The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremish Healy

  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.

  One of two swinging
doors at the back opened, and a woman—dressed exactly like Chan—brought out a tray for the teens. Her right foot circled in a floppy but controlled limp as she balanced the tray and negotiated the spaces between the tables. The teens were closest to me, and before she set their meals in front of them, they asked for silverware in unaccented English, unless you count "Valley-Girl" as a dialect. While the waitress served them, they continued talking a blue-streak stream of consciousness about tennis camp and nail polish and handbags at the mall.

  I turned to look instead at the old man in the flannel shirt. He used his chopsticks to sprinkle mint leaves and bean sprouts into the bowl and mix them into his soup. Satisfied with the blend, he then shoveled the noodles into his mouth with the scoop spoon, the chopsticks directing the long strands without either twirling or cutting them.

  "Welcome to Viet Mam. I am Dinah, your waitress."

  I turned back and looked up at Dinah as she emphasized the last syllable. Also about the same height and age as Chan, Dinah tried to be cheery despite the gaunt cheeks and dark, sad eyes. A whiff of stale smoke came off her, and I noticed amber nicotine stains on the knuckles of her right hand. The shortish black hair seemed professionally coiffed, as though that were the only feature worth enhancing. A scar beginning at her Adam's apple trailed down under the shirt collar, and she stood hip-cocked on her left leg, maybe to allow the right one a brief rest.

  I said, "Is Dinah your real name?"

  She paused, the cheeriness flickering a little. "No. Owner give me that."

  "The man at the counter, you mean?"

  Another pause. "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "My Vietnam name not good for work in restaurant."

  "What is it?"

  A hacking, smoker's cough. Then, "Dung."

  Chan may have had a point. "Well, Dinah, this is my first time here."

  "I think I never see you before." She gestured toward the tabletop. "You need help with menu?"

  "Haven't looked at it yet. What do you recommend to drink?"

  "I show you." Dinah reached down and flipped the menu over, drinks listed vertically and indexed by numbers the way you often see the entrees in a Chinese restaurant. "We got beer, we got wine, we got soda. We got limeade, we got pineapple—"

  "A pineapple shake would be good."

  She smiled without showing teeth and began to move away. For each stride, the right foot circled like a plane before landing.

  I scanned the menu, index numbers again next to each item, words like bo for beef, hea for pork, and ga for chicken coming back to me a little. I decided on fried spring rolls for an appetizer, chicken with lemon grass and ground peanuts as a rice dish.

  Dinah brought my drink, a straw sticking straight up in the tall glass. She let me taste it—kind of a pina colada without the kick—before saying, "You need help with anything?"

  Ignoring the index numbers, I said, "Cha gio and the com ga xao xa ot."

  Dinah looked at me. "You fight in Vietnam?"

  "Yes."

  Without writing down my order, she nodded. "My husband, too."

  As Dinah limped back toward the kitchen, I had the distinct feeling that she hadn't meant Chan.

  The singer on the music system changed over from what I'd thought was Damone to a piece I knew to be Sinatra's. I watched Chan sitting by the cash register reading a newspaper, his fingers tapping the counter in time to the beat. I cleared my throat, and he looked up at me. When I beckoned him over, his sigh was almost as loud as the music, but Chan put down the newspaper and came to my table.

  "You got problem with waitress?"

  "No."

  "She slow with leg, but—"

  "I don't have a problem with Dinah. You're the owner, right?"

  He didn't like the twist this was taking. "Why you want to know?"

  I took out my license holder, but just flashed it open and closed. "I'm investigating the death of Woodrow Gant."

  Chan's lips were two thin lines. "I already talk to all police."

  "Then why don't you sit down now, while I'm waiting for my meal, and talk with me?"

  He was torn about something, but he took the violin-back chair next to me. "I don't see anything that night."

  "Why don't we start with your name?"

  A stare, but he said, "I told you already. Chan."

  "Mr. Chan—"

  "Just Chan. No 'Mr.'. "

  Okay. "What time did Mr. Gant arrive here?"

  "I don't know."

  I looked at him.

  Chan said, "I don't care what time customer come. I care, do they pay before they leave."

  "When Mr. Gant arrived that night, did you recognize him?"

  Chan shifted in his chair, the eyes blinking behind the black-rimmed glasses. "I see him here before, yes."

  "With anyone?"

  "With woman."

  "Same Woman as that night?"

  "Yes."

