The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremish Healy

  "I'm afraid you're right, John." said Frank Neely's voice, the business end of his Colt forty-five preceding the sleeve of a chamois shirt and the leg of some khaki slacks around the corner of the corridor.

  After frisking me for a weapon I wasn't carrying, he marched us very slowly toward his office, Burbage in front, me in the middle, him bringing up the rear. Once inside, Neely waved his secretary toward the interior door.

  “Open it, Imogene, and climb the stairs. One at a time."

  When she was three deliberate steps up, at the first curve of the spiral case, Neely said, "Stop," and then, “Now you, John."

  Reaching the base of the stairs, I paused until he told both of us to start moving again. Burbage climbed stiffly in front of me, her hand shaking the metal bannister every time I touched the railing. Neely came on but kept at least one turn of the staircase between us at all times, giving me no chance to do anything while preserving a nearly clear field of fire for his gun. Something about the spiral nature of the climb made things harder on my ribs, and I was breaking a sweat by the time we reached the top.

  "Step out into the garden." said Neely.

  Burbage and I did. As the staircase door closed behind us, I looked over my shoulder, Neely using a key from his ring to lock up.

  He said, "The contractor who did the renovations for me planned to put only a dead bolt on here, but I wanted a little more security." Neely made a ritual out of returning the ring to his pants pocket. "Glad now that I did. Okay, follow the path."

  Burbage and I moved through the foliage to the marble cocktail table and wrought-iron chairs. When we turned around, my right hand inadvertently brushed the left side of her skirt at the waist. She surprised me by reaching for and holding that hand, her elbow digging into my rib cage just enough to make me flinch.

  Neely noticed it. "I heard you got a little banged up dealing with that loan shark and his pal. Broken rib along with the eye?"

  "I'll live."

  Neely just smiled with a sense of something approaching accomplishment.

  I said, "Uta Radachowski told me you weren't in your office."

  "She was right. I'd come upstairs to do a little gardening, so I changed clothes." With his free hand, Neely tapped the chamois shirt and khaki slacks. "Then I remembered a phone call I hadn't returned, so I went back down to look for the message on my desk. I'd just found the number when I heard your voice, John, talking to Imogene in the reception area."

  "About a number you didn't need to find."

  Neely smiled, but this time without the air of accomplishment. "You picked up on it, too."

  Burbage said, "Picked up on what?"

  I glanced at her. "Woodrow Gant and Deborah Ling were planning to leave Epstein & Neely to open their own law office."

  "No," said Burbage to me.

  "I'm afraid so. The real estate broker they'd asked to help them rent space was one Frank here once used, to find this place when he was breaking off from the last of his old firms. The broker was smart enough, though, to use a different, if similar, name. 'Barber' instead of 'Baker.' "

  " 'Barber.' " The secretary addressed her boss. "But then how would you know who she was?"

  "The telephone number itself, Imogene. The exchange was the same as ours here, not surprising given the few blocks between Ms. Baker's office and this one."

  Burbage seemed awed. "You remembered the last four digits for eight years?"

  "More like fifty-some," I said.

  Now she was confused. "What?"

  Neely lost his smile. "The last four numbers are one-nine-four-four. The year of D-Day, Imogene."

  "My God." she said.

  I was pretty sure of the rest. “And seven weeks ago, when you saw that phone message for Gant via Ling on Ms. Burbage's desk, you knew what it meant."

  "Betrayal, John." said Neely.

  "Because Gant was bailing out and taking Ling with him."

  "Of course." The senior partner seemed to go inside himself, reliving something. "Almost four years ago, when Woodrow approached me about joining the firm, I could tell he was a real go-getter, just what we needed, given Len's dying months before. We never had a written partnership agreement here, but I made it clear to Woodrow that we needed his loyalty, a commitment to stay and build and be a part of the team. He agreed, and I took him at his word." Neely came back to us.

  "But in the end, Woodrow betrayed me, John."

  "Then why didn't you kill Uta Radachowski as well?"

  Burbage drew in a breath, but Neely didn't seem to notice.

  ‘ He said, "Uta? Why?"

  "She was leaving the firm, too, and from the files being transferred to you from her, you had to know about it."

