The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (17 page)

I said, "Where do you work?"

She composed herself with knees together, hands
clasped on top of them. "Social welfare, Mr. Cuddy. I do mostly
outreach and tracking programs."

"Meaning visiting recipients in their homes?"

"Some days. I'm a 'mandated reporter' under the
state statute, so if I see evidence of abuse during my visit, I have
to file a 51A with the DSS—the Department of Social Services? Then
the department investigates, either to screen the incident out or . .
."

The hiccup again, but now a different look. "You're
doing what I do."

"I'm sorry?"

"You're using the same technique I use for
interviewing a family. Get them talking about themselves to see how
they're functioning as a unit."

"Mrs. Gant—"

"By the way, it's Ms. Gant."

"Sorry again."

A level stare. "No need to be. I dropped out of
high school to have Woodrow when I was fifteen, and stayed out for
Grover two years later. Thought giving them the names of presidents
might help them get past their fathers, neither of which being what
you'd call a prizewinner." Another hiccup, and Helen Gant lifted
her chin. "I lived with my mother, went to work as a housekeeper
in a hotel downtown. Started at six A.M. in the laundry, washing and
folding, then on to the rooms, scrubbing on my hands and knees in
bathrooms, keep the mildew from getting a foothold. I'd be finished
by four in the afternoon, five pounds lighter than I was getting
there in the morning." Hiccup. "But I went right from work
to school for my G.E.D., and then on to UMass/Boston for college. Got
the degree, got the job at Welfare, got this house. And never looked
back until your client killed my Woodrow. Now, what more do you want
from me?"

Gant was impressive, containing her emotion rather
than displaying it.
 
I said,
"Witnesses agree your son had dinner with a woman at a nearby
restaurant before he was killed."

"The police told me."

"Do you have any idea who she could have been?"

"No. Why?"

"The woman may have been with your son when he
was shot. She might have seen something that would tell me who the
killer really was."

Gant watched me carefully. "Or she might give
that lawyer you're working for some kind of ammunition for reasonable
doubt."

"That's part of my job, too."

Gant looked down at her hands. "Woodrow hated
that O.J. Simpson business."
 
Until
she said that, it hadn't struck me that Spaeth's wife was also named
"Nicole."

"My son felt the way that trial was televised
destroyed people's faith in the system." Raising her eyes, Gant
hiccuped again. "Well, Mr. Cuddy, I've seen the system. Seen
kids beaten by their parents, and beaten by their stepparents, and
beaten by any somebody who just happened to be dropping by that night
for a couple of rocks in the crack pipe." Hiccup. "Those
are the kids end up getting beaten by the police, too, or shot by
each other. It's not cases like O.J.'s that destroy people's faith in
the system. It's the people themselves and the system itself."

"Yet you're still working within it."

"You have to do something to try and help
people." Gant relented a little. "People helped me when I
needed it."

"And I need your help now."

She moved her tongue around again. "We back to
who that woman might be?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Cuddy, I truly don't know." Hiccup.
"When Woodrow was in college and law school, he went out a lot,
but I never met any of them. Then he got married, and I thought he'd
finished up with sowing his wild oats. But after the divorce, Woodrow
went right back to them. Don't get me wrong, he was a good son. Come
by on Sundays for dinner, always remembered birthdays and holidays."
Hiccup. "But his social life was his own, and I never met
anybody after Jenifer."

"His ex-wife."

"Yes."

"I plan to talk with her, too."

Gant hesitated. "Why?"

"See if she can help."

A skeptical look. "You think a man would tell
his ex-wife about a new girlfriend?"
 
"It's
possible that Ms. Pollard would know someone who had a reason to kill
your son."

Hiccuping, Gant closed her eyes once, then opened
them slowly. "That system we were talking about me working in?
Well, Woodrow worked in it, too, Mr. Cuddy. Did everything he was
supposed to, and it got him killed. When he was with the district
attorney's office, I worried for him, on account of I knew the
children I'd seen at age five he'd be seeing at fifteen. A lot of
them don't have any feeling except hate, and that they keep burning
in a special place deep inside them, a place nobody can touch."
Hiccup. "And they don't forget. But the police say your client
killed my son, and so far I haven't heard anything from you that
tells me different"

A car with a Gatling gun for a muffler pulled up near
her house. “Ms. Gant—"

"You asked for me to talk with you, and I did. I
didn't have to, but I did, and I'll even tell you why. It's because
talking about Woodrow is better than thinking about him. Talking
about him makes it seem like maybe there's still something there, a
part of my son still with me." Hiccup. "When I'm just
thinking about him, all I can see is his body, lying in the coffin at
the wake that night or being lowered into the ground that next
morning. Which is a hell I wouldn't want even Mr. Alan Spaeth to
share."

As Helen Gant rose, I heard a key in the front door.
She turned that way and spoke to someone I couldn't yet see.

"Grover?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

"This man is here about Woodrow." Hiccup.
"You can talk to him or not. I'm going upstairs."

"I was just at this TV thing?"

Grover Cleveland Gant sat on the couch as his mother
had, but he leaned back into the cushions. About six-two, Gant hid
his weight beneath a bulky, crewneck sweater and shapeless pants. The
hair ran almost long enough—and tall enough—to be an Afro from
the seventies. His face was puffy, like a prizefighter who'd been not
so much hammered as jabbed, lightly but constantly, over the last
couple of days, his lips closed into a dazed, somehow satisfied
smile. His fingers were puffy, too, and if what I could see was any
indication, he wasn't in great shape under the clothes.

"TV thing?" I said.

