The only good Lawyer

left decorated with couch and several easy chairs, louvered windows facing eastward as well.
    I said, “How big is the greenhouse part?”
    “Fifty by forty.”
    I did some quick arithmetic. “Doesn’t leave you a lot of floorplan for apartment living space.”
    “That might depend on how you define ‘living,’ John. All I do in the penthouse there is sleep and read, and perhaps microwave leftovers from some take-out place or another. The terrace and the greenhouse are where I prefer to spend my time when—wait a minute.”
    I stopped, Neely looking back at the harbor. “Seems the lovebirds have repaired to a more comfortable billet below. Drinks on the terrace after all?”
    “Fine.”
    “Ask for what you like. If it’s not in stock, I won’t be embarrassed.”
    “Vodka collins.”
    “Have a seat and enjoy the evening.”
    Neely was gone only about five minutes, but when he came back, the sky was nearly showing stars.
    “The pity about this time of year,” handing me my drink in a tall tumbler.
    “Losing the light so early?”
    “Exactly.” Neely had about five fingers of what looked like scotch over ice in an Old-fashioned glass as he lowered himself into the chair next to me, sitting at an angle so we both could watch the harbor.
    I said, “Is the view what sold you on this location for the firm?”
    Neely sipped his scotch. “Before I bore you with that, did you speak to everyone you wanted?”
    “Yes.” I had the feeling each had reported to him after seeing me, but being polite wouldn’t hurt. “Thanks again for being so cooperative and asking them to do the same.”
    Neely waved it off. “The right thing to do. But now for the boring part. At my first two firms, I was mainly a trial attorney. Both offices fronted the water, but prestige then meant the highest floors the firms could command, and in those buildings that was so far up, the views became... I don’t know, ‘sterile,’ maybe? You’d see the planes taking off and landing at Logan , the yachts and the booze cruises and even some honest working folk when they could still commercially fish the harbor. But you couldn’t see any faces or equipment, hear somebody’s laughter or the wind whistling through the rigging. From here, you get it all, even some of the stink when summer heats up the pollution in the water.”
    “So you chose this building when you formed your own firm.”
    “I did. Or we did, Len Epstein and I.”
    “The partnership owns the building?”
    “Ah, no. Actually Len and I bought it as real estate partners, not law partners. Tax reasons. When he passed on, the building passed to me.”
    “Along with its ‘available space’?”
    That bittersweet smile. “You’d be referring to the conspicuous absence of tenants on the floors below the firm.”
    “Must be one hell of a cash drain.”
    “It is, truth to tell. Len and I bought at the apex of the real estate frenzy, and after the market tanked, we were lucky to hold on.” Neely seemed to look back in time. “When Len died, I sold a few things to sort of consolidate here. I built this little aerie and began living above the offices.” A slow swinging of the head. “I like to tell people my commute’s only fifteen vertical feet, which is about the height of that staircase you climbed with Imogene.”
    “So you traded prestige for convenience.”
    Neely seemed to stall a moment, like an airplane engine that hit a patch of turbulence it wasn’t expecting. “Prestige isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, John. And besides, my client base now is trusts and estates. They’re buying my capacity to do contingency planning for generations of beneficiaries.”
    “Contingency planning?”
    “Yes. If X dies before Y, should everything go to Y? If Y dies, should the remainder go to Z? And so on.”
    The rumbling from his chest. “An old trial lawyer’s pension, John, is doing the probate of people who predecease him.”
    I thought of Steve Rothenberg, “diversifying” into divorce work from criminal, which reminded me of why I’d come to Epstein & Neely in the first place. “Couple of questions?”
    “About probating estates?”
    “About Woodrow Gant.”
    Another, bigger bite of the scotch. “Ask.”
    “Do you know of anybody other than Alan Spaeth who could have a reason for wanting Mr. Gant dead?”
    “No. Emphatically, no.”
    “Any ideas on the woman he was having dinner with that night?”
    “As in who she could have