The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (21 page)

The door slammed hard
enough in my face that I felt the vibration through my shoes.

* * *

After walking back to the Prelude, I drove past
another three-decker. There were no lights burning in Nancy's
third-floor apartment. Given my luck so far that night, I didn't
stop.

Reaching Back Bay, I left the car in its slot behind
the corner brownstone and went around to the Beacon Street entrance.
Upstairs in the living room, the fuzzy glow from the street lamp
outside seeped through the stained-glass windows. The polished,
oak-front fireplace hadn't been used since early spring, but it was
comforting to think of Nancy and me, curled up on the rug with a
couple of birch logs crackling and snapping.

What wasn't comforting was to look at the answering
machine. The "0" in the message window meant none from her.

Two hours later, I went to bed with the telephone
squared toward me on the night table. Figuring, Nancy might still
call.

Might, but didn't.
 

Chapter 11

"STEVEN ROTHENBERG."

"John Cuddy," I said into the phone
Thursday morning, trying to keep my irritation at Nancy out of my
voice while balancing a bowl of cornflakes on my lap.

"Can I get back to you, John?"

“
Probably not."

A sigh combined with the rustling of paper. "Okay,
shoot."

“
I'm calling from my apartment because I want to
drive out to Woodrow Gant's old prosecutor's office, maybe talk to
some people who knew him when."

"When he was prosecuting?" said Rothenberg.

"Yes."

"What do you have so far?"

"You're pressed for time, right?"

"Right."

I gave Rothenberg a summary of what little I'd
developed, leaving the Gang Unit out of it except to say, "I
also have a lead on the restaurant I want to follow up."

"What lead?" he said.

"I'd rather get more information first. But
there's something we need to talk about with your client."

"Our client, John."

"Barely."

Rothenberg paused. "I'm not liking the sound of
that."

"You'll come to like it even less, I think. Can
we see Spaeth at the jail today?"

"Is that necessary?"

"Maybe vital."

Another pause. "I could make it by, say . . .
eleven-thirty?"

"Good for me," I said.

"John, basically what's the matter?"

"Spaeth told his son that Daddy thought Mommy's
lawyer was hitting on her."

"Is that all?"

I nearly took the phone away from my ear to stare at
it. "Isn't that enough?"

"John, you don't work a lot of divorce cases, do
you?" "Not if I can help it."

"Well, when the wife's lawyer is a male, the
husband tends to see him as a competitor for the position the husband
used to occupy with her. It's a psychological thing."

"Is it a 'psychological thing' for that husband
to report the wife's lawyer to the Board of Bar Overseers?"

A dead silence this time on the other end of the
line. "Say it ain't so."

"I thought I'd stop at the Board, too. See if I
can find out whether there was a formal complaint filed."

"I doubt they'd tell you," said Rothenberg.
"But, shit, if there was . . . . . then whether or not Woodrow
Gant and you negotiated a settlement in the divorce case, Spaeth
believing strongly that Gant was involved with his wife would enhance
your guy's motive for killing the man."

" 'Enhance' doesn't
quite capture it, John."

* * *

I was just getting into my suit jacket when the phone
rang back. The bedroom extension was closest.

"John, it's me."

Somehow, despite being disappointed over no contact
since Tuesday night at Thai Basil, I wasn't prepared for the sound of
her voice. “Nance, I'm glad you called."

"Don't be so sure. We need to meet, talk this
through"

"How about dinner tonight?"

"No. No, I was thinking lunch, today. Can you
make it?"

I wouldn't not make it. "Where?"

"Cricket's by Quincy Market."

Tourist Central. "Not very . . . private,
Nance."

"I know."

Okay. "When?"

She said, "It would have to be at one o'clock."

"Cricket's at one," I said, trying to keep
my temper while taking her dictation.

"See you then, John."

Nancy hung up before I could say anything more. After
a few moments of squeezing the receiver so hard my hand cramped, I
did the opposite of what I wanted to and set the plastic instrument
gently back in its cradle.

The drive to Gant's former county almost let me push
Nancy out of my mind. The purple flower that blooms in late summer
still covered the marshland bordering the Charles River, contrasting
with the red, gold, and orange leaves of October. After some suburban
twists and turns, I found the building with the district attorney's
office and parked in the rear.

At the reception counter upstairs, a male security
guard in a blue blazer sat next to a female in a polka-dot dress, an
elaborate console of buttons and lights in front of her.

The guard was already sizing up whoever had come in
behind me when the woman said, "Can I help you, sir?"

"Hope so. I'd like to see a prosecutor who
spells his first name 'T-H-O-M.' The last name might begin—"

"That's Thom Arneson. And you are?"

"John Cuddy."

"Is he expecting you?"

"I doubt it."

Both the security guard and the woman looked at me
then, but she punched a button, anyway.

My identification holder came sliding back across the
desk. "So, you're 'John Cuddy, Private Investigator.' Why are
you darkening my door?"

I started to answer when Arneson's phone jingled and
he held up his hand. As he took the call, I looked around the small,
shared office. There was another, identical desk against a second
wall, no one sitting at it and no windows for either prosecutor.
Arneson had stacks of red manila case files on two corners of his
desk, a computer on a third, the telephone on the fourth. Talking in
staccato jargon, he swung through a twenty-degree arc in his chair
under a poster entitled "THINGS INVENTED IN NORWAY," the
list below the title including skis, paper clips, and fishnet
underwear.