"Yeah, man. Weird, we-ird, we-ird. I got this
invitation card in the mail, come down to a hotel on Tremont by the
old Combat Zone. Well, I didn't have nothing better to do with my
time, so I went. There's about a hundred of us—white, Chinese,
wheelchairs, you name it. At the door to a ballroom, these two foxy
ladies in dressy outfits, they taking down names and jobs you did and
such, then they have us sit around these four TV sets raised up high
in the center of the room and pointed every which way. The foxy
ladies tell us we got to sit through these two pilot shows, give them
our views on what we like and don't like. Only thing is, there's more
commercials than show, and they ask us lots of questions about those,
too. More, in fact, like they really interested in whether we go out
and buy the things than watch the programs. Which was just as well,
account of the shows really sucked. I walked out, half-way through
the second one, and don't nobody try to stop me."

I thought Gant might have stopped off himself
somewhere for a couple of pops on the way home, but as long as he was
talkative, I was happy to let him go on. "You watch a lot of
television?"

He squinted at me. "No way, no way, no way. I
got better things to do with my time, usually."

"Like what?"

A sly smile replaced the dazed one. "Track."

"Horseracing?"

"Not 'less I can help it. I'm a greyhound man,
myself. With the ponies, you got what I call the human factor working
against you."

"The human factor?"

"Yeah. You got the jockey on your horse, the
jockeys on the other ones. You don't know who wants it more or who
got paid to hold back this race, let somebody else finish in the
money."

“
But with the greyhounds, it just the animals
themselves."

"Right, right, right. You can trust a puppy,
man. Can't trust people."

As good an opening as any. "Mr. Gant, you
understand I'm here to talk with you about who killed your brother."

"Police got who killed my brother. White
mother—no offense"

"None taken." I adjusted my voice. "It
may be they have the wrong guy."

The features closed down some. “Uh-unh. I seen him,
man."

"Who?"

"That Spaeth dude. At Woodrow's lawyer office.
He was screaming, 'Nigger, nig-ger, nig—ger,' and like that. I come
close to killing him myself." A pause. "Wish I had. Then
Woodrow be alive now."

"Did you see Mr. Spaeth approach your brother at
all?"

" 'Approach' him? Man, what you talking about?
The dude was ranting and raving. About how Woodrow fucked him over,
how lawyers ought to die. I mean, what more you got to know?"

"You were close to your brother then?"

A cloud came over the eyes. "Say what?"

"You said you wished you'd killed Mr. Spaeth to
save your brother, so I assume the two of you got along."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got along just fine. Momma
had us from different men, but she raised us together." The sly
smile again. "Wasn't Woodrow's fault he got the brains and I got
the good looks."

"Then your brother would have confided in you if
something was bothering him?"

The cloud again. "What you trying to put in my
mouth here? Woodrow was a good brother. Loan me money when I needed
it, let me drive that fancy BMW car of his."

For a moment, I wondered if somebody could have
mistaken Woodrow Gant for Grover behind the wheel that night, then
discounted the thought based on body type and dress code. "Lent
you money when you needed it for the track?"

"Man, I already told you, I like to gamble some.
They pass a new law I never heard about?"

"Most people gamble with their own money."

"Yeah, well, I'm like between jobs right now."

"What do you do when you're working?"

"Restaurants."

"Waiter?"

"That's right." The sly smile made another
appearance. "And none of them cheap places, neither. Expensive
restaurant, you do a halfway decent job, they gonna tip you fifteen
percent minimum, maybe even eighteen, twenty on a hundred-dollar tab.
Even at the low end, though, that's fifteen dollars in your pocket.
Cheap place, the bill's gonna be more like forty, say, but you still
got to make the same number of trips to the kitchen or the bar. In
fact, any time I'm looking for work, I walk into a restaurant like
I'm a customer first, ask to see the menu. That way, I can tell does
the place have cheap stuff."

"What if there're no prices on the menu?"

The smile got slyer. "I like those kinds of
restaurants the best. Ritzy, not glitzy, and you can get humongous
tips from guys bringing the old lady out for their twenty-fifth. He's
gonna go overboard on the wine, maybe even some brandy. Don't want to
look like a tightwad on her one big night on the town, and he'll tip
the way them Rockefellers ought to."

"But you're not working in a place like that
now."

"No, man. Like I said, I'm between jobs at the
moment. Woodrow, he was the one always trying to get ahead. And look
where it got him."

"The night your brother was killed, he ate at a
Vietnamese restaurant."

"So?"

"He was with a woman, Mr. Gant. Do you have any
idea who she might have been?"

"Uh-unh, uh—unh, uh-unh. Woodrow and me, we
mostly see each other at dinner over here. He don't talk about his
ladies in front of Momma."

"And he never mentioned anybody to you?"

"Not since he got divorced from that English
bitch. She made him real careful about lady kind of things."

"Did you know his former wife well?"

"Ain't nobody knows that Jenifer 'well.' You
know her at all, though, you watch out for her."

"How do you mean?"

"Body armor, man." Grover Gant ran both
hands from shoulders to knees. "You going anywhere near that
bitch, you got to wear it." Then he hitched the right hand at
his crotch. "At least a cup, you hear what I'm saying?"

"Why don't you spell it out for me?"

A snort. "Bitch is a ball-buster. Eats 'em for
breakfast, man, you let her."

I stood up. "Well, Mr. Gant, thanks for your
time."

He stayed seated, the sly look back. "So, when
am I gonna see my check?"

"Your check?"

"For the insurance, man. The money I got coming
to me on Woodrow's policy."