The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremish Healy

  She twisted around and, in a practiced way, used her left index finger to flick the earphone behind her ear for a moment. Even from four feet away, I could hear techno-rock music.

  "John Cuddy to see Steve Rothenberg."

  She held up the index finger in a "Wait one" way and tapped a couple of buttons on the telephone console before saying, "Steve, a John . . ." She looked up at me.

  "Cuddy."

  "Right. A John . . . Oh, okay." She put the earphone back in place. "Third door."

  "Thanks."

  Steve Rothenberg appeared at his office threshold, which meant he was more anxious to see me than I was to begin running the meter. Inside, his furniture was still kind of shabby, the upholstered seats on the client chairs looking like somebody had shined them. Rothenberg let the coat—tree handle his suit jacket, the dress shirt he wore rolled twice to the elbows, the tie tugged down from an unbuttoned collar, even at nine-thirty on a cool October day. His beard looked trimmed, but what was left of the salt-and-pepper hair had grown a little shaggy.

  "Your barber out of town, Steve?"

  "Yeah."

  "Maybe you should try somebody else."

  "No." Rothenberg waved me to one of the client chairs before sinking into his own behind a cluttered desk, some veneer peeling at the corners. "No, I'd rather have it be long for a couple of weeks than wrong for a couple of months."

  "Makes sense." Sitting down, though, I thought his hair-cutting schedule pretty much matched the office decor. "How can I help you?"

  Rothenberg picked up a pencil, fiddling with it. "Are you still dating that A.D.A.?"

  Nancy Meagher, an"assistant district attorney for Suffolk County and the first woman I'd felt anything for since my wife, Beth, had died of cancer. "I'm still seeing Nancy, Steve. So if she's your direct opponent in whatever—"

  "She's not, but . . ." Rothenberg looked at his window, a pie-wedge of the Boston Common showing through the pane. "You were out of town last week, right?"

  "Out of state, actually." Rothenberg was being oblique, and oblique never made anything easier. "Steve, can we maybe cut to the car chase here?"

  He tossed his pencil onto the desk. "John, I've got Alan Spaeth."

  The name rang a bell. "Who is . . . ?"

  "The defendant in the Woodrow Gant case."

  I felt a tightening in my chest. Even from three hundred miles away, I knew that the shooting of the prosecutor-cum-divorce-attorney had rocked Boston the prior week. The police arrested the husband of a woman Gant had been representing.

  After returning to the city, I'd gently asked Nancy if she'd known Gant. She said that though he'd prosecuted for another county, she'd met him once, then changed the subject.

  Understandably, I'd thought. Some things are harder to think about than others.

  Rothenberg said, "John?"

  I started to rise. "Good luck with Mr. Spaeth."

  "Wait, please. Alan needs an investigator"

  "Steve——"

  "John, hear me out?"

  I stayed standing. "The victim's a former A.D.A. and—what, the third divorce attorney in two years shot by—"

  "—allegedly shot by-"

  "—an enraged husband."

  "You don't have to tell me." Rothenberg lowered his voice.

  "But please, John. Spot me ten minutes, then you can leave, you still want to."

  Given Nancy's job, and sensibilities, I didn't see him convincing me. On the other hand, he'd sent a good deal of business my way over the years, and loyalty entitled Rothenberg to the chance.

  I sat back down. "Ten minutes, and counting."

  "You didn't recognize my client's name, you don't know that I was already representing him against his wife."

  Rothenberg was right. "I thought you did strictly criminal?"

  "Mostly, but I don't want to do it forever." A weak smile. "And besides, this economic climate, you have to diversify."

  Under the circumstances, not funny. "Nine minutes, Steve."

  The weak smile disappeared. "Okay. The bad news first. A couple of months ago, Gant was taking Alan's deposition in the divorce case when my client went ballistic. Screamed and yelled in Gant's conference room and all the way out the door."

  "Did Spaeth threaten him?"

  "Expressly. In the hearing of half a dozen witnesses and using the 'N'-word."

  I remembered Gant had been African-American. "How about the murder weapon?"

  "Left at the crime scene."

  "Fingerprints?"

