The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (8 page)

I didn't have a good answer to that one, other than
Spaeth's believing somebody stole the weapon from his room at
Dufresne's boardinghouse. "Lieutenant, you have anything on the
woman with Gant that night?"

"No. Owner of Viet Mam says he never noticed her
face. And the waitress there doesn't have great English, says just
that the woman was blond and attractive, wore tinted glasses and
drank chardonnay."

"Enough wine so she wouldn't be able to drive?"

Murphy looked at me. "Waitress said the bottle
was empty, but she's not sure who drank how much."

"The lab do Woodrow Gant's blood alcohol level?"

"Point-oh-three."

"Pretty low."

"He was a biggish man, Cuddy."

Okay. "Let's go back to the woman. Height,
weight?"

"Medium everything, according to the owner."

I looked down the road in the direction of the
restaurant, then across, into the trees.

"Lieutenant, can I work something through with
you?"

"I'm listening?

"Either Gant and the woman that night were in
separate cars or the same car, which would have been Gant's BMW."

"Go on."

"But either way, the killer has to take some
time setting up across the road. And that means gambling that Gant is
going to drive back this way to his condo instead of taking or
following the woman home."

"I suppose, but there's another reason to think
Woodrow Gant was alone when he got shot. We traced the man's
movements that day. Found out he had the car washed and waxed after
lunch. Armor All on the dash and upholstery, whole nine yards. There
wasn't a readable latent on the BMW or in it that didn't belong to
Gant or one of the wash crew we took elimination prints from."

I looked at Murphy. "Which leads you to think no
passenger in the car."

He held my gaze. "Right."

"And Spaeth's threats at the law firm combined
with his prints on the shell casings found in the murder weapon lead
you to believe he did the killing."

"Right again."

"So this should be another . . . bunny, then."

Murphy looked away. "Just about."

“
Only if it were," I said, "you wouldn't
be out here with me, going over things as much for your benefit as
mine."

Abruptly, Murphy walked toward the ribboned tree. I
followed him.

When we got there, he turned his back to the trunk,
eyes ranging around the valley. "You take away all the cars
going by, this is a real pretty spot."

"Lieutenant—"

"Shut up a minute, listen to what I'm saying."

I nodded.

Murphy spoke more quietly. "Nationwide, what
percentage of the population you think is African-American?"

I started to feel we were skating on different, and
thinner, ice. "Ten?"

"About twelve and a half, actually. How about
folks on death row or executed in the last twenty years?"

"No idea."

"About forty percent black."

"Jesus."

Murphy rolled his shoulders into the tree, like a
bear scratching an itch. "It gets worse. Nationwide, most of the
homicides—eighty percent, in fact—involve victim and killer from
the same race. Most of the other twenty percent is black doing white.
But here, we've got white doing black."

Even with the traffic, the crisp October air seemed
awfully quiet.

Murphy said, "There's not much doubt why this
Gant killing landed on my desk. High profile, from a lot of different
angles. Victim's black and a lawyer, plus a former A.D.A. and the
third divorce attorney to be killed in the Commonwealth over the last
few years. Lots of constituencies interested in this one. And who's
our best suspect? A white opposing client, man who likes to own guns
and shoot off his mouth as well. The department expects me to clear
this case, get a conviction. But, if your boy walks, the brass wants
to be able to sit down—with the bar association, the
African-American interest groups, the media—and say, 'Hey, we put a
senior homicide detective on it, and he's even black, too; no way
Murphy'd let Spaeth walk, if the white guy was really guilty."

"Sounds like lots of pressure for you."

"Double-boiler." Murphy clucked his tongue
off the roof of his mouth. "When I came on Homicide, though, a
guy named Peter O'Malley broke me in right. He had over thirty years
in the unit, and he told me there's really just one rule. You never
lie anybody into jail."

I waited Murphy out.

He pushed off the tree. "Only thing is, there's
no need to lie here, not even the temptation to do it. We got plenty
enough evidence to convict. Motive, threat, means, opportunity. Shit,
a third-grader with a Dick Tracy badge could submit this case to the
D.A. and not look bad."

"Then what's the problem?"

A quick, "Experience."

"I don't get you."

"Too many things that add up right but feel
wrong." Murphy raised his index finger. "One, we get a call
to the local fire station saying there's a body on the road out
here."

"The call went to the fire department, not
nine-one-one?"

"Right."

"Male or female voice?"

"Male. Woman taking the call said the man
'sounded black'. "

I filed that away.

Murphy raised his middle finger. "Second thing,
I was there when we arrested Spaeth the morning after. Brought an
Entry Team with a fourteen-pound sledge to go through his door. But
hell, your boy's just lying in that apartment's bedroom, still
half-dressed and still half-crocked. When he asks us what the fuck is
going on, I tell him flat out that Woodrow Gant's been killed. You
know what the fucking idiot said?"

I got ready to cringe. "Do I want to?"

"Spaeth says, 'Well, you know what they say. The
only good lawyer is a dead one! And then he goes to roll over. And I
roust him some more. Ask him where he was. He says, 'Here, drinking.
Just ask the Mick.' And Spaeth tries to roll over again. Not like
he's acting, either. I think he's too stupid for that. It was more
like he really wasn't concerned."

"The way an innocent man might behave."

Murphy moved on to his ring finger. "Third thing
doesn't feel right. Every other case I know of with a husband killing
his wife's lawyer, the guy grandstands. Does some obvious, hot-dog
thing, like shoot in broad daylight on a city street or a courtroom
plaza to have an audience, be the center of attention. But this here
was set up as though the guy wanted to get away with it."

