The only good Lawyer

suite he shared with half a dozen other sole practitioners. The lawyers’ names were done individually on horizontal slats of wood stacked vertically to the side of the doorjamb. Each slat had been lettered by a different engraver on differently grained wood, a xylophone designed by committee. I thought a few of the names might have changed since the last time I’d been there, but Steve’s was still in the same place.
    Inside the front door, a young female receptionist with orangeade hair cut in a shingled pattern typed on a desktop computer. Angled away from me, she wore little earphones, the wire running down out of sight. She might have been listening to an old dictation machine or a new Walkman. Given the way she was rocking her head, I put my money on the latter. Coming up on her blind side, I said, “Excuse me?” She twisted around and, in a practiced way, used her left index finger to flick the earphone behind her ear for a moment. Even from four feet away, I could hear techno-rock music.
    “John Cuddy to see Steve Rothenberg.”
    She held up the index finger in a “Wait one” way and tapped a couple of buttons on the telephone console before saying, “Steve, a John ..She looked up at me.
    “Cuddy.”
    “Right. A John... Oh, okay.” She put the earphone back in place. “Third door.”
    “Thanks.”
    Steve Rothenberg appeared at his office threshold, which meant he was more anxious to see me than I was to begin running the meter. Inside, his furniture was still kind of shabby, the upholstered seats on the client chairs looking like somebody had shined them. Rothenberg let the coat-tree handle his suit jacket, the dress shirt he wore rolled twice to the elbows, the tie tugged down from an unbuttoned collar, even at nine-thirty on a cool October day. His beard looked trimmed, but what was left of the salt-and-pepper hair had grown a little shaggy.
    “Your barber out of town, Steve?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Maybe you should try somebody else.”
    “No.” Rothenberg waved me to one of the client chairs before sinking into his own behind a cluttered desk, some veneer peeling at the corners. “No, I’d rather have it be long for a couple of weeks than wrong for a couple of months.”
    “Makes sense.” Sitting down, though, I thought his haircutting schedule pretty much matched the office decor. “How can I help you?”
    Rothenberg picked up a pencil, fiddling with it. “Are you still dating that A.D.A.?”
    Nancy Meagher an assistant district attorney for Suffolk County and the first woman I’d felt anything for since my wife, Beth, had died of cancer. “I’m still seeing Nancy, Steve. So if she’s your direct opponent in whatever—”
    “She’s not, but...” Rothenberg looked at his window, a pie-wedge of the Boston Common showing through the pane. “You were out of town last week, right?”
    “Out of state, actually.” Rothenberg was being oblique, and oblique never made anything easier. “Steve, can we maybe cut to the car chase here?”
    He tossed his pencil onto the desk. “John, I’ve got Alan Spaeth.”
    The name rang a bell. “Who is...?”
    “The defendant in the Woodrow Gant case.”
    I felt a tightening in my chest. Even from three hundred miles away, I knew that the shooting of the prosecutor-cum-divorce-attorney had rocked Boston the prior week. The police arrested the husband of a woman Gant had been representing. After returning to the city, I’d gently asked Nancy if she’d known Gant. She said that though he’d prosecuted for another county, she’d met him once, then changed the subject.
    Understandably, I’d thought. Some things are harder to think about than others.
    Rothenberg said, “John?”
    I started to rise. “Good luck with Mr. Spaeth.”
    “Wait, please. Alan needs an investigator.”
    “Steve—”
    “John, hear me out?”
    I stayed standing. “The victim’s a former A.D.A. and—what, the third divorce attorney in two years shot by—”
    “—allegedly shot by—”
    “—an enraged husband.”
    “You don’t have to tell me.” Rothenberg lowered his voice. “But please, John. Spot me ten minutes, then you can leave, you still want to.”
    Given Nancy ’s job, and sensibilities, I didn’t see him convincing me. On the other hand, he’d sent a good deal of business my way over the years, and loyalty entitled Rothenberg to the chance.
    I sat back down. “Ten minutes, and counting.”
    “You didn’t recognize my client’s name, you