  "Not on the revolver itself, but yes on the shells in the cylinder."

  I felt like standing up again. "Spaeth's prints were on the shells?"

  "Afraid so. Probably his gun, too."

  "Probably?"

  "Alan says he filed the serial numbers off one of his firearms, but it was stolen."

  One of his firearms. "So, Spaeth stole the gun, then—"

  "No, no. Alan claims he bought the thing years ago on a trip—to one of those states where you don't have to show much—then he wiped the numbers, and thereafter it was stolen from his room."

  "His room?"

  "At the boardinghouse he'd been living in."

  "Stolen how long ago?"

  "Four weeks before the murder."

  Convenient.

  Rothenberg read something in my face. "John, Alan says that's the reason he moved out of the rooming house, because he thought the owner of the place had stolen his piece."

  "Moved to where?"

  “An apartment, three or four blocks away." Rothenberg paused. "Part of the good news is that Alan's alibi will also confirm the business about somebody stealing the gun."

  "Spaeth has an alibi witness?"

  "Yeah, one of the other men who lived in the boarding-house."

  "Steve, I don't remember hearing about that on the news."

  Spreading his fingertips, Rothenberg combed the beard with his nails. "He hasn't come forward yet."

  I closed my eyes. "Meaning neither you nor the police know where the guy is."

  "John, I won't lie to you. Our alibi witness is a drinking buddy of Alan's. He could be anywhere, but we need to find him."

  I opened my eyes. "You need to find him, Steve."

  Rothenberg clasped his hands on the desk. “I said I wouldn't lie to you, John. I won't try to kid you, either. Alan Spaeth was a miserable son of a bitch through most of the divorce case. But we pretty much had it settled——house to the wife, my client to absorb their son's future college costs, if any. We even distributed some of the money from the marital estate to both spouses."

  I thought about it. "Kind of reduces Spaeth's motive to kill Gant."

  "Exactly. In fact, I thought Alan'd finally adjusted to the situation, had 'let go of his wife,' as I've heard the shrinks call it. He used some of the money to move to an apartment, start looking for a new job——"

  "New job?"

  "He'd been laid off, before the marriage broke up. One of the reasons it did." Rothenberg changed his tone. "John, my client's been made to look like a pariah, especially given our rash of divorce-attorney killings. And because this one was done execution-style, I have to show the jury a somebody else who might have wanted to shoot Gant. Now the man had an ex-wife himself, plus a real questionable brother. And he even prosecuted gang members once upon a time."

  "Steve—"

  Rothenberg raised his right hand, palm toward me. "All I'm saying is that if we can bring forward Alan's alibi witness, my version of the story becomes a lot more salable."

  "Your version."

  "It's my client's version, too."

  "That a 'somebody else' set him up with his own gun?"

  "Do me a favor, John?"

  "What?"

  "Talk to Alan before you make up your mind about taking the case."

  I gave it a beat. "Why should I, Steve?"

  Rothenberg stared down at his desk. "Because he's convinced me."

  * * *

  The old Suffolk
County jail had been called simply "Charles Street," a brown-and-yellow stone monstrosity erected when Americans wearing blue and gray uniforms were still killing each other. Inside, the architecture would have reminded you of a five-story birdcage with the decibel level of a nineteenth-century asylum.

  The new jail—on Nashua Street—was a soaring seven stories of brick on about two acres of land, with razor wire around the parking lot. The sheriff who finally got the county to build it had to go through a couple of Supreme Court appeals before receiving permission to double-bunk the inmates, but he also included things like a weight room on the second floor and an open-air recreation deck for basketball on the fourth, with wire mesh enclosing the court to prevent the loss of both bouncing balls and footloose players.

  Inside the main entrance, the lobby held three rows of black wire chairs for visitors and a bank of orange, hexagonal lockers for their belongings. Steve Rothenberg had called ahead, and after a deputy in a powder-blue shirt stamped the back of my hand with invisible ink, a sergeant took me up in the elevator, making small talk about the fine weather and the New England Patriots and how he wished the architect for Nashua Street hadn't included so many different colors for the building's walls because six years later it was a bitch to keep track of all the paints for touch-up work. No mention of any angry husbands killing their wives' divorce lawyers, which was fine with me.

