The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (31 page)

Forgoing his honking
laugh, Vincennes Dufresne left us to get a coat against the stark
chill of dawn.

* * *

Three hours later, I was sitting in Steve
Rothenberg's reception area, watching the young woman with the
headphones select the first of today's listening program from a
drawerful of CD's in her desk. When Rothenberg came through the door,
suit coat flapping and tie askew, he saw me and dropped his eyes
dramatically.

"John, I'm already going to be late for a motion
hearing."

"You catch the local news on TV this morning?"

"If I'm late as it is, I wouldn't have had time
to—"

"Make time, Steve."

Rothenberg looked at me
differently, then asked the receptionist to call a court clerk and
say he'd be fifteen minutes late.

* * *

In his office, Steve Rothenberg sat behind the desk
without shedding his jacket. "Speak."

I told him what I'd found out from Nicole Spaeth the
prior night, and he shrunk down into his chair. I told him what I'd
seen with Robert Murphy earlier that morning, and Rothenberg nearly
disappeared from view.

To the desktop, he said, "My client's wife is
the mystery woman."

"That's right, Steve."

"And his alibi witness is dead."

"Probably from the night Woodrow Gant himself
was killed."

Rothenberg looked at me with the brown eyes of a
dejected puppy. "Now what do we do?"

"My mind's a blank,
Steve. How about you take that one?"

* * *

Walking back toward my office building on Tremont, I
tried to use the bright fall colors on the Boston Common to help me
think. While I'd agreed with Murphy's initial reaction at the Gant
crime scene—that Alan Spaeth was innocent—I also couldn't fault
this morning's turn of heart. For me to be right about Spaeth being
framed, someone had to know about the revolver he kept at Vincennes
Dufresne's boardinghouse in Southie. That someone then had to steal
the gun and use it to kill Woodrow Gant. Dufresne had access to
Spaeth's room, but no reason to want Gant dead. Michael Mantle had
access, too, but also no reason to kill Gant, or to frame his
drinking buddy, Spaeth. And besides, both Spaeth and Dufresne said
Mantle wasn't the kind of guy to betray a friend.

Assuming I could get over that hurdle, who besides
Spaeth would want to kill Woodrow Gant (and probably Michael Mantle,
tipping the location of each body as a bonus)? Everybody at Epstein &
Neely seemed to love Gant, or at least value his economic
contribution to the firm, though the million-dollar policy on his
life would go a long way toward salving that loss. And speaking of
policies, Grover Gant needed money enough to talk with me when he
thought I might be the paymaster on his insurance, and Jenifer
Pollard (however well she acted with friend Thom Arneson) could also
use some cash. The heat was probably higher under brother Grover,
given the scene I witnessed at the coffee shop with Nguyen Trinh and
Oscar Huong. And I then you still had the connection between Trinh
and Chan's Viet Mam restaurant, extending to Deborah Ling both
professionally and romantically.

"Romance" reminded me, however perversely,
of Karen Herman's afternoon with Woodrow Gant. Plenty of motive for
husband Elliot, but she claims he didn't know about it. As a former
marine, Elliot Herman had the weaponry know-how to pull off the
ambush and killing, but for that matter so did Frank Neely, the
ex-Ranger. Which brought me back to everybody at the firm liking
Gant.

And, whoever did it, why let Nicole Spaeth live?
After all, as Woodrow Gant's passenger in the car that night, she
could have heard or seen something incriminating. And why drop the
murder weapon in her lap? Because the killer hoped Spaeth's wife
would be found in the car and blamed for the shooting?

None of it made any sense,
but at least I realized I was about to pass my building, so I crossed
the street.

* * *

"John Cuddy."

"Nancy Meagher."

My heart did a sit-up in my chest as I leaned forward
in the desk chair. "Your voice sounds good, even just over the
telephone."

"Yours, too." A pause. "I heard about
the scene in Southie with Michael Mantle's body."

"Better to hear about some things than see
them."

"No argument there." Another pause. "Does
this mean Rothenberg's going to plead Spaeth out?"

My turn to pause. "I guess that's their decision
more than mine, Nance."

"Sorry, of course it is," she said,
quickly. "I just thought . . . maybe you'd already spoken with
them, and they'd already decided."

"So that we could get back together without you
feeling . . . conflicted?"

In a lower tone, Nancy said, "I miss you."

"Same. So much that it hurts."

"Then let's hope we won't be limited to the
phone for much longer."

"Amen."

“
However," she said, "I think our next
call is yours to make."

"I'll try you at home, tomorrow night."

"I love you, John Cuddy."

"I'll save mine for a later time."

"Strike my last comment," said Nancy, but
in a bantering way, before hanging up.

I sat in the office, breathing deeper and feeling
better now that Nancy was genuinely communicating with me again. But
talking together and being together were two different things, and
the Spaeth case still stood between us.

I decided to reduce to paper my mental list of the
people who had the means of killing Woodrow Gant, with motive if I
could see one. The list read:

Grover Gant: money pressure
Jenifer
Pollard/Thom Arneson: greed
Vincennes
Dufresne/Michael Mantle: motive?
Nguyen
Trinh/ Oscar Huong: revenge
Elliot Herman:
jealousy/rage?
Frank Neely: motive?

Writing down Neely's name made me think of the other
people in the law firm. I couldn't see means, but I added Deborah
Ling (motive: Trinh?) and Imogene Burbage (motive: unrequited love?)
to the list, anyway. There was no reason to add Uta Radachowski—or
for that matter, Helen Gant—on any theory.

