The only good Lawyer

come back another day.”
    Burbage had her hand on the knob. “Mr. Neely’s upstairs.” She opened the door. “You first, please.”
    A wrought-iron, spiral staircase was spotlit from above like a piece of movable scenery on a stage.
    As I walked up to Burbage, I got a closer look at a framed photograph next to the old one of the senior partner in his Army uniform. This shot was sepia, too, and showed Neely and a number of other GI’s, wearing Ranger patches and ducking at the base of a cliff. Having seen a similar photo once, I thought I recognized the setting.
    “Mr. Cuddy?” said Burbage.
    I climbed the narrow, winding stairs. My shoes made the iron steps clang hollowly in the closet shaft, Burbage coming behind me and creating echoes over echoes.
    “I hope we’re not trying to sneak up on him.”
    My guide didn’t respond.
    At the top of the single flight was another closed door^ the spotlight now strong and warm on my head and shoulders.
    “Open it, please,” said Burbage behind me.
    The door swung outward, and I had the sensation of being in one of those old horror movies, where the scene you see isn’t what you’d expect.
    In this case, a tropical garden.
    “Come in, John, come in.” Neely’s voice carried through the foliage. “It’s something of a jungle, but mercifully without the predators.”
    There was a walkway three feet wide, its base composed of square, inlaid tiles in burgundy. Stepping onto the path, I looked up. Greenhouse glass reflected that alien glow of grow lights, the glass set into an aluminum superstructure. The aluminum struts slanted down and away from the ridgepoled peak twelve feet above to a red-bricked knee wall rising maybe two feet off the floor. Around me were trees and bushes bearing blossoms of every color, some more typical, others more exotic. A thick, perfumed mugginess hung in the air, like the atmosphere at the prayer rail of a funeral home.
    Burbage closed the door and edged past me on the walkway without brushing against my suit. “This way, Mr. Cuddy.”
    The path wound through the greenery to a seating area of wrought-iron patio furniture painted white and upholstered with cushions the color of the tiles. Frank Neely stood in front of one chair, a rolling, glass-topped liquor cart to his right, no drink poured as yet on the small cocktail table to his left. He’d changed clothes since I’d seen him downstairs, the lawyer uniform gone in favor of a long-sleeved chamois shirt, khaki pants, and boat mocs.
    Burbage said, “Will you be needing me for anything else, Mr. Neely?”
    “No, thank you, Imogene. Just make sure everything’s locked tight before you leave, and I’ll let Mr. Cuddy out when he’s ready to go.”
    “See you in the morning, then. Mr. Cuddy.”
    I turned, but Imogene Burbage was already walking away, her modest heels clicking back toward the staircase door.
    Neely said, “I thought I’d give you a choice.”
    I turned back to him.
    He tapped the round, marble top of the cocktail table. “We can have drinks here or on the terrace.”
    “Outside’s fine with me.”
    “Yes. A little crisp, this time of year, but you look like the sort of man who doesn’t bother with a topcoat till Thanksgiving. I love it inside among the flowers, but I’ve been told the air can be a bit close for others.”
    “Let’s see the terrace.”
    Neely grinned, leading me along a different, curving path to the front of the building. French doors opened onto a twenty-by-fifteen area enclosed by an extension of the brick knee wall. The terrace was bordered on the right by the greenhouse and on the left by a sliding glass door to the living room of an apartment, the half-structure I’d seen from the sidewalk below. There was more of the wrought-iron furniture, but that wasn’t what caught your eye.
    Neely said, “Hell of a view, isn’t it?”
    No argument there. A hundred-twenty-degree slice of Boston Harbor shimmered beneath us under a veil of clouds like the trademarks left by a bulldozer. Five stories up, Neely’s roof was just far enough off the ground to muffle the unseen car traffic, just close enough to distinguish the people on the moored sailboats. Including one couple braving the wind off the water to neck on their quarterdeck, apparently oblivious to our being able to see them from above.
    “Ah,” said Neely. “Perhaps we should leave Romeo and Juliet to themselves.”
    Nodding, I turned, looking into the modest front room at the