The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremish Healy

  "Okay," I said. "Steve told me you had an alibi witness."

  "Damn straight. Mickey, guy I met at Dufresne's."

  "You know his last name?"

  "Of course I do. We were drinking buddies the whole time I was staying there. Had to have something for social life, once Gant got me kicked out of my house."

  "And Mickey's last name?"

  Spaeth paused. "Actually, his real first name's 'Michael,' middle initial 'A'."

  "Michael A. what?"

  Spaeth chewed a moment. "Mantle."

  "Mickey . . . Mantle?"

  "I saw his birth certificate, he carries it with him everywhere, win drinks off guys in the bars. He calls himself 'Mickey Mantle,' and he can prove he's entitled to it."

  "Just like he can prove you're innocent."

  "Damned right. We got shitfaced together in my apartment the night Gant was shot."

  "Your apartment?"

  "I used the money Steve sprung from the divorce to put a security deposit on a real place."

  "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why would you use some of your tight money to rent an apartment instead of staying at Dufresne's till you were employed again?"

  "Hey, sport, you ever tried to get a job—a good job—with no private phone and a boardinghouse for an address? Plus, like I told you, the guy running the place probably stole my I gun."

  "So you move to an apartment, and this Mantle comes over to drink."

  "Yeah."

  "Why not go out drinking with him?"

  "Cheaper this way."

  Spaeth could tell I wasn't buying. "And besides, you live in a little room at a boardinghouse long enough, even a small apartment is a nice place to spend some time." Spaeth looked behind him, into the unit. "Believe me. Here I got a cell maybe half the size of my room at Dufresne's."

  "Aside from Mantle, can anybody else vouch for where you were the night Woodrow Gant was killed?"

  "No." Spaeth raked his hand through the hair again. "No, like I said, we got shitfaced together. The Mick must have left sometime after I fell asleep, because the first thing I remember is a couple of homicide cops banging on my door after they couldn't find me at the rooming house."

  "And they can't find Mantle, either."

  "Which just means they haven't really looked for him. I mean, he's this little, scraggly guy. Reddish hair, reddish beard. Probably hasn't gone more than five miles from Dufresne's in the last year without somebody to drive him."

  "So he should have turned up by now."

  "Unless he's in a drunk tank somewhere, or . . ." Spaeth ran out of gas. "Look, I'll level with you, sport. I listen to my story as I'm telling it to you, and I don't believe it myself. All I know is, I didn't kill that bastard lawyer Gant. It doesn't make any fucking sense to me, either, but somebody must have set me up to take the fall, and if you can't find Mickey, I'm gonna spend the rest of my fucking life with guys ten times worse than the one busted me in the shower. And I don't think I can . . . can take . . ."

  At which point Alan Spaeth began to cry from both the good eye and the bad one, and I felt that twinge in my gut a third time.

  * * *

  When I walked through the door of Steve Rothenberg's office suite, he was just turning away from the disco receptionist and she was just readjusting her earphones. Rothenberg looked at my face, frowned, and beckoned me back to his own office.

  Once inside, he moved around his desk and dropped into the chair while I took one of the worn seats in front of him. Then Rothenberg began combing his beard with his fingers again. "You saw Alan Spaeth?"

  "I did"

  "And?"

  "Your client's a jerk."

  For some reason, Rothenberg seemed to take heart from that. "Most of my clients are."

  "A racist jerk, Steve."

  The frown again. "I was afraid that might show through."

  "It'll 'show through' wherever he happens to be, especially the witness stand."

  Rothenberg swung in his chair a little. "There are three decisions I have to leave to the client in every case, John. The first is whether to plead out or go to trial."

  "The D.A.'s office likely to offer much for a plea?"

  "Zip, without that alibi witness."

  "Named 'Mickey Mantle'."

  Rothenberg winced. "If it's to be a trial, then the second decision I leave to the client is whether to have the judge or a jury as the decider of fact."

  "Won't matter here, will it?"

  Rothenberg chose not to answer. "What I was building to is the third decision, whether the accused takes the stand in his own defense."

