The only good Lawyer

bothered me. It was that I didn’t think I’d asked Nicole Spaeth if there’d been any other incidents where her husband had threatened her lawyer.
    Rothenberg focused on his client. “I’m not talking about what you said to me about your wife and Gant. I want to know why you never told me about your visit to the Board of Bar Overseers.”
    “Those fuckers.” The petulant voice again. “This faggot there said—”
    I interrupted him. “That’s one, Spaeth.”
    “One what?”
    “Once more with the slurs, and I walk.”
    Spaeth stared at me, then went to Rothenberg with, “I’m looking at prison for the rest of my life, and I can’t call a spade a spade?”
    Rothenberg cringed hearing one more reason not to put his client on the stand come trial. “Alan, just use names, not labels. Okay?”
    “Okay, okay. This—” Spaeth looked up at me. “I don’t remember his fucking name.”
    “Jeppers,” I said.
    “Yeah, ‘Jeffers’ except with ‘P’s,’ I remember now. This Jeppers guy said what I told him would be confidential.”
    Rothenberg shook his head. “But why did you go there in the first place?”
    “I thought it could help.” Spaeth grew earnest now, trying to sell us on the package. “Look, I thought Gant was fucking Nicole—I heard plenty of guys say their wife’s lawyer did the same thing in their cases.” Rothenberg said, “She was separated from you.”
    “I don’t care. We’re still married, it’s adultery in my book, a fucking betrayal of loyalty. But I figured I told you about her and him when you started representing me—and you didn’t do anything about it—then maybe some kind of... independent investigation would help.”
    “Independent investigation,” I said.
    “Yeah, like the lawyers’ board there. I figured maybe they’d be more... believable, they found out I was right.”
    “More believable where?”
    “With the judge in my divorce case, of course. Why else would I do it?”
    “Then why didn’t you ever mention it to me?” said his divorce lawyer.
    Spaeth ran a hand through the black clots of hair on his head. “I don’t know. That Jeppers, he didn’t seem to think much of it, either. And, remember; I was doing a lot of drinking around then. I must’ve just... forgot.”
    “Forgot to tell me,” said Rothenberg.
    “Yeah.”
    I watched Spaeth. “But you didn’t forget to tell your son.”
    The man flared. “The fuck does Terry have to do with this?”
    I said, “He told me his father shared those suspicions about his mother.”
    “The fuck was I supposed to do? All the judge’s orders against me—that ‘personal liberty’ shit Steve here said I had to obey—I couldn’t go near Nicole myself.”
    I could see by Rothenberg’s expression that he didn’t get what Spaeth meant. “Steve, your client asked Terry to spy on his mother.”
    Rothenberg’s voice dropped. “Alan, you haven’t made this any easier.”
    “Easier?” Spaeth began to boil over. “You try living with a woman for sixteen fucking years, loving her and having a son by her, then getting ordered out of your own fucking house. And ordered to keep paying the fucking mortgage and every other fucking thing anyway. When you don’t have a job anymore, and nobody wants to hire you for another one. See what you’d do, with the booze and all.”
    I said, “One thing I wouldn’t do is ask my son to spy on his mother.”
    A sneer. “You married, Cuddy?”
    A memory of Beth in her hospital bed flashed back on me. “Widowed.”
    Didn’t slow Alan Spaeth down. “Yeah, well, think about it anyway, sport. How would you feel, you thought a lawyer was fucking you over the coals in a divorce and punching the wife you still loved to boot?”
    I got out of there before I decked him.

    “You okay?” asked Steve Rothenberg, genuine concern in his tone.
    “No,” I said, leaning against the corridor wall outside the client interview room, staring down at the floor.
    Rothenberg leaned with me. “Alan Spaeth’s a bigoted, insensitive lout.”
    “He’s all that, and more.”
    “But you still think my client didn’t shoot Woodrow Gant, don’t you?”
    I glanced at Rothenberg, then away again. “That may not be enough, Steve.”
    “It has to be, John. I need you to follow up on the alibi witness, the gang aspect, the restaurant—” Restaurant? “Christ.” I checked my watch. Almost 12:45, and Nancy had said 1:00. “Steve, I’m sorry, I’ve got to