The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (39 page)

Burbage looked back down at the message pad and began
writing on it. "We have nothing to talk about."

"You should have used a carrier pigeon."

She raised her head again. "A what?"

"Carrier pigeon. Frank Neely told me that to
send a message on one, you have to roll the paper and stick it into
this little quiver on the bird's leg."

No response from Burbage.

I reached for the inside pocket of my suit jacket.
"But since you sent this through the mail slot in an envelope,"
laying the photocopied phone message on her desk, "I could see
how neatly creased it was. And when my name didn't appear on even the
envelope itself, I realized that was probably because the handwriting
would match yours on the slip, since the only other writing was
Deborah Ling's, and she was well past being able to hand-deliver
anything anymore."

Burbage gave up the game. "You're really a lot
smarter than you like to show, aren't you?"

"If so, we're two of a kind."

"Flattery doesn't work with me, Mr. Cuddy."

"That's too bad. You've earned some."

A confused expression. "What do you mean?"

I moved my hand in a small arc. "Everything you
do around here. Secretary, bookkeeper, functional office manager. I'm
betting your IQ beats any lawyer's in the firm by twenty points?

A jaundiced look. "Now you're not just
flattering me, you're buttering me up. For what?"
 
"I want to know why you brought this message
slip to my office."

"That's pretty obvious. I didn't want you to
know who left it there."

"Not what I meant. Why did you think someone
connected with the investigation into Woodrow Gant's death should
know about Ms. Barber's call to Deborah Ling?"

Burbage looked back down at the sheet I'd laid in
front of her. "Because I was his secretary, too."

"Mr. Gant's, you mean?"

"Yes."

Vague, but I thought I saw it. "Frank Neely
became aware of this message, didn't he?"

A nod without looking back up. "I was covering
the switch-board here that day. The voice mail was down again, so I
wrote out Ms. Barber's message, leaving the pink copy for Ms. Ling in
her slot." Burbage motioned to the plastic holder on the
reception desk. "When Ms. Ling came out from her office to go to
a closing, she picked it up. After reading the message, however, she
scribbled a note on it, saying I should give it to Mr. Gant
personally."

Now I pointed to the message holder. "As opposed
to just leaving that pink copy in his own slot."

"Exactly. But I thought Ms. Ling just meant he
needed to see it quickly."

"Not that no one else was to see it at all."

Another nod. "So, when I was relieved by a temp
here at the board, I carried Ms. Barber's message back to my desk in
order to give it to Mr. Gant as soon as I saw him."

"Only Frank Neely came out of his office first."

"Yes. He was asking me about a file, and I had
what he wanted on the floor beside my desk. When I looked back up,
Mr. Neely had the pink copy in his hand, glaring at it like he was
going to tear it up. Then he set the message very carefully on my
desk, and asked me to have Mr. Gant see him as soon as he got back."
Burbage grew quieter. "I could tell Mr. Neely was seething, so I
made a photocopy of the message, in case he wanted one later for some
reason. But I couldn't see why Mr. Neely was so upset. I mean, I
didn't recognize the name 'Barber,' but he obviously did."

"No, he didn't."

Burbage shook her head. "What?"

"Your boss didn't recognize the name." I
pointed to the line underneath on the photocopy, the one that read
513-1944. "He recognized the number."

"I'm afraid you're right, John." said Frank
Neely's voice, the business end of his Colt forty-five preceding the
sleeve of a chamois shirt and the leg of some khaki slacks around the
corner of the corridor.

After frisking me for a weapon I wasn't carrying, he
marched us very slowly toward his office, Burbage in front, me in the
middle, him bringing up the rear. Once inside, Neely waved his
secretary toward the interior door.

“
Open it, Imogene, and climb the stairs. One at a
time."

When she was three deliberate steps up, at the first
curve of the spiral case, Neely said, "Stop," and then,
“Now you, John."

Reaching the base of the stairs, I paused until he
told both of us to start moving again. Burbage climbed stiffly in
front of me, her hand shaking the metal bannister every time I
touched the railing. Neely came on but kept at least one turn of the
staircase between us at all times, giving me no chance to do anything
while preserving a nearly clear field of fire for his gun. Something
about the spiral nature of the climb made things harder on my ribs,
and I was breaking a sweat by the time we reached the top.

"Step out into the garden." said Neely.

Burbage and I did. As the staircase door closed
behind us, I looked over my shoulder, Neely using a key from his ring
to lock up.

He said, "The contractor who did the renovations
for me planned to put only a dead bolt on here, but I wanted a little
more security." Neely made a ritual out of returning the ring to
his pants pocket. "Glad now that I did. Okay, follow the path."

Burbage and I moved through the foliage to the marble
cocktail table and wrought-iron chairs. When we turned around, my
right hand inadvertently brushed the left side of her skirt at the
waist. She surprised me by reaching for and holding that hand, her
elbow digging into my rib cage just enough to make me flinch.

Neely noticed it. "I heard you got a little
banged up dealing with that loan shark and his pal. Broken rib along
with the eye?"

"I'll live."

Neely just smiled with a sense of something
approaching accomplishment.

I said, "Uta Radachowski told me you weren't in
your office."

"She was right. I'd come upstairs to do a little
gardening, so I changed clothes." With his free hand, Neely
tapped the chamois shirt and khaki slacks. "Then I remembered a
phone call I hadn't returned, so I went back down to look for the
message on my desk. I'd just found the number when I heard your
voice, John, talking to Imogene in the reception area."

"About a number you didn't need to find."

Neely smiled, but this time without the air of
accomplishment. "You picked up on it, too."

