The only good Lawyer

sight, though more wheezing came from the room on the landing below where Dufresne had said a man with emphysema was living. Or dying.
    After knocking twice, I used the master key to open Mantle’s door. The place still looked like it had been shot at and hit. Hard to say for sure, but nothing seemed to have been moved, and the towel at the foot of the bureau remained dry to the touch.

    As I went back downstairs, I heard another wheezing cough from the second-floor room. I thought, Nothing ventured.
    Pocketing Dufresne’s master key, I knocked on the door, If I hadn’t been listening for the response, I’m not sure I’d have recognized it as a word. Or even a human voice.
    “Come.”
    I turned the knob and pushed, the smell inside yanking me back to grade school, when I had bronchitis and my mother had plastered facecloths slathered in Vicks VapoRub to my chest. The room appealed to be a duplicate of Alan Spaeth’s former one overhead, but it contained the clutter of a man who’d minimized the number of steps required for basic existence. Next to a red, seam-burst easy chair were stacks of newspapers and magazines. In front of the chair stood two TV trays, one holding envelopes and papers, a mate with plate, fork, and coffee mug.
    The boarder himself was propped up in bed, three pillows behind his back. An old western movie rolled and flickered on the screen of a dinosaur black-and-white threatening to collapse its rickety stand. The man’s face was round and flushed, the gray hair on his head two inches long and bristling in the spikes of a man long between the sheets and short of shampoo. His chest seemed nearly concave under an old robe, the nose running freely from one nostril and not at all from the other,
    “Name?” in the croaking, almost-voice.
    “John Cuddy. I’m a private investigator; ”
    “Remember your... tread.”
    “My tread?”
    A jerking nod. “Tread on... the stairs.” The old man’s throat contorted, as though he were swallowing something. “From this morning.... Like a signature.”
    “I understand.” Dufresne had mentioned his name, but I couldn’t remember it. “And you are?”
    “Hank.”
    I didn’t have the heart to prompt him for a last name. “Hank, you might be able to help me, but I want to make this as easy for you as possible.”
    The jerking nod.
    After closing his door behind me, I moved deeper into the room. “Can I get you anything?”
    One shake of his head as the index finger of a veined, liver-spotted hand pointed toward a full water glass and half-full pitcher on a nightstand.
    I stopped next to the bed. “Let me ask you mostly yes or no questions, then. Nod or shake, okay?”
    The nod.
    “Did you ever meet Alan Spaeth?”
    Pointing to the ceiling, Hank nevertheless gave a shake.
    “You knew he lived on the next floor, but you never met him?”
    Nod.
    “How about Michael Mantle?”
    Another nod, the pointing finger now aimed diagonally up and toward the front of the building. “The Mick.”
    “Right.” I looked at the door. “When’s the last time you saw Mantle?”
    A shrug of the face, but something like a twinkle in his eye, too.
    “You haven’t seen him for a while, but you have heard his... tread?”
    The twinkle and a nod, plus a smile that showed two separated canine teeth on top, three others bunched on the bottom.
    “When’s the last time you heard Mantle walking?”
    “A week... at least.” Swallow. “Went down.”
    “Meaning down the stairs?”
    Nod.
    “And out of the house?”
    Shrug.
    “How sure are you that he hasn’t been back for a week?”
    “Pretty sure… Can’t sleep...“ Swallow. “Much anymore.”
    “Was anybody with Mantle when he left?”
    Shake.
    “Have you heard anyone else walk to his room?”
    “ Vincennes .... You.”
    I couldn’t see what more the man could tell me. “Thanks for the help, Hank. Anything I can do for you before I leave?”
    The jerking nod.
    “What?”
    He raised his right hand, pointing the index finger now at his temple. Using the thumb, Hank pantomimed the cocking and fall of a pistol hammer.
    I looked into the face of old age and illness.
    Shrug. Twinkle. Smile.

    Back downstairs, I knocked on Dufresne’s “parlor” door. He opened it, wineglass still in hand, but now full, a woman singing a French ballad on the stereo. “The hell took you so long?”
    I gave him back the master key. “Have to be thorough.”
    “Thorough.”
    “Speaking of which, it seems to me you