  Exiting the elevator, the sergeant led me along a corridor to an attorney-client consulting room. Its interior was maybe eight feet square, with a butcher-block table and caned chairs on each side, a distinct improvement over the wire jobs in the lobby downstairs.

  "Your guy will come through the trap there," the sergeant said, gesturing toward the door on the other side of the desk.

  "I have to tell you not to pass him anything?"

  "No."

  The sergeant pointed to what looked like a light switch. "This here's a confidentiality switch. You push it over, our audio-surveillance of the room stops."

  "Thanks."

  He pointed again. "Panic button, in case the guy gives you any trouble."

  "He been any trouble?"

  The sergeant gave me a deadpan expression. "Not since he showered yesterday."

  I sat down as the trap to the corridor closed behind me, wondering if I'd know what that was supposed to mean.

  * * *

  One look at Alan Spaeth, and I knew what it meant.

  He said, "You're the investigator Steve Rothenberg called me about, right?"

  "Right." We shook hands. "John Cuddy."

  "And you're wondering where I got this, too."

  Spaeth put an index finger to his left eye, the purple-and-ocher blotch of a shiner not quite closing it, the knuckles on both hands bruised and scabbed. Standing, Spaeth was about six feet in plastic shoes, maybe a hundred-ninety under the one-piece jumpsuit with no pockets. Only late thirties, his unshaven cheeks were already jowls and sagging a little loosely, as though jail chow wasn't agreeing with him. He had a wide, greedy mouth, and a nose that showed more nostrils than bridge. His hair was black and curly to the point of clotted, despite yesterday's "shower."

  I said, "What happened?"

  Spaeth grinned cruelly, though he must have hurt the eye area some to do it. "End of the housing unit, we got five showers. Five for all fifty of us in there. When it was my turn yesterday, one nigger thought he was tough decided to whale on me account of he heard I killed this nigger lawyer." A grunt. "He found out I was tougher."

  "Three's the charm, Spaeth."

  A confused expression. "What?"

  "You've used the 'N'-word twice. I hear it a third time, and you'll be sitting by yourself."

  "Hey, sport, who the fuck's paying the tab here?"

  "Steve Rothenberg, if I decide to help him with this case."

  Spaeth chewed on that. Literally, from the way his jowls worked. Then his chin dropped to his chest. "Look, this thing's got me all screwed up. I don't like what I'm learning about 'jailing' here, and so I'm showing off, trying not to act . . . scared. But I am." Spaeth's head came back up. "Christ, I'm scared shitless."

  A little twinge in my gut. "Okay. Here's the deal. I'm talking to you because Steve asked me to. You tell me your side of things, and I go back to him with whether or not I'm on board. Clear?"

  Alan Spaeth straightened some in his chair, the bruised hands folding themselves on the butcher block. "Clear."

  "Where do we start?"

  "How about with, I didn't kill the bastard."

  "I heard you threatened to."

  "What, at his law firm?"

  "If that was the only time."

  Spaeth raked a hand through his hair. "Look, you're talking August, all right? Over two months ago. I was going through a tough time. I mean, Gant's representing Nicole—my wife?"

  I nodded.

  "And he got this 'vacate the marital home' order against me. Well, the company had laid me off from my marketing job like three weeks before, so I had to go live in a boardinghouse. Try to imagine that, sport. One day I'm coming home to this nice place in West Roxbury I sweated blood to carry, and the next I'm sleeping with the fucking derelicts in Southie."

  South Boston. "I grew up there."

  Spaeth put the hand to his face this time. "Christ, I'm not doing such a good job of getting you on my side."

  Truth to tell, he wasn't. And yet . . . "That day at his law firm, did you threaten to kill Woodrow Gant?"

  A nod before letting his hand fall back to the table. "In front of like, I don't know, six, seven people. I really made my fucking point." Spaeth looked up at me. "But you gotta understand, he was fucking me over the coals, and he was fucking . . ." Spaeth trailed off, shaking his head. "Fucking me every way from Sunday. Poisoning Terry against me, too."

