The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (7 page)

He stared at me.

I said, "A month ago, Mantle gives you six
weeks' worth of rent, all in cash at the same time."

"Right. What he owed me, plus the advance."

"Just before Spaeth accuses you of stealing his
revolver."

"I don't know what kind of gun it was."

"You don't?"

"Hell, no."

"You never saw it?"

A new cocking of the head. "I never even knew
the fucking thing existed, eh? When Spaeth come to rent from me, I
told him the house rule was 'no guns.' Then, after he's lived here
for a while, the asshole claims I went into his room and stole the
thing. Says he's moving out to an apartment three blocks over because
of that."

The version Spaeth told me at the Nashua Street jail.
Which might be just a good setup by him for why Woodrow Gant could
have been killed by a gun with Spaeth's prints on its shells.

But then why wouldn't the guy just have taken the
revolver with him from the crime scene and pitched the thing where it
wouldn't be found and linked with the shooting?

Dufresne gave me a new angle of his head. "Eh,
you okay?"

"Sorry." I moved around the room, more to
think than to look. "You said you helped Mantle up here last
week on Monday or Tuesday."

"Right."

"When did you see him last?"

"Last?"

"Yes."

Dufresne stared at the hardwood floor. "I think
that was it."

I stopped. "You haven't seen Mantle for a full
week?"

"Yeah, but that's not so unusual, you know. I
mean, the guy does his carpentry, he's got to be on the job by seven
in the A.M. sometimes."

"I thought you said he hadn't been working for
the last month?"

"Yeah, but I don't really know that. Besides,
the guys here drift in and out at all hours. I try to get them to
lock the front door, but they're not exactly the most responsible
people on God's earth, eh?"

"How long has Mantle lived here?"

"Two, three years. More like three."

"He ever pay you in advance before?"

"Once. His uncle died, left him some kind of
inheritance."

"But other than that . . . "

"The Mick's strictly hand-to-mouth."

Adding things up, I said, "You think he might
have gotten the advance money this time by stealing Spaeth's gun and
selling it?"

"No." Dufresne shook his head. “No, the
Mick's got his faults, but he's no thief. And he's loyal, too."

"Loyal?"

"He wouldn't screw a friend, even just a
drinking buddy like your Spaeth."

"They drink here?"

"Here and around here. Couple of bars up
Broadway, and another on L Street toward the beach."

"These places have names?"

A shrug. "Not that matter."

Growing up in Southie, I knew what he meant. "Well,
thanks for your help."

As I moved into the hall, Dufresne said, "It's a
good rule, eh?"

I stopped and looked back at him. "What is?"

"My thing about guns. Can't have them in the
house, not with these losers."

"Mr. Dufresne—"

“
My mother, she was part Indian, where those
cheekbones came from? She always said her grandma on the tribe side
told her, 'Firewater and guns, they don't mix!' "

One of the hooking laughs before Vincennes Dufresne
took out his master key and locked Michael Mantle's door.
 

Chapter 4

THE BOSTON HOMICIDE Unit is on D Street in Southie, a
block off West Broadway. It has the second floor of the old District
6 police station, a two-story building of bricks soot-darkened to
that dingy brown of dried blood. The windows show boxy air
conditioners and green trim around them. White stones embedded in the
brick arc above the main entrance, like the doorway to a chapel.
However, the Stars and Stripes flaps overhead, a separate
black-and-white pennant remembering POW's and MIA's just below the
flag they were lost fighting for.

I stopped at the battered counter on the first floor
and asked a woman from Warrants for Lieutenant,Robert Murphy. Hiking
a thumb over her shoulder, she said, "I think he's in the back,
fuming some relic."

The department had let the Homicide Unit turn a
portion of the old station's garage area into a fuming tent for
spotting latents on vehicles suspected of being involved in
homicides. Robert Murphy was standing safely away from two men
working near the wooden frame covered with clear plastic, a low-slung
Pontiac from the seventies getting the treatment inside.

About six feet and barrel-chested, Murphy was wearing
a long-sleeved shirt and geometric tie, the gold wedding band on his
left ring finger contrasting against his black skin as the hand did
against the pale gray pants. There was a Glock 19 over his right hip
because the commissioner doesn't want plainclothes officers wearing
their weapon for a cross-draw that could spray bullets at a civilian
before the muzzle comes to bear on the righteous target. Murphy held
a clipboard in his left hand, frowning at something he saw on it.

"Lieutenant."

Murphy looked over. "Cuddy. Keep your distance,
'less you want a fine layer of Crazy Glue on that suit."

"Not exactly a dust-free environment."

A smile. "Commissioner's promising us this real
fuming facility—bigger version of that room the M.E.'s got over at
the new morgue? We just have to wait for 'Headquarters Building 2000'
to go up." Murphy turned to the men near the tent. "How you
doing?"

“
Nothing yet, Lieutenant."

I looked toward them, too, but spoke quietly to
Murphy. "That stuff really work?"

"If there's anything there to find. This
particular vehicle, I'm not so sure we'll need it. Case it's from
might be a real bunny."

"Meaning open-and-shut?"

A nod. "Three neighborhood civilians eyeballed a
homeboy they knew from the time he was three empty his Tech-9 into
two merry wanderers from a turf ten blocks away."

"A Tech-9? That's thirty-two bullets."

"If the clip was full. Homeboys don't always
remember to reload, and the Crime Scene techs didn't hope to recover
all the slugs."

"Motive?"

