Arneson nodded, like he agreed. "So, what's going on, Cuddy?"
"I'm working with Steven Rothenberg."
"Let me guess. The Gant case."
"Yes. I understand you and Mr. Gant were office-mates here."
Arneson leaned back into his chair, doing the little swing routine again. "Why should I talk with you?"
"I'd think you'd want the right person sent away for the crime."
"We're the representatives of the people, Cuddy. Ordinarily, that's exactly what I'd want. Only thing is, our office isn't the one trying the case."
"I know, but you might be able to give me some information on some people your office did try."
Arneson nodded again. "Really meaning, people Woodrow tried."
"A good starting point."
A third nod, and Arneson came forward in the chair. "I believe in presenting a charge fairly in the courtroom, Cuddy. In fact, I make an effort to conduct myself at all times as though a jury was watching me."
I'd heard Nancy and other prosecutors say something similar. The difference was, I'd thought they'd been sincere, while Arneson's little speech sounded more like the party line.
He went on. "However, I'm leery of maybe fouling up Suffolk's case on your guy."
"Could telling me about Nguyen Trinh foul up their case?"
"Nugey?" Arneson looked away for a moment, then came back, grinning. "You meet him?"
"Not so far."
"Give me a call if you do. I'd like to know how that baby's faring." Arneson dropped the grin. "Look, Cuddy, Woodrow prosecuted Trinh and his buddy Oscar-somebody at least eight or nine years ago. If you're thinking some kind of revenge, they've been out plenty long enough to have done something about it before now."
"Your office caught that case because the home invasion happened in Weston Hil1s?"
"Right. Trinh and—Huong, that was the buddy's name. Oscar Huong. Anyway, Trinh and Huong were from Vietnam, then probably a dozen other places before they ended up on our doorstep. We coordinated with the Boston force and together nailed the punks. End of story."
Not exactly, but I didn't want Arneson knowing about Trinh's restaurant connection before Rothenberg did. "Gant was a good prosecutor?"
"What are you doing now? Trying to blame the victim?"
"Trying to get a handle on the victim from somebody who knew him well."
Arneson leaned back again, but didn't swing the chair. "I'm not sure anybody knew Woodrow well."
“How do you mean?"
"He was a loner, Cuddy. Don't get me wrong. Everybody has to be by themselves some in this job, just like any other. But Woodrow wasn't one to go out for drinks after work or play on the office softball team, you know?"
"Somebody told me he had a bad leg."
"Knee problem. Football, I think. Bottom line is, Woodrow didn't socialize much. I think I met his wife—sorry, ex-wife-maybe once. Jessica?"
"Jenifer," I said.
"Right, Jenifer. English girl. Anyway, like I was saying, Woodrow didn't pal around much, but he did his job well. And he was the best I ever saw at the prosecutor point."
"The 'prosecutor point'?"
“Yeah. You know, the way an A.D.A. can point to the defense table when a witness is identifying the accused as the robber or a crime scene tech is testifying about his fingerprints. Woodrow had refined the gesture to a stylized art. He pointed at you three times, and, baby, you were gone in the eyes of that jury."
"Other than Trinh and Huong, anybody else who might have a reason to kill Mr. Gant?"
"Like I said before, even they didn't have much of a motive after so much lapse of time." Arneson went from merely careful to completely serious. "Look, Cuddy, I'll grant you that Woodrow was a hard charger, all right? He had a pair of stones on him so big, they'd brush the ground between his feet. But Woodrow'd been out of here for what, three years now? He stayed a while, then went private, like most of us."
"But not like you."
The chair swing again. "Yeah, I've stayed. I don't blame the ones who haven't. They got big dreams like Woodrow, or maybe kids to educate. But I'm still here because I like the work, being on the moral side of issues. Also, you stay long enough, you get to be the smartest fish in a dumb pond, everybody else being so junior by comparison. And the secret to being smart as a prosecutor is simple: attention to detail."
Thom Arneson laughed. "Ten years ago, I was a breast man. Now I'm a detail man. Kind of like I'm losing ground, huh?" Actually I was wondering why the supposedly smartest fish still had only a shared office in the pond.
