The only good Lawyer

wish I knew what Nancy ’s feeling toward you was right now, but I never experienced it. You were my one and only, John.
    “I know.” Below us, a barge was moving northeast past the harbor’s mouth, the hull and deck lights on her the only indication of her existence or direction, and even those telltales were distributed haphazardly, like a Christmas tree decorated by a drunk.
    John?
    “Sorry, kid. I’m winking out on you.”
    Or on yourself.
    “What do you mean?”
    John Francis Cuddy, you’ve always been a good man, but more than a bit dense when it comes to some aspects of the human condition.
    “Thanks. That sure clears everything up.”
    I don’t... She started over. I think you have to let Nancy call the tune here, because neither you nor me knows better than she how to handle her feelings.
    I took a breath of the crisp, salt-laden air. “You’re right, Beth. As usual.”
    As always, a hint of smile coming up from the ground that held her, I hoped more comfortably than I ever really believed.

Chapter 15

    B y the Time I got back to my condo from the cemetery that Thursday night, it was pretty late. Rather than ruin Steve Rothenberg’s dreams, I decided to sleep on the information about Nicole Spaeth and Woodrow Gant until the next morning.
    I didn’t get to sleep on it very long.
    The clock radio read 4:50 a.m. when I picked up the phone by my bed on what I think was the second ring. “Yeah?”
    “Cuddy, Murphy.”
    “Lieutenant, what—”
    “Get your ass over here. Now.”
    I sat up. “Where’s ‘here’?”

    It turned out to be a derelict, aluminum-sided two-decker in South Boston abutting several warehouses with chain-link fences and concertina wire festively enclosing their parking lots. The two-decker itself was probably white once, but the skin of paint had peeled off the siding, and the windows and doors I could see were all boarded up.
    I parked the Prelude as close as a uniformed officer would allow, then asked for Murphy. The uniform led me on a wending route around early-bird rubberneckers held back by yellow plastic tape strung from telephone poles and the antennae of bubble-topped cruisers, the tape reading “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.” Inside the perimeter of cruisers were two unmarked sedans sandwiched around the Medical Examiner’s white-and-blue minivan.
    When we reached the back of the building, I could see that the rear door was open—forced open, judging by the way it hung from only its bottom hinge. The uniform told me to wait outside while he went into the house.
    Pretty quickly the officer returned and walked past me, Murphy now beckoning from the threshold. As I moved toward him, he said, “You stop for breakfast along the way?”
    “At five in the morning?”
    Murphy nodded. “Best figure on a light lunch, then.”
    “It’s that bad in there?”
    “Let you decide for yourself.”
    I trailed behind him into what would have been the kitchen, now a wreck of torn-up linoleum whose age and color could be anybody’s guess. All the appliances were gone, with open-faced, rusty pipes or just gaping holes in the cabinetry marking where they’d stood. The clittering of little clawed feet came through the walls, and a haze of dust motes danced in front of me. The air itself carried a strong smell of oil and a stronger smell of urine, but the strongest was that high, sickly-sweet stench which, once you’ve known it, can never be mistaken for anything else.
    Murphy held a handkerchief in front of him, squirting a dose of some liquid onto it from a small squeeze bottle he took from a jacket pocket. “You want some of this?”
    “Gasoline?”
    “Yeah.”
    “No, thanks. I’ll be all right.”
    Murphy raised the hankie to his nose. “Let’s go, then.” At the corner of the kitchen was an open door, stairs to a cellar behind it. Bright lights flared below but not in that strobing way camera flashes will. As we descended the steps, both the oil smell and the sickly-sweet one grew powerfully.
    When I reached the point that my head cleared the ceiling, I could see an old oil burner too big or too broken to move from the dirt-floored basement. A couple of men in business suits holding six-volt lanterns stood around an assistant M.E. in her white coat and surgical mask. She was kneeling beside a body in dirty, tattered clothes curled into the fetal position. The woman blocked most of my view, but I could see the corpse’s face well enough. An older man with wasted