The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremish Healy

  * * *

  An hour later, I parked the Prelude as close as possible to Boston's Area B police station. Families and the elderly were taking the nice fall air within sight of it, like settlers staying around a cavalry fort when trouble was expected.

  Which, for Area B, amounts to a twenty-four-hour-a-day proposition.

  The station was home (in some sense of that word) to the department's Anti-Gang Violence Unit. The unit had been organized when Boston set its all-time record for homicides in 1990. I've always thought a better name would have been the "Gang Anti-Violence Unit." but nobody ever asked me.

  As I went in the downstairs door, an African-American woman and two little girls I took to be her daughters were coming out. The woman had on a green, tailored suit, her hair pulled back into a bun. The girls, maybe a year apart, wore identical print dresses and cornrowed tresses. Some beads had been carefully worked into the braids, creating a dazzling, almost crystal-curtain effect every time either girl moved her head. Which they were doing a lot, as both they and the mother were crying their eyes out.

  I was still shaking my own head as I asked the officer at the desk for Larry Cosentino or Yolanda King.

  * * *

  "Hey. Cuddy, right?"

  Ilario "Larry" Cosentino stood near a tall window, his right foot up on the corner of a desk chair. He was tying the lace to a Turntec running shoe that hadn't gotten any cleaner since the last time I'd seen him, some months before when a gang of young girls thought their path to riches would be clearer without me in the middle of it.

  About forty and stocky, Cosentino was wearing rumpled blue jeans and a rugby shirt, cuffs pushed halfway up his hairy forearms. There was a little less of the hair on his head than I remembered, but the wide mouth and plug-ugly face hadn't changed much, still belonging more to a bullfrog.

  Cosentino turned to the woman sitting at the next desk. "Al, this is the guy I told you about, had that shoot-out with Las Hermanas."

  The woman swung her chair around. Early twenties, she was petite and pretty, wearing a brown tweed skirt and a yellow blouse. Her eyeglasses rode up at her hairline, the hair itself a shade to the blond side of brunette and drawn into a ponytail above her left ear, trailing down onto the shoulder. "Alicia Velez."

  "John Cuddy."

  "Oh, sorry." said Cosentino, finishing with his shoe and getting both feet back on the floor. "I forgot, Yollie and me were still partnered up back then."

  I said, "She's left the unit?"

  Velez nodded. "Yolanda moved over to a district detective slot." The eyebrows went toward Cosentino. "Couldn't stand Larry's one-liners anymore."

  Cosentino said, "The thanks I get, breaking her in. Sit down, sit down."

  As I pulled over a straight-back chair, Velez said, "You went up against those BWA's, we're lucky to be seeing you."

  "BWA's?"

  " 'Bitches with an attitude!' Girl joined Las Hermanas, she got mean in a hurry and didn't go back."

  Cosentino cracked his knuckles, grew serious. "You been visited by any of them, Cuddy?"

  "Not so far."

  "Well, then." He seemed to relax again. "What can we do you for?"

  "I'm helping the defense in the Alan Spaeth case."

  "Be seeing you," said Velez, standing.

  Cosentino lowered his voice. "Al, just a second, okay?"

  "Larry, this guy's—"

  "A second, please?"

  Velez sat back down.

  Cosentino turned to me. "Cuddy, inside the department, an officer or an A.D.A.—even an ex-A.D.A.—gets killed, we still call it by the name of the victim, you know? To us, it's not the 'Alan Spaeth' case, it's the 'Woodrow Gant' case."

  Velez stuck in, “The man's vocabulary isn't why I was I leaving."

  "I know that, Al." Cosentino never moved his eyes off me. "But Cuddy here took down some pretty bad kids we couldn't protect him from, and I heard he risked his fucking life when one of them had another citizen by the balls out in suburbia. So maybe we hear what he has to say."

  Velez didn't like it, but she stayed seated as I tried to figure Cosentino out. He might be trying to help me, or he might be trying to get information on my client that he could feed to the prosecution, with Velez as a corroborating witness in case I tried to backpedal on anything. Either way, though, I needed Cosentino more than he needed me.

  I said, "Somebody suggested I ought to come see you."

