The only good Lawyer

Certainly, and the number?... Five-one-three, one-nine-four-four.... Thank you.”
    When Burbage hung up, I said, “Voice mail on the fritz again?”
    She seemed exasperated more by me than the machine. “Yes.”
    “Well, I think you’ve already answered the question I was going to ask about Ms. Ling. Is Mr. Neely still gone, too?”
    “He is.”
    “Do you know when either of them will be back?”
    “No.”
    Burbage gave the impression that she was sorry the English language didn’t have a shorter term for the concept.
    I said, “Can I leave word for both to call me?”
    “Yes.”
    But instead of putting pen to paper, Imogene Burbage swung the spiral message pad around so I could write out my own number for each of them.

Chapter 19

    F rom the other end of the line, Steve Rothenberg said, “Anything, John?”
    “Not that helps us. I can’t come up with an identifiable motive, much less a plausible theory, why somebody would kill both Woodrow Gant and Michael Mantle.”
    Nothing for a moment. Then, “The sooner I plead Spaeth out, the better the deal’s likely to be.”
    Rothenberg’s words, but his tone of voice, too: tossing in the towel. “I thought you told me when we got started that the D.A. wasn’t offering any kind of plea bargain?”
    “John, what we’d be talking about is less ‘how long’ and more ‘where.’ ”
    “Meaning which prison.”
    “And cell block. How would you like to be a white-collar white guy like our boy consigned to general population after killing a black role model?”
    “Steve, do me a favor?”
    “What?”
    “Don’t call the prosecution for a day or two.”
    “A day or...? Why not?”
    “Because neither of us thinks Spaeth did it.” Another moment, then a sigh. “John, you remember that line from Love Story about not having to say you’re sorry?”
    “I remember the movie version.”
    “Yeah, well, the Alan Spaeth version is, ‘We did our best, but there’s only so much you can do without any evidence.’ ”
    “Meaning we don’t have to say we’re sorry.”
    “Right.”
    “Steve?”
    “What?”
    “You contact the D.A. before I get back to you, I think we’ll both be sorry. For as long as Spaeth sits in a cell anywhere.”

    I’d called Steve Rothenberg when I’d gotten back to my office from Epstein Sc Neely. After hanging up on him, I checked in with my answering service. The nice woman with the silky voice relayed a one-line message from Lieutenant Robert Murphy. “Cuddy, I want your ass at the South Market building, NOW.”
    The woman told me she wrote that last word in caps because that was the way Murphy said it. She was pretty sure of his feelings, too, because he’d called only ten minutes before.

    The South and North Market buildings are the twin, Federalist-period shoe boxes flanking the better-known Quincy Market. Each has countless boutiques and several anchoring restaurants—including Cricket’s, where I’d last seen Nancy . However, from all the commotion at the harbor end of the building, it wasn’t hard to know where Murphy wanted me to be.
    I’d walked down State Street from my office on Tremont, so I didn’t have to find a parking place. That was the only fortunate part, given the sickening similarity the cruisers and unmarkeds and Medical Examiner’s van carried with them from the scene in Southie earlier that day.
    A different uniformed officer met me at the yellow-tape barrier. She led me under the “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS” lettering and around the corner to the alley behind the building. I saw a dumpster with some trash overflowing, unusual because the city was adamant about the restaurants and stores maintaining a neat appearance for our tourist showcase. When you got closer to the dumpster though, you could see the thing wasn’t really full. More like somebody had intentionally strewn garbage on the side of it.
    And over what lay on the ground next to it.
    “Cuddy,” said Murphy, standing near the trash pile, “just what the fuck is going on here?”
    I was close enough to see the shapely legs sticking out from under a flattened cardboard box. The pantyhose were torn up the right calf, that two-inch heel on, the other off so the left foot was visible, pointing toward the sky at a forty-five-degree angle. For just a second, my heart said it was Nancy , but my head kicked in quickly, because while the shoes were right, what I could see of the legs belonged to a shorter woman. Besides, Murphy