The only good Lawyer

satisfied smile. His fingers were puffy, too, and if what I could see was any indication, he wasn’t in great shape under the clothes.
    “TV thing?” I said.
    “Yeah, man. Weird, we-ird, we-ird. I got this invitation card in the mail, come down to a hotel on Tremont by the old Combat Zone. Well, I didn’t have nothing better to do with my time, so I went. There’s about a hundred of us—white, Chinese, wheelchairs, you name it. At the door to a ballroom, these two foxy ladies in dressy outfits, they taking down names and jobs you did and such, then they have us sit around these four TV sets raised up high in the center of the room and pointed every which way. The foxy ladies tell us we got to sit through these two pilot shows, give them our views on what we like and don’t like. Only thing is, there’s more commercials than show, and they ask us lots of questions about those, too. More, in fact, like they really interested in whether we go out and buy the things than watch the programs. Which was just as well, account of the shows really sucked. I walked out, halfway through the second one, and don’t nobody try to stop me.”
    I thought Gant might have stopped off himself somewhere for a couple of pops on the way home, but as long as he was talkative, I was happy to let him go on. “You watch a lot of television?”
    He squinted at me. “No way, no way, no way. I got better things to do with my time, usually.”
    “Like what?”
    A sly smile replaced the dazed one. “Track.”
    “Horseracing?”
    “Not ‘less I can help it. I’m a greyhound man, myself. With the ponies, you got what I call the human factor working against you.”
    “The human factor?”
    “Yeah. You got the jockey on your horse, the jockeys on the other ones. You don’t know who wants it more or who got paid to hold back this race, let somebody else finish in the money.”
    “But with the greyhounds, it’s just the animals themselves.”
    “Right, right, right. You can trust a puppy, man. Can’t trust people.”
    As good an opening as any. “Mr. Gant, you understand I’m here to talk with you about who killed your brother.”
    “Police got who killed my brother. White mother— no offense.”
    “None taken.” I adjusted my voice. “It may be they have the wrong guy.”
    The features closed down some. “Uh-unh. I seen him, man.”
    “Who?”
    “That Spaeth dude. At Woodrow’s lawyer office. He was screaming, ‘Nigger, nig -ger, nig -ger,’ and like that. I come close to killing him myself.” A pause. “Wish I had. Then Woodrow be alive now.”
    “Did you see Mr. Spaeth approach your brother at all?”
    “ ‘Approach’ him? Man, what you talking about? The dude was ranting and raving. About how Woodrow fucked him over, how lawyers ought to die. I mean, what more you got to know?”
    “You were close to your brother then?”
    A cloud came over the eyes. “Say what?”
    “You said you wished you’d killed Mr. Spaeth to save your brother, so I assume the two of you got along.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got along just fine. Momma had us from different men, but she raised us together.” The sly smile again. “Wasn’t Woodrow’s fault he got the brains and I got the good looks.”
    “Then your brother would have confided in you if something was bothering him?”
    The cloud again. “What you trying to put in my mouth here? Woodrow was a good brother. Loan me money when I needed it, let me drive that fancy BMW car of his.”
    For a moment, I wondered if somebody could have mistaken Woodrow Gant for Grover behind the wheel that night, then discounted the thought based on body type and dress code. “Lent you money when you needed it for the track?”
    “Man, I already told you, I like to gamble some. They pass a new law I never heard about?”
    “Most people gamble with their own money.”
    “Yeah, well, Pm like between jobs right now.”
    “What do you do when you’re working?”
    “Restaurants.”
    “Waiter?”
    “That’s right.” The sly smile made another appearance. “And none of them cheap places, neither; Expensive restaurant, you do a halfway decent job, they gonna tip you fifteen percent minimum, maybe even eighteen, twenty on a hundred-dollar tab. Even at the low end, though, that’s fifteen dollars in your pocket. Cheap place, the bill’s gonna be more like forty, say, but you still got to make the same number of trips to the kitchen or the bar. In fact, any time I’m looking for