  "Spaeth testifies, even a rookie prosecutor would draw him out on cross, and either a judge or a jury would crucify him."

  "But . . . rightly?"

  I watched Rothenberg as he watched me. "You mean for the murder of Woodrow Gant?"

  "That's what I mean."

  We watched each other some more.

  "No," I said finally.

  Rothenberg let out a breath I hadn't realized he was holding.

  The fingers went back to grooming his beard. "So, you joining the team?"

  "Who's got the file at Homicide?"

  "Robert Murphy."

  The black lieutenant I'd helped on the William Daniels case. "And you're sure Nancy Meagher's not connected with this prosecution?"

  Rothenberg reeled off the names of two A.D.A.'s. I'd never heard Nancy mention either one, not so surprising when you consider Suffolk County employs over a hundred of them. Then Rothenberg came forward in his chair, palms flat on the desktop. "Look, John. For what it's worth, here's my view. Somebody killed one of my brothers at the bar in cold blood on a deserted road. Shot the poor devil three times from like ten feet away. I picture that, and I can't let the somebody get away with it, all right? But I'm not a cop or a prosecutor, so I can't go after the real killer. I'm just the lawyer who's trying to show the system that they need to keep looking because the defendant they've settled on is the wrong one. And with your help, I just might be able to do that. Now, what do you say?"

  Rothenberg might have a shaky practice and a shabby office, but he had that guild loyalty I'd sensed in the people around me during my one year of law school many years ago. And he'd also been loyal to me.

  I sat back and told Steve Rothenberg what I was going to do.

  Chapter 2

  LEAVING STEVE ROTHENBERGS office for the second time that Tuesday, I bought a tuna

  pita from a deli in Boylston Alley. Eating the pocket sandwich on a bench along the border of Boston Common, I watched the flow of people past me. The homeless with their shopping bags drooping from hyper-extended hands, stiff blankets around their shoulders like starched shawls. Day care workers pushing six-foot vegetable carts, filled not with cabbages and tomatoes but rather three-year-olds, twisting and squirming but mostly smiling and laughing as they got wheeled around the park. Beyond the curb, tourist trolleys—kind of vegetable carts for adults—motored by, their drivers echoing spiels about historical sights left and right.

  Walking back to my own office on Tremont Street, I pretty much ratified the position I'd taken with Rothenberg. I spent most of the afternoon on paperwork in other cases. Then I tackled the utility and other bills from the condo I was renting, sorting them into piles mentally labeled "Due," "Past Due," and "Lights Out."

  Suitably depressed, I decided to leave those problems at my I locked office door and went downstairs for the walk to the courthouse.

  From the last plaza step outside the main entrance, I noticed Nancy Meagher come through the revolving door. My heart did the little dance it learned the first time I'd ever seen her, presenting the Commonwealth's side in an arson/murder hearing. She was dressed the same way, too, in a skirt-and-jacket gray suit, white blouse, and modest heels that kicked her height up to live-nine and change. The autumn-length black hair just brushed her shoulders, framing a face of bright blue eyes over freckles and pearly teeth, an image on a
postcard from County Kerry. Nancy had received a cancer scare of her own a month before, and our working through it had brought us closer together.

  Shifting the strap of her bulging totebag onto a shoulder, she went up on tiptoes to peck the corner of my mouth. "If I'm not mistaken, it's your turn to pick drinks and dinner."

  I gave her a one-armed hug. "It is indeed."

  "We walking or driving?"

  "Walking, unless the totebag's going to give you trouble."

  "The weight won't, but what's inside it might."

  I turned us toward Beacon Street. "Tough trial?"

  Nancy shook her head. "The legislature's finally approved some new superior court judgeships for the governor to fill, and I'm supposed to help our administrative people decide if there's any current nominee we should be opposing."

  "Based on trial attorneys like you litigating against the nominees as opponents?"

  "You got it."

  "Not much fun."

  "No, but it's important to my boss, and he's been loyal to me, so . . . Nancy shook her head againj "How about if we talk about something besides the court system for a while, okay?"