  Velez asked, "Who?"

  I glanced at her. "Whoever you guys tipped about something not being right in the Gant killing."

  Cosentino said, "Al?"

  Her eyes went to her partner.

  He said, "I told Murphy over in Homicide what I told you."

  "Great." Velez's eyes now went to her lap. "Just great"

  I looked from one to the other. “There are some things about the murder that don't add up to Alan Spaeth as the shooter. Since Gant once prosecuted gang members, and the killing was done execution-style, I'm thinking maybe somebody decided to settle a past grudge."

  Cosentino crossed his ankles, swinging his sneakers back and forth a little. "Eight, nine years ago, there was this task force set up, trying to deal with Asian gangs"

  "I remember reading about the Chinatown prosecutions."

  "Yeah. The triads started out from Hong Kong, then the tongs got organized here in the states by Chinese-Americans, then the young-punk street gangs arrived on the scene. But it wasn't just Chinese."

  Velez put in, "Vietnamese, Cambodian, you name it. Very equal opportunity."

  I looked at her. "But all that's Boston. Gant prosecuted in the suburbs."

  "Right," said Cosentino, "but bear with me a minute, okay?"

  "Okay."

  He spoke more slowly. "Say you're an immigrant, but you've saved your money or somebody loaned you a grubstake, and you go into business for yourself. Restaurant, dry cleaners, convenience store. Only in your home country, the banks and all are kind of shaky, and the tax collectors are always shaking you down. Now, your business is mainly a cash-and-carry kind of operation that turns a nice profit. What do you do?"

  I said, "You carry the cash home so it's safe and not reported as income."

  Velez said, "Gold star. But, let's say word gets around among the workers at your restaurant or whatever that the boss is pretty flush and keeps the take at his house. What happens next?"

  Pretty simple. “Home invasion."

  “Exactly," said Cosentino. "The locals get wind of a bank without guards or vaults, and all they got to do is go into the boss's house with some guns and duct tape. Terrorize the guy's family, and he gives up his stash."

  "And, because of the tax-dodge angle, the owner can't turn to the police about the robbery."

  "Or won't, because back home, the cops were even worse than the banks or the revenue service." Cosentino opened his hands, a sermonizing priest asking the flock a question. "Result? People over here are still leery of getting involved with the authorities?

  I stopped to think about it. "I'm guessing that a lot of the successful Asian immigrants move to the suburbs."

  Velez said, "Soon as they can. Bigger house, better schools for the kids, a sense that all their hard work is paying off."

  "So the crime against essentially a Boston business gets pulled in a suburb, and nobody tells the police anywhere about it."

  Cosentino nodded. "Yeah, except some of the suburban immigrants now have real friends—their own kind or neighbors—who tell them they're better off going to the police, otherwise they'll just get ripped off again, over and over."

  "Which is how Woodrow Gant came to be involved with the gang unit here in Boston."

  "Right. The D.A.'s office he worked for didn't have an Asian-American prosecutor at the time, so Gant got assigned by his boss to this task force I mentioned to coordinate with us, try to nail some of these Boston guys before they hit another land-scaped split-level out there."

  "And the task force was successful?"

 
"Yeah," said Cosentino, "but mainly against the Vietnamese gangs."

  "Why them?"

  He moved off the desk, went around behind it to look out the window. "Bunch of reasons. Most of the Vietnamese gangs have only five, six kids in them, so they're manageable to prosecute. Also, they're pretty vicious. The kids in the Chinese gangs grew up in a real family system. You do things a certain way, rules and shit."

  Velez said, "Many of the Vietnamese came to the States from refugee camps, got scattered all over the map without a family support system in place. They didn't know much English, had a lot of trouble in school .... "

  Cosentino turned back to me. "Home invasion, a Chinese gang will say to the victim, 'Call the cops, we kill one of your daughters.' The Vietnamese will say, 'We're gonna take a finger off this daughter here right now, just so you know what'll happen to the rest of her, you report us.' "

  "Also," said Velez, "the Vietnamese gangs are more mobile. They go state-to-state in cars, kind of roving bandits."

  I thought about that. "But if the gang members aren't from the area, how do they know who to target?"

