"Around the time he came with us. His ex-wife
lives out in Brookline." The town just west of Boston's Brighton
neighborhood. "Pol1ard's the last name. Jenifer—with only one
'n'. "

Taking that in, I said, "And he had a policy on
himself payable to her, too?"

"Part of the divorce settlement, Woodrow once
told me."

"Face amount?"

"The same as the others, a straight hundred
thousand."

I watched Neely for a moment. "Not that I don't
appreciate the information, but why so helpful?"

He rolled the cubes some more, almost like dice in a
cup. "I want to get to the bottom of this as much as anyone,
John, and more than most. I recruited Woodrow for the firm, and now I
need to replace him. The sooner we have closure on his death, the
better for everyone."

Neely fixed me again. "Don't get me wrong. I
believe your client did this terrible thing. I watched him downstairs
that day, and I know what I saw in his eyes. But I also know what I
see in yours, and that's a man who won't let go until he's convinced.
So the sooner you check out these other possibilities, the sooner my
job gets easier."

Frank Neely looked away then, giving me one more
chance to appreciate the view from his terrace before he led me
downstairs and out of the building.
 

Chapter 9

AFTER LEAVING THE law firm building, I stopped at a
pay phone to check my answering service. A nice woman with a silky
voice gave me several messages, but nothing from Nancy. Then I dialed
my home phone, using the remote code to trigger the telephone tape
machine. No messages, period. It had been less than twenty-four hours
since Nancy had walked out on me at Thai Basil, but I tried her
apartment in South Boston anyway. When her own answering machine
engaged, I waited for the beep, then left a very neutral "I'll
be out myself tonight, so I'll try you tomorrow at work."

No sense in pushing it, whatever "it" was
for Nancy.

Then I walked uphill to Tremont Street to get my car.

Dorchester is a section of Boston most people think
of as infrequently as possible. In much of it, the storefronts tend
to plywood windowpanes and gang insignia, the housing to rundown
triple-deckers with blistered paint and rotting porches. But there
are pocket neighborhoods that could be models for a magazine, and
Helen Gant lived in one of these. Her home was a single-family,
gingerbread-and-yellow Tudor, centered on a quarter-acre lot with a
small lawn and tended shrubbery. A Mitsubishi compact stood in the
narrow driveway, its grille snubbed up close to the house, as though
making parking room behind it for a second car expected to arrive
later.

I left the Prelude at the curb and used the cement
path to approach the front door. Light shone through curtains, and
when I pressed the doorbell, a hand was opening locks before the
chimes had died away.

"Why you can't keep your house keys with—uh-uh?"

The African-American woman in front of me ended her
sentence with a hiccuping sound as she saw who I was. Or wasn't. In
her early fifties, with hair fashioned into silver-and-black kinks
half an inch long, she wore a robin's-egg blue blouse over a plaid
skirt and opaque hosiery, a commuter's tennis sneakers on her feet.
The woman was only about five-two, but the set of both her eyes and
her lips suggested she'd recovered enough to take charge of the
situation.

"Who are you?"

"John Cuddy. Helen Gant?"

A cautious, “Yes?"

"Mrs. Gant, I'm a private investigator." I
took out my ID and held it to her.

She read the printing quickly. "What's this
about?"

"I'm looking into your son's death, and I was
hoping you could spare a little time."

Hiccup. "Your company called me today, said
they'd send somebody by my office tomorrow morning"

"I'm not here about the insurance, Mrs. Gant. I
was hired by Alan Spaeth's attorney."

Her eyes went cold. "Then why should I talk to
you?"

"Because from some things I've found out so far,
I think the police might have arrested the wrong man."

Gant blinked twice, then put a hand to her eyes, more
to cover them than to block tears, I thought. Then she took the hand
away. "Those same police said I don't have to talk with anybody
from that . . . man's side of the case."

"No, ma'am, you don't. But you should."

Gant moved her tongue against the inside of her
cheek, then opened the door wider. "Fifteen minutes."

"Thank you."

I passed her, and she locked the door behind us. In
front of me was a staircase with natural—oak balustrades just
different enough that they had to have been hand-carved. Similar
spokes rose vertically between the sills and tops of false windows on
either side of the double-wide, interior doorway to the right. Beyond
the doorway was a living room furnished with leather sofa, oak coffee
table, and two barrel chairs arranged on an oriental rug.
 
The fireplace—also oak—dominated one wall, some
family portrait photos on the mantel. I tried not to look at them,
but Helen Gant must have caught me.

"I have a friend at the office who told me in
her religion, when somebody dies, they lie the photos of that person
face-down for a year. I couldn't bear to do that." The hiccuping
noise again. "Please, take one of the chairs."

I did, and Gant sat at the end of the couch closest
to me, leaving about five feet between us.