  I'd wanted to bring up the Alan Spaeth case with her, get it over with, but right then didn't seem the time.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Nancy said, "Don't tell me you've joined the Harvard Club?"

  "I was Holy Cross, Nance," though we had reached the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Commonwealth. I gestured toward a doorway in the hotel on the corner.

  She read the name over the threshold. "The Eliot Lounge?"

  "This is drinks."

  We stepped down into the dark, wood-paneled room, a bar in front of us with stools and taps, a raised platform area off to the right with tables.

  Nancy looked around, allowing her eyes to adjust, I think. "I've never been here, but . . . ?"

  "The Boston Marathon."

  "Oh, right. The place that has a party afterwards?

  "Not a party, the party."

  She said, "Then how come we didn't come here when you ran?"

  "Because after I finished the race, my legs were barely able to climb curbs, remember?"

  "I remember how stupid it was for a man six-three——"

  "—a little under, Nance—"

  "—and almost two hundred pounds to run twenty-six miles without stopping when he didn't have to."

  "And I remember you, waiting for me at the finish line."

  "With my camera."

  "It was the 'you' part that mattered."

  A smile crossed her face, almost from ear to ear. "That was certainly the right thing to say. Where do we sit?"

  I ordered a pint of draught ale for each of us and led her to a table under the "Wall of Memory." There were photos and testaments to Johnny Kelley, who ran more Bostons than any other human being, winning several times around 194O before finally having to stop in the early nineties. I identified some candid shots of Joan Benoit Samuelson, the great women's and Olympic champion, and of course Boston's own Bill Rodgers, who finished first an incredible four times in six years.

  Nancy looked up at the wall as our drinks arrived. "You really know who all these people are?"

  Alberto Salazar, Greg Meyer, Cosmos Ndeti. "Most of them. But this was never just a runner's bar. Professors from Berklee College of Music played jazz. And reporters from the old Phoenix kibitzed with state senators ducking quorum calls. Even the great Bill Lee made an appearance."

  "The Spaceman. He was pitching for the Red Sox one afternoon at Fenway when the game got delayed by rain. He came over to the bar in his uniform and cleats, drinking beer while monitoring the rain on television, running back to the park to retake the mound."

  Nancy looked at me. "And when was all this?"

  "The mid- to late-seventies."

  "John?"

  "What?"

  "In the mid- to late-seventies, the only time I'd have seen any of those people would have been if they'd come to show-and-tell at my grammar school."

  "Drink your ale."

  As Nancy smiled at me over the top of her glass, I looked around the room, then noticed Nancy's expression change. She said, "Something's wrong, isn't it?"

  "How do you mean?"

  "Your face just went sad."

  "The reason I brought you here."

  "Which is?"

  "The owners of the hotel aren't renewing the bar's lease. They want to aim at a more upscale crowd."

  "So, this is kind of last call at the Eliot Lounge?"

  "Kind of."

  Nancy reached her right hand across the table, closing on my left one. "Then I'm glad you cared enough to have me come with you."

  "You and no other, kid."

  "What a lovely evening." said Nancy.

  We were walking east on Newbury Street, Boston's answer to Rodeo Drive. A little funkier on the Mass Ave end where we were, a little ritzier—appropriately—as you got closer to the Ritz Carlton Hotel overlooking the Public Garden. There were a few outdoor cafés, tables set but no diners seated.

  “John?"

  "Agreed," I said. "Lovely evening"

  Nancy took my arm, giving me a sidelong glance. "You still down about the Eliot?"

  "Yes, but I did what I could, which was to send the place off with as much good feeling as it gave me back when."

  "Then there's nothing else you can do."

  "Right."

  Nancy tone changed. "You know the photos of the runners on the wall?"

  "Yes?"

  "I bet you'd look cute in one of those little running outfits, with the silk singlets and short shorts."

  "You should catch me in the swim-suit competition."

  Nancy drew my arm toward her more tightly. "I was kind of hoping for the birthday-suit competition."

  "If you can curb your lust until after dinner."