I looked up at the hillside and nodded.

Murphy noticed me looking. "That's the fourth
thing."

"What is?"

The pinkie now. "My way of seeing it, the killer
has to be following Gant for a long time, figure out about the
restaurant and this route. Granted your guy had plenty of opportunity
to  do that since his threat at the law office back in August.
But I also see our shooter sitting up there on that hillside during a
fairly chilly night for quite a while, watching for Gant's BMW. Then
the killer lines up the rifle and pops off the tire. But after the
car comes to a stop here, what doesn't the killer do?"

Murphy's face stayed on the hillside. "The
killer doesn't use the rifle to take out Gant nice and safe from a
distance. No, our shooter makes his way down here, maybe while the
victim's walking around the back, checking his tire and the gas
smell. The killer gets up close and personal, then drills the man
three times. Why?"

I pictured it. "The shooter wanted Gant to know
who killed him."

"Right. To look into Gant's eyes as the man
recognizes who it is. Maybe say something, even." Murphy finally
turned to me again. "That's cold, Cuddy. Very fucking cold. And
it's also why I don't see the woman from the restaurant—whoever she
is—still being in the car then. Somebody that stone-kills doesn't
leave witnesses lying around."

"I like the 'somebody' part."

A sound between a sigh and a grunt. "I can prove
Spaeth did it, but I don't feel he did. I wouldn't be lying your guy
into jail, but I'd be doing the next thing, helping whoever set him
up."

“
Which is why we're out here."

"And why you're getting nothing more from me.
Somebody hears I led you to this spot, I can always say I thought you
might let something slip. After today, though, it's me working with
my side's lawyer, and you working with yours."

Murphy began walking away from me.

"Lieutenant?"

He kept walking.

I said, "Granted you're in for the prosecution,
but who are you rooting for?"

Murphy stopped, then turned around. "Woodrow
Gant was a role model. The kind we need, especially for the work he
did as an A.D.A. I were you, I'd talk to the Gang Unit sometime
soon."

It took a minute more for the lieutenant to reach his
maroon Crown Vic and start the engine. Then, like the careful man he
is, Robert Murphy waited for a break in traffic before easing onto
the pavement.
 

Chapter 5

I WAS A good deal closer to the restaurant than the
Gang Unit. Back in the Prelude, I waited for another break in traffic
to execute a U-turn and head toward the commercial strip Murphy had
mentioned.

The countryside gave way to a self-only filling
station, then a smattering of outlet stores that would have last
year's styles in odd colors. After a food market and two hair salons,
I saw a marquee for the "Viet Mam" restaurant on the right.
It was in a stucco building shaped like a shoebox, the main entrance
on one of the shorter ends of the box, parking to the side against a
windowless wall. After leaving my car in an angled spot by the
garbage dumpster near a back door, I stepped over a pyramid of dead
cigarettes and walked to the front door. As Murphy had implied, from
the entrance you couldn't see the parking area.

Opening the door and moving inside, I was struck by
the salty smell of
nuoc mam
,
a fish-based dipping sauce and probably the source of the play on
"Viet Nam" in the place's name.

The smell also carried me back several decades and
thousands of miles, to the streets I'd patrolled as an M.P.
lieutenant in Saigon. The scents of anise and cilantro and garlic
spilling out from the open-air restaurants. The unfiltered exhausts
of ancient Renaults and Citroens. The sweat of stringy men pedaling
bicycles and rickshaws around me as I hoped nobody was going to greet
my jeep with a grenade or—

"Just one?"

That nasal, slightly clucking accent that held me
back there nearly as much as it snapped me forward. I turned to see a
man about five-three in black pants and a white, buttoned-down dress
shirt, collar open. Coming around the counter supporting the cash
register, he was painfully thin, both the pants and shirt like
hand-me-downs from a huskier older brother. Maybe forty-five himself,
he wore his hair in a flyaway cut that looked as though one of his
soup bowls could have been its inspiration. The horn-rimmed glasses
were black, similar to the army-issue ones in the sixties, and they
slid down his narrow nose toward a mustache with few enough strands
in it that they could be individually counted.

I said, "One for lunch."

He nodded but seemed disappointed, as though hoping I
might be the advance scout for a tour bus. Led by him toward the
middle of the twenty tables, I could see why. Only three others were
occupied, one by a young Asian couple wearing business suits and a
second by two teenaged Asian women decked out in the sort of designer
"active-wear" that never sees the inside of a gym. At the
third table, an old man in a flannel shirt hunched over a large bowl
of what looked like
pho
,
a rich, traditional soup of meat served over noodles and other
goodies. Everyone looked to have Vietnam somewhere in their heritage,
though after a year in-country, I'd learned you could never judge
ethnicity accurately by appearance alone.

My table was square and wooden, with a formica top
and three violin—back chairs around it. As I sat down, my host laid
the menu against a small lazy Susan in front of me, chopsticks in a
ceramic mug like pencils in a holder. Plastic-scoop soupspoons lay
stacked between the mug and some squeeze bottles containing what I'd
bet would, be sweet and chili sauces.

The man said, "I am Chan. Your waitress come
quick."

Chan walked back toward the cash register, and I
looked around the room. Widely spaced ceiling fans hung from the old,
stamped tin above, wobbling as they turned to piped—in music that
sounded an awful lot like Vic Damone. Thatched, manila wallpaper
provided background for paintings of ducks, geese, and other
waterfowl. Along one wall, the lighting dimmed, and there were four
banquette booths of green and gold leatherette, white tablecloths
under glass protectors for easier cleaning.