Arneson himself was at least thirty-five, with a
widow's peak of nearly platinum hair and fainter eyebrows. I pegged
his height at six feet and change, weight about two hundred if he
maintained the sort of shape all over that the rolled-up sleeves
revealed. His jawline was strong, and the cleft in his chin
approached Kirk Douglas proportions. The general impression leaned
toward ruggedly handsome, but a "me-first" glint playing
around Arneson's eyes also suggested you might not want him covering
your back in an alley.

Saying, "Then he does the max, Don baby, and you
don't make a dime more on it." Arneson hung up the phone and
returned to me. "Sorry, but I hate it when defense lawyers
whine."

"Any lawyer."

Arneson nodded, like he agreed. "So, what's
going on, Cuddy?"

"I'm working with Steven Rothenberg."

"Let me guess. The Gant case."

"Yes. I understand you and Mr. Gant were
office-mates here."

Arneson leaned back into his chair, doing the little
swing routine again. "Why should I talk with you?"

"I'd think you'd want the right person sent away
for the crime."

"We're the representatives of the people, Cuddy.
Ordinarily, that's exactly what I'd want. Only thing is, our office
isn't the one trying the case."

"I know, but you might be able to give me some
information on some people your office did try."

Arneson nodded again. "Really meaning, people
Woodrow tried."

"A good starting point."

A third nod, and Arneson came forward in the chair.
"I believe in presenting a charge fairly in the courtroom,
Cuddy. In fact, I make an effort to conduct myself at all times as
though a jury was watching me."

I'd heard Nancy and other prosecutors say something
similar. The difference was, I'd thought they'd been sincere, while
Arneson's little speech sounded more like the party line.

He went on. "However, I'm leery of maybe fouling
up Suffolk's case on your guy."

"Could telling me about Nguyen Trinh foul up
their case?"

"Nugey?" Arneson looked away for a moment,
then came back, grinning. "You meet him?"

"Not so far."

"Give me a call if you do. I'd like to know how
that baby's faring." Arneson dropped the grin. "Look,
Cuddy, Woodrow prosecuted Trinh and his buddy Oscar-somebody at least
eight or nine years ago. If you're thinking some kind of revenge,
they've been out plenty long enough to have done something about it
before now."

"Your office caught that case because the home
invasion happened in Weston Hil1s?"

"Right. Trinh and—Huong, that was the buddy's
name. Oscar Huong. Anyway, Trinh and Huong were from Vietnam, then
probably a dozen other places before they ended up on our doorstep.
We coordinated with the Boston force and together nailed the punks.
End of story."

Not exactly, but I didn't want Arneson knowing about
Trinh's restaurant connection before Rothenberg did. "Gant was a
good prosecutor?"

"What are you doing now? Trying to blame the
victim?"

"Trying to get a handle on the victim from
somebody who knew him well."

Arneson leaned back again, but didn't swing the
chair. "I'm not sure anybody knew Woodrow well."

“
How do you mean?"

"He was a loner, Cuddy. Don't get me wrong.
Everybody has to be by themselves some in this job, just like any
other. But Woodrow wasn't one to go out for drinks after work or play
on the office softball team, you know?"

"Somebody told me he had a bad leg."

"Knee problem. Football, I think. Bottom line
is, Woodrow didn't socialize much. I think I met his wife—sorry,
ex-wife-maybe once. Jessica?"

"Jenifer," I said.

"Right, Jenifer. English girl. Anyway, like I
was saying, Woodrow didn't pal around much, but he did his job well.
And he was the best I ever saw at the prosecutor point."

"The 'prosecutor point'?"

“
Yeah. You know, the way an A.D.A. can point to the
defense table when a witness is identifying the accused as the robber
or a crime scene tech is testifying about his fingerprints. Woodrow
had refined the gesture to a stylized art. He pointed at you three
times, and, baby, you were gone in the eyes of that jury."

"Other than Trinh and Huong, anybody else who
might have a reason to kill Mr. Gant?"

"Like I said before, even they didn't have much
of a motive after so much lapse of time." Arneson went from
merely careful to completely serious. "Look, Cuddy, I'll grant
you that Woodrow was a hard charger, all right? He had a pair of
stones on him so big, they'd brush the ground between his feet. But
Woodrow'd been out of here for what, three years now? He stayed a
while, then went private, like most of us."

"But not like you."

The chair swing again. "Yeah, I've stayed. I
don't blame the ones who haven't. They got big dreams like Woodrow,
or maybe kids to educate. But I'm still here because I like the work,
being on the moral side of issues. Also, you stay long enough, you
get to be the smartest fish in a dumb pond, everybody else being so
junior by comparison. And the secret to being smart as a prosecutor
is simple: attention to detail."

Thom Arneson laughed. "Ten
years ago, I was a breast man. Now I'm a detail man. Kind of like I'm
losing ground, huh?" Actually I was wondering why the supposedly
smartest fish still had only a shared office in the pond.

* * *

The Board of Bar Overseers is located at 75 Federal
Street in Boston's financial district. The building, nestled between
a couple of banks, was constructed of sturdy gray granite with Art
Deco touches of chrome. Despite the nice facade, I'm told that
lawyers summoned there view it as a cross between a police
department's Internal Affairs Division and the old K.G.B.'s torture
chamber at Lubyanka prison.

When I got off the elevator, the Board seemed to
occupy the entire seventh floor. I followed speckled, marble tiles to
the front counter. A young blond woman sat behind greenish security
glass, overlapped so that papers (but nothing more dangerous) could
be pushed under and up to her. An opaque vase holding an arrangement
of Japanese dried flowers stood serenely in a niche on the left,
solid oak doors closed at both edges of the reception area.