The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (4 page)

"So you move to an apartment, and this Mantle
comes over to drink."

"Yeah."

"Why not go out drinking with him?"

"Cheaper this way."

Spaeth could tell I wasn't buying. "And besides,
you live in a little room at a boardinghouse long enough, even a
small apartment is a nice place to spend some time." Spaeth
looked behind him, into the unit. "Believe me. Here I got a cell
maybe half the size of my room at Dufresne's."

"Aside from Mantle, can anybody else vouch for
where you were the night Woodrow Gant was killed?"

"No." Spaeth raked his hand through the
hair again. "No, like I said, we got shitfaced together. The
Mick must have left sometime after I fell asleep, because the first
thing I remember is a couple of homicide cops banging on my door
after they couldn't find me at the rooming house."

"And they can't find Mantle, either."

"Which just means they haven't really looked for
him. I mean, he's this little, scraggly guy. Reddish hair, reddish
beard. Probably hasn't gone more than five miles from Dufresne's in
the last year without somebody to drive him."

"So he should have turned up by now."

"Unless he's in a drunk tank somewhere, or . .
." Spaeth ran out of gas. "Look, I'll level with you,
sport. I listen to my story as I'm telling it to you, and I don't
believe it myself. All I know is, I didn't kill that bastard lawyer
Gant. It doesn't make any fucking sense to me, either, but somebody
must have set me up to take the fall, and if you can't find Mickey,
I'm gonna spend the rest of my fucking life with guys ten times worse
than the one busted me in the shower. And I don't think I can . . .
can take . . ."

At which point Alan Spaeth
began to cry from both the good eye and the bad one, and I felt that
twinge in my gut a third time.

* * *

When I walked through the door of Steve Rothenberg's
office suite, he was just turning away from the disco receptionist
and she was just readjusting her earphones. Rothenberg looked at my
face, frowned, and beckoned me back to his own office.

Once inside, he moved around his desk and dropped
into the chair while I took one of the worn seats in front of him.
Then Rothenberg began combing his beard with his fingers again. "You
saw Alan Spaeth?"

"I did"

"And?"

"Your client's a jerk."

For some reason, Rothenberg seemed to take heart from
that. "Most of my clients are."

"A racist jerk, Steve."

The frown again. "I was afraid that might show
through."

"It'll 'show through' wherever he happens to be,
especially the witness stand."

Rothenberg swung in his chair a little. "There
are three decisions I have to leave to the client in every case,
John. The first is whether to plead out or go to trial."

"The D.A.'s office likely to offer much for a
plea?"

"Zip, without that alibi witness."

"Named 'Mickey Mantle'."

Rothenberg winced. "If it's to be a trial, then
the second decision I leave to the client is whether to have the
judge or a jury as the decider of fact."

"Won't matter here, will it?"

Rothenberg chose not to answer. "What I was
building to is the third decision, whether the accused takes the
stand in his own defense."

"Spaeth testifies, even a rookie prosecutor
would draw him out on cross, and either a judge or a jury would
crucify him."

"But . . . rightly?"

I watched Rothenberg as he watched me. "You mean
for the murder of Woodrow Gant?"

"That's what I mean."

We watched each other some more.

"No," I said finally.

Rothenberg let out a breath I hadn't realized he was
holding.

The fingers went back to grooming his beard. "So,
you joining the team?"

"Who's got the file at Homicide?"

"Robert Murphy."

The black lieutenant I'd helped on the William
Daniels case. "And you're sure Nancy Meagher's not connected
with this prosecution?"

Rothenberg reeled off the names of two A.D.A.'s. I'd
never heard Nancy mention either one, not so surprising when you
consider Suffolk County employs over a hundred of them. Then
Rothenberg came forward in his chair, palms flat on the desktop.
"Look, John. For what it's worth, here's my view. Somebody
killed one of my brothers at the bar in cold blood on a deserted
road. Shot the poor devil three times from like ten feet away. I
picture that, and I can't let the somebody get away with it, all
right? But I'm not a cop or a prosecutor, so I can't go after the
real killer. I'm just the lawyer who's trying to show the system that
they need to keep looking because the defendant they've settled on is
the wrong one. And with your help, I just might be able to do that.
Now, what do you say?"

Rothenberg might have a shaky practice and a shabby
office, but he had that guild loyalty I'd sensed in the people around
me during my one year of law school many years ago. And he'd also
been loyal to me.

I sat back and told Steve Rothenberg what I was going
to do.
 

Chapter 2

LEAVING STEVE ROTHENBERGS office for the second time
that Tuesday, I bought a tuna
pita from a
deli in Boylston Alley. Eating the pocket sandwich on a bench along
the border of Boston Common, I watched the flow of people past me.
The homeless with their shopping bags drooping from hyper-extended
hands, stiff blankets around their shoulders like starched shawls.
Day care workers pushing six-foot vegetable carts, filled not with
cabbages and tomatoes but rather three-year-olds, twisting and
squirming but mostly smiling and laughing as they got wheeled around
the park. Beyond the curb, tourist trolleys—kind of vegetable carts
for adults—motored by, their drivers echoing spiels about
historical sights left and right.

Walking back to my own office on Tremont Street, I
pretty much ratified the position I'd taken with Rothenberg. I spent
most of the afternoon on paperwork in other cases. Then I tackled the
utility and other bills from the condo I was renting, sorting them
into piles mentally labeled "Due," "Past Due,"
and "Lights Out."

