The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremish Healy

  Then just his voice with, "John?" A short pause. "I don't expect you to answer me, of course. But I thought talking this through might make more sense than chasing you down."

  Silence again, as though Neely really did expect me to answer him, before, "Here's the way I see it, John." His voice still came from near the table and chairs where he'd shot Burbage. "We can play hide-and-seek for a while, but I'm a little old for that, and honestly there's simply no place for you to go. The staircase door is locked, and my elevator in the apartment requires a key as well. Furthermore, it's kind of a long way down to ground level by air."

  A small laugh. "Sorry. I shouldn't be joking about this. But I can't see either of us being stupid when the end of the game isn't in doubt."

  I forced my mind to weigh the options. Why would Neely be offering me the chance to walk up to him for a functional suicide? I looked around. It was the glass, stretching from the ridgepoled peak down to the knee wall. He didn't want to fire another shot that might shatter a pane and draw attention from Commercial Street below us.

  "John?"

  On the other side of the trees and shrubs, Neely had shifted, toward my right and the front of the garden. I looked around again, this time more specifically. No rakes or shovels or even buckets, nothing that could be a make-shift weapon.

  "John, please. Let's be dignified about this, all right?"

  More to my right now, and closer to turning a corner at the front of the roof. Where he'd spot me easily.

  I tried to picture Neely where I'd last seen him. The Colt in his right hand as Burbage lunged forward, behind us the table and . . .

  If not a weapon, maybe a shield?

  A very slight crunching sound to my right, and I hopped like a frog back into the foliage as the forty-five boomed again, another round screaming off the brick kneewall as my cracked ribs screamed at me. This time I kept going, plunging through the leaves until I reached the patio furniture again.

  I stepped over Imogene Burbage, her blood making the burgundy tiles slick. Bending down, I lifted the cocktail table on my left side. Heavier than its size suggested, I tilted it so the marble top was in front of me like a knight's jousting shield. I heard a footstep just before the next shot made a noise somewhere between a thump and a whine as it struck the top of the table. Hunkered down, with the marble covering as much of me as possible, I started running forward. To close the gap between Neely and me, functionally making my shield bigger and hopefully throwing off his trigger timing.

  Another shot and another still, the last ripping a chunk off the meaty outside of my right shoulder. A feeling like being branded. Then the impact of the tabletop on Neely's chest, a whoofing noise from the lungs as he went backward. I felt his heels catching on something, his hips coming up and—The sound of breaking glass.

  Shattering, actually. I'd driven him through one of the vertical panes of the greenhouse right at the knee wall. Neely bellowed as he went out into the air, his arms making whirlygig motions, futilely trying to regain his balance. Seconds later, a whumping sound rose from the street.

  I dropped the table to the tiled floor and forced myself toward the jagged opening in the glass. As I looked down at the body sprawled across the righthand lane, pedestrians from the sidewalk rushed over to it, then turned away abruptly, probably appalled that a five-story drop in real life wasn't quite as stylized and sanitized as television dramas had led them to believe.

  Clamping my left palm over the wound on my right shoulder, I watched the scene below until the wail of a siren began growing closer. That's when I realized my view likely was pretty similar to the one a German soldier would have had fifty-plus years ago, looking down on the casualties from that Ranger battalion heroically scaling the cliff of Pointe-du-Hoc.

  Shock started setting in on me, making my legs rubbery.

  Before the shakes got too bad, I moved back toward the center of Frank Neely's greenhouse to say a little prayer over Imogene Burbage.