Literally not there.
Murphy spoke through his handkerchief. "Rats been at him a while."
"Do we know who he is?" I said, though I had a pretty good idea.
Murphy hooded his eyes, giving me a sideways hint of them. "Why do you think I called you out?"
"Mantle, Michael A.?"
Murphy motioned to one of the other suits, who brought over a plastic evidence baggie with some kind of paper inside it. The lieutenant took the baggie and held it up for me to see. The paper lay open but heavily and dirtily creased in a cross pattern, as though it had been carried folded in fours for a long time.
"No wallet," said Murphy, "but this was in his pant pocket."
The lanterns threw just enough ambient light for me to read the printing on Mantle's birth certificate. "I'm told he used it for winning drinks at bars."
"Winning drinks?"
"As 'Mickey Mantle'."
Murphy huffed out a "just-what-I-needed" laugh, then returned the baggie to the other detective. "Doc, can you give me an estimate on time of death?"
She didn't bother to look up. "Weather like we've had?
More than a few days, less than a few weeks. Lab results ought to narrow the bracket."
The shooting of Woodrow Gant occurred a week ago Wednesday. "You figure this man was strangled?"
In a sarcastic voice, the M.E. replied, "Unless he pictured me naked, and his eyes just popped out."
The top half of Murphy's face lilted toward the stairs.
"Come on."
When we reached the kitchen, he said, "Breathing's better outside."
What passed for the backyard was strewn with broken beer bottles and busted toys, used condoms and torn shingles. We both stood for a minute as Murphy put away his handkerchief. Then he said, "You never met this Mantle, right?"
"You're talking for positive ID now?"
"I am."
"We can try Vincennes Dufresne."
"The one I had to roust at Spaeth's rooming house?"
"Right."
Murphy nodded. "In due time." He gestured behind us.
“Unless Dufresne surprises me, I figure you can forget about I your alibi witness."
"How did you know the corpse was down there?"
"Got a call. Somebody said they went in the house to take a leak, saw the body."
"You have this tip on tape, then."
"Uh—unh. Man called Boston City."
"The hospital?"
"Our one and only."
"Not nine-one-one?"
"I talked to the hospital woman who caught the call, around three-thirty in the A.M. She said the man 'sounded black'."
"Like the call on Woodrow Gant that night."
"Right. Though she's from the Dominican herself, so what does that tell you?"
"It tells me you've gotten two tips involving this case from somebody who sounded—"
"It happens, Cuddy."
"The one about Gant's body on the road, yeah. But let's face it, Lieutenant. Not many blacks tend to just wander into Southie."
"Only takes one."
"Did this morning's caller give the hospital an address?"
Murphy looked at me. "What do you mean?"
"Did the woman have the exact address of this place when she telephoned you guys?"
He thought about it. "Must have. Message slip had the number and street before we ever got a unit over here."
"Don't you think it's kind of odd a black guy strolling around this part of town at that time of the morning goes into an abandoned building to take a leak and then decides to do his business in the cellar?"
"If he was polite about it."
"And then, after seeing a body, the guy's also attentive enough to note the right address before he calls a number that by chance doesn't automatically tape the incomings?"
Murphy said, "What I think is kind of odd, your man's alibi witness is found dead four blocks from your man's apartment. And I'm betting the lab's going to establish that this Mantle got dead right around the time last week that Woodrow Gant i was killed."
"Lieutenant, Spaeth is going to tell you the next morning when you arrest him that he has an alibi witness he strangled the night before?"
“Maybe he hopes we don't find the body."
"Seems to me that the cellar here is a pretty good spot for the body not to be found for a while, but certainly found after a whi1e."
Murphy chewed on that. "So you're saying what?"
"I talked to a lot of people the last two days. One of them could have made this morning's call to the hospital."
"To tip us about Mantle's body, you mean?"
"And wipe out Spaeth's alibi after I rattled some cages on his behalf."
Murphy chewed on it some more, his eyes saying what he felt before the words got to his lips. "No. No, I'll tell you what I think. My instincts fooled me on this one, Cuddy. When I went to arrest him, Spaeth had everything all worked out. He put on a great act, and I bought it. But no more."
"Just a—"
"Your man tapped Mantle as an alibi witness to drum up some reasonable doubt when he'd already killed him. The same night Spaeth did Woodrow Gant, so Mantle can't ever set things straight. It fits."
"It stinks."
Robert Murphy hooded his eyes again. "All depends on your point of view, I suppose."
* * *
“Why the hell does he call this place 'the Chateau'?"
"It's a long story, Lieutenant."
Murphy and I waited under the portico. The bump on the other side of the door made Murphy look up but not jump, and when the door itself creaked open, Vincennes Dufresne blinked out at both of us, the strap of a T-shirt-as-nightie slipping off his shoulder.
"Eh, you got any idea what time it is?"
Murphy said, "Mr. Dufresne, we're going to be needing you for a whi1e."
The boarding house owner looked at me. "After all the help I been, you bring a cop to my place?"
"Always nice to be remembered." said the lieutenant.
Dufresne turned back to him. "What do you got to see?"
"Other way around," said Murphy. "First you have to see somebody, then probably we have to look at Michael Mantle's room."
"The Mick?" Dufresne blinked some more. "Aw, no. He's dead?"
Murphy glanced at me before saying to Dufresne. "Pretty good guess."
The head hung down toward the T-shirt. “Well, maybe he was right after all, eh?"
I said, "Don't get you."
"The Mick." Dufresne looked up. "One day, I say to him, 'Mick, the way you spend your money on the brew, you don't believe you can take it with you.' And the Mick, he says, 'Vinny, let me put it to you this way: You never saw no U-Haul behind a hearse, did you?' "
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 h
is 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.
The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy Page 21