The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (3 page)

"Steve—"

Rothenberg raised his right hand, palm toward me.
"All I'm saying is that if we can bring forward Alan's alibi
witness, my version of the story becomes a lot more salable."

"Your version."

"It's my client's version, too."

"That a 'somebody else' set him up with his own
gun?"

"Do me a favor, John?"

"What?"

"Talk to Alan before you make up your mind about
taking the case."

I gave it a beat. "Why should I, Steve?"

Rothenberg stared down at
his desk. "Because he's convinced me."

* * *

The old Suffolk County jail had been called simply
"Charles Street," a brown-and-yellow stone monstrosity
erected when Americans wearing blue and gray uniforms were still
killing each other. Inside, the architecture would have reminded you
of a five-story birdcage with the decibel level of a
nineteenth-century asylum.

The new jail—on Nashua Street—was a soaring seven
stories of brick on about two acres of land, with razor wire around
the parking lot. The sheriff who finally got the county to build it
had to go through a couple of Supreme Court appeals before receiving
permission to double-bunk the inmates, but he also included things
like a weight room on the second floor and an open-air recreation
deck for basketball on the fourth, with wire mesh enclosing the court
to prevent the loss of both bouncing balls and footloose players.

Inside the main entrance, the lobby held three rows
of black wire chairs for visitors and a bank of orange, hexagonal
lockers for their belongings. Steve Rothenberg had called ahead, and
after a deputy in a powder-blue shirt stamped the back of my hand
with invisible ink, a sergeant took me up in the elevator, making
small talk about the fine weather and the New England Patriots and
how he wished the architect for Nashua Street hadn't included so many
different colors for the building's walls because six years later it
was a bitch to keep track of all the paints for touch-up work. No
mention of any angry husbands killing their wives' divorce lawyers,
which was fine with me.

Exiting the elevator, the sergeant led me along a
corridor to an attorney-client consulting room. Its interior was
maybe eight feet square, with a butcher-block table and caned chairs
on each side, a distinct improvement over the wire jobs in the lobby
downstairs.

"Your guy will come through the trap there,"
the sergeant said, gesturing toward the door on the other side of the
desk.

"I have to tell you not to pass him anything?"

"No."

The sergeant pointed to what looked like a light
switch. "This here's a confidentiality switch. You push it over,
our audio-surveillance of the room stops."

"Thanks."

He pointed again. "Panic button, in case the guy
gives you any trouble."

"He been any trouble?"

The sergeant gave me a deadpan expression. "Not
since he showered yesterday."

I sat down as the trap to
the corridor closed behind me, wondering if I'd know what that was
supposed to mean.

* * *

One look at Alan Spaeth, and I knew what it meant.

He said, "You're the investigator Steve
Rothenberg called me about, right?"

"Right." We shook hands. "John Cuddy."

"And you're wondering where I got this, too."

Spaeth put an index finger to his left eye, the
purple-and-ocher blotch of a shiner not quite closing it, the
knuckles on both hands bruised and scabbed. Standing, Spaeth was
about six feet in plastic shoes, maybe a hundred-ninety under the
one-piece jumpsuit with no pockets. Only late thirties, his unshaven
cheeks were already jowls and sagging a little loosely, as though
jail chow wasn't agreeing with him. He had a wide, greedy mouth, and
a nose that showed more nostrils than bridge. His hair was black and
curly to the point of clotted, despite yesterday's "shower."

I said, "What happened?"

Spaeth grinned cruelly, though he must have hurt the
eye area some to do it. "End of the housing unit, we got five
showers. Five for all fifty of us in there. When it was my turn
yesterday, one nigger thought he was tough decided to whale on me
account of he heard I killed this nigger lawyer." A grunt. "He
found out I was tougher."

"Three's the charm, Spaeth."

A confused expression. "What?"

"You've used the 'N'-word twice. I hear it a
third time, and you'll be sitting by yourself."

"Hey, sport, who the fuck's paying the tab
here?"

"Steve Rothenberg, if I decide to help him with
this case."

Spaeth chewed on that. Literally, from the way his
jowls worked. Then his chin dropped to his chest. "Look, this
thing's got me all screwed up. I don't like what I'm learning about
'jailing' here, and so I'm showing off, trying not to act . . .
scared. But I am." Spaeth's head came back up. "Christ, I'm
scared shitless."

A little twinge in my gut. "Okay. Here's the
deal. I'm talking to you because Steve asked me to. You tell me your
side of things, and I go back to him with whether or not I'm on
board. Clear?"

Alan Spaeth straightened some in his chair, the
bruised hands folding themselves on the butcher block. "Clear."

"Where do we start?"

"How about with, I didn't kill the bastard."

"I heard you threatened to."

"What, at his law firm?"

"If that was the only time."

Spaeth raked a hand through his hair. "Look,
you're talking August, all right? Over two months ago. I was going
through a tough time. I mean, Gant's representing Nicole—my wife?"

I nodded.

"And he got this 'vacate the marital home' order
against me. Well, the company had laid me off from my marketing job
like three weeks before, so I had to go live in a boardinghouse. Try
to imagine that, sport. One day I'm coming home to this nice place in
West Roxbury I sweated blood to carry, and the next I'm sleeping with
the fucking derelicts in Southie."

South Boston. "I grew up there."

Spaeth put the hand to his face this time. "Christ,
I'm not doing such a good job of getting you on my side."

Truth to tell, he wasn't. And yet . . . "That
day at his law firm, did you threaten to kill Woodrow Gant?"