I looked back over the list, trying to decide what to
do. Rattling cages was how I'd flushed out the identity of the woman
in Woodrow Gant's car that night. It didn't make me happier, but
that's how it came about. And maybe rattling cages would work again.

For this round, though, I opened the locked, bottom
drawer of my desk and took out my five-shot Smith Er Wesson Chief's
Special.
 

Chapter 16

A FRIEND OF mine in the state administration building
was able to access the personnel data-bank for our welfare
bureaucracy, but even he couldn't penetrate the busy signal on the
telephone number listed for Helen Gant. Getting out of the Prelude
half an hour later, I looked at the exterior of the branch office
where Grover's mother spent her days.

The bricks probably were all orange once, judging
from the ones under the metal awning and therefore protected from the
effects of weather and soot. Everywhere else the brickwork was dingy,
and the people walking in the wide entry doors with me drab, from
their shabby clothes to their resigned expressions. The only
exception were the children, some smiling and even laughing, often
holding each other's hands because mom had only the two God gave her
to manage the four or five little blessings He'd given her in another
sense.

Inside the doors was a seating area swelled to
standing room only. It looked as though the younger folks had all
given up their chairs, but there were still more senior citizens
than  places to seat them. A woman with three kids who had been
just ahead of me marched directly to the reception desk, an old steel
monster like a battleship guarding the entrance to the wallboarded
harbor behind.

A young African-American man with processed hair
staffed the desk. When the woman and her brood moved. away, I walked
up to him. Coming to a stop, I could hear the whitewater noise from
dozens of voices talking at conversational level behind the
wallboard.

He looked up at me skeptically. “Yes?"

"John Cuddy to see Helen Gant."

He reached a hand toward a stack of forms. "Have
you filled out one of our—"

"I'm not a client of hers."

His hand stopped. "Doesn't matter. She won't get
to you before lunchtime."

I took out my
identification. "Maybe we should let Ms. Gant be the judge of
that."

* * *

"Mr. Cuddy, do you have any idea how many people
need to see me—u h-uh—today?"

The hiccuping sound. "I'm guessing I up the
count to a hundred and one."

Helen Gant glared at me from behind a desk with twin
towers of manila file folders stacked high enough to reach her elbows
if she'd stood when I'd reached her cubicle. Which she hadn't.

Gant pointed to the client chair at the side of her
desk. "Two minutes."

I stayed on my feet. "It may not take that
long."

She leaned back into her chair. Not relaxing, more
buying distance and maybe even some of her own valuable time.

"What is it, then?"

"I need to find your son."

"He's still where we buried him."

The voice as hard as the look that came with it.

"I meant your other son."

"Grover?" Hiccup. "You already talked
to him. In fact, he was so upset that—"

"I have to talk to him again."

"About what?"

"Do you really want to know?"

I could tell by a
different look in Helen Gant's eyes that she didn't.

* * *

After leaving the welfare office, I drove north
through the city, weaving my way to Route IA. At the rotary beyond
the dog track, I came back south and pulled into the lot. There was
free parking to the right, "Preferred & Handicapped" to
the left. "Preferred" turned out to cost a buck in order to
avoid a two-block hike around rows of concrete Jersey barriers.
Walking toward the main entrance, I passed hundreds of already-parked
cars, which surprised me. Most of them were four-door, American
sedans, which didn't surprise me.

Above the customer gate someone had carefully drawn a
greyhound with a red blanket, "Wonderland Park" printed
beneath it. The rest of the facade sported flagpoles and the word
"Clubhouse" in white letters.

Admission proved to be all of fifty cents, and just
past the turnstiles was a raised and railed seating area, bright and
clean, with tables where you could eat or study a racing program in
relative peace. Most of the people in the black resin chairs seemed
retirement age, glancing up from food or form to the overhead
television monitors touting the odds.

"Post time for the seventh race in six minutes,"
boomed the public address system. "Just six."
 
I didn't see Grover Gant in the seating area, so I
moved around it to the right. A couple of men in conservative
business suits passed me before taking an escalator to shielded box
seating somewhere above us hoi polloi. After sixty feet more of tiled
floor, I came to a larger, glass-walled viewing area.

"Paging the Rowley Kennel to the paddock. Report
to the paddock, please."

To fit in a little more, I picked up a program and
skimmed it. There were eight races yet to be run, the greyhounds
bearing the screwy names you usually associate with thoroughbred
horses and European aristocrats. If I was reading the stats
correctly, the dogs ranged in weight by five pounds to either side of
seventy, which seemed heavy to me, given how emaciated they looked.

“
Under two minutes to post time. Under two for the
seventh."

The crowd in the viewing area watched the oval track,
even though I didn't see anything going on out there. Mainly male and
mostly white, there was a smattering of black and Asian faces,
usually in small groups. None of the African-Americans was Grover
Gant, though.

I drifted to the betting counter, overhearing the
short, one-sided conversations.

"Two dollars to win on number Four."

"Gimme a ten-dollar Quiniela on Two and Seven."

"Five bucks to show on the Six dog."

As I stood near the counter, one of the employees
behind it, wearing a white, placket-collared shirt, said, "You
want to place a wager?"

"No, thanks."

"Good," he replied. "Don't get in the
habit, believe me. Look around the room, see what you're in for, you
do."

I did look around the room, but still no Grover Gant,
People smoking like chimneys mingled with others slumping in chairs
or shuffling on canes, crutches, and even a few four-footed walkers.
Behind me, a guy named "Richie" and a woman named "Jayme"
discovered they owned houses just blocks from each other.