The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy Read Online Free PDF

mistaken, it's your turn to pick drinks and dinner."
    I gave her a one-armed hug. "It is indeed."
    "We walking or driving?"
    "Walking, unless the totebag's going to give you
trouble."
    "The weight won't, but what's inside it might."
    I turned us toward Beacon Street. "Tough trial?"
    Nancy shook her head. "The legislature's finally
approved some new superior court judgeships for the governor to fill,
and I'm supposed to help our administrative people decide if there's
any current nominee we should be opposing."
    "Based on trial attorneys like you litigating
against the nominees as opponents?"
    "You got it."
    "Not much fun."
    "No, but it's important to my boss, and he's
been loyal to me, so . . . Nancy shook her head againj "How
about if we talk about something besides the court system for a
while, okay?"
    I'd wanted to bring up the
Alan Spaeth case with her, get it over with, but right then didn't
seem the time.
    * * *
    Twenty minutes later, Nancy said, "Don't tell me
you've joined the Harvard Club?"
    "I was Holy Cross, Nance," though we had
reached the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Commonwealth. I
gestured toward a doorway in the hotel on the corner.
    She read the name over the threshold. "The Eliot
Lounge?"
    "This is drinks."
    We stepped down into the dark, wood-paneled room, a
bar in front of us with stools and taps, a raised platform area off
to the right with tables.
    Nancy looked around, allowing her eyes to adjust, I
think. "I've never been here, but . . . ?"
    "The Boston Marathon."
    "Oh, right. The place that has a party
afterwards?
    "Not a party, the party."
    She said, "Then how come we didn't come here
when you ran?"
    "Because after I finished the race, my legs were
barely able to climb curbs, remember?"
    "I remember how stupid it was for a man
six-three——"
    "—a little under, Nance—"
    "—and almost two hundred pounds to run
twenty-six miles without stopping when he didn't have to."
    "And I remember you, waiting for me at the
finish line."
    "With my camera."
    "It was the 'you' part that mattered."
    A smile crossed her face, almost from ear to ear.
"That was certainly the right thing to say. Where do we sit?"
    I ordered a pint of draught ale for each of us and
led her to a table under the "Wall of Memory." There were
photos and testaments to Johnny Kelley, who ran more Bostons than any
other human being, winning several times around 194O before finally
having to stop in the early nineties. I identified some candid shots
of Joan Benoit Samuelson, the great women's and Olympic champion, and
of course Boston's own Bill Rodgers, who finished first an incredible
four times in six years.
    Nancy looked up at the wall as our drinks arrived.
"You really know who all these people are?"
    Alberto Salazar, Greg Meyer, Cosmos Ndeti. "Most
of them. But this was never just a runner's bar. Professors from
Berklee College of Music played jazz. And reporters from the old
Phoenix kibitzed with state senators ducking quorum calls. Even the
great Bill Lee made an appearance."
    "The Spaceman. He was pitching for the Red Sox
one afternoon at Fenway when the game got delayed by rain. He came
over to the bar in his uniform and cleats, drinking beer while
monitoring the rain on television, running back to the park to retake
the mound."
    Nancy looked at me. "And when was all this?"
    "The mid- to late-seventies."
    "John?"
    "What?"
    "In the mid- to late-seventies, the only time
I'd have seen any of those people would have been if they'd come to
show-and-tell at my grammar school."
    "Drink your ale."
    As Nancy smiled at me over the top of her glass, I
looked around the room, then noticed Nancy's expression change. She
said, "Something's wrong, isn't it?"
    "How do you mean?"
    "Your face just went sad."
    "The reason I brought you here."
    "Which is?"
    "The owners of the hotel aren't renewing the
bar's lease. They want to aim at a more upscale crowd."
    "So, this is kind of last call at the Eliot
Lounge?"
    "Kind of."
    Nancy reached her