A nod before letting his hand fall back to the table.
"In front of like, I don't know, six, seven people. I really
made my fucking point." Spaeth looked up at me. "But you
gotta understand, he was fucking me over the coals, and he was
fucking . . ." Spaeth trailed off, shaking his head. "Fucking
me every way from Sunday. Poisoning Terry against me, too."

"Terry's your son?"

"Yeah, Terence, actually, after Nicole's father.
She got custody—so Terry could stay in the house and keep with the
same school. Not the school where she teaches, that's not . . .
That's not important. What is important is that Gant tells Terry,
'Look, your father has visitation rights, but that doesn't mean you
have to see him! The kid's fourteen, so the judge leaves it up to
him, but meanwhile Gant's poisoning my own son against me."

Sounded like more motive, not less. "Back to
that day at the law firm. What exactly happened?"

Spaeth blew out a breath. "I go in, because
Rothenberg tells me they can take my 'deposition,' ask me a lot of
questions under oath. So we're sitting around this table in a
conference room-like where we are here, only a lot bigger and nicer,
view of the harbor and all. And Gant's needling me, really tucking it
under the saddle with his questions."

"Like what?"

"Oh, I don't mean the words themselves. Hell, a
couple weeks later, Steve gave me this copy of the thing—a
'transcript'?"

"Right."

"Okay, so I read the transcript, and from Gant's
words, you don't get what he was doing. He was too fucking smooth.
No, it was more his . . . like facial expressions, and—what's the
word? 'Inflection,' yeah. The inflection of his voice. Gant was
needling me, and I blew my stack. I said the only good lawyer, like
the only good . . ." Spaeth stopped.

"That word I've heard enough of."

"Yeah." A sniff, almost a good-natured
laugh. "Yeah, I called him that and more, storming out of the
conference room yelling . . . yelling I don't remember exactly what.
But I know I said if he kept it up, I was gonna kill him."

"Kept what up?"

Spaeth stopped. "Fucking me over."

Something didn't feel right. "But Steve told me
things settled pretty soon after that."

"They did. That's what I mean about not killing
the bastard. The divorce was basically over with. And lawyers are a
dime a dozen. Even if I did shoot Gant, Nicole would've just gotten
herself another one."

Thinking about what kind of witness this defendant
would make, I shook my head.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing," I said. "Let's go back to
the murder weapon. Your gun?"

Spaeth started to say something, then just, "I
don't know."

"You don't know?"

"Look, I haven't seen it, all right? The
revolver the cops say got used. I do know I had one just like it, a
Taurus 85. I bought the thing on a business trip in the South, filed
the serial number off it."

"Why the hell did you do that?"

"I read in the paper about the 'Castle Law' we
got here—where the state lets you off if you kill a guy coming into
your house? Only the newspaper said the guy would have to be trying
to kill you, so I figured, anybody ever broke in and I shot him with
one of the guns I bought up here, it'd be nice to have a throwaway
piece for the cops to find on the guy."

Alan Spaeth kept getting better and better. "How
many other firearms do you have?"

"When I was living in the 'marital home,' three
more handguns and two rifles. I used to take Terry deer hunting until
all this shit hit the fan."

"Where are these other weapons now?"

"Locked away in storage, along with most of my
stuff from the West Roxbury place."

"But you kept the throwaway piece?"

"Brought it to the boardinghouse, yeah. For
protection, understand? Only the Taurus got stolen from my room. One
of the reasons I moved out. Fucking owner of the place had a thing
against guns, and I figured Dufresne was the one who took it."

"Dufresne being the owner."

“
Yeah. 'Vincennes Dufresne,' the little frog fuck."

I let that one pass. “Whether it was your weapon or
not, the shells in the cylinder had your prints on them."

"Steve told me my prints weren't on the Taurus
itself, though. You think I'm stupid enough to wipe my prints off the
gun and not off the bullets?"

“
Happens all the time."

"And then leave the thing by Gant's car?"

Stupider still, granted. "How would somebody get
shells with your prints on them if it wasn't your gun?"

Spaeth looked at me hard with the good eye. "That's
why I think it was my Taurus, sport. And my shells in it. Somebody
set me up."

"Dufresne?"

A stop. "No, that doesn't make sense."

I felt the twinge again. "Who, then?"

"If I knew that, I wouldn't need you, right?"

There was something about Spaeth, down past all the
obnoxious bluff and bluster, that rang true. And it bothered me.

"Okay," I said. "Steve told me you had
an alibi witness."

"Damn straight. Mickey, guy I met at
Dufresne's."

"You know his last name?"

"Of course I do. We were drinking buddies the
whole time I was staying there. Had to have something for social
life, once Gant got me kicked out of my house."

"And Mickey's last name?"

Spaeth paused. "Actually, his real first name's
'Michael,' middle initial 'A'."

"Michael A. what?"

Spaeth chewed a moment. "Mantle."

"Mickey . . . Mantle?"

"I saw his birth certificate, he carries it with
him everywhere, win drinks off guys in the bars. He calls himself
'Mickey Mantle,' and he can prove he's entitled to it."

"Just like he can prove you're innocent."

"Damned right. We got shitfaced together in my
apartment the night Gant was shot."

"Your apartment?"

"I used the money Steve sprung from the divorce
to put a security deposit on a real place."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why would you use some of your tight money to
rent an apartment instead of staying at Dufresne's till you were
employed again?"

"Hey, sport, you ever tried to get a job—a
good job—with no private phone and a boardinghouse for an address?
Plus, like I told you, the guy running the place probably stole my I
gun."