  "How about any other women?"

  Chan shifted and blinked some more. "One."

  "Who?"

  "Don't know."

  "But did you recognize this other woman, too?"

  A stop. "She say she lawyer-woman, like him."

  "Like Mr. Gant, you mean."

  "Yes."

  "Was she black, also?"

  "No. Chinese, maybe, but I don't know her name or nothing."

  "All right." I said. "Let's go back to the night Mr. Gant was killed. Can you describe the Woman he had dinner With?"

  "White American"

  "Color hair?"

  "Blond."

  "Eyes?"

  "She have sunglasses."

  "You think that was a little strange?"

  A shrug.

  I said, "For an October night?"

  Another shrug.

  "How tall was she, Chan?"

  "Don't know."

  "Was she taller than you, shorter?"

  He looked at me steadily. "Shorter than lawyer-man."

  "By howmuch?"

  "Don't know."

  "Was she heavy, thin?"

  "No."

  “No what?"

  "No heavy, no thin. In middle."

  "Medium."

  A nod.

  "You said you'd seen this woman here with Mr. Gant before."

  More shifting in the chair. "Yes."

  "And yet 'medium' is the best description you can give me?"

  "They sit in booth, not so much light. Who woman is, that not my business."

  "Would it be your business to let her drive after she drank too much wine?"

  "No! Never I do this."

  "Because you could lose your liquor license, right?"

  "Have only wine-and-beer license."

  "But you could lose that if you weren't sure somebody who drank too much wasn't driving, right?"

  Chan didn't answer.

  "So," I said, "if somebody had too much wine, maybe like the woman that night, you'd try to sneak a peek outside after they paid their bill, be sure the man was driving or that she took a cab."

  "Woman drink wine, maybe. But she not drunk, no. So I not look out door."

  I saw Dinah coming from the kitchen with a plate of spring rolls. Noticing Chan sitting at my table, she seemed to falter in a way I didn't think had anything to do with her bad leg.

  Then she continued in our direction.

  I said, "Who was their waitress that night?"

  Chan started to turn toward the swinging doors, then caught himself. "Dinah."

  She was now at our table, asking her boss a short, swift question in Vietnamese. Chan shot something back.

  I said, “I'd like to speak with Dinah myself."

  "She my only waitress here." He waved a hand. "Must work other tables."

  I was beginning to get tired of Chan. "You cover them for her."

  "What?"

  "Dinah sits with me, you work the tables. And if you say anything more to her, say it in English."

  Chan didn't like that, but got up wit
hout another word in either language and walked over to the young couple in business suits.

  I looked at the chair he'd vacated, but Dinah went to the third instead. After setting down my spring rolls, she used her right hand to lower herself into the violin-back, as though the leg didn't work very well when bent.

  "From the war?" I said.

  The eyes grew sadder. "Yes."

  "I'm sorry."

  “War is over." And the eyes tried to come back, too.

  "I'm investigating the—"

  "Can I see ID, please?"

  Interesting. "You asked Chan in Vietnamese if I was police, and he said that's what I told him."

  She looked around, saw her boss go into the kitchen. "ID, please?"

  I took out the leather case and handed it over. Reading, Dinah glanced twice to the swinging doors, being sure Chan was still out of sight before sending it back to me.

  Very quietly, "You not police."

  "No."

  The hacking cough again. "You lie to Chan?"

  "No."

  A smile now, but still without showing any teeth. I said, "Chan is not as smart as you are."

  She stared at me. "Why should I talk to you?"

  "To help someone."

  "Who?"

  "The man I'm representing. The police think he killed Woodrow Gant. I don't."

  Dinah seemed troubled. "I cannot help."

  "Why not?"

  "I . . . it is danger for me."

  "Danger from what?"

  "Please. Mr. Gant and woman have dinner. That is all I know."

  "Dinah, what are you afraid of?"

  Chan came out of the kitchen glaring at us as he carried a tray for the young couple.

  Dinah levered herself up from the chair, coughing once more. "Please," she said, and then limped back toward the swinging doors, never looking at Chan.

  He walked over to me, his tray now empty. "Waitress bring rest of your food now. You eat, you pay, you leave."

  As Chan went back toward his cash register, I tried the spring rolls. Kind of soggy. I also tried to figure out what was scaring Dinah, and probably Chan, too.

  Giving up on that for the moment, I pushed the spring rolls aside just as Jerry Vale came over the stereo.