The only good Lawyer

“Don’t move.” To the woman, “You can call them in.”

    Nancy Meagher was frowning. Robert Murphy, just behind her, was grinning, his eyes hooded into slits. She said, “The doctor didn’t tell you?”
    “No.”
    I was looking up at her, but I didn’t move. And not just because the doctor said so. Every time I breathed, it felt like hot knives were twisting inside my right side, scraping against the cartilage.
    Nancy shook her head. “It’s Sunday night.”
    “Sunday?”
    “Yes. And if a woman hadn’t called it in yesterday morning, you would have frozen to death out there and joined the other two in the morgue.”
    Other two. “Trinh and... Huong?”
    Murphy said, “Both dead. Staties responding from the old MDC station by the Science Museum said Huong was on top of you.” A broader grin. “Like you were Jack London, and he was your sled dog.”
    Over her shoulder, Nancy said, “Lieutenant, please?”
    Sled dog. “I want to... thank the lady... with the malamute.”
    Murphy said, “Who?”
    “Rollerblader... with her malamute or husky.... She must be... the one who phoned... the State Police, right?”
    A shrug. “Beats me. Headquarters just got an anonymous tip from some woman on the nine-one-one tape. We called the Staties, then got over there ourselves.”
    Well, Thank you, anyway, I thought.
    Nancy said, “Even without the arctic temperature, you’re lucky to be alive.”
    “What’s the... damage?”
    “Two ribs, cracked but not broken.” She pointed toward my face. “A shot you took to the right cheekbone closed your eye pretty well, but thank God didn’t shatter the bone or get the pupil. I won’t even ask how you feel because the doctor said the rest of your body looks like it went tumbling down a staircase.”
    “Close enough.”
    Murphy was grinning broader behind her. “Let me get this straight, Cuddy. You had a gun, and they still beat you up?”
    Nancy said, “Lieutenant?” again, but never stopped watching my one good eye. “John, is it over now?”
    I didn’t even think about shaking my head. “Not quite.”
    “Meaning?”
    My tongue was doing a lousy job of wetting my lips, not to mention stringing together words. “Trinh told me... Grover Gant called him... saying I was the one... who killed Deborah Ling.”
    Murphy stopped grinning. “Nugey tried to take you out for that?”
    “In his office... Trinh said he loved her.... But before Trinh died... he also said Grover... talked ‘funny’ on the phone.”
    Murphy gave me a hard look. “ ‘Funny’?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So?”
    “So maybe it... wasn’t Grover... who called him.”
    Nancy canted her head at me. “But who else would have?”
    “I’d count it a real favor... if one of you could find out.”
    Murphy laughed, Nancy muttering something under her breath.

    “Sorry,” she said, wrestling with the steering wheel of her Civic hatchback after hitting a pothole neither of us spotted.
    “It... happens.”
    Nancy glanced toward me. “You okay?”
    “Breathing just takes... a little concentration, that’s all.”
    I’d cracked a rib during the last week of ROTC Basic Training the summer after my junior year at Holy Cross. In those days, you had to complete a Physical Combat Proficiency Test that final weekend, or else effectively “flunk” and have to be “left back” in boot camp. The PCPT included among its six “events” a fifty-yard low crawl, a hundred-and-fifty-yard fireman’s carry of another cadet, and a mile run in combat boots. I wasn’t about to repeat Basic, thank you very much, so I did the test with the rib screaming at me. But I passed.
    Of course, I was also twenty-one at the time.
    “John?”
    “Believe me... it’s okay.”
    Nancy went back to watching the light Sunday night traffic in front of us. “I didn’t mean so much being in pain as... zoning out on me?”
    “Don’t worry, no... concussion. I was just... thinking back to the... last time I took a hit to the ribcage.”
    She nodded.
    I said, “I’ll be fine.”
    Nancy nodded again. “The Staties making you come down to sign a statement?”
    “Tomorrow.”
    Since the scene with Nguyen Trinh and Oscar Huong had taken place on Metropolitan District Commission land along the river, technically the State Police had jurisdiction. A plainclothes investigator and one of the troopers responding to the emergency call talked with me back at the hospital, Murphy shortening the interrogation to half an hour by