The only good Lawyer

motive after so much lapse of time.” Arneson went from merely careful to completely serious. “Look, Cuddy, I’ll grant you that Woodrow was a hard charger, all right? He had a pair of stones on him so big, they’d brush the ground between his feet. But Woodrow’d been out of here for what, three years now? He stayed a while, then went private, like most of us.”
    “But not like you.”
    The chair swing again. “Yeah, I’ve stayed. I don’t blame the ones who haven’t. They got big dreams like Woodrow, or maybe kids to educate. But I’m still here because I like the work, being on the moral side of issues. Also, you stay long enough, you get to be the smartest fish in a dumb pond, everybody else being so junior by comparison. And the secret to being smart as a prosecutor is simple: attention to detail.” Thom Arneson laughed. “Ten years ago, I was a breast man. Now I’m a detail man. Kind of like I’m losing ground, huh?”
    Actually I was wondering why the supposedly smartest fish still had only a shared office in the pond.

    * * *

    The Board of Bar Overseers is located at 75 Federal Street in Boston ’s financial district. The building, nestled between a couple of banks, was constructed of sturdy gray granite with Art Deco touches of chrome. Despite the nice facade, I’m told that lawyers summoned there view it as a cross between a police department’s Internal Affairs Division and the old K.G.B.’s torture chamber at Lubyanka prison.
    When I got off the elevator, the Board seemed to occupy the entire seventh floor. I followed speckled, marble tiles to the front counter. A young blond woman sat behind greenish security glass, overlapped so that papers (but nothing more dangerous) could be pushed under and up to her. An opaque vase holding an arrangement of Japanese dried flowers stood serenely in a niche on the left, solid oak doors closed at both edges of the reception area.
    As I reached the counter; the young woman was speaking into her telephone. “My name? Heathen... Yes, ma’am.... We have a computer directory here, if you could give me his... Is that with an ‘M’ or an ‘N’? .... Just one second... yes. Yes, we have him in Wellfleet. Here’s his address and telephone.”
    After Heather finished with that last, she paused, then said, “You too, ma’am. Bye now.” The receptionist looked up at me. “Sorry, sir. How can I help you?”
    “I’d like to find out if a lawyer had any complaints lodged against him.”
    A rueful smile. “I’m afraid that’s not public information.”
    “But the lawyer involved is dead.”
    “Sorry,” said Heather. “Unless there’s been a public discipline, all those records have to remain confidential.”
    I took out my identification. “I’m investigating a murder where any complaint here might be important.”
    A polite head shake. “Again, I’m afraid—”
    “It’s the murder of Woodrow Gant.”
    Heather’s face creased. “Just one moment.”

    “Mr. Cuddy?” the man rising behind his desk in a nonshared office.
    “Yes.”
    “Parris Jeppers.” We shook as he said, “Thank you, Heather.”
    The receptionist who had led me to him closed the door on her way out. Jeppers was about five-ten and slim, his forty or so years showing themselves by sprinkled gray in the short, brown hair, both his carefully trimmed mustache and goatee a shade darker. He wore tortoiseshell glasses, one of those neon surfer cords attached to the templates so he could drop the specs in front of him like a bib. Jeppers’ suit was a faint herringbone, his dress shirt blue, but with white collar and cuffs. The paisley bow under his Adam’s apple looked more tied than clipped on.
    Despite the Yankee clothes, he had a Rebel accent. “Heather told me over the telephone that you wished to see any complaints about a given attorney?”
    “I’m thinking, Mr. Jeppers, that she also told you that attorney’s name, or I wouldn’t have gotten an audience with—what are you, anyway?”
    A tight smile. “If you mean title, ‘assistant bar counsel.’ ”
    “What else would I mean?”
    The smile grew tighter. “Sexual orientation, perhaps? If you were guessing I’m gay, you’re right.”
    I didn’t think I’d been guessing at all. “That’s coming on a little strong, isn’t it?”
    “Sometimes strong is a better gambit than courteous. Sorry if I offended you.”
    “Only by assuming that your orientation might affect my view of your