Burbage said, "Picked up on what?"

I glanced at her. "Woodrow Gant and Deborah Ling
were planning to leave Epstein & Neely to open their own law
office."

"No," said Burbage to me.

"I'm afraid so. The real estate broker they'd
asked to help them rent space was one Frank here once used, to find
this place when he was breaking off from the last of his old firms.
The broker was smart enough, though, to use a different, if similar,
name. 'Barber' instead of 'Baker.' "

" 'Barber.' " The secretary addressed her
boss. "But then how would you know who she was?"

"The telephone number itself, Imogene. The
exchange was the same as ours here, not surprising given the few
blocks between Ms. Baker's office and this one."

Burbage seemed awed. "You remembered the last
four digits for eight years?"

"More like fifty-some," I said.

Now she was confused. "What?"

Neely lost his smile. "The last four numbers are
one-nine-four-four. The year of D-Day, Imogene."

"My God." she said.

I was pretty sure of the rest. “And seven weeks
ago, when you saw that phone message for Gant via Ling on Ms.
Burbage's desk, you knew what it meant."

"Betrayal, John." said Neely.

"Because Gant was bailing out and taking Ling
with him."

"Of course." The senior partner seemed to
go inside himself, reliving something. "Almost four years ago,
when Woodrow approached me about joining the firm, I could tell he
was a real go-getter, just what we needed, given Len's dying months
before. We never had a written partnership agreement here, but I made
it clear to Woodrow that we needed his loyalty, a commitment to stay
and build and be a part of the team. He agreed, and I took him at his
word." Neely came back to us.

"But in the end, Woodrow betrayed me, John."

"Then why didn't you kill Uta Radachowski as
well?"

Burbage drew in a breath, but Neely didn't seem to
notice.

‘
He said, "Uta? Why?"

"She was leaving the firm, too, and from the
files being transferred to you from her, you had to know about it."

"Uta told me, straight out." Neely shook
his head. "At her interview for my first firm, in fact. She made
no bones back then about wanting to be a judge someday. When we all
broke off from the second firm to form Epstein & Neely, Uta
expressly promised Len and me that she'd stay with us forever unless
she got a judgeship. Not only wouldn't I stand in her way, I
applauded the opportunity." Neely fixed me with a baleful look.
"No, Uta was forthright. It was Woodrow played the Judas."

"Just following in your footsteps, Frank"

A cocking of the head, a lot like Vincennes Dufresne
at the Chateau in Southie. "What kind of a crack is that?"

"You and Leonard Epstein jumped ship on your old
firm, just the same way that Woodrow—"

"Not in the least! You never knew Len, but you
know me. And we were both men of honor, then and now."

"A man of honor sets up an innocent stooge to
take the fall for him?"

The accomplishment smile. "Your Mr. Alan
Spaeth."

"That's who I was thinking of."

"Then you can hardly call him an 'innocent,'
John. He abused his family, first by neglecting them, then by putting
them through the mill in his divorce case. He was . . . perfect"

“
You'd heard Alan Spaeth berating Gant that day a
few months ago at the deposition downstairs, even threatening him.
Easy enough to wait one night until everybody else had gone home,
then get Spaeth's boardinghouse address in Southie from the divorce
file.

"Woodrow even helped out there, telling us at
lunch a few weeks after the deposition about his client's being
afraid of the gun Spaeth still had."

"I can see you knowing about the revolver. I
haven't figured out how you got it from Spaeth's room at the
boardinghouse."

"I didn't. Mr. Michael Mantle got it for me."

"Not based on what I've heard from the landlord
there. He—and even Spaeth himself—said Mantle was loyal to his
friends."

"And so he was, John. To a fault, you might even
say. Once I realized what a perfect scapegoat Spaeth could be, I
began to spend my evenings following him. I started by using a car,
but I noticed he and Mantle went out from the boardinghouse at least
three times a week to different bars within walking distance, so I
just dressed the part and parked, waiting until one night when Mantle
went out by himself. I left the car and tailed along to this dive,
then sidled up to Mantle and began talking to him. Pretty soon I was
standing for drinks, and soon after that he started opening up about
this friend of his having such a terrible time with his divorce. So
terrible that poor old Mick was afraid poor old Alan might do
something really stupid with his gun."

Christ. "You persuaded Mantle to steal Spaeth's
gun to protect his friend from himself."

"Very good, John. Can you work out the rest,
now?"

I thought about Dufresne recounting the payment of
the room tab. "You told Mantle he could save his friend and pick
up a little money on the side by taking the gun and selling it to
you."

"Go on," said Neely.

"That gets you the right gun, but you also have
to make sure Spaeth doesn't have an alibi for the night in question."

"What night?" said Burbage.

Neely glanced at her. "Please, Imogene. Don't
interrupt the man."

I thought about it some more. "So you tell
Mantle that you're going to use the gun a week ago Wednesday, the
night Gant was killed."

"Actually I told the little drunk that the guy I
sold it to was going to carry the thing into a liquor store, maybe
even fire it, because he was another hotheaded Irishman."

"So Mantle decided he'd better baby-sit his
friend Spaeth"

"I decided for him. Even made sure he had enough
cash to get Spaeth good and drunk."

"Before Mantle left him to meet you."

"Excellent, John." Neely went inside
himself again. "I told him, 'Mick, you meet me late Wednesday
night, over in this derelict shell by some warehouses. I'll let you
know then if your friend has anything to worry about.' "

"But once you got Mantle in that shell, you
strangled him."

Burbage said, "No."