The only good Lawyer

somebody who was.

    I waited in the parking lot until the crowd began streaming out and back to their cars. As the lot emptied, I spotted Gant’s rust-bucket Chevy three rows down and as many over, in the same “Preferred” section I was in. Finally, Gant himself made his way through the gate, shimmering like the proverbial bowlful of jelly as he waddled to his car. Once there, Gant opened the driver’s door and climbed in. After some blue smoke belched from the exhaust pipe, the old Chevy joined the line of cars turning right, back toward the city.
    I started up and followed.

    We went down 1A, negotiating the traffic rotaries and driving almost sedately. I expected Gant to take the Sumner Tunnel, which would lead him to the Central Artery and the most direct path home to his mother’s house. Instead he took the Tobin Bridge , then Storrow Drive along the Charles River . We went past Harvard University and the turn for Harvard Square , eventually getting off Soldiers Field Road in Brighton . Gant cruised through half of a warehouse district near St. Elizabeth’s Hospital before pulling into a narrow parking area with angled white lines. There was only one other vehicle in the lot.
    A Mercedes sedan, green in color.
    I couldn’t make out the license plate, so as Grover Gant left his car and walked in a side door, I checked the address Larry Cosentino had given me back at the Gang Unit. I was indeed sitting outside the offices of Nugey Trinh and Associate, Limited.
    But not limited by much. I’d have bet even my own money on that.

Chapter 17

    T he side door opened silently for me, but the hinge complained a little as it closed. I got some sounds of forklifts and hand dollies from behind an interior door on the first floor, but there were also heavy footfalls at the top of the shrouded staircase to my left. I waited and heard a metallic knock, Grover Gant saying, “It’s me.” Then a swishing noise before the sound of a door clicking shut.
    I took the first half-flight to a landing and, seeing no one above me, climbed the rest of the stairs to the second floor. There was a heavy steel door for what seemed an office, so I walked up to it. Putting my ear against the jamb, I recognized Nguyen Trinh’s voice saying, “Not enough, Grover.”
    I drew my Chief’s Special before trying the knob. Unlocked. As I pushed hard, the door flung open, banging violently against the wall. I leveled the snubbed barrel of the revolver about heart high on Trinh.
    Seated behind a desk, he stared at my gun. Grover Gant, in a chair across the desk from Trinh, twisted around to look at me, too. For just a micro-second, I registered Oscar Huong looming over Gant from behind before Huong literally sprung vertically three feet off the floor, spinning in the air to face me.
    Huong’s feet hadn’t yet hit the ground again when Trinh snapped off, “Oscar, no!”
    Huong landed in a martial arts stance, his body— shaved head on down—vibrating like a tuning fork from the strain of obeying Trinh against his apparent urge to feed the Smith to me an inch at a time.
    Keeping the muzzle on his boss, I said, “Listen to the man, Oscar.”
    Trinh picked up. “Mr. Private Eye here, he ain’t gonna shoot me, long as you don’t do nothing.” Oscar’s words came out like they were being dragged across a gravel driveway. “He does, he’s dead.”
    I said, “Without this gun, Oscar, you’d have maimed me by now. I just want us to have a nice little talk.”
    Trinh nodded very slightly. “You followed Grover.”
    “Yes, but I had the address here anyway.”
    “How you get it?”
    “Connections.”
    Another slight nod. “Oscar?”
    Huong didn’t move.
    Trinh said, “Oscar, ease off. Let Cuddy come in, sit a while, we find out what he want.”
    This time Huong seemed to calm down. I realized that in the stance, his sports coat had been bulging here, there, and everywhere, like the old Incredible Hulk television show, Lou Ferrigno bursting out of the late Bill Bixby’s clothes. Now Huong just looked normal.
    Meaning homicidal.
    But he shook down his sleeves above the huge hands before standing back against the wall.
    Trinh did that wristy Macarena flourish toward the other empty chair across from his desk. “And you can put the gun away, too.”
    Sitting down, I kept the barrel on target. “I don’t think so.”
    Gant spoke to me for the first time. “Mother-fucker, mother- fuck -er, mother- fucker, I thought you was going