  "Uta told me, straight out." Neely shook his head. "At her interview for my first firm, in fact. She made no bones back then about wanting to be a judge someday. When we all broke off from the second firm to form Epstein & Neely, Uta expressly promised Len and me that she'd stay with us forever unless she got a judgeship. Not only wouldn't I stand in her way, I applauded the opportunity." Neely fixed me with a baleful look. "No, Uta was forthright. It was Woodrow played the Judas."

  "Just following in your footsteps, Frank"

  A cocking of the head, a lot like Vincennes Dufresne at the Chateau in Southie. "What kind of a crack is that?"

  "You and Leonard Epstein jumped ship on your old firm, just the same way that Woodrow—"

  "Not in the least! You never knew Len, but you know me. And we were both men of honor, then and now."

  "A man of honor sets up an innocent stooge to take the fall for him?"

  The accomplishment smile. "Your Mr. Alan Spaeth."

  "That's who I was thinking of."

  "Then you can hardly call him an 'innocent,' John. He abused his family, first by neglecting them, then by putting them through the mill in his divorce case. He was . . . perfect"

  “You'd heard Alan Spaeth berating Gant that day a few months ago at the deposition downstairs, even threatening him. Easy enough to wait one night until everybody else had gone home, then get Spaeth's boardinghouse address in Southie from the divorce file.

  "Woodrow even helped out there, telling us at lunch a few weeks after the deposition about his client's being afraid of the gun Spaeth still had."

  "I can see you knowing about the revolver. I haven't figured out how you got it from Spaeth's room at the boardinghouse."

  "I didn't. Mr. Michael Mantle got it for me."

  "Not based on what I've heard from the landlord there. He—and even Spaeth himself—said Mantle was loyal to his friends."

  "And so he was, John. To a fault, you might even say. Once I realized what a perfect scapegoat Spaeth could be, I began to spend my evenings following him. I started by using a car, but I noticed he and Mantle went out from the boardinghouse at least three times a week to different bars within walking distance, so I just dressed the part and parked, waiting until one night when Mantle went out by himself. I left the car and tailed along to this dive, then sidled up to Mantle and began talking to him. Pretty soon I was standing for drinks, and soon after that he started opening up about this friend of his having such a terrible time with his divorce. So terrible that poor old Mick was afraid poor old Alan might do something really stupid with his gun."

  Christ. "You persuaded Mantle to steal Spaeth's gun to protect his friend from himself."

  "Very good, John. Can you work out the rest, now?"

  I thought about Dufresne recounting the payment of the room tab. "You told Mantle he could save his friend and pick up a little money on the side by taking the gun and selling it to you."

  "Go on," said Neely.

  "That gets you the right gun, but you also have to make sure Spaeth doesn't have an alibi for the night in question."

  "What night?" said Burbage.

  Neely glanced at her. "Please, Imogene. Don't interrupt the man."

  I thought about it some more. "So you tell Mantle that you're going to use
the gun a week ago Wednesday, the night Gant was killed."

  "Actually I told the little drunk that the guy I sold it to was going to carry the thing into a liquor store, maybe even fire it, because he was another hotheaded Irishman."

  "So Mantle decided he'd better baby-sit his friend Spaeth"

  "I decided for him. Even made sure he had enough cash to get Spaeth good and drunk."

  "Before Mantle left him to meet you."

  "Excellent, John." Neely went inside himself again. "I told him, 'Mick, you meet me late Wednesday night, over in this derelict shell by some warehouses. I'll let you know then if your friend has anything to worry about.' "

  "But once you got Mantle in that shell, you strangled him."

  Burbage said, "No."

  Neely glanced at her again. "I'm afraid so, Imogene. After all my careful planning, I couldn't very well leave Spaeth with a real alibi, now could I?"

  I said, "You left Mantle's body instead, to be eaten by the rats."

  Burbage gagged.

  Neely looked away from her. "Sweet Jesus, John. I hadn't expected it would take so long before he was found."

  "Only when I came around last Wednesday, rattling your cage with my doubts on Spaeth's guilt, you decided his 'alibi' might need a little help in exploding."

