The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (34 page)

"I'm not sure. I visit Jeppers yesterday morning
at the Board of Bar Overseers, and we talk some about Woodrow Gant
and Alan Spaeth. Then I come over here again, and he's visiting with
you, a partner of the victim. I guess I have to wonder why."

Radachowski closed her eyes briefly, then pointed to
one of the plaques on the wall above her head. "Parris and I are
both trustees for a charitable organization. We confer from time to
time on matters of policy regarding it."

When you ask a lawyer a question, you also have to
listen carefully to the answer, sometimes as much for what's not said
as for what is. "And that's why he was here today, to talk about
'policy'?"

A very measured stare this time. "I'm afraid
that's confidential."

"As in referring a potential client to a
colleague?"

Radachowski's face became a mask. "Now what are
you asking me?"

"You met Nicole Spaeth at another charity event.
She was in need of a divorce lawyer, and you recommended your
partner."

“
Whom I knew to be a fine domestic relations
attorney."

"With maybe a disproportionate appreciation of
the women he represented?"

Radachowski said, "I think that will be all, Mr.
Cuddy."

"Before I go, could you try Elliot Herman for
me?"

"Elliot?"

"I'd go back out to reception, but I hate to
bother Ms. Burbage again, given all she has to do."

Packing papers into his briefcase, Elliot Herman
said, "I have to be out of here in ten—no, five minutes."

"Won't take three."

"All right." Wearing pleated pants held up
by whale-pattern suspenders today, he looked around the office
instead of at me. "Sit."

Without closing his office door behind me, I took a
chair. "I need to ask you an awkward question."

"Ask it." Herman slipped a file from the
middle of a stack on his desk. "Concisely."

"I've heard rumors about Woodrow Gant."

The file wouldn't quite wedge between the others in
the case. "What kind of rumors?" Herman asked, almost
absently, as he tugged on the handle to a desk drawer.

"About Mr. Gant and some of his female clients."

Herman stopped with the drawer open. Rather than
close it, he crossed the room and closed his door instead, beginning
to speak again while he was still behind me. "Mr. Cuddy, I don't
understand."

I waited until Herman returned to his desk, though he
stayed standing, the pleats of his pants quivering as if the leg
muscles were tensing underneath.

I said, "There's some talk that Mr. Gant used to
see his clients . . . socially."

Herman's right hand smoothed the hair by his white,
lightning streak. "I don't see how that—even if it were
true—could matter to you."

"Alan Spaeth is accused of killing his wife's
lawyer. I'd like to know if other opposing husbands might have had a
motive to go after Mr. Gant as well."

I phrased my answer that way to see if it got a rise
out of Herman, as a way of determining whether he knew of his own
wife and Gant. But Herman's expression never changed.

He looked just as worried.

"Mr. Cuddy, you realize what this could do to
the firm?"

"The rumors?"

"The discussion of them in open court."

"Maybe it doesn't have to get that far."

Herman thought for about three breaths. "Okay,
there was some noise about Woodrow."

"Noise."

"Frank got a few calls, I think. He had a talk
with Woodrow, stressing things like the firm's image and general
appearances. That's all I know, okay?"

"Frank Neely just talked with Mr. Gant?"

Now a confused look. "What do you mean?"

"There was no 'Listen, once more and you're out
of here' kind of warning?"

Herman watched me. "I couldn't tell you that. I
just know what I've already told you."

"And how do you know even that?"

"How?"

"Yes."

Herman shrugged. "Woodrow and I had drinks
once."

"Mr. Gant talked with you about this?"

"Yes."

"When was this?"

"I don't know. Five, six months ago, maybe."

Around the time of Gant being with his wife. But
Herman wasn't showing anything to me except that constant concern
about the firm's future.

I said, "Were any . . . names brought up?"

"Of the women clients? Negative. Woodrow wasn't
like that, the kind to brag, I mean. But even if he had mentioned
names, I couldn't tell you. Client confidentiality."

I asked my next question slowly. "And what did
Mr. Gant say to you about Frank Neely's 'talk' with him?"

Herman closed his eyes, as though trying to envision
something, then opened them again. "Woodrow said he wasn't
sweating it too much."

"Why not?"

Elliot Herman glanced at
his watch and nearly jumped for his briefcase. "Woodrow said the
fees he brought in, Frank wouldn't dare call for a partnership vote
with Uta, and if he did, Woodrow would bail out himself."

* * *

Imogene Burbage was on the phone, so I waited
patiently in front of the reception desk.

"No, Ms. Barber, Ms. Ling had a meeting after
lunch, and she isn't back yet."
 
The
name was familiar. That divorce client of Gant's who wanted to sell
her house.

Burbage said, "Yes, I left your earlier message
on her desk .... Certainly, and the number? . . . Five-one-three,
one-nine-four-four .... Thank you."

When Burbage hung up, I said, "Voice mail on the
fritz again?"

She seemed exasperated more by me than the machine.
"Yes."

"Well, I think you've already answered the
question I was going to ask about Ms. Ling. Is Mr. Neely still gone,
too?"

"He is."

"Do you know when either of them will be back?"

"No."

Burbage gave the impression that she was sorry the
English language didn't have a shorter term for the concept.

I said, "Can I leave word for both to call me?"

"Yes."

But instead of putting pen to paper, Imogene Burbage
swung the spiral message pad around so I could write out my own
number for each of them.
 

Chapter 19

FROM THE OTHER end of the line, Steve Rothenberg
said, "Anything, John?"

