The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (25 page)

* * *

"For Yuri, lucky already fifteen dollars."

The driver looked over his shoulder and through the
Plexi-glas, his accent Russian, the meter running. My visitors' green
Mercedes was three vehicles ahead of us and showing no sign of
reaching its destination.

Back in my office, I couldn't see any reason for
Nguyen Trinh to have Oscar Huong bring their car around unless they
didn't want me following them somewhere. Which meant I wanted to. But
I'd never have time to get the Prelude, and besides, Chan or Dinah at
the restaurant might have seen me driving away and described it to
them. A cab would be a little less obvious.

If a lot more expensive.

Yuri pushed back the Kangol cap on his head and
picked up the mike to his radio, saying something in terse Russian
before replacing it. "You think this close enough, three cars?"

"Given the volume of traffic, yes."

He shook his head, waving a hand at the side streets.
"A truck comes out, boom, we lose them."

"We get closer, they'll know I'm back here."

A shrug, then something to himself in Russian.

Another five dollars on the meter, and we were in
Dorchester, skirting the edges of Mattapan. Yuri twisted halfway in
the driver's seat. "I do not like these streets so much."

Hard to blame him. We were in a part of town you
wouldn't mistake for Helen Gant's neighborhood. Building walls tagged
with graffiti crumbled into trash-filled vacant lots. Kids in clumps
wore Oakland Raiders and Philadelphia Eagles colors, watching the
Mercedes glide by, then eyeing us.

"Pretty soon," said Yuri, "I do not
want anymore to follow."

His last word still hung in the air when the Mercedes
pulled to a stop in front of a coffee shop.

I said, "Go past them to the next street and
turn left." Ducking down, I could see only the taped posters
near the top of the shop's windows, advertising "OPEN AT FIVE"
and "TWO EGGS AND TOAST $1.50, COFFEE EXTRA."

After Yuri turned, I told him to stop, too. Getting
out of the cab, I gave him a twenty as good-faith money, then walked
back to the corner building, a failed hardware store from the empty
fixtures still inside. Looking at a slight diagonal across the
street, I couldn't see Nguyen Trinh at first, but Oscar Huong was
just going in the front door of the coffee shop, aiming his keyring
at the Mercedes, which gave that little security-system chirp. Then I
could see Trinh inside the shop, moving to a windowed booth. He slid
onto the bench seat and stretched out, checking his watch again.
Huong eased down opposite him, and I could see their pantomime
conversation through the glass as a waitress brought them both cups
and saucers, pouring from a Pyrex pot.

None of us had to wait very long.

About five minutes after
the waitress left the booth, a junker Chevy came down the street and
parked in front of the Mercedes. I'd seen the car only in bad light,
but its muffler noise was an aural signature, and I wasn't very
surprised when the driver's side door opened to show Grover Cleveland
Gant derricking himself with difficulty out from behind the wheel.

* * *

Quietly and to my back, Yuri said, "Soon we must
leave."

"Soon we will."

"Those kids in the next block, I do not like the
way they look at my cab."

"Stand next to it and flex."

Yuri muttered something in Russian, but moved away
from me.

I was watching the scene in the coffee shop. Oscar
Huong had stood to let Grover Gant slide into the booth on his side,
which put some serious tonnage on that particular bench. After Huong
sat back down and the waitress poured a third cup, Gant watched her
walk away before reaching his right hand, holding an envelope, across
the table. Nguyen Trinh took the envelope and opened just the flap,
looking inside and thumbing the contents. Then he may or may not have
said something to Huong, but the Ultimate Fighter's right hand
disappeared under the table for a moment, and the shoulders of Grover
Gant doubled over toward his coffee, the head bobbing in what didn't
look like pleasure from my angle.

Yuri called out to me, "Two minutes more, then
my cab and me go."

Now Trinh definitely was talking, aiming his comments
at Gant's bobbing head. I thought Gant's lips were moving, but given
the distance, it might just have been from pain. Trinh slipped out of
the booth and Huong stood, then leaned over to Gant, whose head now
snapped up, his upper body beginning to rise, nearly taking the table
with him, coffee cups jumping and spilling. The two Amerasians moved
off, through the door of the shop and toward the Mercedes, the chirp
noise preceding them.

From behind me, "One
minute."
 
I waited until Trinh
and Huong were back in their car, doors closed, before turning away.
"Yuri, start your engine."

* * *

"You know, my cab must be back by three o'clock
to garage."

The Mercedes cruised fairly leisurely along the city
streets, the meter on Yuri's dashboard in the mid-four-figures. I
figured I could always find Grover Gant if need be, but I was curious
where Trinh and Huong might go next, and I had only the office
address the gang unit had given me for them. Holding up his left
wrist, Yuri twisted in his seat to say, "And is already
two-twenty."

"Just hang in there a little—watch it!"

He swung his head forward, stomping the brakes just
as a moving van pulled out from a righthand side street. The van
didn't have the turning radius to clear the parked cars the first
time, requiring a leviathan three-pointer to get squared away. By the
time Yuri was able to pass, the Mercedes was nowhere in sight.

"What do I tell you? A truck comes out, and
boom, we lose them." He looked down at the meter. "Now?"

"Back downtown, Tremont Street."

"Where I pick you up?"

"Yes."

"This time of day, we will not until after three
get there. Way—"

"Twenty-dollar tip, or no tip. Your choice."

A moment's hesitation,
then Yuri picked up his radio mike and spoke some Russian into it
before glancing at the inside mirror. "Again the address,
please?"