* * *
The Board of Bar Overseers is located at 75 Federal Street in Boston's financial district. The building, nestled between a couple of banks, was constructed of sturdy gray granite with Art Deco touches of chrome. Despite the nice facade, I'm told that lawyers summoned there view it as a cross between a police department's Internal Affairs Division and the old K.G.B.'s torture chamber at Lubyanka prison.
When I got off the elevator, the Board seemed to occupy the entire seventh floor. I followed speckled, marble tiles to the front counter. A young blond woman sat behind greenish security glass, overlapped so that papers (but nothing more dangerous) could be pushed under and up to her. An opaque vase holding an arrangement of Japanese dried flowers stood serenely in a niche on the left, solid oak doors closed at both edges of the reception area.
As I reached the counter, the young woman was speaking into her telephone. "My name? Heather .... Yes, ma'am ....We have a computer directory here, if you could give me his . . . Is that with an 'M' or an 'N'? .... Just one second . . .yes. Yes, we have him in Wellfleet. Here's his address and telephone."
After Heather finished with that last, she paused, then said, "You too, ma'am. Bye now." The receptionist looked up at me. "Sorry, sir. How can I help you?"
"I'd like to find out if a lawyer had any complaints lodged against him."
A rueful smile. "I'm afraid that's not public information."
"But the lawyer involved is dead."
"Sorry," said Heather. "Unless there's been a public discipline, all those records have to remain confidential"
I took out my identification. "I'm investigating a murder where any complaint here might be important."
A polite head shake. "Again, I'm afraid—"
"It's the murder of Woodrow Gant."
Heather's face creased. "Just one moment."
"Mr. Cuddy?" the man rising behind his desk in a non shared office.
"Yes."
"Parris Jeppers." We shook as he said, "Thank you, Heather."
The receptionist who had led me to him closed the door on her way out. Jeppers was about five-ten and slim, his forty or so years showing themselves by sprinkled gray in the short, brown hair, both his carefully trimmed mustache and goatee a shade darker. He wore tortoiseshell glasses, one of those neon surfer cords attached to the templates so he could drop the specs in front of him like a bib. Jeppers' suit was a faint herringbone, his dress shirt blue, but with white collar and cuffs. The paisley bow under his Adam's apple looked more tied than clipped on.
Despite the Yankee clothes, he had a Rebel accent. "Heather told me over the telephone that you wished to see any complaints about a given attorney?"
"I'm thinking, Mr. Jeppers, that she also told you that attorney's name, or I wouldn't have gotten an audience with—what are you, anyway?"
A tight smile. "If you mean title, 'assistant bar counsel'."
"What else would I mean?"
The smile grew tighter. "Sexual orientation, perhaps? If you were guessing I'm gay, you're right."
I didn't think I'd been guessing at all. "That's coming on a little strong, isn't it?"
"Sometimes strong is a better gambit than courteous. Sorry if I offended you."
"Only by assuming that your orientation might affect my view of your professionalism."
Jeppers's expression changed. "Then I'm truly sorry for my assumption." He used his right index finger to push the gl
asses higher on the bridge of his nose. "So, you're here about Woodrow Gant?"
"Yes. I'm working with Alan Spaeth's defense attorney, and it occurred to me that it'd be helpful to know whether there might be someone in your files who had a motive to kill Mr. Gant."
"A disgruntled client of his?"
"Or an angry opponent."
"Most lawyers settle any differences between them with paperwork, Mr. Cuddy."
"I meant to include opposing clients."
Jeppers adjusted his glasses again. "As Heather must have told you, those records are confidential."
"I can appreciate that. But Alan Spaeth is going to be on trial for murder, and I've found other information that suggests he may not have done it."
"still . . ."
"Meaning I need a court order to see if there are any potential suspects in your files."
"That would be up to you. Or to Mr. Spaeth's attorney and the presiding judge involved. However, given my . . . breach of good manners at the beginning of our conversation, perhaps I can save both of us some time. And embarrassment as well."
"Thank you."
