The only good Lawyer

understand you introduced him to the place.”
    “Oh.” She shook her head, but it seemed unnatural, like a magician’s gesture to an audience. “A friend of mine had tried it, so I took Woodrow there for lunch one day.”
    “Kind of far from the office for lunch.”
    “We both had to be in Dedham that morning, him for court, me at the registry of deeds. So we drove out in separate cars, but decided to have lunch together on the way back, and I remembered this restaurant my friend had mentioned. ‘Viet Mam,’ right?”
    “Right,” I said evenly.
    More head-shake. “I guess I feel a little guilty about it.”
    “Because?”
    “Well, it’s probably silly, but if I don’t take Woodrow there, he might never have found the place himself.”
    Five miles from where he lived? “Did Mt Gant enjoy his lunch at Viet Mam?”
    Ling looked at me strangely. “He must have. Otherwise, why go back there?”
    “Any idea who the woman with him might have been?”
    “No. No, Epstein & Neely is a friendly place, Mr. Cuddy, but Woodrow didn’t talk much to me about his personal life.”
    “Did he talk about it with anyone at the firm?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “Could we turn to the incident with Mr. Spaeth here in the conference room?”
    “If we must.”
    “You feel uncomfortable discussing it?”
    “Mr. Cuddy, Woodrow Gant was a good friend and colleague. When I first came here a year and a half ago, he tried to help me learn the ropes he’d learned two years before that. Frank said we should tell you everything we know so the criminal justice system can function properly. Which to me means nailing your client to the cross he built for himself that afternoon.”
    “The afternoon of the shouting match.”
    “If you want to call it that. Your client was the one doing all the shouting.”
    “Could you describe things for me?”
    Ling drew in a breath, then gave pretty much the same account as Herman had, finishing with, “And then Frank ordered your client out, like a father scolding a misbehaving child.”
    “So, Mr. Spaeth never physically approached either of the Gant brothers?”
    Ling stopped a third time. “No, I saw your client only backing away, not actually fighting or even going up to either of them. But I did see his face.”
    “Mr. Spaeth’s now?”
    “Yes.” Deborah Ling shook her head again, somewhere between natural and theatrical this time. “You ever heard the expression, ‘if looks could kill’?”
    Who hadn’t.

    “Mr. Neely said you wanted to see Mr. Gant’s office, and he thought it might be more comfortable for you to have me here.”
    Glancing around the dead man’s former space, I said, “But is it more comfortable for you?”
    Imogene Burbage gave me one of her controlled smiles, no trace of humor. “Mr. Cuddy, circumstances require me to be in here more than half the day. Mr. Gant’s cases have to be referred to other attorneys.”
    “Can’t you just bring in another divorce lawyer to handle them?”
    “ I certainly can’t. Perhaps you could ask Mr. Neely about that.”
    Burbage pointed toward one of two client chairs in front of a desk of iron trestles and smoked glass, the most modernistic furniture I’d seen in the firm. Sunlight from the windows behind Gant’s desk refracted through the smoked glass, combining with some heat currents to make whorling patterns on the plain carpet. One long wall had a modular bookcase, complementary African masks mounted on either side of it. The other long wall had a lowboy filing cabinet, a seascape centered above the top. The short wall with the door had diplomas and a trio of football photographs. The first shot showed Gant kneeling on a helmet, and he was identifiable by the number on his jersey in the other, action ones. In effect, most visitors to the office—client, ally, or opponent—probably wouldn’t see the sports photos until leaving, and you had to believe that was Gant’s intention.
    As Burbage took the other client’s chair, she crossed her legs at the ankles, bringing both hands to her lap and massaging the right wrist this time. “Mr. Gant was proud of those days.”
    “Looks like high school.”
    “It was. He had a full scholarship to college,” she gestured vaguely at one diploma, “but Mr Gant injured his knee somehow in the first practice, and the school canceled his grant-in-aid the next year because he couldn’t play anymore. So, after recuperating from the operation, Mr Gant worked any