  "I called a hospital the next night, late."

  "Why did you wait a day and a half?"

  "So as not to have the 'news' seem obviously triggered by your visit to us."

  "And the hospital number was one you knew wouldn't record your voice for later comparison purposes."

  "Correct. I faked a 'street-black' accent to report Mantle's body, and Woodrow's a week earlier." Neely smiled some more. "Careful planning always pays off, John. I learned that from my trusts and estates practice."

  I wanted to change the focus a little. "You said you followed Mantle and Spaeth. You must have followed Gant, too."

  "I did. And he deserved what he got for just that reason."

  "Fooling around with one of his clients."

  "One of the firm's clients, the rutting pig. Woodrow was a fine-looking man. And, divorced as he was, he could have had his pick of the litter."

  I felt Burbage's hand start to tremble inside mine.

  “But no." said Neely. "He couldn't keep away from the forbidden fruit."

  "And so you followed Gant, too. Enough to establish that he liked to take Nicole Spaeth to Viet Mam."

  "A certain restaurant five miles from his love nest, one that was most conveniently accessed by a very dark and lonely road."

  Squeezing my hand now, Burbage said to him, "You killed Mr. Gant?"

  "Imogene, Imogene." Neely shook his head some more. "For such a bright woman, you are indeed a slow learner in some ways."

  Burbage began to let go of my hand, me now holding hers more tightly.

  I said, "Everybody has blind spots, Frank."

  He came back to me. "Yes. Yes, I suppose they do. Woodrow's was that he thought he'd gone well past anyone from his prosecutor past who might want to kill him. I could tell by the way he left his car that night, after I'd shot out the tire. I tried to picture the scene. "Gant thought he had just a flat?"

  “Yes. My ricochet must have punctured the fuel tank, though, because I could see him get down on his bad knee to inspect under the rear bumper. And, once I was near enough to Woodrow, I could smell the gasoline myself."

  "At which point, you shot him, too."

  "Not immediately, John. No, first I had a little talk with the boy. Told him why he was going to die."

  Burbage's hand trembled violently inside mine.

  I said, "And then you went around to the passenger side of the car and dropped the gun into Nicole Spaeth's lap."

  "Yes."

  "Why didn't you kill her, too?"

  "I'd thought about it, believe me. As a contingency plan, just like you allow for when drawing a client's complicated will. And I would have killed Mrs. Spaeth, too, if she'd been sober enough to see or hear anything incriminating."

  "But since she was drunk, you didn't have to."

  "And didn't want to, John. Even with the wig and sunglasses, I recognized the woman. But if possible, I didn't want to kill her. Can you guess why?"

  "Because while you had a motive to kill Gant, only Alan Spaeth would have had a motive to kill him and not to kill a potential witness only Spaeth himself loved."

  "And . . . ?"

  It took me a minute. "And only Spaeth would have a revenge reason for a 'practical joke,' letting his wife know who killed her new lover by leaving 'his' gun as the murder weapon in her lap."

  A fatherly smile. "You would have made a fine trusts and estates lawyer, John."

  "Not if it'd mean turning out like you."

  The smile flew off his face. "Woodrow Gant betrayed me!"

  Neely waved the gun around his greenhouse. "Just like those bastards in Army intelligence betrayed my Ranger outfit in 'forty-four. Not telling us the guns at Pointe-du-Hoc had been moved, letting half my friends be cut down by enemy fire climbing that goddamned rock that didn't mean a thing anymore. My first outfit was betrayed that day, and Woodrow betrayed my current outfit in his own way."

  "Oh, be honest, Frank. It takes a lot of money to maintain your little version of 'the Pointe' up here. You're on the mortgage personally with no other tenants to help carry it. You needed the proceeds from the policy on Gant's life."

  "The firm needed it."

  "No, Frank. There wasn't going to be a firm anymore."

  "There always—"

  "Uta Radachowski was in line for her judgeship, and Deborah Ling intended to pull the ripcord, too, with or without Gant. The firm was going to lose most of its rainmakers, which would jeopardize your staying in this building as a home."

