The only good Lawyer

never looks good to paint the victim bl... in a bad light on sex stuff. Unless you’ve come up with a connection to the woman he was with that night?”
    “Nobody seems to have any ideas about that.” Rothenberg looked skeptical. “None at all?”
    “I don’t buy it either, even though everyone took great pains in telling me Woodrow Gant kept his personal life to himself.”
    “Well, keep trying. If the woman was with him when the shooter opened up, she may have seen something.”
    “In which case,” I said, echoing Lieutenant Murphy, “why didn’t our killer get her, too?”
    “Maybe that’s exactly what happened.”
    “Steve.”
    “What?”
    “No other body was found.”
    “So, the killer took the woman away.”
    “Why?”
    “Maybe for just the reason we’re having trouble finding out who she was.”
    “The killer wanted to hide her identity?”
    “Look, this woman tried to disguise herself, right? I mean, dark glasses in a restaurant at night?” Rothenberg had a point.
    He waited a moment, then said, “Anything from Gant’s time as a prosecutor?”
    “I drove out there, talked with a current A.DA. named Arneson, who was Gant’s office-mate. Arneson says Gant was aggressive and effective but fair.” Rothenberg said, “Gang members who get sent away aren’t usually consoled much by ‘fair.’ ”
    “Which brings us to the only piece of good news.”
    “Anything at this point.”
    I lowered my voice. “One of the bad guys Woodrow Gant put away was a home-invader named Nguyen Trinh. But Trinh was only a juvenile at the time, and after paying his debt to society, he expanded into other lines of work.”
    “What other lines?”
    “Loan-sharking, but bordering on venture capital.”
    “Venture capital? Bankrolling what?”
    “A certain Vietnamese restaurant.”
    “No,” said Rothenberg, brightening visibly.
    “Yes. It’s probably just a coincidence that Woodrow Gant ever ate at Viet Mam—one of the other attorneys in the firm had it recommended to her by a friend and took him there once. But maybe Trinh happened to see him at the restaurant.”
    “And got the idea to take his revenge by following Gant the next time the man came by.”
    “Except that A.D.A. Arneson thinks it’s pretty unlikely Trinh would wait so many years before getting even.”
    “John, let’s not taketh away with the other hand, okay?”
    “Meaning this is the best evidence we’ve got so far.”
    “By a mile. You’re sure about this former gang guy’s connection to the restaurant?”
    “That’s what a pretty reliable source told me, but I think one of us should hit the Registry of Deeds, link the property to Trinh through documentation.”
    “I can have somebody there run the title and fax the papers to you.”
    “The Suffolk registry’s not that far from my office. Have your searcher drop an envelope through the mail slot in my door.”
    Rothenberg stared at me. “You still don’t have a fax machine, do you?”
    “Steve, I never even learned how to type.” Rothenberg was giving me a “that-doesn’t-compute” look when we heard a perfunctory rap/rap on the other side of the interior trap.

    In a petulant voice, Alan Spaeth said, “I did tell you.” Rothenberg shook his head. “Alan, what do you take me for, an idiot? I’d have remembered.”
    “Our first meeting, Steve. About the divorce thing. I remember it clear as a fucking bell. You asked me if my wife had a lawyer yet, and I told you, yeah, this colored guy, and you asked me for his name. And as you were writing it down, I said, ‘The way he looks at her, I think he’s getting some on the side.’ ”
    It sounded too “Spaeth-like” to be a lie, so I broke in. “You met Woodrow Gant before you retained Steve on the divorce?”
    “Sure,” a little defiance now from across the desk, the heel of his left hand rubbing the slowly healing “shower” eye. “Hey, sport, I was a pretty good marketing executive, and I handled dozens of negotiations where I sure as shit knew a lot less about the landscape than I did in my own fucking marriage. I figured I’d be able to handle things, no sweat. Only this Gant brings down a mountain of shit on my head, papers on ‘Vacating the Marital Home,’ and ‘No Impositions on Wife’s Personal Liberty.’ Well, what about my ‘personal liberty,’ huh? Who was supposed to look after that, I didn’t hire a lawyer, too?”
    It wasn’t Spaeth’s decision to hire Rothenberg that