The only good Lawyer

wasn’t driving, right?” Chan didn’t answer.
    “So,” I said, “if somebody had too much wine, maybe like the woman that night, you’d try to sneak a peek outside after they paid their bill, be sure the man was driving or that she took a cab.”
    “Woman drink wine, maybe. But she not drunk, no. So I not look out door.”
    I saw Dinah coming from the kitchen with a plate of spring rolls. Noticing Chan sitting at my table, she seemed to falter in a way I didn’t think had anything to do with her bad leg. Then she continued in our direction.
    I said, “Who was their waitress that night?”
    Chan started to turn toward the swinging doors, then caught himself. “Dinah.”
    She was now at our table, asking her boss a short, swift question in Vietnamese. Chan shot something back.
    I said, “I’d like to speak with Dinah myself.”
    “She my only waitress here.” He waved a hand. “Must work other tables.”
    I was beginning to get tired of Chan. “You cover them for her.”
    “What?”
    “Dinah sits with me, you work the tables. And if you say anything more to her, say it in English.”
    Chan didn’t like that, but got up without another word in either language and walked over to the young couple in business suits.
    I looked at the chair he’d vacated, but Dinah went to the third instead. After setting down my spring rolls, she used her right hand to lower herself into the violin-back, as though the leg didn’t work very well when bent.
    “From the war?” I said.
    The eyes grew sadder. “Yes.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “War is over.” And the eyes tried to come back, too.
    “I’m investigating the—”
    “Can I see ID, please?”
    Interesting. “You asked Chan in Vietnamese if I was police, and he said that’s what I told him.”
    She looked around, saw her boss go into the kitchen. “ID, please?”
    I took out the leather case and handed it over. Reading, Dinah glanced twice to the swinging doors, being sure Chan was still out of sight before sending it back to me.
    Very quietly, “You not police.”
    “No.”
    The hacking cough again. “You lie to Chan?”
    “No.”
    A smile now, but still without showing any teeth.
    I said, “Chan is not as smart as you are.”
    She stared at me. “Why should I talk to you?”
    “To help someone.”
    “Who?”
    “The man I’m representing. The police think he killed Woodrow Gant. I don’t.”
    Dinah seemed troubled. “I cannot help.”
    “Why not?”
    “I... it is danger for me.”
    “Danger from what?”
    “Please. Mr. Gant and woman have dinner. That is all I know.”
    “Dinah, what are you afraid of?”
    Chan came out of the kitchen glaring at us as he carried a tray for the young couple.
    Dinah levered herself up from the chair, coughing once more. “Please,” she said, and then limped back toward the swinging doors, never looking at Chan.
    He walked over to me, his tray now empty. “Waitress bring rest of your food now. You eat, you pay, you leave.”
    As Chan went back toward his cash register, I tried the spring rolls. Kind of soggy. I also tried to figure out what was scaring Dinah, and probably Chan, too.
    Giving up on that for the moment, I pushed the spring rolls aside just as Jerry Vale came over the stereo.

    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.