The only good Lawyer

decibel level of a nineteenth-century asylum.
    The new jail—on Nashua Street —was a soaring seven stories of brick on about two acres of land, with razor wire around the parking lot. The sheriff who finally got the county to build it had to go through a couple of Supreme Court appeals before receiving permission to double-bunk the inmates, but he also included things like a weight room on the second floor and an open-air recreation deck for basketball on the fourth, with wire mesh enclosing the court to prevent the loss of both bouncing balls and footloose players.
    Inside the main entrance, the lobby held three rows of black wire chairs for visitors and a bank of orange, hexagonal lockers for their belongings. Steve Rothenberg had called ahead, and after a deputy in a powder-blue shirt stamped the back of my hand with invisible ink, a sergeant took me up in the elevator, making small talk about the fine weather and the New England Patriots and how he wished the architect for Nashua Street hadn’t included so many different colors for the building’s walls because six years later it was a bitch to keep track of all the paints for touch-up work. No mention of any angry husbands killing their wives’ divorce lawyers, which was fine with me.
    Exiting the elevator, the sergeant led me along a corridor to an attorney-client consulting room. Its interior was maybe eight feet square, with a butcher-block table and caned chairs on each side, a distinct improvement over the wire jobs in the lobby downstairs.
    “Your guy will come through the trap there,” the sergeant said, gesturing toward the door on the other side of the desk. “I have to tell you not to pass him anything?”
    “No.”
    The sergeant pointed to what looked like a light switch. “This here’s a confidentiality switch. You push it over, our audio-surveillance of the room stops.”
    “Thanks.”
    He pointed again. “Panic button, in case the guy gives you any trouble.”
    “He been any trouble?”
    The sergeant gave me a deadpan expression. “Not since he showered yesterday.”
    I sat down as the trap to the corridor closed behind me, wondering if I’d know what that was supposed to mean.

    * * *

    One look at Alan Spaeth, and I knew what it meant.
    He said, “You’re the investigator Steve Rothenberg called me about, right?”
    “Right.” We shook hands. “John Cuddy.”
    “And you’re wondering where I got this, too.” Spaeth put an index finger to his left eye, the purple-and-ocher blotch of a shiner not quite closing it, the knuckles on both hands bruised and scabbed. Standing, Spaeth was about six feet in plastic shoes, maybe a hundred-ninety under the one-piece jumpsuit with no pockets. Only late thirties, his unshaven cheeks were already jowls and sagging a little loosely, as though jail chow wasn’t agreeing with him. He had a wide, greedy mouth, and a nose that showed more nostrils than bridge. His hair was black and curly to the point of clotted, despite yesterday’s “shower.”
    I said, “What happened?”
    Spaeth grinned cruelly, though he must have hurt the eye area some to do it. “End of the housing unit, we got five showers. Five for all fifty of us in there. When it was my turn yesterday, one nigger thought he was tough decided to whale on me account of he heard I killed this nigger lawyer.” A grunt. “He found out I was tougher.”
    “Three’s the charm, Spaeth.”
    A confused expression. “What?”
    “You’ve used the ‘N’-word twice. I hear it a third time, and you’ll be sitting by yourself.”
    “Hey, sport, who the fuck’s paying the tab here?”
    “Steve Rothenberg, if I decide to help him with this case.”
    Spaeth chewed on that. Literally, from the way his jowls worked. Then his chin dropped to his chest. “Look, this thing’s got me all screwed up. I don’t like what I’m learning about ‘jailing’ here, and so I’m showing off, trying not to act... scared. But I am.” Spaeth’s head came back up. “Christ, I’m scared shitless.”
    A little twinge in my gut. “Okay. Here’s the deal. I’m talking to you because Steve asked me to. You tell me your side of things, and I go back to him with whether or not I’m on board. Clear?”
    Alan Spaeth straightened some in his chair, the bruised hands folding themselves on the butcher block. “Clear.”
    “Where do we start?”
    “How about with, I didn’t kill the bastard.”
    “I heard you threatened to.”
    “What, at his