The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (22 page)

As I reached the counter, the young woman was
speaking into her telephone. "My name? Heather .... Yes, ma'am
....We have a computer directory here, if you could give me his . . .
Is that with an 'M' or an 'N'? .... Just one second . . .yes. Yes, we
have him in Wellfleet. Here's his address and telephone."

After Heather finished with that last, she paused,
then said, "You too, ma'am. Bye now." The receptionist
looked up at me. "Sorry, sir. How can I help you?"

"I'd like to find out if a lawyer had any
complaints lodged against him."

A rueful smile. "I'm afraid that's not public
information."

"But the lawyer involved is dead."

"Sorry," said Heather. "Unless there's
been a public discipline, all those records have to remain
confidential"

I took out my identification. "I'm investigating
a murder where any complaint here might be important."

A polite head shake. "Again, I'm afraid—"

"It's the murder of Woodrow Gant."

Heather's face creased. "Just one moment."

"Mr. Cuddy?" the man rising behind his desk
in a non shared office.

"Yes."

"Parris Jeppers." We shook as he said,
"Thank you, Heather."

The receptionist who had led me to him closed the
door on her way out. Jeppers was about five-ten and slim, his forty
or so years showing themselves by sprinkled gray in the short, brown
hair, both his carefully trimmed mustache and goatee a shade darker.
He wore tortoiseshell glasses, one of those neon surfer cords
attached to the templates so he could drop the specs in front of him
like a bib. Jeppers' suit was a faint herringbone, his dress shirt
blue, but with white collar and cuffs. The paisley bow under his
Adam's apple looked more tied than clipped on.

Despite the Yankee clothes, he had a Rebel accent.
"Heather told me over the telephone that you wished to see any
complaints about a given attorney?"

"I'm thinking, Mr. Jeppers, that she also told
you that attorney's name, or I wouldn't have gotten an audience
with—what are you, anyway?"

A tight smile. "If you mean title, 'assistant
bar counsel'."

"What else would I mean?"

The smile grew tighter. "Sexual orientation,
perhaps? If you were guessing I'm gay, you're right."

I didn't think I'd been guessing at all. "That's
coming on a little strong, isn't it?"

"Sometimes strong is a better gambit than
courteous. Sorry if I offended you."
 
"Only
by assuming that your orientation might affect my view of your
professionalism."

Jeppers's expression changed. "Then I'm truly
sorry for my assumption." He used his right index finger to push
the glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. "So, you're here
about Woodrow Gant?"

"Yes. I'm working with Alan Spaeth's defense
attorney, and it occurred to me that it'd be helpful to know whether
there might be someone in your files who had a motive to kill Mr.
Gant."

"A disgruntled client of his?"

"Or an angry opponent."

"Most lawyers settle any differences between
them with paperwork, Mr. Cuddy."

"I meant to include opposing clients."

Jeppers adjusted his glasses again. "As Heather
must have told you, those records are confidential."

"I can appreciate that. But Alan Spaeth is going
to be on trial for murder, and I've found other information that
suggests he may not have done it."

"still . . ."

"Meaning I need a court order to see if there
are any potential suspects in your files."

"That would be up to you. Or to Mr. Spaeth's
attorney and the presiding judge involved. However, given my . . .
breach of good manners at the beginning of our conversation, perhaps
I can save both of us some time. And embarrassment as well."

"Thank you."

Jeppers's hand went to his bow tie for a moment. "Mr.
Spaeth himself came here to file a complaint against Mr. Gant
regarding Mr. Spaeth's wife."

Half-expecting that, I tried not to let my face show
Jeppers anything. "What kind of complaint?"

"Mr. Spaeth behaved in a belligerent manner out
front, so Heather referred him to me. It seems your client believed
Mr. Gant was having an affair with Mrs. Spaeth. The man was rather
insistent about it, too, though long on belief and short on details."

"What did you do about his complaint?"

"Told him it had no foundation."

I stopped for a second. "How could you know
that?"

"Don't misunderstand, Mr. Cuddy. I'm not talking
about factual foundation. I mean legal foundation."

"Legally, it's all right for a lawyer to have
sex with his divorce client?"

"The Commonwealth's attorneys have long been
governed by the Code of Professional Responsibility, which for our
purposes is divided into aspirational ethical considerations and
stricter disciplinary rules. Is it ethical for a lawyer to engage in
such an affair? No. Is it a direct violation of a disciplinary rule?
No again. Hence, there was no legal foundation upon which we could
proceed, even if Mr. Spaeth's version of the situation was true."

"Which it might not have been."

The tight smile again, and another adjustment of the
glasses. "That's almost immaterial, don't you think? Mr.
Spaeth's belief that it was true is the damage I'd bring to his
defense counsel's attention."

I thanked Parris Jeppers
for his advice, and he called Heather to escort me back out to the
elevators.

* * *

"Shit," said Steve Rothenberg. "You're
sure?"

"There a reason why this Jeppers at the
Overseers would lie to me?"

The lawyer shook his head. We were sitting inside the
client interview room at the Nashua Street jail, waiting for the
guard to bring Alan Spaeth to us.

I'd started Steve off with my last stop, and now I
went back to the beginning. "I hit Michael Mantle's place at the
rooming house twice. No sign of him there since late Tuesday of last
week."

"The night before Gant was shot."

"Right. And Mantle hasn't visited his usual
watering holes, either."

"Also since that Tuesday?"

I nodded. "Plus, everybody at the law firm
confirms that Spaeth went nuts that day at his deposition."