Suitably depressed, I decided to leave those problems
at my I locked office door and went downstairs for the walk to the
courthouse.

From the last plaza step outside the main entrance, I
noticed Nancy Meagher come through the revolving door. My heart did
the little dance it learned the first time I'd ever seen her,
presenting the Commonwealth's side in an arson/murder hearing. She
was dressed the same way, too, in a skirt-and-jacket gray suit, white
blouse, and modest heels that kicked her height up to live-nine and
change. The autumn-length black hair just brushed her shoulders,
framing a face of bright blue eyes over freckles and pearly teeth, an
image on a postcard from County Kerry. Nancy had received a cancer
scare of her own a month before, and our working through it had
brought us closer together.

Shifting the strap of her bulging totebag onto a
shoulder, she went up on tiptoes to peck the corner of my mouth. "If
I'm not mistaken, it's your turn to pick drinks and dinner."

I gave her a one-armed hug. "It is indeed."

"We walking or driving?"

"Walking, unless the totebag's going to give you
trouble."

"The weight won't, but what's inside it might."

I turned us toward Beacon Street. "Tough trial?"

Nancy shook her head. "The legislature's finally
approved some new superior court judgeships for the governor to fill,
and I'm supposed to help our administrative people decide if there's
any current nominee we should be opposing."

"Based on trial attorneys like you litigating
against the nominees as opponents?"

"You got it."

"Not much fun."

"No, but it's important to my boss, and he's
been loyal to me, so . . . Nancy shook her head againj "How
about if we talk about something besides the court system for a
while, okay?"

I'd wanted to bring up the
Alan Spaeth case with her, get it over with, but right then didn't
seem the time.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Nancy said, "Don't tell me
you've joined the Harvard Club?"

"I was Holy Cross, Nance," though we had
reached the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Commonwealth. I
gestured toward a doorway in the hotel on the corner.

She read the name over the threshold. "The Eliot
Lounge?"

"This is drinks."

We stepped down into the dark, wood-paneled room, a
bar in front of us with stools and taps, a raised platform area off
to the right with tables.

Nancy looked around, allowing her eyes to adjust, I
think. "I've never been here, but . . . ?"

"The Boston Marathon."

"Oh, right. The place that has a party
afterwards?

"Not a party, the party."

She said, "Then how come we didn't come here
when you ran?"

"Because after I finished the race, my legs were
barely able to climb curbs, remember?"

"I remember how stupid it was for a man
six-three——"

"—a little under, Nance—"

"—and almost two hundred pounds to run
twenty-six miles without stopping when he didn't have to."

"And I remember you, waiting for me at the
finish line."

"With my camera."

"It was the 'you' part that mattered."

A smile crossed her face, almost from ear to ear.
"That was certainly the right thing to say. Where do we sit?"

I ordered a pint of draught ale for each of us and
led her to a table under the "Wall of Memory." There were
photos and testaments to Johnny Kelley, who ran more Bostons than any
other human being, winning several times around 194O before finally
having to stop in the early nineties. I identified some candid shots
of Joan Benoit Samuelson, the great women's and Olympic champion, and
of course Boston's own Bill Rodgers, who finished first an incredible
four times in six years.

Nancy looked up at the wall as our drinks arrived.
"You really know who all these people are?"

Alberto Salazar, Greg Meyer, Cosmos Ndeti. "Most
of them. But this was never just a runner's bar. Professors from
Berklee College of Music played jazz. And reporters from the old
Phoenix kibitzed with state senators ducking quorum calls. Even the
great Bill Lee made an appearance."

"The Spaceman. He was pitching for the Red Sox
one afternoon at Fenway when the game got delayed by rain. He came
over to the bar in his uniform and cleats, drinking beer while
monitoring the rain on television, running back to the park to retake
the mound."

Nancy looked at me. "And when was all this?"

"The mid- to late-seventies."

"John?"

"What?"

"In the mid- to late-seventies, the only time
I'd have seen any of those people would have been if they'd come to
show-and-tell at my grammar school."

"Drink your ale."

As Nancy smiled at me over the top of her glass, I
looked around the room, then noticed Nancy's expression change. She
said, "Something's wrong, isn't it?"

"How do you mean?"

"Your face just went sad."

"The reason I brought you here."

"Which is?"

"The owners of the hotel aren't renewing the
bar's lease. They want to aim at a more upscale crowd."

"So, this is kind of last call at the Eliot
Lounge?"

"Kind of."

Nancy reached her right hand across the table,
closing on my left one. "Then I'm glad you cared enough to have
me come with you."

"You and no other, kid."

"What a lovely evening." said Nancy.

We were walking east on Newbury Street, Boston's
answer to Rodeo Drive. A little funkier on the Mass Ave end where we
were, a little ritzier—appropriately—as you got closer to the
Ritz Carlton Hotel overlooking the Public Garden. There were a few
outdoor cafés, tables set but no diners seated.

“
John?"

"Agreed," I said. "Lovely evening"

Nancy took my arm, giving me a sidelong glance. "You
still down about the Eliot?"

"Yes, but I did what I could, which was to send
the place off with as much good feeling as it gave me back when."

"Then there's nothing else you can do."

"Right."

Nancy tone changed. "You know the photos of the
runners on the wall?"

"Yes?"

"I bet you'd look cute in one of those little
running outfits, with the silk singlets and short shorts."

"You should catch me in the swim-suit
competition."