  Cosentino and Velez exchanged looks. Then he said to me, "Traditionally, when you had a mixed neighborhood, you'd get some mixing in the gangs, too."

  "Meaning?"

  Velez said, "Meaning, you have Irish, Latinos, and blacks living in the same couple of blocks, maybe you have a rainbow-coalition gang, too."

  Cosentino stayed by the window, cracked his knuckles again. "That never used to be true with the Asians, though. The Chinese hated the Vietnamese, the Cambodians hated the Koreans, and vice versa all over the fucking place."

  "I follow you, but I don't see where you're going."

  “Larry's point," said Velez, "is that now we're starting to notice some cooperation among the different Asian groups. Makes it even harder for us to trace who's doing what if a Vietnamese gang knocks over a business or home owned by a Chinese."

  I shook my head. "Yeah, only what does this have to do with Woodrow Gant? He hadn't been prosecuting for years."

  Cosentino came away from the window and sat on the desk again, but fidgety. "I heard some noise about one of the gangs Gant helped put away back then."

  "Vietnamese?"

  "Kind of."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It was an Amerasian gang, mostly teens whose mothers were Vietnamese women, fathers GI's during the war. You spent some time in Saigon, right?"

  "Right."

  "So you know what I mean. The kids were neither fish nor fowl to the purebred Vietnamese. And not just because of the mixed blood, either. It was more that the kids reminded the rest of the people what the war had done to their country, which made any Amerasian a real outcast over there."

  "And not much better treated over here," said Velez. "I remember in my school, nobody would hang with a mixed-race kid except the others."

  Cosentino cracked another knuckle. "That task force I told you about set up kind of a sting, caught four Amerasian kids in a house out in Weston Hills, Gant's jurisdiction."

  I'd had a case in the town a while ago.

  Cosentino said, "Two of the kids got killed, the other two prosecuted and turned over to DYS."

  Division of Youth Services, our Commonwealth's reformatory system. "And Gant was their prosecutor."

  "Right. Only problem was, even with the killings that night—and maybe five others we could guess about—DYS couldn't hold them past their eighteenth birthdays?"

  "Wait a minute. How old were the kids when they pulled the home invasion?"

  "The two survivors were fifteen and sixteen."

  "How'd they get out there in the first place?"

  "Stolen car." Cosentino shrugged. "You don't have to be old enough to get a driver's license in order to drive, Cuddy."

  "Okay," I said. "So these—what were their names, anyway?"

  "The muscle was Oscar Huong, a real Mr. five-by-five. Father supposedly a black Marine boxing champion. The brains was Nguyen Trinh—or 'Nugey,' for short. He had no idea who his daddy was."

  "So Huong and Trinh were with DYS——"

  "—until they turned eighteen. Then the system had to cut them loose. Only Nugey learned a few things while he was away. One, Oscar could protect him. Two, you get along by going along."

  “Meaning?"

  "Nugey started brokering deals inside DYS. One group of bad guys cooperates with another, everybody gets better treatment as a result."

  "How about when he got out?"

  "Went straight." said Cosentino, his face neutral.

  "And that's the 'noise' you heard about him? That Trinh actually reformed?"

  Cosentino looked at his partner. “You want to leave now?"

  Velez reached her left hand up to the ponytail, curling an inch or two of hair around her index finger. "I've sat through this much, I'll stay for the punch line."

  "Which is?" I said. `

  Cosentino came back to me. "When Nugey and Oscar graduated from DYS, they had a nest egg. They started loaning it out to people who got turned down by your normal kind of banks."

  "Sharking."

  "Yeah, but very quiet, very . . . progressive. Not the 'I-need-five-hundred-for-the-rent' types. More business investments where the ultimate payoff might be bigger."

  "You make them sound like venture capitalists."

  Velez laughed, nervously.

  Cosentino didn't even grin. "When Woodrow Gant got killed, I asked around about Nugey. On instinct, you might say. I found out he has a half-assed office out in Brighton."

  A western part of Boston. "Which led you to Trinh's loan-shark/investor profile."

  "And led me to something else, too."

  "What?"