“
Witnesses said it was because 'they be down with
his lady.' He yelled it from the rear window as one of the other kids
he hangs with obliged him as wheelman." Murphy stuck the
clipboard under his arm like a drill sergeant on parade. "If
only they weren't so stupid about it." Then he seemed to
remember I'd come to see him. "So, what are you wanting?"

"I'm on the Alan Spaeth case."

Murphy's face turned toward me slowly, the eyes
giving me nothing, but the lips pursing some. "Steven
Rothenberg."

"He asked me to talk with his client over at
Nashua Street. I did."

"Not gonna make you many friends."

"And I don't want to trade on the ones I've
already got."

Murphy turned back to watch the progress on the
Pontiac. "Meaning I should go over things for you without you
asking right out."

"You once told me how you hated asking for
favors."

Murphy nodded. "William Daniels."

The case I'd helped him with. "Which was why
Rothenberg thought of me on this one."

The clipboard changed arms. "Funny how things
come back around, isn't it?" A little pawing of the floor with
his right shoe. "Cuddy, the Gant killing is as high-profile as a
homicide can get."

"All the more reason to be sure that, pretrial,
you've got the right guy for it."

Lieutenant Robert Murphy
looked at me, then set the clipboard down on a table before calling
over to the two men at the plastic tent. "I'll be out on the
street a while."

* * *

The maroon Crown Victoria that Murphy had signed for
back at the Homicide Unit turned left in front of me. I followed in
the Prelude as the road became more rural and twisty. It's easy to
forget there are still some sections of the city like this, a
two-lane parkway through a forested valley.

Murphy slowed to maybe twenty miles an hour,
eventually pulling onto the grassy shoulder near skid marks darker
than their neighbors on the pavement. The Crown Vic trundled along
the shoulder a while more, coming to a stop about fifty feet before a
tree at the bottom of the slope. The tree had a strip of yellow
plastic tape tied in a simple knot about eye-height on its trunk. I
stopped behind Murphy's bumper, and we both waited for a break in the
traffic before exiting our driver's side doors.

Shrugging into his suit jacket so the Glock on his
belt wouldn't scare the people passing us on the roadway, he walked
around the front of his vehicle to its righthand headlight, waiting
for me.

"You notice the skids?" he said.

I glanced back toward where they started. "From
the blown-out tire?"

"Shot-out tire." Murphy pointed ahead and
toward the near treeline. "You see the tape?"

"Yes. Crime Scene stuff?"

"Right. Marked that trunk even with Gant's body,
behind his car."

"What make?"

"BMW 530i." Murphy gestured. "Gant was
lying half on the pavement, half on the shoulder."

"Can we walk over there?"

"Sure."

As Murphy moved ahead of me, a lot of traffic whizzed
by in both directions. Above the noise, I said, "Busy road."

"This time of day, maybe."

"But not at night?"

"Gets kind of lonesome, account of folks don't
want to take the chance of breaking down, middle of nowhere. We
figure that's why your boy Spaeth picked this spot."

"Only how did the killer, Spaeth or otherwise,
know to pick it?"

"Meaning how could he be sure Gant would come
along here?"

"That's what I mean."

Murphy drew even with the taped tree and turned his
head, back the way we'd come. "This parkway, maybe a mile beyond
where we turned on it, gets pretty commercial. Auto parts, discount
houses, restaurants. We know Gant and some woman had a late dinner at
this place called 'Viet Mam'. "

"Viet Mam?"

"Right, two M's." Murphy swung his head
back to the direction we'd been going. "Four, five miles up
there, you've got Gant's condo building."

" 'Four, five miles'?"

Murphy almost smiled. "I clocked it at
four-point-six on the odometer."

"And this parkway's a good route between the
restaurant and Gant's place?"

"Most direct, anyway."

I thought about it. "I still don't see how the
killer knows
Gant will be coming by here."

"Well, we don't believe Spaeth staked out one
restaurant out of a thousand, hoping Gant and this woman would eat
there. But all your boy would have to do is be following Gant,
watching for a chance to do him, and then figure after dinner, the
man'll be coming back this way to go home."

"Or take the woman back to her place."

Murphy kicked at a stone. "We don't know whether
they came to the restaurant together or in separate cars."

"You don't."

"Uh-unh. The parking lot's on the side of the
restaurant building, no windows. All the Viet Mam people could tell
us is that Gant and the woman walked in together and walked out
together."

"How about a cab?"

"Checked with the companies. No pick-ups or
drop-offs near the restaurant that we couldn't eliminate."

I shelved the car issue for a while. Looking down at
the shoulder, I could see a patch of stones and grass that seemed
almost bleached. "What caused this?"

"Gasoline."

"From the BMW's tank?"

"Right." Murphy pointed across the road to
the other slope of the valley. "Ballistics figures it was a
rifle of some kind. Bullet went through the left rear tire,
ricocheted up, and punctured the gas tank."

"But without exploding it."

A real smile this time. "Cuddy, you watch too
much TV."

I looked back over at the hillside where the shooter
supposedly had been. "Any kind of make on the bullet or rifle?"

"No. Slug was too deformed by the things it hit.
But from the composition of the metal, we know it wasn't the same as
the ones found in Gant."

"Meaning two different guns."

"Right. A rifle and a revolver. M.E. dug two
readable rounds out of Gant's soft tissue, and Ballistics matched
them to Spaeth's Taurus Model 85 revolver."

"To the revolver found at the scene."

"With your boy's prints on the shell casings
still in the cylinder. And he admits to owning a Taurus 85."