  "You're on."

  Just past Dartmouth, we turned down a set of stairs to Thai Basil.

  Nancy smiled. "My tummy's happy already."

  The owner, a smiling man with full cheeks and a bustling manner, takes such pride in the place I've never eaten there when he hasn't been behind the cash register. He welcomed Nancy and me before leading us to a table separated from its neighbor by a clear glass panel. Though the restaurant isn't huge, there's always a sense of privacy accompanying the intimacy, and it's become my favorite place in Back Bay.

  I ordered a Dry Creek Fume Blanc from the ponytailed waitress, whose command of English still reflected the tinkling accent of her homeland. The mixed appetizer plate for two (shrimp toast, spring rolls, and five or six other delights) arrived so quickly you almost couldn't believe it was freshly prepared, though one taste convinced. And, as always, the entrée dishes of Tamarind duck and garlic pork and pad Thai noodles were truly to die for.

  Nancy spooned a few more finger-sized slices of duck onto her plate. "So, you given any thought to what we'll do for the weekend?"

  "No. You?"

  "I was thinking of a road trip."

  I had some wine. "To . . . ?"

  "Mystic Seaport."

  "In Connecticut?"

  "It's only a hundred miles or so, John. We could stay at a bed-and-breakfast Saturday night."

  I pictured the bills in piles back at my office.

  Nancy warmed up to her subject. "One of the other prosecutors went last weekend, and she said it was neat. The seaport itself has all kinds of shops set up the way they were in the whaling days, with ships and demonstrations of sail rigging and anchoring and so on. Be a real nice break from the city, not to mention my judge-review homework."

  As good an opening as I was likely to get. "I don't know, Nance. I might have a case I'm starting that would make it tough for me to take off like that."

  She blinked. "You don't know whether you're starting the case or not?"

  "I told the lawyer who wants to hire me that I needed to talk with you about it first."

  "Me?" Nancy sipped some wi
ne. "I don't understand. If it's a case I'm working on, you really shouldn't take it, but otherwise there's no conflict."

  "Not directly, maybe. But . . . Nance, it's Alan Spaeth."

  Her face lost all color, and I suddenly had the impression that if she hadn't set her glass down, she'd have dropped it.

  "You can't be serious."

  "Steve Rothenberg asked—"

  "I know who the defense attorney is, John. Everybody in the office is on eggshells about it."

  "But Steve said you weren't one of the trial lawyers assigned."

  "I'm . . . I'm not." .

  "Nancy, I met with Spaeth at Nashua Street."

  She stared hard at me. "And?"

  "I don't think he killed Woodrow Gant."

  Nancy coughed out a breath. "I don't believe this."

  "But you just said there's no conflict"

  "I don't care what 1 just said."

  "Nance, when we talked about this last week——"

  "Last week you asked me about a news headline, John. Now you're talking about helping the man's killer."

  Her voice was rising, so I thought I should lower mine.

  "Nancy, you mentioned loyalty to your boss before. Well, I have some loyalty to Steve Rothenberg, too. Besides, I'm really talking about trying to find out who shot Gant because I don't think Spaeth did."

  Nancy's face seemed to close down. "You've already made up your mind, haven't you?"

  "About Spaeth's innocence? Yes. But——"

  Nancy reached for her totebag and started to stand. "Do what you feel is best, John."

  "Wait a minute."

  She stepped around the table. "I said, you should do what you feel is best, and it's obvious that means you should take on this case. But I can't . . . I have to get out of here. I'll call you."

  I swiveled in my chair. "Nancy——"

  "I'll call you." she repeated over her shoulder.

  The owner was trying not to look from Nancy to me as she strode out of the restaurant. The waitress, who'd been in the kitchen, came through its door and glanced only at our table before asking brightly if she should bring a dessert menu. 1 told her 1 didn't think so.

  Chapter 3

  THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up in the bedroom of my rented condo on Beacon Street.

  Woke up alone, and more than a little angry. The way I saw Nancy's blowup the prior night, she was upset at me for just doing my job.