Jeppers's hand went to his bow tie for a moment. "Mr. Spaeth himself came here to file a complaint against Mr. Gant regarding Mr. Spaeth's wife."
Half-expecting that, I tried not to let my face show Jeppers anything. "What kind of complaint?"
"Mr. Spaeth behaved in a belligerent manner out front, so Heather referred him to me. It seems your client believed Mr. Gant was having an affair with Mrs. Spaeth. The man was rather insistent about it, too, though long on belief and short on details."
"What did you do about his complaint?"
"Told him it had no foundation."
I stopped for a second. "How could you know that?"
"Don't misunderstand, Mr. Cuddy. I'm not talking about factual foundation. I mean legal foundation."
"Legally, it's all right for a lawyer to have sex with his divorce client?"
"The Commonwealth's attorneys have long been governed by the Code of Professional Responsibility, which for our purposes is divided into aspirational ethical considerations and stricter disciplinary rules. Is it ethical for a lawyer to engage in such an affair? No. Is it a direct violation of a disciplinary rule? No again. Hence, there was no legal foundation upon which we could proceed, even if Mr. Spaeth's version of the situation was true."
"Which it might not have been."
The tight smile again, and another adjustment of the glasses. "That's almost immaterial, don't you think? Mr. Spaeth's belief that it was true is the damage I'd bring to his defense counsel's attention."
I thanked Parris Jeppers for his advice, and he called Heather to escort me back out to the elevators.
* * *
"Shit," said Steve Rothenberg. "You're sure?"
"There a reason why this Jeppers at the Overseers would lie to me?"
The lawyer shook his head. We were sitting inside the client interview room at the Nashua Street jail, waiting for the guard to bring Alan Spaeth to us.
I'd started Steve off with my last stop, and now I went back to the beginning. "I hit Michael Mantle's place at the rooming house twice. No sign of him there since late Tuesday of last week."
"The night before Gant was shot."
"Right. And Mantle hasn't visited his usual watering holes, either."
"Also since that Tuesday?"
I nodded. "Plus, everybody at the law firm confirms that Spaeth went nuts that day at his deposition."
"Ah, yes," said Rothenberg, a dollop of sarcasm in his voice. "I remember it well."
"However, I also got everyone there to admit that Spaeth just yelled, that he never approached anybody physically. And that Woodrow Gant's brother was the one who had to be restrained."
"That's 'Grover,' right?"
"Grover Cleveland Gant. Though if I'm the prosecution, I think I'd bypass him and put the mother on the stand. She'l1 have the jurors standing in line during recess to learn the hangman's knot."
Another shake of the head.
"On top of that." I said, "almost nobody has a bad word about the deceased. Good partner as well as good son and brother. His ex-wife says he played around during their marriage, but once Gant's single, that's a risk I think the jury would let him run."
"Besides, it never looks good to paint the victim bl . . . in a bad light on sex stuff. Unless you've come up with a connection to the woman he was with that night?"
"Nobody seems to have any ideas about that."
Rothenberg looked skeptical. "None at all?"
"I don't buy it either, even though everyone took great pains in telling me Woodrow Gant kept his personal life to himself."
"Well, keep trying. If the woman was with him when the shooter opened up, she may have seen something."
"In which case," I said, echoing Lieutenant Murphy, "why didn't our killer get her, too?"
"Maybe that's exactly what happened."
"Steve."
"What?"
"No other body was found"
"So, the killer took the woman away."
"Why?"
"Maybe for just the reason we're having trouble finding out who she was."
"The killer wanted to hide her identity?"
"Look, this woman tried to disguise herself, right? I mean, dark glasses in a restaurant at night?"
Rothenberg had a point.
He waited a moment, then said, "Anything from Gant's time as a prosecutor?"
"I drove out there, talked with a current A.D.A. named Arneson, who was Gant's office-mate. Arneson says Gant was aggressive and effective but fair."
Rothenberg said, "Gang members who get sent away aren't usually consoled much by 'fair'. "
"Which brings us to the only piece of good news."
"Anything at this point."
