The only good Lawyer

what I meant. Were there any men from his time in the D.A.’s office who might have known him well?”
    “Oh. Let me see... Back to posing, a finger to her chin. “Woodrow did have an office-mate. Now, what was—yes. Yes, a Tom someone or other. Spelled it queerly, though.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “T-H-O-M, if I’m remembering correctly.”
    “Last name?”
    “Oh, no hope there, John. It began with an ‘A,’ though. Arthur, Arnold?”
    Another stagey shrug, and I got up from the chair. “Well, Jenifer, thanks for your time.”
    She leaned back into the throw pillows, yet another pose. “I’m not at all like Woodrow, by the by.”
    “You lost me.”
    “I find a man I like, I stick with him.”
    “Good trait.”
    The glitter came back into her eyes. “I was hoping you’d think so.”
    Ah. “Unfortunately, I’m already spoken for.”
    “We wouldn’t have to spend all that much time ‘speaking.’ ”
    “Thanks again, but no.”
    “Pity,” said Jenifer Pollard, finally breaking the pillow pose. “You seemed about the right... size, too.”

    I drove slowly down V.F.W. Parkway in West Roxbury, the section of Boston that lies farthest from downtown. The houses in West Rox are mostly modest single-family homes, the demographics heavily white. I found the Spaeths’ street and turned onto it, both sides lined with small ranches.
    The address I had was 396. In front of 388, four early-teen kids were playing in the street under the lights. Wearing baggy shorts, sleeveless sweatshirts, and backward baseball caps, they’d arranged themselves in a rough rectangle, tossing what looked like an orange toy football in a diagonal pattern, corner-to-corner among them. Rather than break up their game, I parked and began moving down the sidewalk toward the Spaeths’ house.
    As I drew even with the closest boy, a throw to him went a little awry, the football spiraling down near me. That was when I heard the whistling howl of incoming artillery and almost hit the deck before the thing landed six feet away.
    “Sorry,” said the kid, wearing a San Diego Padres cap and a little silver ring through his left eyebrow. “But it wasn’t, like, going to hit you or anything.”
    I watched as the boy came over and picked up his “toy.” It was football-shaped upfront, all right, though plastic fletching—like a giant throwing dart— stuck out from the back.
    When the Padres kid tossed it to his friend, I could hear the artillery whistle again. “What is that?”
    The boy said, “A Howla.”
    “ ‘Howla’?”
    “Yeah. Sounds just like a cannonball coming at you. Cool, huh?” The word “cool” came out in two syllables, “koo-uhl.” The kid then said, “You want to know where you can buy one?”
    I thought back to a time before the lads were born, when I wasn’t that much older than them, and the other side’s “howlas” were for real. I said, “Thanks, anyway,” and walked on.
    When I reached 396, there was a Mazda hatchback in the driveway and lights coming through the windows. As I went up the path, a dried yellow leaf, shellshaped, skittered across the flagstones like a crab scrabbling over a dock.
    Shortly after I rang the bell, the door was opened by a woman in her mid-thirties, with sandy-brown hair clipped like a helmet that stopped at the tops of her ears. Nudging five-five in sneakers, she also wore a lemon-colored sweater and blue jeans. I’d have called her attractive, with haunting hazel eyes and full lips, but right then she looked more tired than fetching. There was a hardcover book with a clear plastic cover in her right hand, the index finger marking her place.
    “Nicole Spaeth?”
    “Kind of late to be selling something, don’t you think?”
    A tired voice, too. “My name’s John Cuddy. I’m investigating the killing of Woodrow Gant.”
    Her eyes narrowed, her tone deepened. “I’ve already talked to the other police officers.”
    “I’m not the police, either.”
    Spaeth moved her left hand, as if to close the door. “No reporters, no interviews.”
    “I’m working for the attorney representing your husband.”
    She hesitated, her eyes suggesting she was trying to work something through.
    “Mrs. Spaeth, please. I won’t take very long, and you might be able to help me help him.”
    “That’s pretty funny,” she said, as though it were anything but. “Okay, I’ll talk to you.”
    I followed her into a living room with wall-to-wall carpeting, that sculpted