"Not that helps us. I can't come up with an
identifiable motive, much less a plausible theory, why somebody would
kill both Woodrow Gant and Michael Mantle."

Nothing for a moment. Then, "The sooner I plead
Spaeth out, the better the deal's likely to be."

Rothenberg's words, but his tone of voice, too:
tossing in the towel. "I thought you told me when we got started
that the D.A. wasn't offering any kind of plea bargain?"

"John, what we'd be talking about is less 'how
long' and more 'where'."

"Meaning which prison."

"And cell block. How would you like to be a
white-collar white guy like our boy consigned to general population
after killing a black role model?"

"Steve, do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Don't call the prosecution for a day or two."\

"A day or . . . ? Why not?"

"Because neither of us thinks Spaeth did it."

Another moment, then a sigh. "John, you remember
that line from Love Story about not having to say you're sorry?"

"I remember the movie version."

“
Yeah, well, the Alan Spaeth version is, 'We did
our best, but there's only so much you can do without any evidence.'
"

"Meaning we don't have to say we're sorry."

"Right."

"Steve?"

"What?"

"You contact the D.A.
before I get back to you, I think we'll both be sorry. For as long as
Spaeth sits in a cell anywhere."

* * *

I'd called Steve Rothenberg when I'd gotten back to
my office from Epstein & Neely. After hanging up on him, I
checked in with my answering service. The nice woman with the silky
voice relayed a one-line message from Lieutenant Robert Murphy.
“Cuddy, I want your ass at the South Market building, NOW."

The woman told me she
wrote that last word in caps because that was the way Murphy said it.
She was pretty sure of his feelings, too, because he'd called only
ten minutes before.

* * *

The South and North Market buildings are the twin,
Federalist-period shoe boxes flanking the better-known Quincy Market.
Each has countless boutiques and several anchoring
restaurants—including Cricket's, where I'd last seen Nancy.
However, from all the commotion at the harbor end of the building, it
wasn't hard to know where Murphy wanted me to be.

I'd walked down State Street from my office on
Tremont, so I didn't have to find a parking place. That was the only
fortunate part, given the sickening similarity the cruisers and
unmarkeds and Medical Examiner's van carried with them from the scene
in Southie earlier that day.

A different uniformed officer met me at the
yellow-tape barrier. She led me under the "POLICE LINE DO NOT
CROSS" lettering and around the corner to the alley behind the
building. I saw a dumpster with some trash overflowing, unusual
because the city was adamant about the restaurants and stores
maintaining a neat appearance for our tourist showcase. When you got
closer to the dumpster, though, you could see the thing wasn't really
full. More like somebody had intentionally strewn garbage on the side
of it.

And over what lay on the ground next to it.

"Cuddy," said Murphy, standing near the
trash pile, "just what the fuck is going on here?"

I was close enough to see the shapely legs sticking
out from under a flattened cardboard box. The pantyhose were torn up
the right calf, that two-inch heel on, the other off so the left foot
was visible, pointing toward the sky at a forty-five-degree angle.
For just a second, my heart said it was Nancy, but my head kicked in
quickly, because while the shoes were right, what I could see of the
legs belonged to a shorter woman. Besides, Murphy wouldn't have
sprung something involving Nancy on me, no matter what his mood might
be.

I drew even with him and looked down at the other end
of the trash pile. The orange rinds and banana peels had been brushed
away from the face staring up at us. The eyes were bulging, the
tongue gorged and turned that grotesque shade of blue.

The way Michael Mantle would have been if the rats
hadn't been at him first.

"You recognize her." said Murphy, but not
as a question.

I did, though what I saw on the ground made no sense.
"Deborah Ling."

He nodded. "I met her when we did the Q&A
over at Woodrow Gant's law firm, day after he was killed on the
road."

"I was there a little while ago."

"The road?"

"No, at Epstein Er Neely. The head secretary,
Imogene Burbage, said Ling hadn't gotten back from a meeting after
lunch."

Now Murphy was staring at me. "My question still
stands."

"Why is this woman dead?"

"That's the question. What's your answer?"

"I don't know."

"Not good enough."

"Lieutenant—"

"No 'Lieutenant' bullshit, Cuddy." Murphy
was getting hot, and tough to blame him. "I want the straight
skinny, and I want it now."

I glanced around the trash pile. "I don't see
her handbag anywhere."

“
Neither did the poor son of a bitch taking out the
trash, and I believe him."

"Which means, it could have been an unrelated
mugging."

"That's how we'll carry it for now, media-wise."
Murphy turned away from me and spoke in a softer voice. "But
everybody who thinks that's likely, raise his hand."

Neither of us did.

I said, "Besides the torn pantyhose, any
indication of sexual assault?"

"No," from Murphy, over the shoulder, "but
we have to wait on the M.E. and lab tests to be sure."

"Speaking of which, you get any better time of
death for Michael Mantle?"

He turned back to me. "We're not talking about
Mantle. We're talking about Ling" Murphy took a breath. "Account
of your client Spaeth being a guest of the county, he's in the clear
on this one. So, who might've killed her?"

I couldn't see how keeping my promise to Deborah Ling
would help the woman now.

"Cuddy, I'm—"

"She had a
boyfriend," I said.

* * *

After giving Robert Murphy the information about
Nguyen Trinh and his enforcer, I went back to my office and called
Nancy. The person picking up her phone said Ms. Meagher was on trial
for the afternoon. I left a simple, "If you see the news, I'm
okay," and hung up on him.