I lowered my voice. "One of the bad guys Woodrow Gant put away was a home-invader named Nguyen Trinh. But Trinh was only a juvenile at the time, and after paying his debt to society, he expanded into other lines of work."
"What other lines?"
"Loan-sharking, but bordering on venture capital."
"Venture capital? Bankrolling what?"
"A certain Vietnamese restaurant."
"No," said Rothenberg, brightening visibly.
"Yes. It's probably just a coincidence that Woodrow Gant ever ate at Viet Mam—one of the other attorneys in the firm had it recommended to her by a friend and took him there once. But maybe Trinh happened to see him at the restaurant."
"And got the idea to take his revenge by following Gant the next time the man came by."
"Except that A.D.A. Arneson thinks it's pretty unlikely Trinh would wait so many years before getting even."
"John, let's not taketh away with the other hand, okay?"
"Meaning this is the best evidence we've got so far."
"By a mile. You're sure about this former gang guy's connection to the restaurant?"
"That's what a pretty reliable source told me, but I think one of us should hit the Registry of Deeds, link the property to Trinh through documentation."
"I can have somebody there run the title and fax the papers to you."
"The Suffolk registry's not that far from my office. Have your searcher drop an envelope through the mail slot in my door."
Rothenberg stared at me. "You still don't have a fax machine, do you?"
"Steve, I never even learned how to type."
Rothenberg was giving me a "that-doesn't-compute" look when we heard a perfunctory rap/rap on the other side of the interior trap.
* * *
In a petulant voice, Alan Spaeth said, "I did tell you."
Rothenberg shook his head. "Alan, what do you take me for, an idiot? I'd have remembered."
"Our first meeting, Steve. About the divorce thing. I remember it clear as a fucking bell. You asked me if my wife had a lawyer yet, and I told you, yeah, this colored guy, and you asked me for his name. And as you were writing it down, I said,
'The way he looks at her, I think he's getting some on the side.' "
It sounded too "Spaeth-like" to be a lie, so I broke in. "You met Woodrow Gant before you retained Steve on the divorce?"
"Sure," a little defiance now from across the desk, the heel of his left hand rubbing the slowly healing "shower" eye. "Hey, sport, I was a pretty good marketing executive, and I handled dozens of negotiations where I sure as shit knew a lot less about the landscape than I did in my own fucking marriage. I figured I'd be able to handle things, no sweat. Only this Gant brings down a mountain of shit on my head, papers on ‘Vacating the Marital Home,' and 'No Impositions on Wife's Personal Liberty.' Well, what about my 'personal liberty,' huh? Who was supposed to look after that, I didn't hire a lawyer,
too?"
It wasn't Spaeth's decision to hire Rothenberg that bothered me. It was that I didn't think I'd asked Nicole Spaeth if there'd been any other incidents where her husband had threatened her lawyer.
Rothenberg focused on his client. "I'm not talking about what you said to me about your wife and Gant. I want to know why you never told me about your visit to the Board of Bar Overseers."
"Those fuckers." The petulant voice again. "This faggot there said—"
I interrupted him. “That's one, Spaeth."
"One what?"
"Once more with the slurs, and I walk."
Spaeth stared at me, then went to Rothenberg with, "I'm looking at prison for the rest of my life, and I can't call a spade a spade?"
Rothenberg cringed hearing one more reason not to put his client on the stand come trial. "Alan, just use names, not labels. Okay?"
"Okay, okay. This—" Spaeth looked up at me. "I don't remember his fucking name."
"Jeppers." I said.
"Yeah, 'Jeffers' except with 'P's,' I remember now. This Jeppers guy said what I told him would be confidential."
Rothenberg shook his head. "But why did you go there in the first place?"
"I thought it could help." Spaeth grew earnest now, trying to sell us on the package. “Look, I thought Gant was fucking Nicole—I heard plenty of guys say their wife's lawyer did the same thing in their cases."
Rothenberg said, "She was separated from you."
"I don't care. We're still married, it's adultery in my book, a fucking betrayal of loyalty. But I figured I told you about her and him when you started representing me-and you didn't do anything about it—then maybe some kind of . . . independent investigation would help."
The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy Page 15
