The only good Lawyer

more do you want from me?” Gant was impressive, containing her emotion rather than displaying it.
    I said, “Witnesses agree your son had dinner with a woman at a nearby restaurant before he was killed.”
    “The police told me.”
    “Do you have any idea who she could have been?”
    “No. Why?”
    “The woman may have been with your son when he was shot. She might have seen something that would tell me who the killer really was.”
    Gant watched me carefully. “Or she might give that lawyer you’re working for some kind of ammunition for reasonable doubt.”
    “That’s part of my job, too.”
    Gant looked down at her hands. “Woodrow hated that O.J. Simpson business.”
    Until she said that, it hadn’t struck me that Spaeth’s wife was also named “Nicole.”
    “My son felt the way that trial was televised destroyed people’s faith in the system.” Raising her eyes, Gant hiccuped again. “Well, Mr. Cuddy, I’ve seen the system. Seen kids beaten by their parents, and beaten by their stepparents, and beaten by any somebody who just happened to be dropping by that night for a couple of rocks in the crack pipe.” Hiccup. “Those are the kids end up getting beaten by the police, too, or shot by each other. It’s not cases like O.J.’s that destroy people’s faith in the system. It’s the people themselves and the system itself.”
    “Yet you’re still working within it.”
    “You have to do something to try and help people.” Gant relented a little. “People helped me when I needed it.”
    “And I need your help now.”
    She moved her tongue around again. “We back to who that woman might be?”
    “Yes.”
    “Mr. Cuddy, I truly don’t know.” Hiccup. “When Woodrow was in college and law school, he went out a lot, but I never met any of them. Then he got married, and I thought he’d finished up with sowing his wild oats. But after the divorce, Woodrow went right back to them. Don’t get me wrong, he was a good son. Come by on Sundays for dinner, always remembered birthdays and holidays.” Hiccup. “But his social life was his own, and I never met anybody after Jenifer.”
    “His ex-wife.”
    “Yes.”
    “I plan to talk with her, too.”
    Gant hesitated. “Why?”
    “See if she can help.”
    A skeptical look. “You think a man would tell his ex-wife about a new girlfriend?”
    “It’s possible that Ms. Pollard would know someone who had a reason to kill your son.”
    Hiccuping, Gant closed her eyes once, then opened them slowly. “That system we were talking about me working in? Well, Woodrow worked in it, too, Mr. Cuddy. Did everything he was supposed to, and it got him killed. When he was with the district attorney’s office, I worried for him, on account of I knew the children I’d seen at age five he’d be seeing at fifteen. A lot of them don’t have any feeling except hate, and that they keep burning in a special place deep inside them, a place nobody can touch.” Hiccup. “And they don’t forget. But the police say your client killed my son, and so far I haven’t heard anything from you that tells me different.”
    A car with a Gatling gun for a muffler pulled up near her house. “Ms. Gant—”
    “You asked for me to talk with you, and I did. I didn’t have to, but I did, and I’ll even tell you why. It’s because talking about Woodrow is better than thinking about him. Talking about him makes it seem like maybe there’s still something there, a part of my son still with me.” Hiccup. “When I’m just thinking about him, all I can see is his body, lying in the coffin at the wake that night or being lowered into the ground that next morning. Which is a hell I wouldn’t want even Mr. Alan Spaeth to share.”
    As Helen Gant rose, I heard a key in the front door. She turned that way and spoke to someone I couldn’t yet see.
    “Grover?”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
    “This man is here about Woodrow.” Hiccup. “You can talk to him or not. I’m going upstairs.”

    “I was just at this TV thing?”
    Grover Cleveland Gant sat on the couch as his mother had, but he leaned back into the cushions. About six-two, Gant hid his weight beneath a bulky, crewneck sweater and shapeless pants. The hair ran almost long enough—and tall enough—to be an Afro from the seventies. His face was puffy, like a prizefighter who’d been not so much hammered as jabbed, lightly but constantly, over the last couple of days, his lips closed into a dazed, somehow