* * *

Back in my office, I got our superintendent working
on my door lock as I flipped through the mail Nguyen Trinh had
opened. Nothing seemed to be missing among the flyers, insurance
advice, and utility bills on the condo.

When I called my answering
service, the woman with the silky voice gave me one message on the
Gant case. Steve Rothenberg's title searcher at the Registry of Deeds
would be dropping off a package of recorded documents on the Viet Mam
property late that afternoon. There'd been no unstamped envelope on
the floor under the mail slot, but I decided not to wait for it
before driving out to the restaurant, since I thought a bluff would
work, and I wanted to catch Dinah before she'd be involved in the
preparations for their dinner crowd.

* * *

Frankly, I wasn't sorry there was no green Mercedes
in the parking lot next to Viet Mam. I stopped the Prelude across the
street, so that I could get a good view of the dumpster and the
pyramid of cigarette butts next to it.

About fifteen minutes later, the outside door to what
I took to be the kitchen opened, and Dinah stepped onto the
black-top. Her right leg looped behind the left as she walked to the
corner of the dumpster, her hair still perfect but slightly
different, I thought. A cigarette was already in her mouth, a lighter
coming up from an apron pocket.

I left the car and moved toward her. Dinah was just
blowing out the first big plume of smoke with something approaching
pleasure on her face when I must have appeared in her peripheral
vision.

Standing hip-cocked, weight on the good left leg, her
pleasure waned as she waited for me to reach her.

"Dinah, I need to talk with you."

She took another drag on the cigarette. "This my
break." A hacking cough. "Chan give me five minute only."

"I know why you were so scared the last time I
was here."

Dinah looked away, taking a deeper drag. "I not
scared. I not know—"

"Nguyen Trinh and Oscar Huong?"

She winced, the way I suspected she'd learned not to
with her leg. "I have nothing to tell you."

"I'm trying to help a man I think is innocent."

Dinah looked at me.

I said, "Please?"

She glanced once toward the kitchen door before
refocusing on her cigarette. "When I in Vietnam, many
'innocents' die. My husband, too."

"I'm sorry." The first time I saw Dinah,
she'd mentioned that he'd fought. "Was your husband ARVN?"
meaning Army of the Republic of Vietnam, our southern allies.

"No. He from north, a Catholic." Dinah
fixed me with her eyes. "One of the commandos in newspaper
stories."

Jesus. Before I got to Saigon in the late sixties,
about three hundred men who'd fled from the communist North had been
recruited by our C.I.A. to parachute back up there because they knew
the terrain and the dialects. Thanks to a North Vietnamese mole in
the ARVN, they were captured, tortured, and often killed. Recently
declassified American military records confirmed that our government
had written off all of them. Whether dead or alive.

I said, "There's supposed to be a payment from
our Congress for survivors like you."

Dinah coughed out a laugh. "No. When my husband
killed, American officer come to our village. With money, four
thousand dollar. Family of my husband say he never marry me, and I
have no record to show, so his family take all the money."

"But maybe you can get more now."

She looked at me with contempt. "No money then,
no money now." Then she sucked in more smoke. "When
Communists win war, they come find me. They believe I wife of my
husband. They torture him, they torture me. My leg, my br . . . my
chest." A hand fluttered helplessly to her neckline, the scar
diving under her collar more livid in the late afternoon light. "And
so now I am with Chan, and no money can pay for these things."

"Dinah, I'm truly sorry, but your husband tried
to help people who needed it. Can you help me?"

She drew again on the cigarette, her eyes working
hard on something. "What you want to know?"

A window, but one I didn't think would stay open very
long. "The woman with Woodrow Gant that night. You'd seen her
before?"

"Yes."

"With Mr. Gant?"

"Yes. Only."

"Only what?"

"Only with him."

"Do you know if they left in the same car?"

Dinah glanced to an empty parking slot. "I know
they come in same car."

Bingo. Maybe. "You saw them arrive?"

A look over her shoulder. "I am walking out door
for cigarette break. Chan always want me in restaurant to help when
new customers come. I watch them get out of car, walk to front door.
Same car, he drive."

"When they were leaving, did they call a cab?"

Genuine confusion. "Taxi?"

"Right."

"Why they call, they have car?"

One more. "The woman, was she a little drunk
when they left?"

“
She drink most of wine bottle."

Only a quick puff now, Dinah's cigarette almost gone,
and I sensed my window closing.

I said, "Is there anything else you can tell me
about the woman that night?"

"She always with sunglasses, always with same
big hair."

"Same hairstyle, you mean?"

Dinah took a last drag. "I save my tips here,
study for beautician school." The free hand went to her own
head.

"Yes?"

Dinah dropped the stub on the ground near the pile of
dead ones and crushed it out with the toe of the good foot. "I
don't look at her face so much, but I look at the hair, like I look
at everybody's." Another smoky, hacking cough. "Same hair
mean not her hair."

Jenifer Pollard had said that Woodrow Gant liked her
to dress in costume and . . . "The woman in the restaurant that
night was wearing a wig?"

"Yes. That is all I know."

"Dinah—"

"I must go." She was already turned to move
as she coughed a final time. "Chan give me five minute only, and
too many cigarette bad for you."

By the time Dinah reached
the kitchen door, I was halfway to my car. After what she'd been
through, I thought lung cancer probably held precious little terror
for the waitress of Viet Mam.

* * *

Back at my office by half-past four, I pushed open
the door to find the package from Steve Rothenberg's badger at the
Registry. It was a manila envelope, nine-by-twelve, folded over to
fit through the mail slot in my now fixed door.