The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy Read Online Free PDF Page A

a trial, then
the second decision I leave to the client is whether to have the
judge or a jury as the decider of fact."
    "Won't matter here, will it?"
    Rothenberg chose not to answer. "What I was
building to is the third decision, whether the accused takes the
stand in his own defense."
    "Spaeth testifies, even a rookie prosecutor
would draw him out on cross, and either a judge or a jury would
crucify him."
    "But . . . rightly?"
    I watched Rothenberg as he watched me. "You mean
for the murder of Woodrow Gant?"
    "That's what I mean."
    We watched each other some more.
    "No," I said finally.
    Rothenberg let out a breath I hadn't realized he was
holding.
    The fingers went back to grooming his beard. "So,
you joining the team?"
    "Who's got the file at Homicide?"
    "Robert Murphy."
    The black lieutenant I'd helped on the William
Daniels case. "And you're sure Nancy Meagher's not connected
with this prosecution?"
    Rothenberg reeled off the names of two A.D.A.'s. I'd
never heard Nancy mention either one, not so surprising when you
consider Suffolk County employs over a hundred of them. Then
Rothenberg came forward in his chair, palms flat on the desktop.
"Look, John. For what it's worth, here's my view. Somebody
killed one of my brothers at the bar in cold blood on a deserted
road. Shot the poor devil three times from like ten feet away. I
picture that, and I can't let the somebody get away with it, all
right? But I'm not a cop or a prosecutor, so I can't go after the
real killer. I'm just the lawyer who's trying to show the system that
they need to keep looking because the defendant they've settled on is
the wrong one. And with your help, I just might be able to do that.
Now, what do you say?"
    Rothenberg might have a shaky practice and a shabby
office, but he had that guild loyalty I'd sensed in the people around
me during my one year of law school many years ago. And he'd also
been loyal to me.
    I sat back and told Steve Rothenberg what I was going
to do.
 
    Chapter 2
    LEAVING STEVE ROTHENBERGS office for the second time
that Tuesday, I bought a tuna
pita from a
deli in Boylston Alley. Eating the pocket sandwich on a bench along
the border of Boston Common, I watched the flow of people past me.
The homeless with their shopping bags drooping from hyper-extended
hands, stiff blankets around their shoulders like starched shawls.
Day care workers pushing six-foot vegetable carts, filled not with
cabbages and tomatoes but rather three-year-olds, twisting and
squirming but mostly smiling and laughing as they got wheeled around
the park. Beyond the curb, tourist trolleys—kind of vegetable carts
for adults—motored by, their drivers echoing spiels about
historical sights left and right.
    Walking back to my own office on Tremont Street, I
pretty much ratified the position I'd taken with Rothenberg. I spent
most of the afternoon on paperwork in other cases. Then I tackled the
utility and other bills from the condo I was renting, sorting them
into piles mentally labeled "Due," "Past Due,"
and "Lights Out."
    Suitably depressed, I decided to leave those problems
at my I locked office door and went downstairs for the walk to the
courthouse.
    From the last plaza step outside the main entrance, I
noticed Nancy Meagher come through the revolving door. My heart did
the little dance it learned the first time I'd ever seen her,
presenting the Commonwealth's side in an arson/murder hearing. She
was dressed the same way, too, in a skirt-and-jacket gray suit, white
blouse, and modest heels that kicked her height up to live-nine and
change. The autumn-length black hair just brushed her shoulders,
framing a face of bright blue eyes over freckles and pearly teeth, an
image on a postcard from County Kerry. Nancy had received a cancer
scare of her own a month before, and our working through it had
brought us closer together.
    Shifting the strap of her bulging totebag onto a
shoulder, she went up on tiptoes to peck the corner of my mouth. "If
I'm not