The only good Lawyer

Brighton . It’s not cleaned out, but there’s not much to look at, either. At least, without a warrant.”
    “You try that coffee shop?”
    “Yeah. The owner claims she never heard of them.”
    “How about the restaurant?”
    “Viet Mam? The owner’s story is that Trinh just helped him get started. Doesn’t know shit from Shinola about Trinh spying on Woodrow Gant or dating Deborah Ling.”
    “Chan knows, Lieutenant. He’s just scared.”
    “Well, maybe you ought to join him.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “While I’ve been chasing after Trinh and Huong, one of my other detectives was at the law firm. Seems both that secretary Burbage and the head guy Neely thought Ling was upset about something ever since you saw her yesterday afternoon.”
    Her work on the Viet Mam building deal. “Meaning Trinh might be targeting me, too.”
    “That’s what I’m thinking.”
    “How about Uta Radachowski and Elliot Herman?”
    “What about them?”
    “Did they have any contact with Ling last night or today?”
    “My detective asked, and both said no, except that around lunchtime Herman saw a woman in Quincy Market who might have been her.”
    “ ‘Might have been’?”
    “He was a ways away, and behind her.”
    “Well, you already know everything Ling and I talked about.”
    “This Imogene Burbage told my detective that a man with an ‘Asian’ accent tried to reach Ling by telephone all this morning, but she—Ling, now—wouldn’t take his calls.”
    “You’re thinking Trinh might have decided on a personal appearance?”
    “You met the scumbag. He strike you as the type that’s satisfied with ‘no’ for an answer?”
    I thought about it. And about missing something that might have gotten Deborah Ling killed. “Lieutenant, can you put somebody on Grover Gant?”
    “The brother? Why would we want to watch him?”
    “Not so much watch as baby-sit. Grover owed Trinh, and if Trinh and Huong did Ling, they probably did Mantle and therefore Woodrow Gant as well.” A pause. “Meaning Grover might be next on Trinh’s list?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “That’s not much reason for me to authorize a bodyguard, Cuddy.”
    “It’s all I’ve got right now. But I’d hate to see another member of the Gant family added to the body count.”
    A shorter pause. “I hear you. Only thing is, we start putting people on Gant—or you and the other people at the law firm, for that matter—I’m going to be doing a lot of baby-sitting and not much investigating.”
    “Take it from me, Lieutenant. Investigating’s vastly overrated.”
    Lieutenant Robert Murphy might actually have been laughing as he hung up his end of the line.

    My phone was barely back in its cradle when it rang again. Somehow it seemed louder still, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.
    “Cuddy, this is Frank Neely.”
    “Frank—”
    “I want you over here, and I mean now, mister.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Cuddy? If you aren’t—”
    “I don’t work for you, Frank.”
    “Goddamnit, we tried to do the right thing! Cooperate with the defendant’s side. And now Deborah’s dead, too.”
    “I didn’t say I wouldn’t come over. I just don’t like the ‘command performance’ attitude.”
    I thought I could hear the sound of teeth grinding, but in a different tone, Neely said, “As soon as possible, then. Please.”

    It was maybe fifteen minutes more than that, because I waited inside my office door for a while to listen for movement or breathing in the corridor outside it. And on the stairs, for the same. At the front entrance to my building, I looked across the street and both ways on Tremont itself before taking a zigzag route to the waterfront.
    From Spaulding Wharf , I watched the old red-bricked and weathered shingle structure for a while more before walking over to it. Nobody in the lobby, and the elevator worked fine as it brought me to the fourth floor.
    I guess I would have expected everybody to be in the glass-walled conference room, but they weren’t. Uta Radachowski filled one of the reception area chairs, a bunch of Kleenex wadded in one of her big hands. Elliot Herman risked his suit pants by sitting on the wine-and-gold carpeting, back against a wall, heels at his butt and wrists resting on his knees. Imogene Burbage was behind the reception desk, the tears trickling down her cheeks not smearing her makeup because she didn’t wear any.
    And Frank Neely? He stood off to the side, by the conference