  "You know Woodrow Gant ate at a restaurant the night of the murder?"

  "Place called Viet Mam."

  "Right," said Cosentino. "Now, you want to guess who owns the building it's in?"

  I looked from Larry Cosentino to Alicia Velez and back again, both of them nodding.

  No wonder Chan and Dinah were so scared.

  Chapter 6

  BEFORE LEAVING THE gang unit, I got Nguyen Trinh's office address. I thought about paying Chan's landlord a visit, but my original trip to Viet Mam might itself trigger something, and given Cosentino's description of Oscar Huong, I'd want to meet the Amerasians on my ground rather than theirs. Also, Woodrow Gant's eating at a restaurant in a building owned by a prior defendant could have been just random chance. In fact, it was hard to see any reason why a former A.D.A. would ever intentionally patronize such a place. However, if Gant's meals there were more than coincidence, my best hope for learning what that reason might be would more likely come from the man's present circle.

  And Steve Rothenberg had given me a wedge for penetrating that.

  Commercial Street curves with the waterfront while providing land access to a dozen wharves jutting into the harbor between the Aquarium and the Charlestown Bridge. The wharves support substantial condominium complexes, both business and residential uses in the same buildings to retain that "quaint" look. Unfortunately, Boston's real estate recession had really whacked most properties east of Quincy Market's "ultimate shopping experience."

  The address of Epstein 8 Neely, attorneys at law, turned out to be a five-story combination of red brick and weathered gray shingle. It stood across from Spaulding Wharf, facing southeast toward a hundred-slip marina, twenty or so sailboats-to-yachts still creaking against floating docks. The building's directory was displayed next to a set of buttons on the jamb of the downstairs entrance. The directory showed a travel agency on the ground floor, open slots for the second and third, and the law firm on four. Nothing for the fifth, which from the sidewalk seemed to be built across only half the roof.

  I looked into the picture window next to the door. A bare counter, a single chair, and two posters of the Caribbean with water as natural-looking as a tinted contact lens. It seemed that our recession had caused even the travel age
ncy to pull the rip cord.

  Before pressing the button for the law firm, I tried the main entrance door. It opened onto a postage-stamp lobby with a staircase and a tiny elevator sporting one of those old-fashioned, diamond windows.

  In the elevator—and out of curiosity—I pushed the button for "2". The little number outline didn't light up. Same for floor "3". The fourth button did make contact, and the door slid closed.

  When the backlit "4" went dark, the cab opened onto a reception area with wine-and-gold swirled carpeting. I got another view of the marina through a glass-walled conference room that had a bigger picture window to the outside world than the departed travel agency downstairs. The higher perspective made the boats seem less impressive against the greater expanse of harbor.

  A polished teak reception desk graced the carpeting between the elevator and the conference room. A woman in her thirties looked up at me from the telephone console as she massaged her left wrist with the other hand. Reddish hair was drawn back into a bun, and a pair of half-glasses perched halfway down her nose. If she wore any makeup, I couldn't see its effects. Her suit jacket was brown, the blouse under it maize. A spindly pilot's mouthpiece angled toward thin lips and a narrow jaw. In a very controlled voice, the woman said, "I'm afraid Ms. Ling is out of the office right now." Stopping the massage, she reached for a pen, raising it to a hovering position over a spiral notebook with serrated, pink and yellow bi-part message slips in it. A plastic, compartmentalized holder contained the pink copies of other messages. “No, for some reason the system isn't accepting voice mail, but I can take a . . .Very well."

  Her left hand moved subtly, and I had the feeling the connection had been broken, partly because the woman said to me, "May I help you?"

  The controlled voice still. "Yes. John Cuddy here to see Mr. Epstein or Mr. Neely."

  "I'm afraid that's not possible."

  "I can wait."

  A labored sigh. "Mr. Epstein passed away four years ago."

  Not one of my better starts. "I'm sorry. I didn't—"

  "Obviously not. And Mr. Neely is in conference."

  "Then I'll wait for him."

  "His schedule is rather full." She didn't need to consult anything to determine that. "Our telephone number is five-one-three, two-two-oh-oh. Perhaps if you called to make anappointment?"