"Ah, yes," said Rothenberg, a dollop of
sarcasm in his voice. "I remember it well."

"However, I also got everyone there to admit
that Spaeth just yelled, that he never approached anybody physically.
And that Woodrow Gant's brother was the one who had to be
restrained."

"That's 'Grover,' right?"

"Grover Cleveland Gant. Though if I'm the
prosecution, I think I'd bypass him and put the mother on the stand.
She'l1 have the jurors standing in line during recess to learn the
hangman's knot."

Another shake of the head.

"On top of that." I said, "almost
nobody has a bad word about the deceased. Good partner as well as
good son and brother. His ex-wife says he played around during their
marriage, but once Gant's single, that's a risk I think the jury
would let him run."

"Besides, it never looks good to paint the
victim bl . . . in a bad light on sex stuff. Unless you've come up
with a connection to the woman he was with that night?"

"Nobody seems to have any ideas about that."

Rothenberg looked skeptical. "None at all?"

"I don't buy it either, even though everyone
took great pains in telling me Woodrow Gant kept his personal life to
himself."

"Well, keep trying. If the woman was with him
when the shooter opened up, she may have seen something."

"In which case," I said, echoing Lieutenant
Murphy, "why didn't our killer get her, too?"

"Maybe that's exactly what happened."

"Steve."

"What?"

"No other body was found"

"So, the killer took the woman away."

"Why?"

"Maybe for just the reason we're having trouble
finding out who she was."

"The killer wanted to hide her identity?"

"Look, this woman tried to disguise herself,
right? I mean, dark glasses in a restaurant at night?"

Rothenberg had a point.

He waited a moment, then said, "Anything from
Gant's time as a prosecutor?"

"I drove out there, talked with a current A.D.A.
named Arneson, who was Gant's office-mate. Arneson says Gant was
aggressive and effective but fair."

Rothenberg said, "Gang members who get sent away
aren't usually consoled much by 'fair'. "

"Which brings us to the only piece of good
news."

"Anything at this point."

I lowered my voice. "One of the bad guys Woodrow
Gant put away was a home-invader named Nguyen Trinh. But Trinh was
only a juvenile at the time, and after paying his debt to society, he
expanded into other lines of work."

"What other lines?"

"Loan-sharking, but bordering on venture
capital."

"Venture capital? Bankrolling what?"

"A certain Vietnamese restaurant."

"No," said Rothenberg, brightening visibly.

"Yes. It's probably just a coincidence that
Woodrow Gant ever ate at Viet Mam—one of the other attorneys in the
firm had it recommended to her by a friend and took him there once.
But maybe Trinh happened to see him at the restaurant."

"And got the idea to take his revenge by
following Gant the next time the man came by."

"Except that A.D.A. Arneson thinks it's pretty
unlikely Trinh would wait so many years before getting even."

"John, let's not taketh away with the other
hand, okay?"

"Meaning this is the best evidence we've got so
far."

"By a mile. You're sure about this former gang
guy's connection to the restaurant?"

"That's what a pretty reliable source told me,
but I think one of us should hit the Registry of Deeds, link the
property to Trinh through documentation."

"I can have somebody there run the title and fax
the papers to you."

"The Suffolk registry's not that far from my
office. Have your searcher drop an envelope through the mail slot in
my door."

Rothenberg stared at me. "You still don't have a
fax machine, do you?"

"Steve, I never even learned how to type."

Rothenberg was giving me a
"that-doesn't-compute" look when we heard a perfunctory
rap/rap on the other side of the interior trap.

* * *

In a petulant voice, Alan Spaeth said, "I did
tell you."

Rothenberg shook his head. "Alan, what do you
take me for, an idiot? I'd have remembered."

"Our first meeting, Steve. About the divorce
thing. I remember it clear as a fucking bell. You asked me if my wife
had a lawyer yet, and I told you, yeah, this colored guy, and you
asked me for his name. And as you were writing it down, I said, 'The
way he looks at her, I think he's getting some on the side.' "

It sounded too "Spaeth-like" to be a lie,
so I broke in. "You met Woodrow Gant before you retained Steve
on the divorce?"

"Sure," a little defiance now from across
the desk, the heel of his left hand rubbing the slowly healing
"shower" eye. "Hey, sport, I was a pretty good
marketing executive, and I handled dozens of negotiations where I
sure as shit knew a lot less about the landscape than I did in my own
fucking marriage. I figured I'd be able to handle things, no sweat.
Only this Gant brings down a mountain of shit on my head, papers on
‘Vacating the Marital Home,' and 'No Impositions on Wife's Personal
Liberty.' Well, what about my 'personal liberty,' huh? Who was
supposed to look after that, I didn't hire a lawyer,
too?"

It wasn't Spaeth's decision to hire Rothenberg that
bothered me. It was that I didn't think I'd asked Nicole Spaeth if
there'd been any other incidents where her husband had threatened her
lawyer.

Rothenberg focused on his client. "I'm not
talking about what you said to me about your wife and Gant. I want to
know why you never told me about your visit to the Board of Bar
Overseers."

"Those fuckers." The petulant voice again.
"This faggot there said—"

I interrupted him. “That's one, Spaeth."

"One what?"

"Once more with the slurs, and I walk."

Spaeth stared at me, then went to Rothenberg with,
"I'm looking at prison for the rest of my life, and I can't call
a spade a spade?"

Rothenberg cringed hearing one more reason not to put
his client on the stand come trial. "Alan, just use names, not
labels. Okay?"

"Okay, okay. This—" Spaeth looked up at
me. "I don't remember his fucking name."