  "Terry's your son?"

  "Yeah, Terence, actually, after Nicole's father. She got custody—so Terry could stay in the house and keep with the same school. Not the school where she teaches, that's not . . . That's not important. What is important is that Gant tells Terry, 'Look, your father has visitation rights, but that doesn't mean you have to see him! The kid's fourteen, so the judge leaves it up to him, but meanwhile Gant's poisoning my own son against me."

  Sounded like more motive, not less. "Back to that day at the law firm. What exactly happened?"

  Spaeth blew out a breath. "I go in, because Rothenberg tells me they can take my 'deposition,' ask me a lot of questions under oath. So we're sitting around this table in a conference room-like where we are here, only a lot bigger and nicer, view of the harbor and all. And Gant's needling me, really tucking it under the saddle with his questions."

  "Like what?"

  "Oh, I don't mean the words themselves. Hell, a couple weeks later, Steve gave me this copy of the thing—a 'transcript'?"

  "Right."

  "Okay, so I read the transcript, and from Gant's words, you don't get what he was doing. He was too fucking smooth. No, it was more his . . . like facial expressions, and—what's the word? 'Inflection,' yeah. The inflection of his voice. Gant was needling me, and I blew my stack. I said the only good lawyer, like the only good . . ." Spaeth stopped.

  "That word I've heard enough of."

  "Yeah." A sniff, almost a good-natured laugh. "Yeah, I called him that and more, storming out of the conference room yelling . . . yelling I don't remember exactly what. But I know I said if he kept it up, I was gonna kill him."

  "Kept what up?"

  Spaeth stopped. "Fucking me over."

  Something didn't feel right. "But Steve told me things settled pretty soon after that."

  "They did. That's what I mean about not killing the bastard. The divorce was basically over with. And lawyers are a dime a dozen. Even if I did shoot Gant, Nicole would've just gotten

  herself another one."

  Thinking about what kind of witness this defendant would make, I shook my head.

  "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing," I said. "Let's
go back to the murder weapon. Your gun?"

  Spaeth started to say something, then just, "I don't know."

  "You don't know?"

  "Look, I haven't seen it, all right? The revolver the cops say got used. I do know I had one just like it, a Taurus 85. I bought the thing on a business trip in the South, filed the serial number off it."

  "Why the hell did you do that?"

  "I read in the paper about the 'Castle Law' we got here—where the state lets you off if you kill a guy coming into your house? Only the newspaper said the guy would have to be trying to kill you, so I figured, anybody ever broke in and I shot him with one of the guns I bought up here, it'd be nice to have a throwaway piece for the cops to find on the guy."

  Alan Spaeth kept getting better and better. "How many other firearms do you have?"

  "When I was living in the 'marital home,' three more handguns and two rifles. I used to take Terry deer hunting until all this shit hit the fan."

  "Where are these other weapons now?"

  "Locked away in storage, along with most of my stuff from the West Roxbury place."

  "But you kept the throwaway piece?"

  "Brought it to the boardinghouse, yeah. For protection, understand? Only the Taurus got stolen from my room. One of the reasons I moved out. Fucking owner of the place had a thing against guns, and I figured Dufresne was the one who took it."

  "Dufresne being the owner."

  “Yeah. 'Vincennes Dufresne,' the little frog fuck."

  I let that one pass. “Whether it was your weapon or not, the shells in the cylinder had your prints on them."

  "Steve told me my prints weren't on the Taurus itself, though. You think I'm stupid enough to wipe my prints off the gun and not off the bullets?"

  “Happens all the time."

  "And then leave the thing by Gant's car?"

  Stupider still, granted. "How would somebody get shells with your prints on them if it wasn't your gun?"

  Spaeth looked at me hard with the good eye. "That's why I think it was my Taurus, sport. And my shells in it. Somebody set me up."

  "Dufresne?"

  A stop. "No, that doesn't make sense."

  I felt the twinge again. "Who, then?"

  "If I knew that, I wouldn't need you, right?"

  There was something about Spaeth, down past all the obnoxious bluff and bluster, that rang true. And it bothered me.