The only good Lawyer

traffic, yes.”
    He shook his head, waving a hand at the side streets. “A truck comes out, boom, we lose them.”
    “We get closer, they’ll know I’m back here.”
    A shrug, then something to himself in Russian. Another five dollars on the meter, and we were in Dorchester , skirting the edges of Mattapan. Yuri twisted halfway in the driver’s seat. “I do not like these streets so much.”
    Hard to blame him. We were in a part of town you wouldn’t mistake for Helen Gant’s neighborhood. Building walls tagged with graffiti crumbled into trash-filled vacant lots. Kids in clumps wore Oakland Raiders and Philadelphia Eagles colors, watching the Mercedes glide by, then eyeing us.
    “Pretty soon,” said Yuri, “I do not want anymore to follow.”
    His last word still hung in the air when the Mercedes pulled to a stop in front of a coffee shop.
    I said, “Go past them to the next street and turn left.” Ducking down, I could see only the taped posters near the top of the shop’s windows, advertising “OPEN AT FIVE” and “TWO EGGS AND TOAST $1.50, COFFEE EXTRA.”
    After Yuri turned, I told him to stop, too. Getting out of the cab, I gave him a twenty as good-faith money, then walked back to the corner building, a failed hardware store from the empty fixtures still inside. Looking at a slight diagonal across the street, I couldn’t see Nguyen Trinh at first, but Oscar Huong was just going in the front door of the coffee shop, aiming his keyring at the Mercedes, which gave that little security-system chirp. Then I could see Trinh inside the shop, moving to a windowed booth. He slid onto the bench seat and stretched out, checking his watch again. Huong eased down opposite him, and I could see their pantomime conversation through the glass as a waitress brought them both cups and saucers, pouring from a Pyrex pot.
    None of us had to wait very long.
    About five minutes after the waitress left the booth, a junker Chevy came down the street and parked in front of the Mercedes. I’d seen the car only in bad light, but its muffler noise was an aural signature, and I wasn’t very surprised when the driver’s side door opened to show Grover Cleveland Gant derricking himself with difficulty out from behind the wheel.

    Quietly and to my back, Yuri said, “Soon we must leave.”
    “Soon we will.”
    “Those kids in the next block, I do not like the way they look at my cab.”
    “Stand next to it and flex.”
    Yuri muttered something in Russian, but moved away from me.
    I was watching the scene in the coffee shop. Oscar Huong had stood to let Grover Gant slide into the booth on his side, which put some serious tonnage on that particular bench. After Huong sat back down and the waitress poured a third cup, Gant watched her walk away before reaching his right hand, holding an envelope, across the table. Nguyen Trinh took the envelope and opened just the flap, looking inside and thumbing the contents. Then he may or may not have said something to Huong, but the Ultimate Fighter’s right hand disappeared under the table for a moment, and the shoulders of Grover Gant doubled over toward his coffee, the head bobbing in what didn’t look like pleasure from my angle.
    Yuri called out to me, “Two minutes more, then my cab and me go.”
    Now Trinh definitely was talking, aiming his comments at Gant’s bobbing head. I thought Gant’s lips were moving, but given the distance, it might just have been from pain. Trinh slipped out of the booth and Huong stood, then leaned over to Gant, whose head now snapped up, his upper body beginning to rise, nearly taking the table with him, coffee cups jumping and spilling. The two Amerasians moved off, through the door of the shop and toward the Mercedes, the chirp noise preceding them.
    From behind me. “One minute.”
    I waited until Trinh and Huong were back in their car, doors closed, before turning away. “Yuri, start your engine.”
    “You know, my cab must be back by three o’clock to garage.”
    The Mercedes cruised fairly leisurely along the city streets, the meter on Yuri’s dashboard in the mid-four-figures. I figured I could always find Grover Gant if need be, but I was curious where Trinh and Huong might go next, and I had only the office address the gang unit had given me for them.
    Holding up his left wrist, Yuri twisted in his seat to say, “And is already two-twenty.”
    “Just hang in there a little—watch it!”
    He swung his head forward, stomping