  Neely seemed to soften for a moment, even relent. "I'd been through two partnership breakups, John. The only real asset I had was ‘Epstein & Neely,' bringing in cash to carry the building here. At my age, I couldn't start over again." A hardening. “And I shouldn't have to. I survived a war, goddamnit. It was supposed to be my turn to take it easy as a senior partner, not hustle for clients like some insurance salesman."

  "Tell me, Frank, is bailing out really what Ling wanted to see you about the morning she died?"

  Neely ground his jaw. "Deborah came into my office, said she had to talk with me. After Woodrow was gone, I was sure she'd stay, build her real estate practice inside the firm. But no, I seemed to be the only good lawyer around. Deborah confirmed that she was a traitor, too. Leaving us over her 'romantic involvement' with that gangster, Trinh."

  I closed my eyes for a second.

  "Yes, John." said Neely. "I'd never heard the name until the afternoon before, when you'd mentioned him as a criminal connected to the Vietnamese restaurant Woodrow visited. Trinh and Deborah being a couple seemed a bit too convenient to be coincidental."

  "So you saw a chance to punish Ling for her 'betrayal' and to cash another million-dollar policy, both in one fell swoop."

  "Actually, killing Deborah worried me more than you can guess."

  Burbage's hand squirmed in my own.

  Neely made a tsking sound. "I had to follow her last Friday and do the deed in broad daylight, stuffing her handbag into that big old briefcase of mine, all without any real planning ahead of time."

  The reason he'd used the same method of killing that had worked with Mantle. "But why couldn't you plan it, Frank?"

  "Because that morning in my office, Deborah told me not just about quitting the firm, but also that she was going to the District Attorney with the fact of her representing the gangster boyfriend in purchasing that restaurant building."

  Which meant I really had panicked Ling. "And her blowing that whistle would have widened the official investigation—"

  "—like a floodgate—"

  "—and tied Woodrow Gant's murder more closely to the firm."

  "Exactly. I certainly didn't want the authorities thinking they
had to reopen that whole can of worms. Sweet Jesus, John, you were bad enough."

  "But then you thought of a way to kill two birds with one phone call."

  The accomplishment smile again. "Trinh's number was in Deborah's handbag. I'd met Grover Gant often enough, and one street-black voice is very much like another. Not too difficult to fool Trinh, 'if you know what I'm saying, man.' "

  That last in dialect. "So Trinh buys that it's Grover calling him to say I was the one who strangled his girlfriend, Ling."

  "As I'd hoped. And it worked, almost perfectly."

  "I killed Trinh and Huong, but they didn't quite kill me."

  "No, but with them both unable to give their versions, they turn out to be quite nice remainder suspects, and even with you still alive, no reason to think any further investigation was needed to get Alan Spaeth—'innocent stooge'—off the Woodrow Gant hook."

  Burbage said, "You killed Mr. Gant, and this poor man named Mantle, and Ms. Ling. And then you tried to get somebody else to kill Mr. Cuddy?"

  "Let me guess, Imogene. With all this talk of betrayal, you somehow feel I've let you down, too."

  Burbage now wrenched her hand away from mine, forcefully enough that the motion torqued my ribcage, and I had to let go of her.

  She stepped toward Neely and in front of me. In a strong, even voice, Burbage said, "Woodrow Gant was my boss, too."

  "I'm sorry you feel that way, Imogene. But even if you didn't, I'm afraid I have no—"

  Whether Burbage realized Neely was going to kill both of us, or whether she simply snapped, I'll never know. But she ran at him just as the report of the Colt, even muffled by her body mass, thundered in the confines of the greenhouse. The exiting forty-five slug tore a grisly hole the size of a plum in the center of her back before whistling past my left arm and thumping into a tree behind me.

  There was nothing I could do for Imogene Burbage, so I turned and dove into the little forest myself, the ribs punishing me for the effort. One more shot from the rear, the unmuffled report even louder, its bullet making a zipping noise as it plowed through the leaves near my head and ricocheted off the brick kneewall.

  My ribcage pounding, I crawled through the foliage and onto the narrow, bordering walkway around the glass windows of the greenhouse. Getting into a squatting position, I listened stock-still for which route Frank Neely would take toward me. Absolute silence from him, too.